[slaughter] from the paddock to the stomach

Don't worry - she's just for milking

In my direst moments, I always remember too late and then do two things - pray and visit Iceland. Iceland was one of my first posts ever and still it's a fascinating place. Take this, for example:

The Farmers Association of Iceland is considering reinterpreting EU regulations that would enable farmers to establish small slaughterhouses on their farms to sell the meat themselves as part of so-called “food tourism.”

Isn't that sweet? As me old mucker Árni Jósteinsson told Bladid [itself a great name for a newspaper]:

“Home slaughtering offers opportunities for food-tourism ... Farmers could even invite tourists to observe the meat’s journey until in ends up on their plates—from the paddock to the stomach.”

That reminds me - in my concentration on the woes of the world, I forgot to eat the burger I made earlier. Should I still eat it?

[sunday thought] someone has to say it

This is a blog. Blogs must be fun, quick bites of entertaining fiskings of the MSM or pen-pictures of homelife, otherwise readers move on. I'd hoped this post would be fun. Sorry to disappoint:

Major General Tim Cross, the top British officer involved in planning post-war Iraq, said he raised serious concerns with then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the possibility of the country descending into chaos […]General Sir Mike Jackson branded US post-invasion policy "intellectually bankrupt" and said Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq."

My only quibble with Tim Cross and Mike Jackson is not the targets of their ire - Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney are very much responsible for much that is wrong - but that I don't think the officers fully see to whom these men, in turn, pay their tithes. It's not excusing the Rumsfelds of this world but they're only pawns in a greater power game and I don't mean the U.S.

There are most definitely trends since the 50s in the west and globally as well and they could be summarized this way:

1. the secularization of society over two generations and replacement of intrinsic values with extrinsic, such as property, fame, sexual gratification and comfort as the be-alls and end-alls, plus goth - always a sign of a disintegrating society and the understandable non-opposition from the Church due to the appointees being of a certain ilk;

2. the progressive appointment of people of this certain ilk, over the last two generations, into positions of power in education, the arts, medicine and law, such people being inimicable to the old values of patriotism and Christianity and by their position, having the ability to snuff out and mock western societies' roots to the point where Gen X and Y have largely grown up as g-dless hedonists;

3. a lot of global talk at ruling elite level in every western nation and from bodies such as the U.N. plus openly global elitist bodies such as the CFR, the TLC, the BBs and the other luminaries all pushing the same agenda;

4. a clear push for war by those behind the weak western leaders - Kosovo, Iraq and NATO operations to name the most recent and the re-emergence of the west in the middle-east generally for the first time since WW2;

5. provocation of Islam in the form of western foreign policy, playing the patriot card against first supposed and then genuine terrorism, to the point where islamization is a very real threat and "terrorism" allows the ruling elite to bring in the legislation they always wanted to in the first place;

6. the weaning of everyone since the 60s onto a credit based economy and therefore serfdom to the banks, the pushing of housing prices to unrealistic levels which cuts out the first home buyer and must inevitably lead to the ultimate crash, the manoeuvring of the credit institutions into a position to be able, by 2012, to pull the plug;

7. the tightening of western society by criminalizing it [e.g. Blair's 3000+ new crimes in his ten years], the dead hand of political correctness now having the power of incarceration for sedition and the talk by Merkel, among others, of the possibility of war now "not able to be ruled out", along with ID cards, iris scans and all the other goodies plus armed police and troops on the streets and the general frightening of society, whether via climate change or terrorism;

8. the shifting of the world hegemony in the form of the emboldened Islamic world plus China [less so Russia] and the spectre of the next conflagration starting locally but escalating to pan-continental, rather than international and possibly centred in the Middle-East.

The essential difficulty is that a small blogger like myself couldn't possibly see what is happening, could he?

Very few will accept the miniscule number of pundits like myself who say that this thing is induced - that there is nothing sociologically natural about the dystopia we are sliding into and thus nothing whatever can halt its advance.

Even if sufficient woke up to who is stirring the pot, inducing the preconditions, it could only be altered by a revolution and this also has been factored in. Revolutions only ever usher in a worse order. So where does that leave you? Into the new serfdom with some of you climbing into relative safety in the new order. For the nonce.

Where does that leave me? As a Christian and one who is trying to do the job the Pope and the silent Archbishops should be doing but who were either bought or frightened into silence, it's pretty bleak.

Sooner or later I'll be rounded up, a loose cannon which will fire no more. So why bother?

Heaven knows. Someone has to say it.

[blogfocus saturday] genesis of the bloggers

1. Iain Dale, who incidentally doesn't make it easy to access his old material, is having an identity crisis, as can be seen in the banner above and asks whether anyone can design a new banner for him. That's the latest post but his earlier efforts show that many issues are the same today as way back then:

To understand why this country should question its whole relationship with the EU click on this link. I defy even the most ardent Europhile to defend this.

2. Mr. Eugenides did not begin with much fanfare but with a nevertheless interesting observation of the Tory leadership race at the time:

According to an article in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, many of the members of the Cornerstone Group of "traditionalist" Tory MPs are considering backing David Cameron. Full story can be found here. If true, this is a big blow to DD. He's trying to paint himself as the heir to Thatcher whilst DC is the heir to Blair - a gross oversimplification, but a convenient one. And, like all good caricatures, it has at its heart a kernel of truth. Cameron seems sure to win the contest - but it's an open question whether or not the party membership would be so keen if they truly understood what he has in mind for the future.

3. In what I thought a neat little piece on Arnie, Vox Day did two amazing things - pumped iron and got no comments. For a 100+ commenter, that seemed a little strange:

In honor of Governor Schwarzenegger's election - I didn't and don't support his political career, but I still like him as an example of what determination can do for an individual - I hit the triceps hard today. After my normal workout, I added a symbolic six reps with the 100-pound dumbell. I figure Arnold would appreciate that sort of homage instead of the usual toast or whatever. So, *grunt* here's to the new governor!

4. Jonathan Swift went out on a limb and predicted what would happen in 2006. How did he do?

Condoleeza Rice will win the 2006 Presidential election.

There won’t be a single terrorist attack in Wyoming.

The Baltimore Colts will win the Superbowl.

Dick Cheney will resign for health reasons and President Bush will choose Joe Lieberman as the new Vice President uniting the country.

American troops will leave Iraq except for the ones necessary to keep order and prevent civil war.

The stock market will soar to 10,000.

5. The Tin Drummer has made a comeback [how's that for a scoop?] but here he writes of the cultural blog to be:

I had intended this to be a cultural blog, full of literature; however at the moment I am drinking rather more than I am reading. And I wanted to make a defence of beer, by which I mean ale, bitter; what is sometimes dismissed by people as "warm beer". This makes me laugh. You don't drink red wine at 2C, so why drink a flavoursome, malty, hoppy, tangy, fruity beer at such a low temperature that you can barely taste anything and your tongue is numbed as it goes down?

6. The ex-globetrotting CityUnslicker got straight down to the issues when he began and at the same time displayed that idiosyncratic spelling he's now come to be known and loved for, along with Tiberius Gracchus:

Today I wanted to briefly air my thoughts on immigration and employment in the UK today. The MSM have been reporting for the last few days on the large numbers of immigrants that the UK has accpeted since 1997. In general they have tried to avoid giving any real insights into the issue and instead have taken simple ideological stances on the statistics produced.

7. Like Iain Dale, another blogger with the extremely annoying habit of not providing archives, Jocko, aka Colin Campbell, aka Adelaide Green Porridge, aka everything else under the sun, gives us the wordy Count Up:

Early one morning in early May 2006, it will be 01:02:03:04:05:06. Only once in your lifetime. And that's all for now folks.

Don't forget that it's 68 days until Hannah's birthday as well.

8. Saving the lady with the capitalized post titles for last, here she is, the incomparable Welshcakes, whose latest post contains some surprises, as does her take on STORMY WEATHER:

Well, not really. This morning it rained hard for about five minutes and there was loud thunder without lightning, which always frightens me to death. [I wondered if, this time, it was old Pluto having a noisy sulk. Perhaps he is going to abduct Persephone again in revenge for losing his status?] If you are out and get caught in a summer storm like that, it is much too hot and sticky to put on one of those raincoats-in-a-bag beloved of the British, and everyone stares at you if you do, as it is evidence of the kind of forward planning that Italians don't go in for. Besides, where's your pazienza? - Just wait a minute and the rain will stop, as suddenly as it came.

If you have pazienza, I'll be back Wednesday evening with another Focus. Ciao, baby.

[deng xiaoping] foresight or blind determination

At first sight, this might seem both boring and irrelevant but when you consider the sheer size of the project, you can see it impacts on the world as a whole. Let me quote just a few stats concerning China's Three Gorges Dam Project:

181 metres high and 2.3 kilometres wide. When it is fully operational, it will supply 85 billion kilowatts of power annually — just 2 per cent of the country's energy needs by 2010.

That's massive. It has also attracted environmental ire:

Environmentalists and scientists fear the reservoir behind the dam will become a giant cesspool that will affect water quality for the 30 million residents a bottleneck for shipping, the migrants it has created will cause social turmoil for generations to come and thousands of people have been displaced, before the cost in wioldlife is even mentioned.

It was also opposed by one third of deputies in the National Assembly at a time of communist Party crackdowns. Still it went ahead. Now I ask the question - was Deng Xiaoping, the man whose quote gave this blog its name, perhaps right all along?

If he were still around and I put all the objections to him, I imagine he'd reply: "And would you prefer us to supply power to our people through coal-burning? How about nuclear means?" Think through the alternatives to what is clearly the cheapest and cleanest variant and the thing starts to look a bit different on the sort of scale we're talking.

Look at the whole article by Mary-Anne Toy, the url, alas, being lost in my pre-blogging days.

[stupidity] a second look

Not Juliet

When I wrote the post on stupidity, Mopsa made it into a gender issue and asked that I even the score. I asked the sweet lass, in turn, to point me in the right direction but sadly, on this she went quiet. Thank goodness for Juliet, who has finally provided me with the material:

I can't believe the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres has somehow found it appropriate to open his sermon during the otherwise beautiful memorial service for Princess Diana by yelling the words, "Who's cheating?!"

Read the rest here.

We love Mopsa

[september 1st] new academic year

Well, I just heard a huge noise with megaphones and everything and looked across the road at the school and yes - it's that time of year again. Across Russia and former republics, it's the start of the new academic year - much frenetic activity, the flower shops do a roaring trade as children buy flowers for their teachers, everybody's all hyper and I'm delighted I'm only observing at a distance this time.

The little guys in their suits and looking resplendent and hopeful, the little girls in their white shirts, hair in bows and their black skirts and the same colour scheme right across this vast land.

Managed to avoid the faculty meeting yesterday and have two ladies coming here today, both sisters and the good thing is that I don't know which is coming first and so I'm getting ready for the surprise. I also have to Min today - can you believe government departments working on this day?

It's not a good day to be out - the cafes and cinemas are packed and everyone's having a jolly good time. Little girl yesterday told me she was so looking forward to getting back and working again. I looked at her to see if she was kidding but she was dead serious.