The Terrorists we Support

Updated:

Increasingly we get reports of terrorists being born and bred in western countries and going off to join some mob of murderers in the Middle East.  Many are the dregs of our society.

These are not just from immigrant families from the middle east with diabolical 'cultures', nor simply from illegal immigrants breaking through our National borders; but home grown.

And we wonder how it can be.

The state of the world is a subject of conversation in the Tavern almost every evening on one bar or another and with one dismay or another causing the smiles to leave otherwise pleasant faces.  Many see the west 'falling', and muse on 'how could it be'?

The 'beyond the Anglosphere' is an increasingly lunatic place with lunatic peoples on every bomb-damaged street corner, but we overlook the loonies at home. The mind-set has been infiltrating for decades.

Previous conversations here have mentioned Gramsci's "Long March Through the Institutions" and the effect is all around us for those with eyes to see.

Just look at how the Left Media  screetched when David Hicks was arrested and incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. That prison which Obama said he would close and yet after one and a half terms in Office still has not. 

**(See below for more on ex-Guantanamo prisoners)

Hicks became a poster-boy for all the lefty loonies who are the 'Useful Idiots' that are undermining the west. A self-declared fighter for the Taliban, he became a 'best selling' author. Astonishing.  The ABC would have elected him to its Board if it could.  Tony Jones and the Q&A thickos saw him as the second coming. The gun-toting slob was like Barabbas, the prefered prisoner to be released at the demand of the stupid mob.

Who should have been incarcerated instead? 

Of course. John Howard. 

Marches and speeches were made to get 'our boy' 'home'. The firmness of the Prime Minister was condemned.  And the result...?

Other stupid terrorist-inclined boys were encouraged. 

Now we have a flood.

Update: 

Security officials fear as many as 250 Aussies could be fighting or supporting Islamic State terrorists

SECURITY officials say there could be as many as 250 Australians fighting with or ­supporting Islamic State.

The figure dwarfs the government’s most recent official tally of about 70 Australians in the conflict zone and another 100 at home supporting the Muslim extremist terrorists.

United Nations counter-terrorism expert Richard Barrett said Australian Secret Intelligence Service staff revealed the figure during a private meeting with other security and intelligence officials in April.

Mr Barrett told the Herald Sun the Australian Government had revised its figures over time and while the numbers might change it was the risk each fighter posed when they got home which was the greatest concern.

http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/security-officials-fear-as-many-as-250-aussies-could-be-fighting-or-supporting-islamic-state-terrorists/story-fnii5sms-1227109002025

So, this is the 'Hick's legacy'. The fruit of leftist encouragement. The left are destructive even when they have no idea of the consequences of their actions; even when the effects they facilitate have nothing to do with 'left' or 'socialism'.
............
Those who did and do all the excusing and the encouraging, the blaming of the west; those who have stolen and bastardised such words as 'Tolerance', Diversity', 'Equality', Peace',  even 'gay' and 'love', have a lot to answer for.

They declare with all the confidence of the one-eyed amongst the blind that 'all cultures are equal'. That 'there is no such thing as 'Truth'. Those amongst them who are challenged fall back on "My Truth and your truth'. 

Your truth of course is not equal to theirs.

And it is not just the yobs in the street. The lefty 'Rent-a-Mob' that appears on cue to wreck the normal desire for peace and sanity command attention inside the corridors of power. Green and Socialist MPs egg them on.

The competent governance is consistently driven out by incompetent socialist-green coalitions, aided by fully-funded Non-Government fifth column sector dominated by feminists and addled-headed, betraying-hearted 'church' groups.

And the Media.

One hopes to see or even hear of - in some far off Anglophile land - a Government that actually repeals all the destructive socialist -green-feminist-'tolerant' laws.  When will the monstrous regiments of women, greens, corrupt church of the do-it-nicely be swept away by an adult government? It does not happen. 

Incompetence rules.

It is seen in its almost extreme form in America where the 'last great Empire' is falling, in slow motion, like a toppling tower.

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN  gave us a blow by blow account today.

The Collapse of American Competence

When this writer was three years old, the Empire of Japan devastated Battleship Row of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Before I was seven, Gen. MacArthur was in an office in Tokyo overlooking the Imperial Palace, dictating to a shattered Japan.

In 1956, President Eisenhower, impressed by the autobahn he had seen in Hitler’s Reich, ordered a U.S. Interstate Highway System constructed, tying America together, one of the great public works projects in all history. Within a decade, the system was on its way to completion.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy said the United States, beaten into space by Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, would put a man on the moon and return him to earth within the decade. In July 1969, President Nixon, on the deck of the carrier Hornet, welcomed home Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins of Apollo 11.

What ever became of that America? What ever became of that can-do nation? What has happened to us?

This October saw the vaunted Center for Disease Control and Prevention fumbling over basic questions on how to protect Americans from an Ebola epidemic in three small countries of West Africa.

In September, an intruder with a knife climbed the White House fence, trotted across the North lawn, walked through the unlocked front door of the president’s house, barreled over a female officer, and ran around the East Room before being tackled by a Secret Service agent going off duty. The president had just departed. 

Days earlier, an armed security guard in Atlanta with a violent criminal past was allowed by Secret Service to ride an elevator with Barack Obama.

Last summer came reports that 60,000 children and young people from Central America had walked across the border into the United States, overwhelming our Border Patrol. 

Last spring, we learned that sick and suffering vets were deliberately made to wait months for appointments to see VA doctors, and dozens may have died during the wait. Earlier, the rollout of Obamacare, years in preparation, became a national joke and a metaphor for government incompetence.

Under President Bush came Katrina, where 30,000 residents of New Orleans were stranded for days behind a pool of stagnant water after a hurricane. The city and state couldn’t handle it. 

Yet, during five days in 1940, 350,000 British troops, besieged at Dunkirk, were rescued from across the Channel by their countrymen in boats and yachts under the guns of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.

Such events have contributed to a collapse of confidence among Americans in the competency of their leaders and their government. Large majorities now believe America is heading downhill, that the future will not be as good as the past, that we are going in the wrong direction. Malaise pervades the republic.

And there are larger reasons for these sentiments.

Our recent wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, all seem to have left them and us worse off. In fighting our new war in Iraq and Syria we have neither a credible strategy nor sufficient troops to prevail against the Islamic State. Already, Americans are asking: Why is this our war?

Since the mid-1970s, the real wages of working Americans have stagnated as we have run uninterrupted trade deficits totaling more than $10 trillion. Under Obama the national debt has surpassed the Gross Domestic Product.

Our manufacturing base has been hollowed out with Detroit as Exhibit A. We outsource our future by borrowing from China to buy from China. We borrow from Japan and Europe to defend Japan and Europe, though World War II has been over for 70 years.

FedEx tracks with precision millions of packages a day. But the U.S. government cannot locate and send back 12 million illegal aliens. 

Thirty years after a Reagan amnesty that carried a commitment to secure our borders, Obama is preparing an executive amnesty for untold millions of illegals, as soon as the election is over. And still the borders are not secure.

If government is conceded a role in anything, it is in building roads, bridges, highways, and airports, and in running public schools. Yet our infrastructure is crumbling, U.S. children fall lower and lower in international competition, and the racial divide in academic performances has never closed, despite an investment of trillions in education over half a century. Even Joe Biden calls LaGuardia a “Third World” airport.

Many private institutions are succeeding splendidly. But our public institutions, save the military, seem to be broadly failing. Congress is gridlocked. The president is seen as a dithering incompetent. The Supreme Court is polarized irreparably.

Our political, racial, and cultural clashes, traceable to conflicts created by the revolutions of the 1960s, are daily magnified and exacerbated by cable TV, the Internet and social media.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” wrote the poet Yeats.

Clare Luce put is another way. In this world, she said, there are two kinds of people — optimists and pessimists. “The pessimists are better informed.”

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-collapse-of-american-competence/

Gramsci called for - and mapped out - a 'Long March Through the Institutions'. It was a strategy to undermine and destroy Western Government, education, the family, religion, the economy, Morality.  

It had an end in sight.

We are seeing it.

** Now, about those Guantanamo prisoners. Many have been released.

Of the 620 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay, 180 have returned or are suspected to have returned to the battlefield. 

Of those 180, sources say 20 to 30 have either joined ISIS or other militants groups in Syria, or are participating with these groups from outside countries. Officials say most of those 20 to 30 are operating inside Syria. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/30/sources-former-guantanamo-detainees-suspected-joining-isis-other-groups-in/

They didn't get the ABC treatment and book deals.  Watch their space though.

Pax.

WAR & Religion

A new sign to hang on the wall. 

To save a few arguements and generally promote harmony.

Please take notice. Especially the 'anti-religious folk. Maybe atheists should fact-check before they go around blaming religion for all or most of the wars in history. 

"...while clearly there were wars that had religion as the prime cause, an objective look at history reveals that those killed in the name of religion have, in fact, been a tiny fraction in the bloody history of human conflict. In their recently published book, "Encyclopedia of Wars," authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod document the history of recorded warfare, and from their list of 1763 wars only 123 have been classified to involve a religious cause, accounting for less than 7 percent of all wars and less than 2 percent of all people killed in warfare.''

While we are on the subject of war, things are looking up. Not only are wars less frequent than in the past for most people but the suffering is reducing too. 

Back in my day a chap died on the field usually from bleeding to death. Battle fields were strewn with groaning men. Sword thrusts and chops, and spears sticking through a chap were usually fatal, but death took its time.

Bullet wounds today can be 'plugged' if not too severe on exit and helicopters can get a chap off the field and to hospital with better chances of his survival.

Now even the wound itself can get faster treatment.

A new way to heal bullet wounds - with sponges.

Throughout the war in Afghanistan the main cause of death has been blood loss from wounds and American company has created a useful little gizmo here is the story.....

A new treatment for gunshot wounds could revolutionise military trauma care and greatly reduce deaths from blood loss in the battlefield.

Oregon-based startup RevMedx, which is made up from veterans, scientists and engineers, has created the XStat, a device which could drastically improve wounded soldiers chances of survival in the critical first minutes of injury.

The traditional means of treating gunshot wounds involves packing the wound with gauze to stop the bleeding. It is intensely painful - according to former US Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh, who joined RevMedx in 2012 after retiring with a head injury.

"You take the guy's gun away first, it's that painful", says Steinbaugh. "Gauze bandages just don't work for anything serious". A 2011 medical paper describes haemorrhaging from major trauma as "the predominant mechanism of death" in 80 per cent of potentially survivable battlefield injuries.

RevMedx has come up with an alternative. The XStat began life inspired by the expanding foam that is used to repair car tyres. "That's what we pictured as the perfect solution: something you could spray in, it would expand, and bleeding stops".

Early efforts with foam proved futile, however, as it was forced out of the wound by blood pressure. The team turned their attention to sponges and almost by accident went straight to the ideal size - 1cm circles of sponge that expand when wet.

Following successful trials on animal wounds and a $5m grant from the US Army, the XStat was developed. The sponges are made from wood pulp, and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting antimicrobial substance made from shrimp shells.

A marker visible under X-rays is added to each marker to prevent them being accidentally left behind in the body after treatment. In 15 seconds, the sponges expand to fill the wound and create enough pressure to halt bleeding.

To enable the sponges to be easily packed into deep, narrow wounds, the team decided to package them in wide syringe-like applicators, available in 12mm-wide or 30mm-wide gauges.

Currently, each XStat costs around $100. "I spend the whole war on terror in the Middle East, so I know what a medic needs when someone has been shot," says Steinbaugh. "I've trained lots of guys who would have benefited from this product. That's what drives me."

Let's hope this great invention will be passed for use by British Soldiers in Afghan.

Although I have my suspicions that at $100 a pop (that's approximately £60) our government in it's infinite wisdom will say it's too expensive.

This old knight has sent men to meet their maker in days long past, but even then a last remedy was applied. It can be so at anytime. A Prayer for the man's soul.

Love thy Enemy.

A soldier is not there to hate.

PAX.

Poisoned Ivy League gets disinfectant spray.

Great celebrations in the Tavern this night with news from the western colonies which have been beset by the Princess of Lies for so long, particularly in their 'top' Universities. The Poisoned Ivy League.

The draconian and unwarranted laws and procedures introduced to counter the so called 'war on women' and the so called 'rape culture', and which have so destroyed mens' and boys' opportunities and reputation in University education has at last - AT LAST - been condemned by an influential group at Harvard.

Harvard is (in)famous for the driving out of the Vice Chancellor who dared to suggest in a speech that men and women just might choose different courses and therefore might not have 'gender balance' on those courses. One female professor said she nearly vomited at the suggestion and had to leave the room lest she fainted.  Professor Nancy 'Vomit' Hopkins.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/02/why-feminist-careerists-neutered-larry-summers/303795/

Feminists stomped Harvard University President Lawrence Summers for mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties remain so heavily male.

Summers's suggestion—now ignominiously retracted, with groveling, Soviet-show-trial-style apologies—was that sex discrimination and the reluctance of mothers to work 80 hours a week are not the only possible explanations for gender imbalances in the math-science area. He noted that high school boys have many more of the highest math scores than girls, and suggested that this might reflect genetic differences. He also stressed the need for further research into all three possible explanations.

The foul brute may as well have rapped that women are "hos," or declared that they should be kept barefoot and pregnant. 

The most remarkable feminist exercise in self-parody was that of MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who famously told reporters that she "felt I was going to be sick," that "my heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," that "I just couldn't breathe, because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," and that she had to flee the room because otherwise "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Such fatuous feminist fulminations have been good fun, as have the eviscerations of Hopkins as a latter-day "Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, [who] suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines," in the words of George Will.

Any young man takes his reputation and future in his hands entering such feminist-dominated institutions. A simple accusation of a hinted sexual nature could see him not just rusticated but  masticated and spat out.

Even President O'Blasphemy got in on the act approving and sending out a guideline letter to education institutions (The 'Dear Colleague' letter) setting the dogs of whore on boys and men. Fortunately he stopped short of making Islam a compulsory subject.

Perhaps now we are seeing a fight-back. The decline in male attendance at University is at an all-time low and the educational standards have been poisoned by feminist make-believe agitprop courses that have rendered even girls as uneducated thickos. 

A 'Womyn's Studies' Degree does not even cut it in MacDonalds.

Harvard Law Professors Condemn University's War On Young Men

In age when ideology increasingly trumps the impartial quest for truth on our college campuses, 28 Harvard University law professors are to be commended, for—to borrow William F. Buckley, Jr.’s famous phrase—“stand[ing] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Harvard’s motto is Veritas, Latin for “Truth.” 

Given its high visibility, Harvard habitually takes a good deal of flak from higher-education reformers—for valuing faculty publications more highly than teaching, for political correctness, and for rampant grade inflation, among other practices. Such critiques are demanded by a true survey of the detrimental example Harvard sets for all the little would-be-Harvard institutions who look up to it for guidance. 

But the same insistence on the truth should compel us to praise those Law School faculty members who are demonstrating that they possess the intellects to understand and the moral courage to “stand athwart” the totalitarian-tending project of radical feminism, as embodied in the university’s new “Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy” announced in July.

Last week, these 28 law professors—among them, Alan Dershowitz and Charles Ogletree—penned an open letter to the Harvard administration castigating it for imposing a sexual harassment policy that “will do more harm than good.” The letter could not be more pointed. 

It blames the new policy for violating “many of the most basic principles we teach,” among which are “due process of law, the substantive law governing discrimination and violence, appropriate decision-making, and the rule of law generally.”

Harvard’s administration, these law professors charge, has adopted “procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation.” 

Among the violations they find in the new policy are an inadequate “opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses”; the “lodging of the functions of investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review in one office,” which is “itself a Title IX compliance office rather than an entity” that might be “considered structurally impartial”; and the “failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused.”

Moreover, Harvard, they charge, has wrongly “expanded the scope of forbidden conduct” in a manner that “goes significantly beyond Title IX and Title VII law,” setting in place “starkly one-sided” rules that fail to address “unfortunate situations involving extreme use and abuse of alcohol and drugs by our students.” 

The War on Young Men that the new policy embodies is one of the more curious results of the Sexual Liberation movement launched on campuses in the ‘60s. Until that time, universities took seriously their role of in loco parentis (Latin for “in the place of a parent”). This meant curfews, single-sex dorms, prohibitions on alcohol consumption, and the like. All that fell by the cultural wayside in the ‘60s with the rise of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, which have come to be viewed almost as inalienable rights.

But when you put young men and women together, and add alcohol and drugs, sex is going to happen, and—surprise—it is not always going to proceed according to Marquess of Queensberry rules. In response to this dilemma, in loco parentis on campuses has now given way to in loco tyrannicus—to vague dictates regarding sexual conduct that are enforced in an oppressive manner on those already presumed guilty. If the ideologues of the ‘60s “liberated” the sexual passions, today’s feminist ideologues on campus have forged new fetters from principles antithetical to individual liberty and due process of law.

As a parting shot—and a stinging one, at that—the law professors appear to unload on Harvard president Drew Faust, who boasts that the new sexual harassment policies “will significantly enhance Harvard’s ability to address these incidents when they occur.” The law professors see through this façade, raising the age-old legal question of cui bono—“Who benefits?” “We recognize,” they conclude, “that large amounts of federal funding may ultimately be at stake.” 

That is, Harvard and other universities may be rushing to institute these illiberal policies in order to satisfy—and thus continue to receive federal funding from—the Obama administration, with its equally illiberal sexual-harassment agenda, as announced in the Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” memo. The law professors find themselves forced to remind their university’s president of the ultimate price of her Faustian bargain: “Harvard University is positioned as well as any academic institution in the country to stand up for principle in the face of funding threats. The issues at stake are vitally important to our students, faculties, and entire community.”

In all, the letter provides a model defense of the rule of law, on which individual liberty relies. The letter also provides a model of academic dialogue. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets the tone for what academic discourse should look like at the very moment that he disagreed fundamentally with Plato: “Dear is Plato,” writes Aristotle of his teacher, “but dearer still is the truth.” In an age when postmodern critiques of the very possibility of objective truth abound in academia, it is more than encouraging to see these members of Harvard’s law faculty take what some suspect is the minority position at too many elite colleges—namely, that freedom under law is what distinguishes civilization from barbarism, even and especially when the barbarians are convinced of their high-mindedness.

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2014/10/23/shocker-harvard-law-professors-condemn-universitys-war-on-young-men/

Here is the Letter itself. 

Rethink Harvard’s sexual harassment policy

In July, Harvard University announced a new university-wide policy aimed at preventing sexual harassment and sexual violence based on gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

The new policy, which applies to all schools within the university and to all Harvard faculty, administrators, and students, sets up the Office for Sexual and Gender-Based Dispute Resolution to process complaints against students. Both the definition of sexual harassment and the procedures for disciplining students are new, with the policy taking effect this academic year. Like many universities across the nation, Harvard acted under pressure imposed by the federal government, which has threatened to withhold funds for universities not complying with its idea of appropriate sexual harassment policy. 

In response, 28 members of the Harvard Law School Faculty have issued the following statement:

AS MEMBERS of the faculty of Harvard Law School, we write to voice our strong objections to the Sexual Harassment Policy and Procedures imposed by the central university administration and the Corporation on all parts of the university, including the law school.

We strongly endorse the importance of protecting our students from sexual misconduct and providing an educational environment free from the sexual and other harassment that can diminish educational opportunity. But we believe that this particular sexual harassment policy adopted by Harvard will do more harm than good.

As teachers responsible for educating our students about due process of law, the substantive law governing discrimination and violence, appropriate administrative decision-making, and the rule of law generally, we find the new sexual harassment policy inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach. We also find the process by which this policy was decided and imposed on all parts of the university inconsistent with the finest traditions of Harvard University, of faculty governance, and of academic freedom.

Among our many concerns are the following:

Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation. Here our concerns include but are not limited to the following:

¦ ** The absence of any adequate opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses and present a defense at an adversary hearing.

¦ ** The lodging of the functions of investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review in one office, and the fact that that office is itself a Title IX compliance office rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial.

¦** The failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused, particularly for students unable to afford representation.

Harvard has inappropriately expanded the scope of forbidden conduct, including by:

¦ **Adopting a definition of sexual harassment that goes significantly beyond Title IX and Title VII law.

¦ **Adopting rules governing sexual conduct between students both of whom are impaired or incapacitated, rules which are starkly one-sided as between complainants and respondents, and entirely inadequate to address the complex issues in these unfortunate situations involving extreme use and abuse of alcohol and drugs by our students.

Harvard has pursued a process in arriving at its new sexual harassment policy which violates its own finest traditions of academic freedom and faculty governance, including by the following:

¦ **Harvard apparently decided simply to defer to the demands of certain federal administrative officials, rather than exercise independent judgment about the kind of sexual harassment policy that would be consistent with law and with the needs of our students and the larger university community.

¦ ** Harvard failed to engage a broad group of faculty from its different schools, including the law school, in the development of the new sexual harassment policy. And Harvard imposed its new sexual harassment policy on all the schools by fiat without any adequate opportunity for consultation by the relevant faculties.

¦ ** Harvard undermined and effectively destroyed the individual schools’ traditional authority to decide discipline for their own students. The sexual harassment policy’s provision purporting to leave the schools with decision-making authority over discipline is negated by the university’s insistence that its Title IX compliance office’s report be totally binding with respect to fact findings and violation decisions.

We call on the university to withdraw this sexual harassment policy and begin the challenging project of carefully thinking through what substantive and procedural rules would best balance the complex issues involved in addressing sexual conduct and misconduct in our community.

The goal must not be simply to go as far as possible in the direction of preventing anything that some might characterize as sexual harassment. The goal must instead be to fully address sexual harassment while at the same time protecting students against unfair and inappropriate discipline, honoring individual relationship autonomy, and maintaining the values of academic freedom. The law that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have developed under Title IX and Title VII attempts to balance all these important interests. The university’s sexual harassment policy departs dramatically from these legal principles, jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials.

We recognize that large amounts of federal funding may ultimately be at stake. But Harvard University is positioned as well as any academic institution in the country to stand up for principle in the face of funding threats. The issues at stake are vitally important to our students, faculties, and entire community.

Elizabeth Bartholet

Scott Brewer

Robert Clark

Alan Dershowitz, Emeritus

Christine Desan

Charles Donahue

Einer Elhauge

Allen Ferrell

Martha Field

Jesse Fried

Nancy Gertner

Janet Halley

Bruce Hay

Philip Heymann

David Kennedy

Duncan Kennedy

Robert Mnookin

Charles Nesson

Charles Ogletree

Richard Parker

Mark Ramseyer

David Rosenberg

Lewis Sargentich

David Shapiro, Emeritus

Henry Steiner, Emeritus

Jeannie Suk

Lucie White

David Wilkins

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/14/rethink-harvard-sexual-harassment-policy/HFDDiZN7nU2UwuUuWMnqbM/story.html


We raised a glass.


Pax. 

Disabling the Village Idiot.

Before the Tavern and after my career as a Warrior, Knight and King, this old man wandered through a different battlefied. The world of the mind was my patch and it's peaks and pits were populated by various walking wounded or quite insane; some who tripped and some who had been pushed; some who arrived that way; some who had tested the 'hand in the fire' idea.

Many are the poor souls this old Psycho either pulled from the pit or bandaged up, fixed broken pasts, altered defective presents and constructed better futures.  I had to uproot some and replant them in better soil.

It was a task that needed Help and allowed me to occasionally catch sight of my future 'Business Partner'.  During that phase in my life I was learning the ins and outs of the First Fundemental Question  and starting to grasp the meaning of the Second Fundemental Question.

The difference between sad, mad and bad may be difficult to discern for the ordinary man in the street, let alone differentiating between those who arrive in the world with a serious mental disability and those who 

choose their own 

from a smorgasboard on offer in our modern world.  

It is not long ago that every village had its idiot. Now the Hilary Village elevates them to political power.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

This was a hoax 'Newsweek-attributed' article opener doing the rounds last week that actually made a lot of sense despite not being as purported.  It does however show up the propensity of even the sane and ordinary to become quite mentally disturbed. Obama was voted into the job.

But closer to home, the Tavern hosted a bus-load of visitors the other day from a Battalion that the Old Psych used to lead. But first some 'topical affirs' scenic introduction. Few people, you see, care little enough until money comes into view.  This was in the Australian:

INTELLECTUALLY disabled workers paid an average of $4.48 an hour in the nation’s “sheltered workshops’’ are at risk of losing their jobs, the industry claims.

Official data from the Department of Social Services reveals that only one in every 200 workers in the nation’s 193 Australian Disability Enterprises go on to find a mainstream job. The 20,000 workers, many with profound intellectual or physical disabilities, earn barely a third of the minimum wage, the data shows.

But the enterprises warn they will have to shut the workshops if they are forced to pay the workers fairer wages, as a result of a Federal Court ruling that they paid “discriminatory wages’’ to intellectually disabled workers for the past decade. The ruling could result in wages doubling to $9 or $10 an hour — still well below the $16 an hour minimum wage.

National Disability Services chief executive Ken Baker yesterday said the enterprises had high overheads, and often employed three or four disabled people to do a job that would be carried out by one mainstream worker.

Endeavour Foundation executive general manager Andrew Donne said the new wage system could cost $13 million more each year, potentially forcing the closure of workshops. “Last year we barely broke even, so we’d have to close most of the workshops,’’ he said. “The workers really don’t have anywhere else to go, so if we are forced to shut, the guys would be sitting at home playing Xbox.’’

Cathy de Vos is paid $2.50 an hour to label packages, fill food packets and shrink-wrap bottles at the Endeavour Foundation’s Wacol workshop in Brisbane. She also receives the Disability Support Pension.

Ms de Vos likes her job because she has many friends at work, and finds it “more interesting’’ than sitting at home.

Her colleague Kirk Steenbok, 21, works at the Wacol centre five days a week, and enjoys going to work to meet his “beautiful friends’’.

Michael MacKenzie, 51, earns $10.67 an hour as a line assistant, supervising colleagues with more severe intellectual disabilities. “My team is absolutely brilliant,’’ he said. “They’re lovely people.

“They all like working here because they have somewhere to go instead of sitting at home watching television, or being on the streets.’’

Social Services Assistant Minister Mitch Fifield yesterday called on more companies to give “poverty busting’’ jobs to disabled Australians, who made “incredibly committed, hardworking employees’’. “They take fewer sick days and have lower rates of ¬absenteeism,’’ he said. “And they really value the dignity of work.’’

Senator Fifield said the federal government would spend $3.85 billion over the next four years to help disabled Australians find work in the open jobs market.

More than 10,000 disabled people found jobs as a result of the government’s $15.5m wage subsidy scheme last financial year.

Disability Discrimination Commissioner Susan Ryan said the public service should hire more Australians with disabilities, to provide full-wage alternatives to the low-wage employers.

She said 13 per cent of workers at Westpac bank had a disability, yet only 5 per cent of public servants were disabled. “If a big commercial, profit-driven bank can employ so many people with a disability, the public service should be able to do that too,’’ she said. “It’s a signal the public service should be doing more.’’

Ms Ryan said one in 10 workers in the federal Department of Health and Ageing had a disability, so other government agencies should set higher targets. She said Australia ranked 21st out of 29 developed countries in an OECD survey of employment participation rates for disabled people.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that 15 per cent of working-age Australians have a disability, and more than a million of them are working.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/fears-courts-pay-ruling-will-see-doors-shut-on-sheltered-workshops/story-fn59noo3-1227095495262?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20TheAustralianNewsNDM%20%28The%20Australian%20%7C%20News%20%7C%29

The State sees itself as the driver of all things and all too often so do the 'do-good' industries. It was not the view my Colleagues, Officers and Troops took, even though we had to 'work within' the system. Nevertheless we did manage to achieve some things.

Most of those 'do-good' industries were started by parents. Men and women with a family that included a sad soul, misformed in some way from birth. It was they who banded together to share knowledge and give comfort. It was they who established a 'self-help' system that the State later took over.

Knoxbrooke was one such. 

I have many happy memories of Knoxbrooke. It had a school and a farm and many, many warm, hard-working 'carers', whose self-chosen task in life was to be of service to others. Every one was a Lancer that I was pleased to salute and lead into battle.

They were paid: I was not. My leadership was pro-bono. 

We - the parents and staff, and me - had a 'self-help' mentality that brought a 'business' atmosphere to bear in order to financially support others who were largely quite incapable of living in the demanding world that you, my customers - manage with difficulty yourselves.

Our main 'business' was a horticultural enterprise in the hills outside Melbourne where mentally disabled people could work growing plants for wide sale. Camelias were a main product. We sold interstate and developed a first class reputation for quality and service. Just as any business has to do. 

Our disabled clients - our friends - were able to learn, share, strive and succeed.

One chap we had in our care was catatonic. He never spoke. He never moved. He would be 'delivered' daily in a wheelchair and would resist any attempt at interaction, simply staring into the distance or looking at his knees.  

We decided to take him up to the farm in the summer months where he could sit in the shade and watch the rest of the crew - who were only marginally better 'in the world' than he. We put a table next to his wheelchair and from time to time some poor soul would move from their own spot to escape the mumblings and often noisy groups and sit next to him potting seedlings. 

The staff had their work cut out teaching and supervision the disabled crews. Over several months of almost benign 'neglect' this gentleman started to look around; to focus as best he could. He learned to pay attention. Soon he was lifting a hand and pointing to pots. He would mumble to whoever sat next to him. Soon after he wanted a pot to plant in. In six months he was walking in the fields and tending the plants.  He spoke.

It is not just 'care' but Nature that works.

While I was there we expanded to retail in addition to wholesale. We staffed our retail outlet with our 'clients'. 

This brought the public directly into contact with the people who would otherwise have been quite invisible to them. And both thrived.

The ABC even did a Gardening program at our facilities:

For people with disabilities, finding meaningful work can be a real problem. But at a nursery called Knoxbrooke over a hundred people with varying disabilities find meaningful work and are able to exercise a real love for plants and the environment. 

Knoxbrooke, about 30 kilometres east of Melbourne, is a non-government, not-for-profit organisation which provides services to people with disabilities. Jay Pinkster is the chief training officer.

He says that each week about 90 people with disabilities access the service. “We also have school groups and volunteers and work-for-the-dole people coming in and about 25 staff who manage the site”.

It’s a wholesale production nursery and there are many repetitive tasks and a lot of labour that's required. This includes potting up, tubing, preparing plants for sale - they need to be bar coded, labelled, weeded and topped up with potting mix. 

Jay says the repetitive nature of the tasks definitely suits the workers because people with disabilities often like routine and a stable environment. “It’s something they feel comfortable with and are familiar with. “There's a great atmosphere here, it's a really fun place to work in that regard,” he says.

Many of the workers at the nursery have an intellectual disability. Michael Hill had a stroke nine years ago but since then he has put himself through several horticultural classes provided by Knoxbrooke and is now one of the facility's principal trainers.

Michael says that he has moved into the role of an assistant teacher or a skills mentor. This involves working with plants but is more “one on one with the guys or with a specific team to help build skills and help with the general flow of particular work groups,” he says.

Walking through the propagation shed there is a great sense of camaraderie between all the people.

Michael says it seems a bit cheesy to say we're a big family but for a lot of the people here, it's about getting together with their workmates rather than being a part of a workforce, and it gives people responsibilities and a social outlet.

He says, “We are also not just about employment, but about providing training to empower people to get out there in open employment”.

Michael says the nursery offers a certificate 1 class in horticulture. “But rather than having big manuals, with lots of botanical names, we've simplified it to having pictures of tools, personal protective equipment and materials needed for the job. It helps plan the work routine and gets people to work independently. This has revolutionised the way we teach and probably cut our class times by about 75 per cent”.

Jay says there is also a big push at the moment in the disability sector to try and prepare people for open employment. “I can get employers to take extended work placements for people with disabilities but when you say - Do you want to sign them on as an employee- there's a real reluctance to do that”.

 http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1929736.htm

There is a lot one could say about the mentally disabled. We can see them coming these days. Medical science can spot them in the womb.

Unfortunately a different sort of mental disability rules out here in 'normal-land' and such people advocate killing disabled babies before they become a 'problem'. Able babies too.

It is sad. It is mad. It is Bad.

A mentally disabled person, baby, teen or adult, is NOT a problem but an Opportunity to ask the Question: "What ails thee Uncle?"

They are opportunities for you and I to be ..

Human; to Love; to Care.
BE Compassionate.

Our society tries hard to disable us. It tells women particularly that they are 'oppressed': it 'empowers' them with victimhood and envy, whines and demands.  At the same time it punishes the oppressors' -MEN !!!(tm). It takes responsibility from families, parents, fathers, and hands it to young female zozchial verkers freshly minted from our cultural-marxist Universities. Idiot 22 year olds have power to wreak havoc.

Victimhood abounds like a new desirable suit. And we ignore the real disadvantaged amongst us.

We ARE the Village Idiots.

For allowing it.

We even vote-in idiots.

It is high time that we disabled the whole 'progressive' PC nonsense and brought in a recognition that we have the opportunity to Love, right before our eyes. Be 'able' instead of seeking a wheelchair. Be able adults.

Thank Him above for the people that staff the Knoxbrookes of this world. I would have them at my back in Battle.

So does He.


Pax.

The Tavern's Home

People who drop by often ask about the Island beyond the hedge; Tasmania. If it is, as I tell it, just another part of the great Hilary Village, populated by feminists and socialists and greenies, why, they ask, do I live here?

There are few places in the world now that are not beset by said socialists and feminists - ugly creatures all - but even they deserve Love: and where better for Love, Beauty, and a Tavern that serves Grace?

So let me take a break for a few minutes and take you up onto the top of one of the Tavern's many towers and show the place to you. Who knows, you just might love the place too and decide to spend a few hours looking. I will send refreshments up from time to time.

First, let's look at the Tassie Devil. It is a famed creature, just short of fable. It makes a noise just like the feminists do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3RjAh8PRTQ

 A short intro to not-quite set the scene but at least gets it out of the way and onto more beautiful sounds and sights.

Here is something to sit with a while. Jump in; taste; maybe if it is too long for you, move on to some others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMya8C22AyU

As the narrator said, this place is about the same size as Ireland but without the leprechauns. It has just 500,000 people give or take a few and much of the island therefore is quite unpopulated. Most of the people live in either Hobart of Launceston and the rest live in quite small towns and villages and scattered tiny settlements.

From the air you can see the scope better and perhaps with more ease.  The old Knight Tavern Keeper loves to fly. Bit too old now though. But you can start at the North end of the Island.

 The Tavern is in the South though. On a small mountain that just shows itself in this next video. Fleetingly.  

Here's another taste. A beer-drinking man shows you some sights, and just a heads-up here.... when he shows you the 'first Casino in Oz', look up the hill behind, to the left. Tucked away in the trees at the very top.... there you can just see the Tavern ! 

A pint to the first who can spot it.

 It is not all just city, scenery and heritage however. There is adventure and daring here too. One place that strikes fear and desire into a certain sort of folk is the infamous Shipstern Bluff. The waves are enormous on some days and crash onto 300 ft cliffs. It provides surfing for the extreemers.

 It also has some spots that I personally find very agreeable. Especially on a clear winter Sunday.

Enjoy.

Pax

Change Reality at your Peril

Hate is a strong word; a strong emotion. Many of us do not 'hate' as such but mearly dislike. The word has been diminished by overuse by the under-educated. It is not often that patrons of the Tavern use the word or express the emotion.  Occasionally I remind people to 'hate the sin but love the sinner', hardly expecting them to do much of either. But we have to remind ourselves.

The most egregious 'sin' that we need to hate is that 'primal' one; 

The Lie.  

The Prince of Lies ( or since his sex-change, the Princess of Lies) is aptly described. And the reason is not so much that lies simply 'hurt' people but that they change reality.

You only have to change reality a little bit to have long lasting and devastating consequences.

Our words and actions construct the world about us. Were we not here the world would carry on as usual. The tides would come in and go out. The Sun would rise and set. Reality would be as stable over a longish term as it used to be once. But we are here and we do a great deal while the tides flow and the Sun shines. We make the world a different place. We build and we destroy.

Given that we all have a fairly clear idea that we can do things that affect one another and the world around us, it behoves us to stick to reality. If I tell a child he can fly if he jumps off a roof wearing a Superman cape, I am not just telling a lie. When he hits the floor and breaks his leg or his neck, his reality takes a sharp turn. My lie changes it. If we tell a woman that her lifestyle is worth more than a baby's life, a life can be stopped in its womb.

Most of us are taught from an early age not to lie. But some people are inveterate liars.  They do it for the same reasons that any lie is told. To escape consequence or to manipulate others or to gain Power over others.  Or all three.

Most of us lie occasionally, often for those reasons and sometimes we tell ourselves it is so as 'not to hurt' someone, or to 'help' someone. We tell 'white lies' which are never white. They deny reality.

Very few people trust Politicians because lies are a politician's tools of trade. We expect them to exaggerate, promise falsely, falsely accuse. Most politicians try to limit thier lies because they will get found out, exposed, deposed. But some just cannot help themselves. They lie so much that lying is all the know how to do, and the damage they cause can be enormous. It can have a profound affect on the daily reality of millions.

It can also backfire.

A recent Prime Minister in Oz, out there in the great southern Hilary Village, lied so often and so loudly that she almost single-handedly set-back the prospects of women having any National  'authority' ever again.  

Julia Gillard, the First Female Prime Minister could have ushered in a new era of 'equal opportunity' for women. Not that they do not already have equal opportunity. But the reality includes the perception and that is all too easily manipulated. As she strove so hard to do. She lied where there was absolutly no 'white lie' excuse.

She is out of office now and her future safely assured (she deludes herself) with $200,000 indexed linked each year from the pockets of somewhat more honest taxpaying Australians. But it has done nothing to halt the flow of her lies.

Andrew Bolt was telling us about her book. "My Story".  Hah! 

(Her 'stories' would have been a more apt title.)

Inventing misogynist insults, inventing conspiracy theories… Is is any wonder her prime ministership was so disastrously divisive and paranoid?: 

True? Gillard, My Story, 2014:

(I ATTENDED the) 2010 annual Minerals Council dinner in Parliament House, while representing prime minister Kevin Rudd. The disputation over the Rudd government’s proposed resources super-profits tax (RSPT) was raging, so it was always going to be like entering a lion’s den. As the guest of honour, I was one of two women seated at the head table. Keeping me company was my chief of staff, Amanda Lampe ... at a hand signal ... (from MCA boss Mitch Hooke) ... a tray of what looked to be rum and coke was brought to the table. A glass was dutifully put in front of every man except (then BHP Billiton CEO) ¬Marius Kloppers, who declined it. Neither Amanda nor I was offered one. The two of us exchanged a look and afterwards uproarious laughter about this rudeness.

Joe Aston, Australian Financial ¬Review, yesterday: 

BUT hang on, Gillard didn’t even attend the 2010 MCA dinner. 

Nobody in the Labor caucus did. She wasn’t representing Rudd that night, she was in his office ending his leadership. 

Gillard and Lampe did sit at the head table the year previously with Hooke and Kloppers. But the RSPT wasn’t announced until May 2010 — that’s when the miners’ disputation with Labor began. 

So why was attending the 2009 dinner “like entering a lion’s den”? 

This is supposed to be an authoritative telling of political history and (Gillard) can’t even get her basic facts straight? ...

She is a LIAR. Remember? She is quite unable to tell the truth. So deep into lying has she dived in her life that 

her character is completely distorted. 

She cares not a jot who she takes down with her.

Hooke remembers the moment (not just the date) very differently. Ian Smith (… then of Newcrest Mining) asked Hooke what he was drinking (Hooke only drinks Bundy and Coke) and whether he could have one. Hooke then asked everyone at the table if they’d like one, including Gillard, who declined on the basis she was about to speak. Hooke’s reply? “So am I — that’s why I need one.” Shortly after, drinks arrived ... and that was that. Or so they thought ... In 2011, Gillard’s version of the story finally circulated back to the MCA. Hooke contacted Lampe’s successor, Ben Hubbard, who assured Hooke he needn’t worry. Hooke still sent Gillard an SMS apologising if any unintended offence had been caused. She never responded.

True?   My Story again: 

JOHN Howard skilfully rode the ¬political momentum that can be ¬created around ¬asylum-seeker issues at the 2001 election. Coming after the terrorist shock of 9/11 and in the atmosphere of fear that it created, Howard took a hairy-chested political approach and deployed our elite military forces to stop a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, from bringing rescued asylum-seekers to our shore.

Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, October 1:

JOHN Howard has called on Julia Gillard to correct a “false” claim that he used the September 11 terror attacks to take a “hairy-chested political approach” on asylum-seekers and send SAS troops on to the Norwegian freighter, Tampa ... In fact, the Tampa episode took place weeks before the September 11 attacks in 2001. 

“Any storyline that we somehow played off Tampa or the September 11 attacks against each other is false and I completely reject it,” Mr Howard told The Australian _yesterday. “The former prime minister has her chronology wrong and should correct the claims in the book.” 

 Andrew continued:

Another Gillard blue in a memoir surprisingly full of them. 

 Senator Nick Xenophon has forced Random House to agree to remove a false and defamatory claim in future editions of My Story that he was suspended for stuffing a ballot box in student elections. 

He’s still after damages and an apology, says the Financial Review today.

Gillard calls her memoirs My Story because it’s no one else’s.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_dark_world_of_julia_gillard/

I suppose there could be some very slight benefit to the National Statistics that come out of her book. She may be sued by so many people for defamation that the $200,000 (and hopefully more)  changes hands several times and so adds to the nation's Gross Domestic Product. ( a very large and ongoing Lie in itself.)

The reality of Oz before the Socialist Liars Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Shorten et all took over was pretty rosy. The Sun shone, the tides flowed, and Australians on the whole were relatively prosperous. Economically the Nation was in surplus. We had 'money in the bank' Savings were high.  Not so now. They ruined that.

Lies are but one form of Dishonesty. 

A MORAL issue.

The intellectual dishonesty of the socialists is just one part of a constellation of moral failures that beset them and affect all of us. They drove the entire nation into deep debt which will be affecting our grandchilden's lives. 

Their reality will have been constructed on Socialist Lies and Deceits.

As a Nation we are not quite as technically Bankrupt as some other nations, but all across the world we can see the effects of  the MORAL BANKRUPTCY of the Left.

It is not simply a matter of 'Women' politicians, of course. They can be just as useful, even good, as any male one, and just as bad too.  Just look at the American situation. They have had six or seven years of an Arch Liar as President and maybe in the next year or two may well have the Most Powerful female Liar ever to wield power in the Oval Orofice.

Then the Reality of Hilary's Village will be everywhere.

You will all need a stiff drink.

I had better get an order in.

Pax.