The Deadly Crescent

David Goodman writes about Syria:

If we had a Syrian elite dedicated to modernization, free markets, and opportunity, we could have an economic recovery in Syria. But the country is locked into suppurating backwardness precisely because the dominant culture holds back individual initiative and enterprise. The longstanding hatreds among Sunnis and Shi’ites, and Kurds and Druze and Arabs, turn into a fight to the death as the ground shrinks beneath them. The pre-modern culture demands proofs of group loyalty in the form of atrocities which bind the combatants to an all-or-nothing outcome. The Sunni rebels appear quite as enthusiastic in their perpetration of atrocities as does the disgusting Assad government.david goodman

Which, I suspect, gets Syria about right.

Patrick Buchanan wrote up a bit of history in discussing Sykes-Picot which was the WWI treaty which carved up Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and such like.

I’ve just finished reading Philip Mansel’s brilliant history of the region, Levant, which gets the sweep of the history of the area very right indeed. The critical thing in Mansal’s book is the “black tide” of Islam sweeping up from the Gulf and destroying the cosmopolitan accommodation of Levantine culture. In Smyrna, Alexandria and Beruit the imposition of Islam has destroyed the mercantile, liberal cultures of the Mediterranean. It is a book of massacres, ethnic cleansing and a description of the corrosive effects of Islam.

There is a very good argument that we are looking at the first phase of a Thirty Year war in Islam. And those wars have never been anything but pure atrocity in the name of God.

For the West the best policy is, I think, to stay the Hell out and make sure that any of our “citizens” who participate are denied reentry to the West.

We might also, usefully, ensure that other than the Christians who are displaced, we prohibit immigration from any of the nations involved. Frankly, we have not the slightest idea which of them have blood on their hands. And, as we don’t, there is no reason at all to let mass murderers or their enablers into Canada.

Globe and Mail: Rob Ford: Comments Closed

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/gawker-says-alleged-rob-ford-crack-video-is-gone/article12353604/comments/

Because when you wet your pants in public it is a bad idea to invite people to comment on the embarrassment.

Of course, the pants are still wet and, in time, stinky.

Dumbos.

Ha, Ha, Ha…..Gone

Those damned Toronto star journalists…bugged the drug dealer just a little too much.

So says Gawker and who would not believe them.

Syria issues travel warning for Turkey

Ace.

Springtime in Turkey?

Not Happy with Islamists

The general collapse of the old order in the Levant continues.

My bet is that these largely secular protestors will go the same way as the anti-regime protestors in Iran. They will be ignored by the great and the good in the West for fear of destabilization. Which is a shame but about what can be expected from the pussies who purport to be our political class.

Syria is in a full scale civil war with the traditional sectarian massacres – I am reading Mansel’s wonderful history of the Levant: Splendor and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean – and if history is any guide we are at the very beginning of a Rwandan level slaughter of the innocents.

The Turkish protests are a first shot. Syria started in much the same way.

The Levant is filled with fanatics, often under a thin veneer of a Westernized culture, who have a long history of rampage and amok. It is very sad but, I fear, it is a convulsion which needs to burn itself out.

Rob Ford and the Toronto Media

I find Rob Ford rather repellant. Better than the other guys but that just shows how weak the Toronto conservative bench really is.

Of course I am delighted he gets up the nose of all the right people, but he is still pretty gross.

And now, having failed to depose him via a stupid Court case, the bien pensant are going for the flat out smear. Armed with a grainy picture of a big fat idiot and, apparently, the word of a bunch of murdering drug dealers, the Toronto media – and right thinking citizens in the Annex and environs - have decided that Ford  smokes crack with black people. If true, this is not a good thing.

However, for the moment the fact is that these great and good folks a) don’t have the video, b) have sorta lost track of the people who claim to have the video, c) are looking dumber by the hour.

Time to put up or shut up: got the video? Great, let’s give the drug dealers the 200K (and not ask too many questions, OK) and out Ford as a crack smoking fat boy. Or, if you can’t actually produce the video, shut up.

Meanwhile, conservatives, please…try to find less revolting people to elect. Just because Ford is better than any of the dimwit lefties who ran against him is no reason to be proud of the buffoon – try to do better. The reality is that there are smart, articulate, conservative people with fewer downsides than the Ford Brothers bring to the table. Why not go that way?

Snort!

Two important developments happened Thursday night in Gawker’s Rob Ford “Crackstarter” campaign: someone donated $10,000, and editor John Cook admitted he hasn’t been able to get in touch with the owner of the alleged Ford crack video since Sunday.

The U.S. website’s crowd-funding campaign is seeking to buy the smartphone video that allegedly shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford appearing to smoke crack cocaine. The video is being shopped around by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade, the Toronto Star previously reported. the star

Generally, drug dealers tend not to be terrifically reliable.

Apparently this is news to the Star and Gawker.

‘Cause they really are that dumb.

Quick Kudo!

My mum’s birthday is tomorrow. I wanted to send flowers to Vancouver…fast.

I scanned around the net and found Flowers on First. Critically for me Flowers on First accepts Paypal.

Problem solved.

Thanks Ady!

Progress

No Tricks Zone has a roundup of German and Danish mainstream media climate coverage in which – in the middle of a 100 year winter – the dubious nature of the IPCC endorsed “science” is explored.

The Economist, bastion of all things warm, green and very fuzzy, is moved to notice that the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 may be a bit less than catastrophic.

While the wheels began falling off the CAGW bus back in 2008 the fact is that the mainstream media were far too committed to the cause to actually report the evolution of climate thinking. Five nasty winters in a row in Europe has, apparently, made it possible for a few media outlets to climb out of the tank.

It’s a start.

Earth Hour

Snort.

Man found dead in snow drift Telegraph

Kate’s Spring Roundup

Amusingly, here in not very warm Victoria, Earth Hour has gone unmentioned.

I fear that only we “Hour of Power” celebrants are paying much attention this year.

I fear that the whole “global warming” thing is, well, done.