Tuesday 26 August 2014

Odds and Ends: Muslims, Barry's Foreign Policy, strings, sealing wax, and other fancy stuff

____________________________________________________
 
 
      .
 
 
______________________________________________
 
      This first point is a fairly simple one, and one that has been made before here.   It is not disputable, and we use Saint Francis of Assisi as our guarantor and witness.   We also use the Koran.  We also use the foundation of the Knights Templar as a political and religious force and the ancient base of the French Masons, the Scottish Rite Masons, and the York Rite Masons.   We also use the Torah, particularly the part that is fully incorporated into the Holy Word as interpreted in the King James Bible, unabridged.
 


Mary receives the
announcement.  We
chose this picture
because it shows her
as a young teen-ager
which is her age at the
moment of the message.



Hagar and Ishmael begin
their trek to the west
     Mohammed and Yeshua are cousins, many times removed, but still cousins.  AND, Yeshua is a true prophet of Islam, a fellow named Mohammed said so.  AND the Blessed Virgin Mother, Saint Mary, Mother of Yeshua of Nazareth (meaning - a promontory, a place of reflection, isolation, observation)....yes, our Holy Mother....is a Saint of Islam, as is the Archangel of the Annunciation, Gabriel an Angel of Islam.   and on and on.  I know, not because I say so, but rather because Mohammed said so.

     This writer is a traditionalist, Orthodox Christian, as a member of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of the Anglican Communion, but he still must see that  he has to resolve the fact that certain promises were made by Yahweh to Hagar.

      From her seed would spring another great race, and a covenant was made by Him to her that such would be.    And, it happened to the good....if one can only think of the Swamp Arabs of Iraq.   Such a wondrous place, indeed.
   But now, horrid squabbles between Shi'ite and Sunni and other smaller sects have brought Islam to these ridiculous levels.  Not only Christians and Jews,  Agnostics and atheists, Hindus and Buddhists, but always first and above all else, the scene begins with someone setting out in the early morning to blow up some other Moslem's mosque or funeral or wedding or bazaar.
 
    The Old Testament is replete with cross referential material that can be lifted from the Bible, put in the Torah, and then placed into the Quran.   Further, there were two main entries into Spain and England by the Jews. The first was when the Romans, supposedly, sent significant number of Jews and their families, slaves, servants, and possessions, who were associated with the minority of the Sanhedrin to Iberia and Britannia.  That minority was composed of those who were either supportive or neutral concerning Jesus's claims about being the Fulfilment.  They were sent there for their own protection.
     Next was the accompaniment by Jews of the Muslim Saracen invasion into Hispania and much of southwestern Europe in the later part of the Seventh Century.   Why Jews?  Because the Arabic and Phoenician ancestry Muslims trusted the Jews to be the quartermasters and accountants of properties and monies required for the war and occupation effort.   Buying and selling, repairs, camels and horses, provisions and forage, soldiers' and artisans' wages, and such were handled by those "other" Sons of Abraham.   The bulk of the Jews who were banished from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella at the joining of their two kingdoms could trace their existence in Iberia to those times in the early eighth Century or just before.  As the Berbers (Barbary Arabs from Tunisia...essentially historical Phoenician peoples, confused with and somewhat mingled with the Arabian) and Saracens. (Please note that historically, Saracen quickly came to mean almost anything Arabic or Islamic.  There is no extant Saracen ethnic subdivision of the Arab division of the white race.  From the Beyond.com internet information service, To wit:  In 711, Muslims came to Spain from North Africa. They were called "Arabs" although they were mostly Berbers. (We'll now refer to them as Saracens, for the sake of consistency.) The Spanish Visigoths, with large minorities of Jews and Arians, welcomed the arrival of the Saracens. In 720 the Saracens occupied La Septimanie, the capitol of Narbonne in the ancient Visigoth Provence. In 721 al-Samah, the Muslim governer of Spain led an attack on Toulouse, and was repulsed by Eudes, the Duke of Aquitaine.: )  With this included footnote, the point is underscored about the pre-existing Jewish community, while the Germanic Visigoths were holdovers from those Germanics who hastened the final dissolution of the ancient, Caesarean Rome.  Those Teutonic types had settled in the warm and fertile southeastern part of Iberia, contributing to that motley mix of humanity often considered stunningly beautiful and generally comely to this day.   
 
     And for some reason or another, they got along with the Muslims and visa-versa.   As did the Croatians and other such in the Balkans when the Nazi SS would come looking for Jews.  For instance, the Muslim women, at profound risk,  would dress up the Jewesses and their children like Muslims....even teach them the language of the locale... so that the Nazi SS would just pass them by.   In the meanwhile, the Muslim men, at great risk, took the male Jews out to the caves and crannies of those beautiful little countries and hid Abie and Bennie and Jacob in places where the Nazi SS would not or could not access.    Mon Dieu!!!  Mon Dieu!!! What has caused all of this reversal?  Beelzebub himself??
      Anger at the loss of unused land???   And that the people who never lived there want to take away from the people who always lived there???  Those who then returned and changed the desert into a land of milk and honey???
 
     Muslims!  Please stop and think.  You are being cowed by cowards and bullies, and you are violating your own history....and you are carrying baggage with dirty clothes that cannot be unstained.  We all are.  We are humans whose original mother disobeyed the strict orders of the Almighty by attempting to be wise as He is wise....by eating of the forbidden fruit.  Move on. The South lost the War Between the States.  We can say it is ours, but the Yankees hold the title, the last time I checked and another war with a few million dead is just not worth it.   We get along pretty well, more or less, now.

_______________________________________________________
Conclusion:   That all of this sound and fury is based upon the excesses of the various Crusades is ridiculous and specious.  The Muslims themselves had demonstrated their own successes well before the Crusades in establishing their culture and religion on European soil for over seven Centuries!  Then, at various times, large blocs of Muslim countries and kingdoms and emirates allied with those Christian countries and against those other Christian countries, as nations do.   Jews and Christians hung around, practicing great and lengthy traditions for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years....in some cases 1,700 years in the same place in the case of some Christian sects and denominations and for the continuity in the case of the Hebrews.   Then suddenly, a sect of Islam says "Death to Israel and those who support her!"   I accuse -  Muslim, think and take back your faith.  You must grant succour and three days passport to the enemy who touches your tent pole and requests succour.   Practice your religion in its positive passages.  Let the Samaritan be your beacon.  And remember when the Arab was associated with being generous to a fault.   Many good and bad stories came back from Iraq, but the story about kindnesses from Iraqis to the American soldiers are not uncommon.   Turn in the terrorists - turn on the terrorists, for the sake of your religion and traditions.   To think that these ISIL thugs would blow up the church/mosque of Jonah the Prophet.....
 
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
 
 
Strings, Sealing Wax, and Other Fancy Stuff:
 

     It does not "do" to sit on a surprise hostage liberation plan for a month and then order the plan into operation.  It would obviously have to be re-researched and scouted and re-mapped, and re-planned.  We start off with "Strike Three" and one dead, beheaded American journalist.  Shades of Benghazi.

     The commander-in-chief of the United States military said that there would be no "spiking the ball" or "dancing in the end-zone" after the killing of bin Laden.   He lied.  Since that time, he has done nothing but, like a fat, old lardbutt sitting at the bar talking about when he caught the winning pass for his team's State semi-final football championship playoffs....forty years ago.  At least that old lardbutt did not identify the Pakistani doctor by name and address....who still sits in prison in Pakistan, for "treason".
     The "junior varsity" has passed from its frenzy of victory and will now begin the fairly easy process of outthinking a narcissistic poseur, with limited intellectual ability, who is surrounded by people who are anti-military, anti-American...and who thought they were "pro-Muslim" until they found out that not all Muslims are angelic messengers exchanging new lamps for old.   The willingness of Barry the Golfer to overturn the statements and conclusion of his Secretary of War, Dolt Hegel and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey.
 
   This is from the movie  "Shades of General Ham and Admiral Gaouette" about the commanding officers of land and sea forces who  had to be relieved of duty during the Night of Benghazi and transferred to a Naval Hospital on the Pacific Coast, in Washington State because of their "insubordination".  They returned after a few months, completely lobotomised and declaring that they never had thought that there would be any way to interdict the attack on the Benghazi Counsel Compound.  This was  in complete contradiction to their pre-lobotomised positions the night of the attack when they were both prepared to launch against the terrorists, and had so ordered.   The number of general officers sacked, demoted, and slandered during this administration is staggering.  The number of dismissals of thousands of middle ranking officers and high-ranking sergeants, even while at the front is all but incomprehensible.  

Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman  Gen.Martin
Dempsey
    We find the quandary facing Barry as he and his Bolshi-national socialist posse are forced into the reality corner.  All religion is an opiate for the masses, but Islam is supposed to be good and great...they have sects that  still allow the official murder of homosexuals and adulteresses.  I mean, what could be more enlightened?
    They can slaughter apostates and heretics without having a stain on their soul....although there is no such thing as a soul...and that is good because a soul gets in the way when at least 1,000 innocent Mexicans have been killed by Eric the Red Holder's illegal guns.   And, it's always better  to forget about a "Status of Arms" agreement when Marine One is winding up for the trip to the golf course.
   Drawing those lines in the sand is tough work.  And it's perfectly understandable to fly to a fund-raiser in Las Vegas while four Americans drain their blood out, abandoned to stain the sands of Libya.   Not even county the illegal, unconstitutional, and unconscionable act of ordering the harassment of small, Americanist political and social groups who made the mistake of applying for a non-profit status permit from the Internal Revenue Service.   What a bunch of slugs.
 
     And there ends the other fancy stuff.  Thanks for your attention.  More later.
El Gringo Viejo
________________________________________

Monday 25 August 2014

Deranged Elitists Speak - brought to you by Planned Parenthood

The founder of Planned Parenthood .. in her own words.  :'(

The legacy of Progressives... How does that "feel" to ya???
Margaret Sanger's insane mission to reduce the world's population to the level whereby there would be only 100 million people like her, and 400 million people of the servant class to wait on the commissars and elite...do their nails and hair...do their cooking, cleaning, ironing, and milking of the cows.
    After all, being the perfect blend of Nazi and Bolshevik, people like (Sir Edmund)Hillary and Sanger have to think of new groups of people who have to be destroyed and/or eliminated or enslaved.  It's hard work, it is. 
 
More later. 
El Gringo Viejo
___________________________________________

A bit of news from Mexico and the leftwing press's take

__________________________________________
  
    The major wire services, as well as the not so major, all line up to jump on Mexico's bones at every opportunity.  One might wonder why.   The press hates America, and Mexico presents America with any number of problems, and frequently behaves unjustifiably irascibly during times of contention.  Mexico also has a sense of righteous hypocrisy as well as a healthy official disregard for historical facts concerning interaction between our two contiguous Republics.  So, the press should hold in with Mexico all the time, right?   Well, not so much.
 
     Mexico still holds on to the idea of having no Death Tax.  It was one of the sops the marxists threw out to try to keep the wealthy in-country after the Revolution of 1910 and the establishment of the Constitution of 1917.  The international and American Press is still in a huff because Mexico's "Institutional Revolution" from 1917 through the year 2000 did not manage to thoroughly nationalise and establish social democracy as was intended during the Revolution of 1910.  Little matter, of course, that there was never any method by which Mexico could ever have developed what marxists call "social democracy" under any form of governance.
    Moving on to the topic at hand, we have McClatchy's Foreign Staff writer, Tim Johnson, holding forth at another failure of the present administration.  Johnson takes, as usual, elements of the truth and then retires to the saloon or library or bench at Chapultepec Park in downtown Mexico City,  or perhaps in the pleasant diner of the Museo de Antopologia e Historia on the Paseo de la Reforma's Chapultepec extention.  All nice places to whack away on the ole' laptop. 
    Johnson points out that Ernesto Pen~a Nieto made a fool of himself because he was going to establish a militia concept of common citizens to stand up to the Knights Templar Cartel and The Family Cartel, and they were going to establish a group of 40,000 citizen soldiers to accomplish this village by village in some of the really rough areas.  But, no...he failed and there is only going to be a small cadre of about 5,000.   Then Johnson does a bit of fluffery about some of the training and some of the applications for this new group of security agents.   Johnson also points out that with all the soldiers and marine infantry and army air corps, etc. there are only a little over 30,000 boots on the ground at any given time, actively engaged, in cutting the legs off of the cartels in Mexico.    It is as if he is saying, "We have 400,000 military personnel and only 30,000 are actually out killing and capturing cockroaches."
 
     This number of deployed people are the ones who are actively deployed on missions with a specific military objective.  Of course, at any given minute in Mexico there are short to medium convoys of 5 to 20 or more armoured pickups, each with a mounted machine gun, and carrying four or five more persons, mixed with APCs with squads of heavily armed and closely trained infantry.   The number of green camo (Army) and tan camo (Naval Infantry) out and active at any moment will range from 60,000 to 75,000...day and night...25/8...and this does not count the ships at sea that are engaged in patrol, contact, and "reduccion"....and the air patrols, many of which are (or were) co-ordinated with the United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard.
 
The new "Gendarmerie"
Part investigator, part
Infantry Rangers 
Johnson does not point out that the 40,000 civilian militia are still around, but in slightly smaller numbers.   Some of that group were selected along with members of the Regular Army to go for training in another elite group, something like the Federal Civilian Police (uniformed) which is essentially an extension of the Army, but dressed in dark blue fatiques, and heavily armed and trained.   The PFC (the dark blue guys) work in patrol, ride to the sound of the guns, and perform essentially as another form of light cavalry with armoured pick-ups instead of horses.
     The new group, of 5,000 with the title "Gendarmerie" is actually being received with the same enthusiasm as the other organisations.  They have been in training with very advanced groups from Italy, France, Spain, the United States, Colombia, and Chile to perform clandestine investigation, uniformed patrol, counter-insurgency, surreptitious observation, and infiltration using IDF, MI6, and DIA training to defend small, medium, and large businesses from the extortion, kidnapping, protection rackets, and other impediments to free and open commerce.

Mixed cropping of sorghum and broomcorn
     Pleasantly for El Gringo Viejo, much of their effort will be concentrated in the "Sorghum Belt" of Tamaulipas.  The crop and its processing and commercial applications have turned into  a 10 billion dollar industry now, and involves some 4 million acres of cultivation, planting, and harvesting.   It is all heavily and totally mechanised and done at a very major league level.  Extortion of the farmers and the cattle ranchers who still practice extended ranching in the Chapparral has declined over the last two years, but it still persists.   Of the 5,000 of this new Gendarmerie there will be about 2,000 working on the area where I travel and in the citrus district, another 1,000,000,000 (one billion) USD production area directly where we have our place.   The "Gendarmerie" will be dealing with an enemy that has been substantially....very substantially...degraded.  That is good and it is bad in a way.  Information will be harder to obtain, the thugs are more dangerous due to their lack of understanding about long-range strategy and short ranged thinking about "How do I get out of this mess?"  But, the bad guys will be facing another layer of competent firepower that is American-military-level honest.
   And remember what El Gringo Viejo wrote earlier.  One of the reasons the Central American Future Babymother Committee came charging up the Tamaulipas corridor to Reynosa - McAllen was because it had been made clear by Father Obamaham that they would be taken direct to the hog trough in Texas.   The other reason was because the Mexican military had essentially quelled 97% of the cockroach activity that had plagued the Central Americans before.   All the stuff about La Bestia train and the coyotes charging 5,000 dollars to come up etc....about 88% bunkum.
     For a Central American of the class of the vast majority of the ones coming up from Honduras to come up with 1,000 or 3,000 USD would be like your humble servant leveraging a bank loan in McAllen or Austin for 50,000,000 USD without collateral.   The images painted for the unsuspecting news "consumer" was horribly inaccurate during the recent unpleasantness.  It only began to refocus onto something almost like a true image with the appearance of Perry and some of his clunky explanations.
 
     We could go on forever, talking about details and specifics, but such would be overkill.  There will be other moments when we shall write about more specific things in this vein, but for now, this should be enough to chew upon.
El Gringo Viejo
_______________________________________________

Sunday 24 August 2014

Happy Trails.....

__________________________________________________ 

Yeah.. Abu Mosa, the spokesperson for ISIS, he's dead. Killed in an air strike no less. He won't be raising any flags any time soon.
 
 

Back from a short trip to the beach....

_______________________________________________________
A more or less current picture of the beach,
surf, and development of South Padre Island 
     We are just back from a "Day at the Beach" with daughter, son-in-law, and our two granddaughters.  They have an arrangement for/with a condo on the beach...or at least only 100 yards from the water's edge, at a preferred location on South Padre Island, Texas.

     It was amazing to see the width and breadth of the economic activity, the full restaurants, and the full saloons, and the full attractions and services.   Our granddaughters took a four-horse convoy for a beach ride, totalling an hour and a half, for considerable distance along that scene to the left, essentially, albeit with a few more people.   One granddaughter's horse was named "Chum Bucket", which was a bit of an unfortunate thing, when of course her grandfather had to inform her that her horse would have to be ground up into small pieces of meat to throw into the water in order to attract sharks for the shark fishermen;   chum is a form of bait, and Chum Bucket was a horse, so...well....you know....things have to go on.  Granddaughter number one was not so impressed with that explanation, as one might imagine.    We did confess shortly after telling her such things that Chum Bucket was not going to be ground into fish food.
 
     Besides the generally excellent food and beverage service, and the subdued but lively Island activity pace, the think that shocked this observer was that common first-class hotels, whether chains or independents were charging  240 to 360 dollars per night for accommodation for two people in a fairly dull room with minimal appointments and almost no frill.   And rooms were scarce. 

     For what passes as de luxe level availabilities, the rate was around 390 to 600 dollars per night.  We are not saying that, "Well, back in 1963 you could have any hotel on the beach side for 9 dollars per night!"   To begin with, there were scant rooms of any kind or level on the Island at that time.    And we recognise that in 1963, our currency still had nominal backing by gold and silver.  We also know that the Island has been essentially semi-occupied by the very wealthy of San Pedro de Garza Garcia, Monterrey, and San Nicolas de los Garza people from the Monterrey Metroplex in Mexico
.  These are contiguous cities are replete with  old-money millionaires and some billionaires, and with huge extreme upper-middle class professionals and proprietor cohorts descended during the last century from what little existed of the old Mexican middle-class of ancient days.  This cohort of the population of the three named cities, Monterrey  being the largest with 2,000,000, San Pedro being the richest with about 600,000 and San Nicolas being almost totally middle and upper-middle class and numbering now nearly 1,000,000 people, back in the late 1960s,  began to stake out South Padre Island of Texas as their Summer, Easter Break, and long-weekend official playground.  Investment followed.   Condos, hotels, and bar & grill, and  other investments were made by these folks.
     While these folks are very reticent and private, you will see them during any of your visits, in good numbers on the Island and they will interact, surprisingly, with a charming form of civility and even  warmth and enthusiasm.   They are relatively at home among us and we among them.  They carry their own weight and then some, leaving the woodpile higher than they found it in many ways.
     I do not believe they are the cause of the high prices.  It is simply that the demand is there to charge the prices being charged at the hotels.    There is also considerable sport-fishing and maritime sight-seeing tourism that cranks the people in and out of the venue.  And then, being situtated at the very tip end of the Republic of Texas, it tends to have Winters that much milder than one might find in....say ....Alberta or Up-state New York or say, North Dakota or Minnesota.   A once booming Spring Bring business has gradually receded to minor league debauchery and declining numbers during the past three or four years, thankfully. 
The Queen Isabella Causeway
connecting South Padre Island to Port Isabel
and the rest of the Republic of Texas - 3 miles
across the fabled Laguna Madre Bay complex

The Boss and I made reservations some time back and wound up staying in a place on the "mainland",  a town named Port Isabel.   It was and is, depending upon the year, home to the largest shrimping fleet in the United States.  The seemingly unlikely place where we stayed in mid-town Port Isabel is named the Southwind Hotel.   Across from the street from the  small hotel is the city's oldest cemetery.  The unapologetic peculiar layout, taking advantage of an irregular lot, is on two stories, with a pool, a nice dog in the office, a huge cat at the front door, demanding attention upon the arrival of new arrivals....roughish, semi-finished to well finished exterior, built for hurricanes....lead one to his/her room that is excellent for all purposes.  Very clean, small appointments like fluffy towels, excellent mattresses and pillows, ceiling fans, powerful air-conditioners, convenient location to about 20 restaurants of note and the longest fishing pier on the Texas Coast, giving ac
The historic and intermittently employed
Port Isabel Lighthouse, about three blocks
from our little hotel on the Bay in, you
guessed it, Port Isabel.
cess to the interminably rich bounty of the Laguna Madre Bay complex's myriad of edible game fish.   Moreover, a lazy or industrious angler can walk 200 feet with his bait and tackle in hand from the hotel to very rich bank and wade fishing in that Bay and have a good shot at redfish, trout, and flounder whenever the moon stage and tidal rhythms permit, which can be frequently.   All of this and the price was one-third to one-fourth the price of a not quite as good room on the Island.   Our on-line booking was easy and instantly recognised upon arrival.  The owner and his lady were extremely and genuinely pleased with our presence and even the chambermaid crew was accommodative and their work somewhere between excellent and perfect.

     In any regard, it was a wonderful time, full of adventures, fireworks displays, sun, surf, waves, and great meals.   We were having a great time, and we wish you could have been there.  More comments follow to-night and to-morrow.  There will be a bit of history about the beginning of the War between the United States and Mexico.  There will also be a bit of a story about a new unit in the Mexican panoply of crime-fighting that gives us even more certainty of ultimate victory in the restoration of reasonable expectation of security in business and social matters.

El Gringo Viejo
_______________________________________________