Sport: From the Sublime to the stupid.

We like a bit of sport in the Tavern, this old Tavern Keeper having been sort of sporty in his youth.

Mind you, that was a while ago and since then I became a passable archer and parachutist, both of which can be competetive but really demand that a chap be better than he was the last time.  Apart from Rugger I was rarely a team man.

A younger Tavern Keeper. !

I used to use a bow and arrow to hunt wild pigs too. (Mind you, that was in Malaya and I did have a chap behind me with a rifle too). I much prefer the sort of sport where a man is constantly seeking to 'go further, go deeper' in himself. Develop his skill and courage; his agility and strength.
Like this:

I once started and ran a 'club' for military assault course running. It was a splendid way to spend an afternoon in the forest. But such things rarely get onto our screens or get set up on our local sports grounds. They would be great fun to watch and take part.  I would have those Chilean chaps on my Tavern grounds to watch from the patio.

Mind you, we have had quite a bit of daring-do here as you might have seen.

But in general, modern team 'sport' is really boring and sports fans are encouraged to be brainless. Spectators are treated to dancing girls in America before armoured men 'play' football. It is a very frantic game, full of pre-game hysteria, but I can watch barely ten minutes of it; and they themselves seem only able to play in three-minute bursts of quite mind-numbing unsporting activity in which players who are nowhere near the ball simply knock each other over.  Why? And did I mention the armour, including helmets? Odd lot, Americans. It is combative and tough. It is a game for very tough chaps. But....

At least in Rugger the chaps are monsters, unarmed and unarmoured. True 'contact' sport, with blood!  It is just as rough as American football but the chap with the ball is the target that everyone goes for.  I doubt many Americans, raised on highly armoured football would ever last ten minutes on a rugger pitch.

Look for yourself. Compare. 

As for English football, it is all one can do to stop falling asleep in the rain and wind. 

Boring.

Basketball and baseball, cricket and such dominate the 'ratings, and the players recieve a small fortune in salary,  for what?  Playing for an hour or so?  And don't get me going on Australian Rules.  James, a regular here, loves it, but to me it is a gargle-mixture of a game where thuggish players routinely cheat and foul and even the scoring is aided by multiple points for goals and goal posts either side of the goal posts to make even blind Freddy able to get through.

I could go on but fortunately Mike Cunningham was in the bar saying what many think.

Sport.

and the Answer is?

Listening with only one ear this morning, to the usual tripe and propaganda bilge from the BBC, care of their Toady Programme. The original discussion, as far as remembered, was about how teenaged girls would jump into hysterics over some spotty-faced Boy band, and how this differed from people watching a rugby or football match. 

The presenters and some bloke were talking about sport, and how it was ‘understandable’ for a grown man to cry if his team had lost, or won for that matter; but this ‘emotional response’ was totally different to a bunch of adolescent females showing off their hormonal urges as a group.

Now, as for myself; I just cannot understand the whole idea of ‘my team’ or being ‘the winner’, or the ‘best’: or whatever is shovelled out by the sports-lovers lobby, which of course is vast and all-pervasive.

You and me both, Mike. 

Sport itself, in all its forms, is just another Industry, and all its individual tendril offshoots are dedicated to doing one thing, and one thing only, to take your cash, and endeavour to get ever more of your cash, and business’ cash, and tv and broadband cash, to enrich the Empire whilst delivering: exactly what? 

Emotional release? Team loyalty? Admiration of individual endeavour? 

Let’s face it, sports fans are just as deluded as any other mass entertainment audience. 

When the  Chelsea fans roar their approval, what are they actually stating? That their team is better than their opponents? That they are ‘winners’? What actually have they, the spectators, silly, deluded people that they are, really won, or achieved? 

 http://www.4liberty.org.uk/2015/08/29/and-the-answer-is/

When an Olympic crowd of eighty-odd thousand cheers a victory in a distance race, are they applauding the winner, or are they stating that their country, and its political philosophy, is somehow on a higher plane than the runners who came second, or last? What I am asking, in admittedly a roundabout way is this: 

What’s the Point?

So your team wins, or the runner comes first, or the penalty-taker misses, or whatever god-forsaken physical activity which you hew to makes the headlines on the back pages of some gutter-press production. Why the glorification? Why the deluded doom when the ‘Team’ is headed, inexorably, for the demotion area of the League? There seems to be a total lack of awareness that, for every winner, there must be a ‘loser’. 

I remember reading some ‘pop-ed’ piece where the female writer came home on a Saturday afternoon to find her fiancè lying on the floor, beating his fists into the carpet, whilst moaning ‘Liverpool lost!’ 

Big deal! 

The governmental, with the emphasis on the ‘mental’ part of that word, push when the Olympics were being touted around as the saviour of all things British is but typical of the hype surrounding sport and its promotion. The Olympics would give new emphasis to inclusivity, and general health, along with all the usual mealy-mouthed phrases from the lowest of the low: an ex-Government Minister.

The words which shape the phrase ‘role-models’ are used, especially in football, to determine who is being hero-worshipped by the plebs this month; but just let us examine those who are being touted as the ‘role-model’ for impressionable youngsters in today’s shabby little universe. 

The likes of Ryan Giggs, of whom I wrote  “a footballer whose ‘clean-living’ image was parlayed into a huge array of sponsorships was found, after the removal of not one but several ‘super-injunctions’ was found to be leading such an amoral lifestyle as not only carrying on a liaison with some prostitute, but also to have had sex with his brother’s wife over an eight year period: is portrayed as a role-model; no wonder men of my generation shake their heads in silent sorrow.” 

'Image' is it. Not the substance. And young people are suckered in to part with their cash and emulate the crude and thuggish.

In my younger days, our heroes were heroes, worthy of the name, but that sort of individual wouldn’t stand much chance of reward in these days of instant glory, and of fame for fame’s sake. I wrote of a young man who was being touted as the ‘next great thing’ in football, but I also wrote of that same youngster as being an amoral thug who threatened a contemporary with violence because his friends had been charged on evidence given by this young man. The footballer was named Ravel Morrison; and I musingly asked if an elderly man would post a picture of Ravel Morrison on a blogsite some twenty-three years after his death? Somehow, I doubt it!

The huge business of Sport, whether it is football and the fatally-corrupted & -flawed FIFA, or Athletics and the dope-ridden IAAF; cricket, and the fantastic numbers of Indian enthusiasts; or any one of a dozen differing sporting endeavours, are all inextricably linked with cash, with sponsorship, with the huge deals for global television. 

But again I ask the only question which counts: What’s the Point? Does it really matter if one man or woman runs faster, jumps longer, or moves a ball more skilfully than his opponent? 

Apart from individual earnings, that is? 

Why this adoration of certain people because of either a natural or learned ability to perform certain manoeuvres? Why the fevered following for a team of a certain city, or even a locality; despite there being hardly any native sons in that team? When I was much younger, my Dad and my brother went to all Newcastle home matches, and there they could watch and cheer men who came from the same villages and vicinity as the fans. But could a similar family identify with a team today? I doubt it very, very much indeed!

Mike nails much of what is wrong. The appalling 'stars' who gain fame and fortune, paid for by people earning barely above poverty line wages. 

And that's just the men's sports. Women also want into the fame and fortune but can't seem to attract the same level of ludicrous hero-worship and sponsorship. 

But they whine about a 'pay-gap' and the lady reporters feed their envy. Until a hard working and talented woman slaps them down.

And all the time they miss the point.  It's not about gender. Nothing to do with 'men' and 'women'. Its about money. Industry. Taking vast amounts of money from drongos who are more like rock concert fans willing to pay $150 to watch some children or geriatrics gyrate crudely and make raucous noise in a stadium. Oh, by the way, the 'ladies' seem to make a lot of money there.  Miley Cyrus, for instance is just a grown-up three year old at home showing her knickers to visitors. For that and her screetching she gets a fortune that a family man wage earner cannot even dream of ever earning in his lifetime.

Your Daughters'  Role Model ????

Have you never wondered just what 'music' audiences see or hear to scream about? 

It is an hysteria. Not 'appreciation'.

Sport as it is presented today is no different.

I have watched women's football and woman's cricket.  Clearly the ladies enjoy playing it and they can often acquit themselves well. But it is just as boring as the men's game. I have watched women's basketball (they call it netball here) and that is boring. Ten minutes and I am back to the bar, wiping down splashes.

Too few woman are daft enough to want to spend $100 to stand for an hour and a half to watch them in a stadium. 

That's why they don't get paid much.

The men are not 'worth' more.

There are many 'sports' of skill and strategic brilliance that rarely make it into popular sight. I go back to archery again, as an example. It is a fantastic sport, taking in styles beyond target shooting. There is field shooting and Clout and even archery golf! Golfing is incredibly boring until you put golfers up against archers. THEN it is a great competition. 

You will never see it televised.

Crikey even Lawn Bowls is more exciting  and skillful than football.

Drink up and list the sports that YOU would like to see.

I'll get a fresh pint in for you.

Pax

Identify: Friend or Faux.

Some strange people show up in the Tavern to shake the dust off their feet and seek  some good company. I do not ask many questions. But perhaps I should have to start, if I can find the right words when they sit. Perhaps, "can you keep your knees together", would be a start.

Friend or Foe. A fine old military challenge to sort the sound men from the bad boyos. Identify yourself with a password. The Guards shouted it down from the Watch Towers. But today the guardians of our society have been sacked and their watch towers turned into platforms for narcissists to flaunt themselves upon.

The false mingle with the good and the brave and many today have difficulty telling them apart. When they do manage it, they laud the faux and dismiss the brave. It is a clear sign that our society has turned sour. 

We come into the world with some fairly clear indications of who we are. Boys and girls. But for some that is not enough now. How you 'feel' about it matters more than any physical parts you might have. Your genes - and even what you find when you take your jeans off - are not enough anymore.

So we have the ludicrous award of Woman of the Year, given each year by Glamour' magazine, given this year to a man who pretends to be a woman

No, not The US President's 'Partner', but to an ever greater SuperStar, 

Yes, Bruce Jenner.

In Oz, Bruce is an all purpose name given to any old Aussie (male) bod, especially philosophers, and as a parody.  The English did it. Monty Python. We do not do parody as well in Oz as they do in England. Its a bit like Irony in the USA. But in the USA Bruce is a particular sports..er..person's name and he has changed it to Caitlyn.

He decided he is a woman, not a man.

THAT is parody.

She was even called 'courageous' !!

Hello, ladies. He's a bloke !

You would think the Feminist sistahood would be up in arms about this, but no. It was they who sowed this nonesense and it is they who reap the wind-up-the-skirt harvest.

Look, as a chap who has had a career as a Knight, a King, a Philosopher, a Psycomancer, a Monk, a Hermit and a Tavern Keeper, I am well aware that people change their minds and develop different interests.  Some chaps, like Bruce, may even want to change their usual attire, as I have done many times.

Bruce likes ladies' clothes. He likes to pose in ladies' underwear. 

Ordinarily (?) one might look slightly askance but Bruce demands 'Respect'.

And more.

Accolade.

Some chaps like to wear ladies 'things'. I recall back in my Knightly days that poor knights (and I started as a poor one) wore a linen or woolen shirt under their armour, while the better-off fellows wore a silk shift.  It was a favoured fabric as it was soft and rust did not easily get through it from the sweaty armour. Many of those chaps got their silk shifts from their mother's wardrobe. They usually stopped short of borrowing the flouncy petticoats though.

A chap may prefer the soft and silky feel of such lady-usual materials next to

his skin, especially to insulate against cold steel armour.  (And these days that 'Cold Steel' can be quite extensive.... but more on that later). And why indeed should only the ladies have fine materials?  I do not ever enquire of my customers what they are wearing beneath their trousers; whether it is cotton or microfibre, Bonds Y-fronts, shreddies, Hings or Vanity Fair Nylon knickers. As long as he does not flash them about of seek the views and viewing of others, I care not a whit.  Some chaps are happy little transvestites at home and in secret in the office. And even, so it is said, in the Senate of the USA and heading up the FBI. But they still claim to be men.   Robin Hood wore tights, as did many a fine chap of his day, and even in modern times, Batman and Robin had a fine line in hosiery. ("Robin. Stop looking at my thighs"). 

One does not ask a lady customer, of course.  Many are not even ladies, but 'modern women'. One does not have to ask or look these days. So many come into the bars with skirts so short that one can see not just their choice in underwear (and some quite pretty ones they are too ) but what they had for breakfast. Which is a bit off putting and calls for the Bouncer to make a discrete approach. Clearly the 'modern woman' does not care about what men wear either; nor one another. They revel in being transvestites  themselves and no-one bats an eylid. They can wear whatever they like and quite often wear their male 'partner's' clothes. 

Woe betide him wearing her's though !!

Until Bruce showed up.

Well known TV women's talk-show transvestite.

But Bruce takes it a tad further and demands to be treated 'as' a woman. Not simply a run of the mill transvestite.

Gender, these days is a battlefield of its own, made so by feminists who revel in making mischief and mayhem that extends well beyond the school playground. It is rife in Universities.

Being male in a 'tolerant', 'diversity'-demanding place is a minefield, nonetheless.

Wellesley College students are okay with him on campus, but not in a leadership position.

A student who was born female felt perfectly comfortable identifying as a man at Wellesley College–until people said he shouldn’t be class diversity officer because he is now a white male.

Timothy, dressed a a chap, sits with his female friends who also seem to be dressed like chaps.

Timothy Boatwright was born a girl, and checked off the “female” box when applying to the Massachusetts all-women’s school, according to an article in the New York Times. But when he got there, he introduced himself as a “masculine-of-center genderqueer” person named “Timothy” (the name he picked for himself) and asked them to use male pronouns when referring to him.

  http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390425/students-transgender-woman-cant-be-diversity-officer-because-shes-white-man-now?nopaging=1

And, by all accounts, Boatwright felt welcome on campus–until the day he announced that he wanted to run for the school’s office of multicultural affairs coordinator, whose job is to promote a “culture of diversity” on campus.

But some students thought that allowing Boatwright to have the position would just perpetuate patriarchy. They were so opposed, in fact, that when the other three candidates (all women of color) dropped out, they started an anonymous Facebook campaign encouraging people not to vote at all to keep him from winning the position.

Mind you, it is a partial victory that a 'he' managed to get into a college at all. In some places men are simply refused entry.

This picture of Bahar Mustafa, the student union Welfare and Diversity Officer at Goldsmiths University, shows her posing in front if a 'no white men' sign while pretending to cry.

It is all very wierd.

The feminists have actually risen from the plain stupid to the ridiculously stupid. It seems even the Feminist SuperStars can get into trouble with the modern feminist 'Zozchial Justitz Warriors'.

An online petition has been launched seeking to prevent Germaine Greer from giving a lecture at Cardiff University, claiming her views are “problematic” for transgender people.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

The petition on Change.org was started by Rachael Melhuish, women’s officer at the university’s students’ union, and alleges that Greer has “demonstrated misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether”.

Well, whoda Thunk !  It could not have happened to a more deserving harridan.

But it can facilitate some opportunities for the Modern Knight. Some armour is more mobility-oriented than others.

A Mr Warthog dropped into the Tavern and announced.....

I Sexually Identify As An A-10 Thunderbolt

I have finally found the strength to admit it.

I was 12 years old when I realized that I’m not really a man at heart, but rather a 19 foot, 10.5 inch long gatling gun strapped onto a 24,959 pound airframe.

 http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/03/op-ed-i-sexually-identify-as-an-a-10-thunderbolt/

All my life has been a lie but I’m setting that right today. I was designed to kill Soviet tanks. From now on, call me “Warthog.” That’s my real name.

I’m having plastic surgeons attach a GAU-8 Avenger 30 milimeter rotary cannon, 1,200 pounds of titanium armor, and two General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofan engines to my body. Sgt. Major Fairchild said I’m fucking stupid and I can’t be a jet, but I’m beautiful and I am a goddamn jet.

If the Army won’t pay for me to get the surgery, I’m just going to bring in Code Pink and point out that that Manning loser is getting hormones and he’s in prison so why shouldn’t a perfectly well-adjusted and honorably serving soldier have the right to be who they truly are, a metal killing machine?

I am so sick and tired of being oppressed. Now we A-10’s are on Congress’s chopping block. It’s sickening to see all the white cisgender nazi shitlords literally raping my people with their actions.

It’s my right to spray 2,100 to 4,200 depleted uranium rounds per minute at both soft and hard targets and if you don’t support me and my transformation then you’re an aerialphobe and need to check your weapon platform privilege.

hahahahahahaha.

I did not enquire as to his preference in knickers.

I gave him a pint.


Pax. 

Poor, poor Jennifer

The treatment of women, we are told, is terrible. It shows, it seems, in the pittance we pay them for the same work as men.  Jennifer Lawrence, the ...erm.. actress, tells us that we cannot avoid dealing with this pressing issue for too much longer or we shall be swept away in a flood of tears, and stamping feet, and holding of breath until a legion of waifs turn blue.

I was not going to mention this at all except the issue was raised to me quite personally when I moved my quarters recently. I took the opportunity to have a 'spring clean' in the Tavern and gathered my cleaning staff around. It was only when I totted up the cost that it really hit home. I must use my towel far more than I have been, just to save some of the outrageous outgoings.

Earns more than a normal man who supports a family, and she still
has the cradle marks on her bum.

That was partly Jennifer's point although she focused her attention on the difference between what outgoes from her employer's pocket into her clutch baggage and that of a similarly endowed male actor getting his crust. My cleaners all recieved a flat rate of $300 for an eight hour sweep, mop and wipe. Clearly I saw no need to differentiate on breast size when it came to pay up. They take home a reasonable average Oz wage of around $45000 a year.

Not so Jennifer. You might recall the lass. She was the poor village girl taken away to the forest to hunt down her teenage colleagues, kill them with her bow and arrows, and get some glittering prize. 

Not in reality of course; it was a film.

She was spared the sweeping and mopping and wiping, (and even smiling, or any facial expression) and simply had to read the lines that barely literate scriptwriters has written for her and goto, stand, sit, run, smile and grimmace as the Director instructed, (she doesn't do grimmace either) then retire to her make up artistes for a redo of her face.  

And for this she was paid.... not enough, it seems. A mere one million bucks.

My average wage cleaners would have to work for 22 years to earn  that much.

But she's a canny lass, and having caused a fuss she now has organised herself (well, ok, her agent has) $20 million up-front or fully 30% of the next film's profits.  And there will be next films. 

That's 440 years of cleaner's pay.

Jennifer still had a lot to say though.

Jennifer Lawrence expresses anger at Hollywood's gender pay gap

‘I’m over trying to find the adorable way to state my opinion,’ the Oscar winner says of her disappointment at finding she was paid less than her male co-stars

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/13/jennifer-lawrence-hollywood-gender-pay-gap

Jennifer Lawrence has come out hard against the gender pay inequality in Hollywood, in an impassioned essay she wrote for her friend Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter newsletter.

The Hunger Games actor for the first time addresses revelations from the Sony hack that she earned considerably less than her male co-stars in American Hustle, despite her major role in the film and bankable status as a Hollywood A-lister and Oscar winner.

 “When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony,” she writes. “I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need.”

She writes that a need “to be liked” and the fear of seeming “difficult” or “spoiled” kept her from demanding more money.

“This could be a young-person thing,” she writes. “It could be a personality thing. I’m sure it’s both. But this is an element of my personality that I’ve been working against for years, and based on the statistics, I don’t think I’m the only woman with this issue … Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?”

Lawrence peppers her essay with her trademark self-deprecating tone: “It’s hard for me to speak about my experience as a working woman because I can safely say my problems aren’t exactly relatable.”

You have to love that. 'Self depreciating'. Whining over an enormous pay check. 

She 'compares', you see. With MEN !!! (tm) (Hiss, boo, the all-purpose bogeyperson)

She writes that she has kept mostly quiet until now on the subject of feminism because she tends to veer away from topics that she fears are “trending”. “I’m even the asshole who didn’t do anything about the ice-bucket challenge – which was saving lives – because it started to feel more like a ‘trend’ than a cause,” she writes. “I should have written a check, but I fucking forgot, OK? I’m not perfect.”

Nor her language, it seems. 

Lawrence’s essay is notable for its anger, something the actor rarely expresses during interviews. 

She is angry at being paid a huge sum to ACT. ??

“I’m over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state my opinion and still be likable,” she writes. “Fuck that.”

Script-writer's pithy phrase.  You have failed the 'adorable' hurdle, m'dear.

Forbes recently ranked Lawrence as the highest-paid female actor of 2015. Since the Sony leak, Lawrence made headlines for negotiating a higher salary than Chris Pratt, her co-star in the upcoming blockbuster Passengers. Pratt will earn $12m for the film, while Lawrence will net $20m upfront or 30% of the film’s profits.

Lawrence joins a long list of actors including Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Patricia Arquette, Cate Blanchett and Rose McGowan who in recent months have spoken up about misogyny in the entertainment industry.

The heart has to bleed over this egregious victimhood.

It isn't just actors, of course. There are other 'professions' that have no code of ethics, produce not a damned thing except hyper-inflated egos and do nothing at all to make life better for anyone but themselves.

Perhaps poor Jennifer should take acting lessons from another Jennifer.

It's been a rough year for the actress, but at least she has her millions of dollars to ease the pain. 43-year-old Jennifer Garner has taken the No. 1 spot on People With Money’s top 10 highest-paid actresses for 2015 with an estimated $96 million in combined earnings.

Poor gal cannot afford more than $10,000 for a dress.

In 2013 it looked like the actress’s spectacular career was winding down. Suddenly, she was back on top. People With Money reports on Thursday (October 22) that Garner is the highest-paid actress in the world, pulling in an astonishing $96 million between September 2014 and September 2015, a nearly $60 million lead over her closest competition.

The American actress has an estimated net worth of $275 million.

Oh my. How does she manage ? Some bloke, who is just as grossly paid, gets more.

And she is right. Here is the evidence, M'Lud. of this gross miscarriage of pay equity.

Hollywood's gender pay gap 

Actor's name Paid (m)   Actresses's name Paid (m)

Robert Downey Jr. $75   Sandra Bullock $51

Dwayne Johson    $54   Jennifer Lawrence $34

Bradley Cooper    $46   Jennifer Aniston $31

Leonardo DiCaprio $39   Gwyneth Paltrow $19

Chris Hemsworth   $37   Angelina Jolie   $18

Liam Neeson   $36     Cameron Diaz $18

Ben Affleck   $35     Scarlett Johansson $17

Christian Bale   $35      Amy Adams         $13

Will Smith           $32     Natalie Portman $13

Mark Wahlberg  $32      Kristen Stewart $12

That's millions of dollars, by the way.

Frankly I just don't know how Natalie and Angelina get by.  Most don't get near to Mark Wahlburg. (Who?). Mind you, the Jennifers are avoiding comparing their pay to Sandra's. All those ladies (nearly all) are clearly very hard done by. It is scandalous.  There they are reading lines and being moved around by Directors and for such little benefit to themselves, and for less than Mark ! Crikey, they may as well be cooking in an old folks home or perhaps walking the beat as a police... er.... person.

(A Police Officer's average pay in the USA is $66,000 pa, by the way)

(That's 303 years for him to earn the Hunger gal's salary for one film)

Hmmmm. I shall get around to CEOs another time.

Its enough to make a woman (?) cry.

Pax.

The Move.

My move to new quarters is complete. Well, almost.  Still a little sorting out to do, especially with the Tavern reporting.

Thankfully there were several young Knights and a fetching Lady at hand to help and the two day moving my kit exercise went fine apart from leaving this Knackered old Knight even more knackered than usual. 

But the new quarters are splendid, even down to the views over the grounds. One gets used to the sight from one's usual windows, but just a few yards away the views can be quite different. Such is this small Isle with its never-flat horizons (except at sea).

Even the view at night is better from here. And the evening air is heady.

The Tavern services continued in my absence although the staff were reluctant to take the plunge and tell of what they heard around the tables and counters and bartops.

Give me a day or two.


Pax.

Behind Enemy Lines.

This will be a last post for a few days.  I am moving my living quarters to create space for my collection of shields and lances, swords and halberds. They were crowding my bed-space so it is either them or me.

But as I took most of them, rather audaciously I might add, from the cold, dead hands of my vanquished enemies, they are rather special and precious to me.  I once was a warrior, you see.  So 'tis I that will move.

I am going to recount a tale from someone who came into the US Room the other day. It was about a Warrior who dared to face his enemies, audaciously, but first a little about another minor event that occured yesterday. It may illustrate the many ways in which we fight for Goodness and Light. 

In my move preparations I found that I had some furniture surplus to requirements. A rather large bed, for instance. I am a large chap but that bed was really for two quite active people. You know the sort of night-time activity I mean. Those days are long past for me so I have another bed, with added firmness for my old bones to lay upon.

I had a large settee too, suitable for several fully armoured Knights should they need somewhere to sit. I have bars full of seats for them and I am tired of raucous chaps clumping around disturbing my sleep, so the settee could go.

I called St Vinny's in Hillary's Village to come along and take them away.  A refugee family in need could rest easy on such comfortable items. But it seems they were only fit for me and not for the needy, according to the 'Charity'. 

I had not realised just how poor and needy I must be m'self !!

Refugees deserve high quality goods in near perfect condition, it seems. The Salvation Army said the same.  Both they and other such 'relief' organisations have been worn down by the relentless scourge of Gummunt regulations. 

I spoke of this to some people and was roundly condemned by one particular chap who calls himself a Christian. I should not, it seemed to him, be giving stuff to 'the enemy'. I was a 'traitor'. 

I pointed to the sign on the wall. Love the sinner not the sin. 

Being a Warrior does not mean eschewing Christian Charity. And refugees in Oz come from all corners of the world. Most are not the Muslims he so hates. He failes to distinguish between the sinner and the sins. Just how he expects muslims to grasp the main points of Christian action if we are not at the very least kind to their needy, beats me.

Anyway, the furniture went to good homes via Gumtree. I shall be back in the bar next week, hopefully, having sorted out my new quarters.

So... onto the heroic man. 

Going behind enemy lines is the main point of 'Special Forces'. Such highly effective military formations were 'created' with the SAS in North Africa and the concept has spread to pretty well all forces. But here we have a non-military crew doing this dangerous and secretive work of infiltrating the enemy positions and causing mayhem. 

Here is what  Sandhya Somashekhar said about the recent actions to defend babies and expose their murderers.

Anti-abortion activist's recent undercover campaign forced policy change

The slim young man with the Clark Kent glasses mingled easily at the conference of abortion providers. By day, he sat quietly in his company’s booth, under a sign festooned with a burbling lab flask. By night, he schmoozed with presenters at the swanky hotel bar.

If people noticed that he seemed a bit stiff, they tended to write it off as an odd physical tic. In fact, David Daleiden was probably trying to keep his hidden camera straight.

His efforts paid off and resulted in the Government being forced to acknowledge the issue. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/politics/meet-the-millennial-who-infiltrated-the-guarded-world-of-abortion-providers/2015/10/14/25aaf862-678b-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to defend the organization against allegations of illegally selling fetus tissues for profit. Things quickly became heated between Richards and several lawmakers.

Daleiden, 26, is the anti-abortion activist who masterminded the recent undercover campaign... 

...aimed at proving that Planned Parenthood illegally sells what he calls aborted “baby body parts.” 

Not all Warriors wear Armour.

He captured intimate details of the famously guarded organization, hobnobbing at conferences so secretive that they require background checks and talking his way into a back laboratory at a Colorado clinic where he picked through the remains of aborted fetuses and displayed them luridly for the camera.

Daleiden’s videos landed like a bomb in Washington this summer, providing fodder for a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders and energizing social conservatives on Capitol Hill. They also shed harsh new light on the venerable women’s health organization, capturing officials sipping wine while joking about abortion and appearing to haggle over the price of fetal tissue.

The anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress posted a long version of the conversation between a Planned Parenthood executive and undercover actors on YouTube along with an shorter version that has been shared widely. 

This week, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards announced that the group would continue to donate tissue for medical research but would no longer accept compensation for storing and delivering the specimens. She said the organization has done nothing wrong but decided to take this step to disarm its critics.

Daleiden, characteristically, saw things in darker tones.

“It’s pretty much an admission of guilt,” he said this week.

Before emerging as the biggest star in the antiabortion firmament, Daleiden had long been a bit player. A Catholic and Southern California native who drives a Honda hybrid, Daleiden calls himself an investigative journalist and credits his California public school education with fomenting in him a passion for human rights.

At the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington late last month, Daleiden wore his signature dark blazer and skinny black tie and a pair of “Nightmare Before Christmas” socks. During a break, he described himself as the result of a “crisis pregnancy,” born while his parents were in their junior year of college.

“I always grew up with the understanding that some people have kids in less than fully intended situations and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

At 15, he said, he Googled images of aborted fetuses — an exploration that cemented his antiabortion views. While studying at Claremont McKenna College, he began fixating on Planned Parenthood. He got a job with Live Action, an antiabortion nonprofit group led by a fellow millennial that made its name by mounting undercover “stings” against Planned Parenthood. In 2009, Daleiden was kicked off the neighboring Pomona College campus after aggressively questioning a Planned Parenthood official who had been invited to speak.

And something else happened in college: While on assignment for a professor, Daleiden wound up at a conference on stem cell research where a presenter mentioned that the results of her work had been drawn from the brains of aborted fetuses.

“I thought, wait, did I hear that right?” he recalled.

His horror stuck with him for years, as did what he sees as a cruel paradox — that when it comes to a fetus, “its humanity isn’t considered valid, yet it’s precisely that same humanity that makes it valuable for experimentation.”

He soon began to hatch an audacious plan to infiltrate Planned Parenthood to its very senior reaches. He pulled the trigger in 2013.

Audacity is the Hallmark of the Special Ops man. 

"Who dares, Wins". 

Daleiden had been living in the Washington area and working with Live Action. That January, he took a road trip back to California with Rocky, his 6-foot, 30-pound black-throated monitor lizard. Along the way, he met with two of the nation’s most controversial antiabortion activists.

In Wichita he visited Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, who has made approving comments about violence against abortion providers though he has denounced violence himself. (Newman was recently deported from Australia over concerns that his presence there could inspire acts against medical professionals.)

Bullshyte, of course. Troy is no threat of violence against anyone. He simply called for 'medico-murderers' to be charged and tried in a Court.

Newman is one of three board members for the nonprofit Daleiden set up, the unassumingly named Center for Medical Progress. Another is Daleiden, and the third is Albin Rhomberg, who made headlines in the 1980s when he broke into the Los Angeles County coroner’s office to photograph aborted fetuses.

In an interview, Newman said he was not sure that Daleiden’s plan would work. A decade earlier, Mark Crutcher, the head of a Texas antiabortion group, had infiltrated a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas to prove that it was illegally selling fetal tissue. But after an investigation by ABC’s “20/20” and a congressional inquiry, the clinic was cleared of wrongdoing.

Bit of a white-wash by the media, which has since redoubled its efforts to breed hostility against those who defend Life. 

“I said, ‘We will have to deeply embed ourselves — and by we, I mean you,’ ” Newman recalled.

Daleiden then went to Dallas to meet with Crutcher, who gave him the same advice. Daleiden recalled: “He said, ‘You can’t just put on a lab coat and walk in the front door.’ ”

So Daleiden developed an elaborate ruse. He posed as Robert Daoud Sarkis, an employee of Biomax Procurement Services LLC, a fake company he concocted to serve as a front for the operation. 

He registered the company with the California secretary of state, set up a mock Web site and even created Facebook pages for his fake employees.

According to a lawsuit later filed by the National Abortion Federation, the company chief executive’s “likes” included Hillary Rodham Clinton, “The Rachel Maddow Show” and stem cell research.

With $120,000 raised from about 20 donors, whom Daleiden refuses to name, Daleiden spent nearly 30 months living his Sarkis persona. He and six paid actors visited clinics in Texas and Colorado; attended Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation conferences, signing nondisclosure agreements he would later disregard; and lunched with top Planned Parenthood officials. Daleiden even managed to speak briefly, camera running, with Richards, the group’s president.

Daleiden developed an in-depth knowledge of fetal-tissue research. On the videos, he can be heard breezily questioning whether the eyeballs in a petri dish are sufficiently developed to be useful for researchers and praising the intactness of a tiny liver.

And he sweet-talked his subjects. Monica McLemore, an abortion nurse and researcher at the University of California at San Francisco, experienced Daleiden’s charm firsthand in April during the National Abortion Federation’s annual meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

McLemore said she was waiting for a friend at the hotel’s mezzanine bar when she was approached by a polite and flattering young man. He presented himself as a university postdoc and proffered some kind words about a presentation she had made. Could he buy her a glass of wine, he asked?

She agreed, and they talked. She found him elusive, but many people at abortion conferences are cagey about their work. Concerns about attracting violence are so pervasive that the conference is not widely publicized and attendees undergo background checks.

Daleiden quickly lost interest in the conversation, she recalled. He finished his beer and left. Three months later, McLemore saw him on “The O’Reilly Factor.” “That’s when I started calling my lawyers,” she said.

Alcohol played a central role in Daleiden’s project. Several of his subjects were caught talking glibly with a cold beverage in hand. Critics call it a trick to loosen tongues and elicit embarrassing jokes, but Newman has another explanation.

“We really felt as if these were troubled individuals,” he said. “They soothe their consciences with copious amounts of alcoholic beverages.”

Matthew Reeves, the National Abortion Federation’s medical director, also had an encounter with Daleiden, according to the lawsuit. He described Daleiden’s questions as “pushy” and “leading” and noted his “strange face-forward stiffness when speaking.” At the time, Reeves attributed this stiffness “to a personality quirk,” the lawsuit says, but he “now realizes [it] was because Daleiden was most likely carrying equipment and filming or recording the conversation.”

The lawsuit describes two women who attended the conference with Daleiden — actors, it turns out — wearing loose-fitting scarves that may have concealed recording equipment. And it includes photographs of Daleiden in black-framed glasses that he no longer seems to wear. Daleiden declined to say whether that was where he hid the camera.

The lawsuit seeks to have 500 hours of footage shot at two conferences turned over to the abortion federation on grounds that Daleiden signed a confidentiality agreement. A California judge has granted the organization a preliminary injunction, which for now prevents Daleiden from releasing those videos.

Daleiden estimates that about a third of his footage is now in legal limbo. But someone is watching it — the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the footage as part of its investigation into Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood officials have long said that the organization follows all laws and that many women treasure the ability to donate tissue for life-giving research. In a letter to Congress, Richards complained that Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress are not under the microscope.

“It is clear they acted fraudulently and unethically — and perhaps illegally,” Richards wrote. “Yet it is Planned Parenthood, not Mr. Daleiden, that is currently subject to four separate congressional investigations.”

Hello, Mandy Rice Davies !! 

Whatever the outcome, Daleiden’s project has already exceeded the wildest expectations of antiabortion activists. 

He has released 10 videos from clinic visits, Planned Parenthood meetings and lunches with executives, and put the abortion issue back on the front burner in Washington and on the presidential campaign trail.

Money, too, is pouring in for Daleiden, though he will say only that the Center for Medical Progress has managed to recoup its costs.

Daleiden often says he likes the abortion providers he met. He calls Deborah Nucatola, the Planned Parenthood medical director whose casual comments about abortion procedures were his first big get, a “friend.” (It is unlikely she feels any reciprocal warmth, considering that the National Abortion Federation says she has been the subject of online death threats. Nucatola declined to comment through a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman.)

Get it? Love the Sinner: Hate the Sins. 

At other times, Daleiden’s disdain for his targets is palpable. Asked by conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck whether he had ever encountered “evil,” Daleiden described a discussion with one of the few doctors in the United States who perform abortions in the third trimester.

“She wasn’t suspicious of my character. Everything was going well,” he told Beck. “We were talking and kind of joking, laughing about something. And all of a sudden she looked straight in my eyes, and I saw almost a flash of light go from one eye to the other . . . and all of a sudden her eyes looked hard and mean and aggressive, and for the first time in this entire project, I felt actually afraid.”

“On some level,” he continued, “we feel like that was the predator look or predator instinct that you see in someone who is accustomed to killing people.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Sandhya Somashekhar is the social change reporter for the Washington Post.

There are many ways to be Christian. Do good works. Be Charitable. Love. 

FIGHT.

Drink deep.

Pax afterward in a firm bed!