Another brick in the wall

Britain has announced that certain people will not be allowed into the country because — at least in some cases — it doesn't like the way they think. From The Independent (tip of the hat: Lawrence Auster):

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.

The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host.

A country is not obliged to admit anyone who wants in. I'd like both the United States and Britain to see off more of the unsavory and dangerous than they do. But who does the Home Secretary consider mad, bad, and dangerous to know?

The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host. …

The list of the 16 "least wanted" includes radio talk show host Michael Savage, real name Michael Weiner.

"This is someone who has fallen into the category of Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe," Ms Smith told BBC Breakfast.

Michael Savage gets on my nerves. His shouting, his endless repetition of every point, his fingernails-on-a-blackboard New Yawk accent … ugh. As far as I know, however, he has never been accused of any crime, except anti-liberalism.

Also named are American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, who have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and claimed the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.

I've never heard of either, but if that is an accurate portrait of them — not an automatic assumption, given this is from the way-left Independent — they are contemptible wackos. But that, too, is not itself a crime.

So how is it that Savage, Phelps "Snr" (that means Senior, for Yanks unfamiliar with strange Brit abbreviations), and Phelps-Roper are in the same most-dangerous category as "Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky [a case of moral equivalence?], former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe"?

Namer-and-shamer Jacqui Smith explains it: "This is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."

Translated from Government Mafia jargon, that means something like: "This is someone who sees Islam and sharia law as threats to Western society. As if that wasn't bad enough, he says so — on the radio, my dear No-God! And since the United Kingdom has encouraged its colonisation by thousands of beheaders-in-training, screaming misfits, and jihad-supporting imams, some of our not yet dhimmified citizens might be encouraged to become a bit tense over the position, which could lead to violent demos by our Muslim community in righteous repugnance at unrestrained infidel behaviour. As we all know, Britain has defended through the centuries, since the very days of Richard the Chicken-Hearted, individuals' right never to have to hear a word challenging their belief system."

What are tea parties protesting?

Reflecting Light is taking a brief vacation from its vacation from politics. I was going to write about clouds today. Clouds refresh the parts of us that concepts cannot reach. But the shocking changes that our country is being subjected to call for comment, however I might wish to turn my attention to symbols of the Everlasting. The nice thing about the Everlasting is, well, that it will always be there. The same cannot be said of liberty, free speech, cultural continuity. Clouds will have their posting here in due course.

Apparently the April 15 tea parties were well attended — I say "apparently" because the mass media, household servants of the Obama machine, scarcely noticed them; you have to read blogs or look at videos on YouTube to get the picture. The lack of coverage may turn out to be a good thing. If you were in the midst of thousands on that day, knowing that there were similar rallies all over the country, and found that it hadn't happened and you didn't exist as far as the Living Dead media were concerned, that might stir further thoughts about the status of power in this country.

The tea parties were encouraging, of course. They were the first time I can remember when large numbers of conservatives — including many who were formerly complacent or apolitical — took to the streets nationwide demonstrating against political malfeasance. It wasn't a long journey, only the proverbial first step.

But what are the protests about? Looking at web sites for the upcoming action, scheduled for September 12, it's not clear. Many, like this, sound generically anti-taxation, like budget hawks with upraised muskets. A few, like this, have a long agenda, mostly items on the conservative shopping list for years. But if the tea parties are to matter, they have to carry the struggle into new territory, because the immediate danger — of our becoming a society in which the State makes every decision and the individual's role is to consume, produce, and obey — goes way beyond traditional liberal versus conservative arguments.

So there are ditches on either side of the road, and the new energy of protest can run into either and wind up with its wheels spinning in the air.

If it becomes just blustering about taxes and Mad King Obama's borrow-and-borrow, spend-and-spend vote buying, it's likely to be futile. It then becomes an argument about economics rather than principles of a free society.

If the tea parties are no more than agitation for various reforms, worthy though many of them would be, they miss the point. There are times in history — and we have been lucky that they've included most of the years of our republic — when reforms, even incomplete, keep the society going reasonably well. This is not one of those times. Not when a radical overthrow of what the United States has meant is happening before our eyes.

If not stopped, it could unfold amazingly fast. Britain has turned into an Orwellian, corrupt, dysfunctional catastrophe, mostly in less than two decades since Labour took over. Here we face the prospect of being reduced to servants of a globalist elite–controlled government with the power to save or kill businesses; dilute the indigenous population with alien tribes that can be easily bribed with welfare and preferment; pull down the foundations of our armed forces and security agencies; and suppress or criminalize blogs, radio, or speech that challenge the party line.

Bring on the tea parties. But understand what we're really up against, and act accordingly.

Un-man-caused disease

A month ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, following President for Life Obama's kinder, gentler approach to terrorism, announced that there was no longer any such thing. Acts that we unenlightened proles might mistake for terrorism would henceforth be called "man-caused disasters."

The same progressive approach has been placed in the service of our health. "Swine flu" is officially over. The Council on Swine-Human Relations objected to the old tag. It has been rebranded "H1N1 flu."

Blinking hell. Now we have to be politically correct so as not to offend diseases.

It's an ill wind that blows no good at all …

Nothing can stop compassionate opportunism, though. Some on-line ads today:

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Don't wait! If Swine Flu kills you it may be too late! Call now — operators are standing by.

Technological unemployment cited in monastery downsizing

A calligraphic robot has been programmed to create a "hand"-lettered Bible, similar to those in pre-Gutenberg times. (Tip of the hat: Ministry of Type)

It's hard to imagine this application of robotic science has a future. The letters appear to be uniform, so there's not much difference between the "hand"-written version and a printed page.

But suppose you could do this: scan the pages of medieval, multi-colored illuminated manuscripts to record the exact design and color values. (As I noted once, the colored inks in manuscripts fade much less than paint on wood or canvas. The hand-painted illustrations give us an authentic idea of the tonal palettes used by artists in the Middle Ages.)

Then, you develop software that enables the robot to ink in exactly the same colors as the original on each page. You could even use parchment-like paper. When the process is complete, you have a nearly exact copy of the historical document … and besides, the software files could be stored so that reproductions could be made any time, even if the original were to be lost in some calamity.

High-quality modern color printing can give a pretty fair image of hand-painted manuscripts, but even at its best can't reproduce the sheen and mineral-impregnated tones of colored ink applied flat rather than bit-mapped in the four-color process.

Imagine recreating in actual size an illuminated manuscript such as the 15th century masterpiece, Les très riches heures du duc de Berry:

I understand that Google is embarked on a project to scan every book in print, or maybe every printed book available. I'd like to see all hand-written manuscripts preserved as well. It would be expensive (though there might be economies of scale). The writings of the ancients were copied, and often embellished, by men in much poorer societies than ours. We might do those artist-craftsmen the same favor.

Fashion notes from all over

In keeping with Reflecting Light's vacation from politics, we have called in our Soft News editor for a fashion article.

Estelle Globule-Marks and Mbukini "Pinky" Kolumubu
model latest kit at Fireperson Fashions 09

Fire departments around the U.K., tired of hearing public complaints about women firefighters being given affirmative action preferences, are rebranding their services with a new, stronger image in facewear.

"Bloke or not-bloke? It's all in the eye of the beholder," said Cmdr. Michael Toweller of the Chipping Sodbury Fire Suppression Force. "Now shut your gob and let us get on with it. Public relations is Job 1."

Michael Jackson steps out in anti-Swine Flu attire.
That's one flu over the cuckoo's nest!

Michael Jackson, in London for a series of concerts, said through a publicist: "Rumors that I have converted to Islam are categorically untrue. Pork is excluded from my diet only because of Swine Flu and because I intend to maintain my physical and mental purity. I am only here to raise money for Flu Aid 09, and my mask is a symbol to raise public consciousness of the threat of Global Flu Warming."

The American Jacobin era begins

We interrupt Reflecting Light's holiday from politics for a public service announcement.

President for Life Obama and his radical left zombie followers have signaled that they are prepared to purge these United States of dissenters and deviationists. First came the now-notorious DHS report trying to brand opponents of his centralized-power Putsch as proto-terrorists.

Next he began testing the waters for show trials of members of the other party who served in the previous administration, a common feature of life in African one-man-rule countries. There have even been suggestions of trials like those in South Africa after the end of apartheid -- you know, where you were "forgiven" as long as you pleaded guilty. If you protested your innocence, you were found guilty anyway and jailed.

And, always in the background, the colonization of the United States by Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadoreans, Somalis, Muslims of various nationalities ... legal or illegal, it doesn't matter: it's the globalist strategy of divide and conquer, balkanize, replace indigenous populations, all in aid of stifling opposition.

It's getting hot in here.

We now return to our regularly scheduled non-political blogging.