Nothing to be Islam, or the power of sarcasm
Pat on the money yet again…
As is David Wood
“I am Charlie Hebdo”
Two gunmen in balaclavas and bullet-proof vests, armed with a pump-action shotgun and an automatic rifle, stormed into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo at about 11.30am as about 15 journalists had gathered for the weekly editorial conference. They called for the editor by name and then murdered him before spraying the room with gunfire, killing nine more and wounding others. Laurent Léger, a Charlie Hebdo writer, managed to sound the alarm, calling a friend and telling him: “Call the police. It’s carnage, a bloodbath. Everyone is dead.”
As they made their getaway, the gunmen shot dead two policemen, including one who they shot in the head at close range as he lay injured on the pavement.
The two attackers then jumped into a small black Citroën that they had apparently arrived in and drove off. Police said there was a third man involved in the attack, who had driven the car to the magazine offices, on rue Nicolas Appert in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris, and it is not clear whether he fled the scene during the attack.
The gunmen abandoned the Citroën in the 19th arrondissement, in the north-east of the capital before hijacking another car. Police said the attackers had then had gone to ground, leaving a nation in shock.
The attack was the bloody culmination of a long-simmering struggle between France’s libertarian traditions of free speech and an increasingly extreme strand of Islamism. Witnesses described hearing the attackers shout “Allahu Akbar” as well as “We have avenged the Prophet.” Two eyewitnesses said they claimed to be from al-Qaida. One of them specified al-Qaida in Yemen, a group also known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
The French are often despised by the English for being “cheese eating surrender monkeys” as a consequence of their capitulation to the invading Nazis during the second world war so It is heartening to see that they are on this occasion not being at all meek in their response to this outrage. To be frank there is no reason to make excuses for Islam after this assault upon every writer’s freedom of speech. Yet I am certain that there will be elements of the left who will do just that. Without the right to treat the totalitarian religion of our age with the utter contempt that it so clearly deserves we are all slaves to its propagators and as someone observed on twitter “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” (who said that before?) maybe its time for all of the fourth estate to stop pussy footing around with the followers of Islam, to tell them that they are not going to win and that theirs is a religion that is totally unacceptable in a modern world. maybe its time for all of us who have a presence in the public media discourse to stand up and say “I am Charlie Hebdo” just as the slaves in revolt against Rome all stood up and said “I am Spartacus”*
Angry again Comrades
*well according to the film anyway
Gearboxes and Pizza boxes that do not face Mecca
I have been rather slack about posting to this blog of late, for a couple a reasons, firstly its the season for spending more time with the family , secondly I have been far more focused on my car projects , in particular getting my sports car sorted and fitted with a new manual transmission because the auto I had in it was sounding like a bag of nails and running very badly. having to make a clutch peddle and ensure it works properly took longer than I expected and then I also had to alter the gearshift so that I falls conveniently to hand. The wrenching gods even made the speedo cable a problem as the corolla cable had an incomparable fitting for my Smiths speedo. I solved that one with a short length of fuel line and some hose claps to splice the last inches of my existing cable outer to the end of the Corolla cable.
Any way its time to get back too it but I just feel compelled to share this picture that was posted to my face book time line:

Cadbury have apparently closed production to see if they can ride out being boycotted. Removing the halal extortion tax (fee) may not only reduce the cost of some food, but may prevent the unaccounted channeling of funds to overseas groups of questionable religious motives.
Its nice to see that companies are waking up the the “halal” scam and not letting the politically correct ninnies extort them into endorsing the pernicious ideology of Islam.
Cheers Comrades
Sydney Siege, why was there no use of a sniper?

If a scumbag claims to be acting in the Name of Allah then why does the Australian media keep insisting on pretending otherwise?
I don’t sleep very well at the bets of times but I have spent most of last night listening to the rolling coverage of the siege in Sydney and I am both desperately saddened by the death of two hostages and annoyed that a sniper did not take the scumbag out before any hostages could be killed. Further I can not comprehend why he was out on bail after being changed with murdering his wife and how he was able to get hold of a hand gun.
Finally I have been utterly sickened by all of the obsequious excuse making for Islam We, as a society well understand that the the majority of this in this country who follow that religion are decent people who mean their fellow Australians no harm so we do not need the sort of endless excuse making for the religion that has been so evident in the Media coverage for this atrocity done in the name of Allah. Simply put, if this was not an act based upon an “Islamic” motivation then why was it clothed in Islamist vestments?
Sadly nothing to cheer about on this one Comrades
At last after seven years of madness the country can draw a line under the Asylum seeker disarray created by Kevin Rudd
I must say that waking up to the news that the government has finally manged to secure the passage of a bill to reintroduce TPVs has really brightened my day.
“The crossbench shouldn’t have been put in this position, but we have,” the Motoring Enthusiast party senator said.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon also wrestled with the decision, but like Muir believed the amendments would give hope to thousands of refugees stuck in detention.
In return for their support – and that of the Palmer United party – the government agreed to quickly process the claims of 30,000 asylum seekers languishing in detention centres across Australia.
PUP leader Clive Palmer said that backing the legislation meant 1,500 asylum seekers – including 468 children – would soon be leaving Christmas Island.
But Labor and the Greens accused the government of using those children as a bargaining chip, arguing that the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, could release them at any time, if he wished.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie – who opposed the legislation – attacked the government for keeping children detained for so long.
“These kids have been sitting there for 15 months, and you want a pat on the back? You’ve got to be kidding yourselves,” she said.
Particular concerns were raised about the return of TPVs, a Howard-era policy condemned by refugee advocates and repealed by the previous Labor government.
The government also agreed to increase Australia’s humanitarian intake of refugees and to give those on bridging visas the right to work.
Now the government can virtually clear the legacy backlog of mendicants that we can thank the Labor party for creating way back at the beginning of the Rudd regime. Long time readers may remember when I correctly predicted the subsequent flood of boats Further despite voting against the bill in the Senate I very much doubt that any future Labor government will be rushing to repeal the legislation because they will not want to endure being thrashed for their stupid position of the issue for another seven years. Any one who looks back on the this part of our political history must surely recognize that the whole problem is a consequence of the Labor party making a bad call and then being political cowards unwilling to undo their mistake or even admit that it was a mistake. All because the Labor party have been trying to court the very loopy left who support the Greens position on the Asylum seeker issues. That sort of thinking from the ALP is of course rather mad because there is no way that a sensible ALP person can possibly sink deep enough into the slime of Green political idea without alienating their center.
The thing that we should always remember is that the measure of the ALP’s position on any issue where it is at odds with the current government is not the posturings of Electricity Bill Shorten and his motley crew but their answer to being asked “will you repeal it if you win office?” and my guess is that The ALP answer will almost without exception fudge it and make excuses and prevaricate because the last thing that they want to do is commit themselves to giving the public a very spiky stick to beat them with for the next seven years.
Educated Cambridge University arses.
When I was at university the students were revolting they celebrated and delighted in being transgressive Sadly that is no longer the case.
Can naked bottoms really be that socio-politically significant? Oh very much so, I’d say. Especially to anyone who has just read the quite monumentally depressing cover story from this week’s Spectator by Brendan O’Neill. His argument is that political correctness has become so heavily entrenched in academe that our seats of learning are in serious danger of abandoning perhaps their most important function: opening up developing minds to new ideas and experiences.
If your go-to image of a student is someone who’s free-spirited and open-minded, who loves having a pop at orthodoxies, then you urgently need to update your mind’s picture bank. Students are now pretty much the opposite of that. It’s hard to think of any other section of society that has undergone as epic a transformation as students have. From freewheelin’ to ban-happy, from askers of awkward questions to suppressors of offensive speech, in the space of a generation
A worthy and witty post that I commend to readers of the Sandpit
Cheers Comrades
Racism off the rails in Queensland
Now I abhor racism in any form but I also find the spin on this incident sadly disappointing on several fronts,
Around 8pm Saturday, the offender(Identified as Kader Boumzar) posted a status update to his Facebook page.
“I was just drunk couldn’t remember s–t so stop over reacting, but I am proud to be white!” it read.
Around 11pm a second status update appeared on the page, expressing remorse.
“I’m really sorry to everyone that was affected by the video I really can not remember anything out of all honesty the post made before was someone else I know this is no excuse,” it read.
“But can you all see from my point of view that I was a f—-ing idiot and I’m really sorry.”
The offender is believed to be 17 years old.
Queensland Police said on Saturday night they were aware of the video, and would investigate further with Queensland Rail officials on Sunday.