We Are The World

Europe, IMMIGRATION, Nationhood

Sanctimonious British and American media have covered the refugee crisis in Europe with distinct disdain for … the native populations. After all, aren’t the latter strangers in their own land? What right have they to worry about and wall-off their small piece of the world?

The Greeks, you will agree, have enough problems of their own. The islanders of Kos struggle to make a living. But now they have to fight for their small, compromised corner of the country. The Greek island lives off tourism. This will not last.

So many migrants have slipped into the small Greek island that its 30,000 population is struggling to cope amid rising fears that disgruntled tourists will begin boycotting the idyllic holiday destination, a long-time favourite of Britons.

The new — and very unwelcome — arrivals sleep under trees in the park, on sun loungers at the beach, and on the ground by the police station. Or they take their chances at a dirty, makeshift camp, set up in a derelict hotel close to Lambi beach where the traffickers’ inflatable dinghies creep in each dawn with their next load of human cargo.

(Daily Mail.)

A picture of refugee men ogling British tourists:

UPDATED: Chrissie Hynde On Skanks (Serena Williams Agrees)

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Music

Tough, quite talented and smart: Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde also says what needs to be said just to keep the truth alive in the public square: Women who dress like skanks and then sue or cry rape when men come on to them are not blameless.

Where I disagree with Hynde is when she asserts that the rape of a woman who dresses and behaves like a hooker is somehow deserved. No! It’s understandable, not deserved.

Before being abducted, raped and killed by Jesse Matthew, Hannah Graham drew his attention by wondering about with midriff so bare that her crotch is almost visible. In surveillance footage she can be seen swaying as though tipsy.

Skank attire and conduct is sanctioned these days by parents of small girls. What’s in their heads, one wonders.

As for Hynde’s claim “that pop stars who call themselves feminists but use their sex appeal to sell records were effectively just ‘prostitutes'”: More crucially, most are nothing without their looks. They aren’t musicians. Auto-Tune technology is what makes a cast of vain ventriloquists like Katy Perry and other screamers what they are.

UPDATE: Another strong, sensible woman, tennis star Serena Williams, agrees. “If you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you—don’t take drinks from other people,” she said about the case of the intoxicated teen who cried rape in Steubenville, Ohio.

‘She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.’

Jonathan Meades Is Ever So Convincing; Much More Than Brutalism

Aesthetics, Art, Britain, Intellectualism, Socialism, The State

The little I know about Brutalist architecture is enough to make me skeptical of Jonathan Meades’ brilliantly spoken claims for it. This school of architecture seems to have been wedded to The State and, as such, to have taken on its foreboding austerity (expensive and ugly). “Governmentally sanctioned Brutalims” is indeed “the architecture of “cultural welfarism.” But a government-spawned “novelty”? Please!

However, Meades, a Briton of course, is a magnificent advocate for anything, really. His polemics are astounding in both beauty and internal logic. “… a prose style so pugnaciously cultivated, so unpredictably informative, and, enviably often, so extremely funny . …” Meades is indeed a strange experience: You might not agree with his assessment, but you love every moment of it and follow in delight.

On the 1960s cultural output: “A kaleidoscope of polychromatic vacuity.” “Enjoyably witless hedonism.” “A gluppy soap of mysticism …” “New universities busily inventing new disciplines.” Vatican Two decreeing that new churches should be churches in the round, like theaters in the round.”

Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry – Two from MeadesShrine on Vimeo.

*Image courtesy By Aurelien Guichard from London, United Kingdom – National Theatre Uploaded by BaldBoris, CC BY-SA 2.0

‘Gun Violence’? No! Goon Violence

Crime, GUNS, Reason

Thinking logically about crime is far likelier to lead to solutions than irrational, mythical thinking. This morning, CNN’s Poppy Harlow—below an amusing thought I once entertained about her—inveighed against the “gun violence” that “took” the life of poor Deputy Darren Goforth, today.

“Gun Violence”? No! Goon violence. A very dark man—safe to say black, from the images—has been taken into custody for the execution-style murder of the deputy, at “a suburban Houston gas station.”

Police have described the suspect as a male with a dark complexion, about 5-foot-10 to 6 feet tall, wearing a white T-shirt and red shorts. Authorities did not say what race they believe him to be. …

It was not an inanimate object that murdered this innocent individual, but a malevolent man with murder in his heart and a weapon in his hand. Grasping that distinction is more truthful and hence more productive than blaming an inanimate object.

Poppy bonus:

If only a woman with the wicked wit of a Margot Asquith—countess of Oxford, author and socialite (1864- 1945)—were around to put slobbering Poppy Harlow in her proper place.

When asked by American actress Jean Harlow how she pronounces her first name, Mrs. Asquith quickly retorted: “The ‘t’ is silent, as in Harlow.”

From “Savoring Hillary’s Vow Of Silence.”