latté island

Punk eats lead taco

2012-02-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

Finally, something good happened in Oakland. Taco truck vendor Omar Casillas was confronted by two men, one of whom pointed a gun at him. Casillas shot the gunman, 19-year-old Shean Ward-Morris, wounding him. Both assailants got away but were later arrested at a hospital.

The comments are overwhelmingly positive. Several commenters pointed out that it's likely Casillas didn't have a concealed carry permit, because they're hard to get if you're not a politician. But most people who comment on this type of story are beyond caring about permits.

SFGate: Taco truck shootout caught on video

Schadenfreude story of the week

2012-01-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

Adopted son murders Bay Area do-gooders

SFGate: Friends and relatives said Susan Poff and Robert Kamin of Oakland were the perfect pair to adopt a foster child.

They had dedicated their careers to helping others escape poverty, she as a physician assistant in a city-run clinic in the Tenderloin and he as a clinical psychologist for inmates in the San Francisco County Jail system.

But now, less than a decade after they adopted, their 15-year-old son stands accused of strangling both Poff, 50, and Kamin, 55, then hiding their bodies in the back of the family's PT Cruiser.

The boy's name (and race) aren't in the article, because he's a minor, but it's likely that he's a minority.

The couple who adopted this thing deserved what happened to them. Both of the victims were actively enabling crime against others, before their karma caught up with them. Working in a Tenderloin clinic means patching up psychotic druggies so they can go out and prey on tourists. A prison shrink? how many parole hearings has he testified at, assuring the parole board that his precious little snowflake is rehabilitated? No matter how many of his pets have gone out and hurt actual humans, he probably never made the connection.

If I were an investigative journalist instead of a lazy blogger, I'd get their patients' rap sheets. Then everyone would have a better idea of why this doesn't matter too much. Let's hope Junior doesn't find some other fools to rehabilitate him and help him get out early for good behavior, but this being the Bay Area, of course that's exactly what will happen.

Autistic Girl Expresses Unimaginable Intelligence

2012-01-27T23:36:00.000-08:00

Dark horse wins Golden Globe award

2012-01-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

Just in time for MLK's b-day, black actress Octavia Spencer has won a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress for "The Help." I haven't seen this movie and don't want to. It's about a white southern debutante who comes back from college and interviews the town's black maids for a book. The white people are mostly bad, and the black people are mostly good, according to reviews I read.

The other nominees in this category were:
Berenice Bejo, Jessica Chastain, Janet McTeer, and Shailene Woodley. Chastain and McTeer were probably the front-runners. Spencer's credits aren't in the same league. This is clearly a case of affirmative action. I find it beyond belief that white people would reward an anti-white film like this, and pass over much more accomplished actresses, who happen to be white.

This clip was apparently recorded in a movie theatre. Everyone laughed, and so did I when I saw it on YouTube, despite how I feel about what's really being done here. There's nothing wrong with laughing at something funny, but it should have been left at that, and not given a prestigious award.

And yet, she does have a big butt

2011-12-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

Left to right: Princess Letizia of Spain, French first lady Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama

Sensenbrenner sorry for 'big butt' remark

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he apologized to Michelle Obama Thursday after he was overheard saying the first lady has a "large posterior."

Sensenbrenner was overheard Wednesday at a lounge in Reagan National Airport outside Washington talking on his cellphone about the first lady's healthy food initiative, saying Obama "lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself," Politico reported.

Sensenbrenner was recounting a conversation he had Dec. 10 at St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in Hartford, Wis., the newspaper said.

Ann Marsh-Meigs, a 72-year-old member of the church, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sensenbrenner implied Obama's initiatives to combat childhood obesity are not serious.

"He got on the topic of first ladies and their special interests, and he said most first ladies have serious projects," Marsh-Meigs. "He implied that Michelle Obama being interested in childhood obesity was not serious, he sort of made fun of it and then he made fun of her. He said something like, 'Look at her big butt.'"

"I regret my inappropriate comment and I have sent a personal note to the first lady apologizing," Sensenbrenner said in a statement Thursday.

Rep. Sensenbrenner isn't in such great shape himself, but he's right about Michelle Obama. Why would anyone take nutrition advice from a woman who looks like her? She must be doing something wrong. Maybe her advice to restrict fat is wrong. Someone who gives advice without getting good results, is a hypocrite and busybody. There's nothing wrong with having a fat ass, but don't tell other people about nutrition, if you do have a fat ass.

This apology by Rep. Sensenbrenner is just the latest example of uppity crackas who have to apologize to black people for nothing. His remarks were made in private and off the record, and were reported by whites who think black people will like them better if they report on white people who don't know their place.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to think very carefully before apologizing to any black person for anything. If it's a personal matter, and I'm at fault, I'll apologize, but if it's one of those "I'll apologize because you expect it" deals, I'll do it only to avoid violence. If it's only about social awkwardness, so be it. I'll just look at them like, what's your problem.

BTW, another New Year's resolution is to get into better shape. I'm in my late 50s and sedentary, but I swear on my cat, if I were in the above pic, I'd be the third best, and Mrs. Obama would still be the worst. Is there something she's not telling us, or just those African genes?

Eva Hoeke gets Imused

2011-12-21T22:56:00.000-08:00

White Dutch woman Eva Hoeke had to resign as editor of Jackie, a Dutch fashion magazine, for accurately describing pop singer Rihanna as "the ultimate niggabitch." Black people are angry, as usual.

The SF Chronicle is so intimidated, they didn't even use the phrase, only referred to it as a racial slur. The commenters, who are mostly white, are over this. Most comments referred to the double standard that black people can say "nigger," but white people get fired for it.

It's good to see some clarity from white people in the ultra-liberal SF Bay Area.

I have a suggestion for how these incidents can be avoided in the future. Media should stop paying attention to ugly, trashy black performers, and pay more attention to white performers. Even though white pop stars like Britney Spears and all the rest are almost as trashy as Rihanna, at least their white fans don't get upset if a journalist notices how they dress.

Here is a pic of Eva Hoeke, the latest victim of the black mob. Isn't she a lot more pleasant to look at than Rihanna?

Art destroyed by Muslim, I mean Christian fanatics

2011-12-21T00:14:00.000-08:00

Via VFR, this image of Mary has been cut up by a vandal who claims he is being persecuted for his faith. The image, on a billboard on private property, was put up by a liberal Anglican church in New Zealand. After the vandal destroyed the image with scissors, a group of about 100 Roman Catholics gathered nearby to pray.

What an Anglican church displays on private property is its own business. A group of believers from another denomination has no right to censor the religious or political expression of others. And they have the nerve to think they're being persecuted for their faith. It seems to me it's the liberal Anglican church that's being persecuted for its views.

What's wrong with portraying Mary as an ordinary person? She may not actually have been a virgin, that may have been based on a mistranslation. Maybe the church that put this up was telling people they don't have to base their religion on magical thinking.

Some of these Christian extremists remind me of Muslim extremists. They think their way is the only way, and they have the right to destroy anything they deem "Satanic." Both Christian and Muslim fanatics need to develop a sense of humor and respect for private property and free speech.

Article in Telegraph

Paul on Homosexuality

2011-12-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

There's a new book that shows how New Testament Paul was really okay with gays. I don't care all that much about what Paul may or may not have said about homosexuality, but apparently a lot of people do. I'm no biblical scholar, so even if I ever get around to reading this book, I won't be able to evaluate it, but here's the website, for people who are curious.

Paul on Homosexuality

Dharun Ravi is Indian national

2011-12-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

Tyler Clementi's roommate rejects plea deal

In all the news coverage of the Tyler Clementi suicide, I didn't see any mention of the fact that Ravi is an Indian national. Now the papers are reporting that Ravi risks being deported back to India if he is convicted of various charges related to his cyber-bullying of his gay roommate, who committed suicide.

It's interesting that Ravi's immigration status was hidden from the public until now, when it can no longer be hidden, because deportation will be a likely result if he is convicted. I did a cursory search on Molly Wei's citizenship status, and haven't found anything yet. (She was his accomplice/girlfriend, and has agreed to testify against Ravi in exchange for charges being dropped against her.) That's interesting, too. The rule in journalism is, a criminal suspect is an American citizen until it becomes absolutely unavoidable to disclose otherwise.

Racist chav gets arrested for honesty; mental health questioned

2011-11-29T22:56:00.000-08:00

A white English woman has been arrested for ranting against immigrants on public transportation. She has been denied bail for her own safety, as authorities fear she is at risk of revenge attacks. According to an article in Croyden Today, she "has been remanded in custody while psychiatric reports are prepared." The passive voice WRT to the psychiatric reports makes it sound as Orwellian as it is.

All this is odd, because I see black people freaking out quite often on public transportation and elsewhere, and no one objects. Also, if anyone bothered to post a video of one of these ordinary instances of non-white people behaving badly in public, including racist remarks against white people and/or Asians, it's unlikely anyone would make death threats against them, as has happened in this case.

Only this morning, a well-dressed white man on my bus was muttering in a loud voice about how Christians don't die, and other typical religious fanatic ravings, and no one even reacted. He didn't say anything about black people, though. But why is a video like the one here getting all this attention? People freak out all the time and say all kinds of things without getting arrested or getting death threats.

Since she has been arrested, and so many people condemn her as a racist and chav and question her mental health, I just want to say that I agree with her comments and would rather sit next to her than anyone else in that video.

Article from Croyden Today

Uhuru Guru is back

2011-10-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Via Jew Among You, Uhuru Guru is blogging again at South Africa Sucks.

On Blogspot, though? How long will that last?

Patrick Lumumba's airtight alibi

2011-10-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

I've spent some time trying to track down Patrick Lumumba's alibi, which several journalists refer to in the same words, "airtight alibi," as if they were quoting the same source.

Apparently, the conventional wisdom is that Lumumba was talking to a Swiss professor at his bar while Meredith Kercher was being murdered.

I'm not suggesting Lumumba had anything to do with the crime, but it seems odd that everyone accepts that he had an airtight alibi, when even a cursory internet search shows there were always problems with it. No new information came out, it's just that people started referring to the alibi as airtight.

The articles from a few years ago say, Lumumba couldn't provide a solid alibi. He told the police he had some receipts from his bar that showed him at the bar at the time the murder took place. He claimed to have spent the time with a Swiss professor, but the articles say the Swiss professor wasn't sure of the time, or that Lumumba hadn't been there all the time.

The articles say the Swiss professor was never named. So, who is this Swiss professor? Was he Swiss, or an African with a Swiss passport? What was a professor doing in Lumumba's dive bar?

Of course, in a case like this, there will be a lot of loose ends, and it doesn't mean much that someone doesn't have an alibi. But I do have a problem with the way Lumumba has been whitewashed, probably because he is black.

Everyone assumes his alibi is airtight, end of story. There is actually nothing on the internet to give him an alibi. He may have a good alibi, but it is not written anywhere accessible to the public. In other words, everyone referring to his airtight alibi has turned off their curiosity in order to pander to black people.

Just like so many of the news stories, even now, refuse to refer to the murderer, Rudy Guede. I've read so many articles with the angle that the Kerchers must go without closure because no one knows what happened.

I actually read an old interview with Lumumba, in which he describes Amanda Knox as such an unsatisfactory worker, who came on to all the male customers, that he had to fire her. Well, if she was fired, why did he text her that night, telling her not to come to work? In the same article, he isn't shy about how much more attractive he found Meredith than Amanda.

Most likely, he had nothing to do with the murder, but he is obviously a piece of work, and shouldn't get a pass, with expressions like "innocent man" and "airtight alibi."

I fired Foxy Knoxy for hitting on customers

Meredith suspect caught on cctv at murder scene

According to Italian newspapers yesterday, Mr Lumumba's testimony has also taken a knock following the questioning of a Swiss professor who Mr Lumumba claimed would provide him with an alibi. The bar owner said the professor was drinking in Le Chic from 8pm to 10pm and would be able to confirm Mr Lumumba's presence there. But police investigators, who questioned the Swiss national in secrecy away from the media glare after he flew into Italy on Sunday, have revealed that he could not confirm that the Congolese national was present the whole time. Police claim that at 8.38pm Mr Lumumba's mobile phone placed him in the vicinity of Ms Kercher's house

The model minority and urban blight

2011-10-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

Doggy Style is a gourmet hot dog chain. After reading the reviews of this shop on Yelp, I almost want to go there. They have hot dogs with all kinds of creative toppings, including kim chi. Out of 14 positive reviews on Yelp, no one mentioned the name.

This shop is near Alameda High School, and I assume most of its business will come from teenagers. It's also on Park Street, a few blocks down from the drug-dealing shops I've already mentioned. This section of Park Street, cross street San Antonio Avenue, is a respectable neighborhood of old Victorian houses, although it's now working class. Many young children live there.

I don't think a business like this should be in Alameda. Rap music has made this type of vulgarity acceptable to middle class people, but regardless of how hip everyone wants to seem, aren't people a tad offended at the huge sign that refers to a sex act?

How do teenage girls feel when they go there for lunch, pass by on their way to school, or walk home? They won't say anything, because no one wants to seem prudish, but having once been a teenage girl myself, I assume most girls will be uncomfortable. It's sexual harassment.

People spend a lot more money to live in Alameda, to get away from the ghetto culture of Oakland. But Oakland is moving in, a little more every day.

The proprietor of this shop is Asian. I'm mentioning this because it's part of a trend. Chinese immigrants open their little shops, and there's often something wrong: drug dealing, illegal labor practices, and now this crude sign on Alameda's restaurant row. He may not even speak English well enough to know that the sign isn't appropriate.

I don't have children, so this post will be the extent of my activism. If I had children, especially girls, I would sue to get the sign removed or changed. I find it really strange that Alameda parents are tolerating this.

Working in a yogurt shop--a job Americans won't do

2011-10-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a story from the Alameda Journal that's remarkable for several reasons. It's about a Russian girl who is accusing a yogurt shop owner of sexual harassment.

Even people outside of Alameda should read the entire story, because you will learn things you didn't know. I had no idea that foreigners are given visas to work easy minimum wage jobs that many American teenagers are willing to do.

This 20 year old Russian girl spoke no English, but was brought in by an agency to work for $8 an hour at a yogurt shop in downtown Alameda. She spoke no English? And working retail? And how did she support herself in the Bay Area on $8 an hour? Most people who work retail either live with their family or share an apartment with several people. Did this Russian girl live in some kind of immigrant dormitory with other scab labor, or did some political or religious group sponsor her? The article doesn't say, but there is absolutely no way she could have made money here, unless she had other motives, like finding a sugar daddy, being a prostitute, or whatever (this lawsuit).

The Alameda Journal never reports on the downside of immigration. This hard-hitting story was probably an accident, maybe the editor didn't understand it. And the creepy owner is Asian, no surprise there.

Alameda yogurt shop owner accused of harassment

The no smoking rule in bars is ruining my neighborhood

2011-09-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Webster Street is on the west side of Alameda. It's always had a reputation for being downscale, but actually the surrounding neighborhood is decent working class, with very little gang presence until recently.

There are a few bars on Webster Street. One of them, near the corner of Central Avenue, I forget the name, but it has a shamrock neon sign so it must have been Irish at one time, caters to hard core alcoholics. There are two other bars up the street that are nicer.

Whenever I pass that bar, day or evening, there is always a crowd of rough-looking people smoking near the entrance. I try to avoid that corner, because I have to run a gantlet (yes, it's gantlet, not gauntlet) of losers. Some of them are so out of it, and so rowdy, even adults in their 30s or so, that one could easily get hit, shoved or spat on, by accident. There is no real malice, they just aren't paying attention. I'm pretty sure of that, because I've lived there for a long time, and no one has ever bothered me on that corner. But the possibility is there because people are really high and not paying attention.

The drunks hanging out on the corner aren't the problem. The problem is that, since smoking isn't allowed in the bar, the legitimate drunks provide cover for the drug dealers that have started hanging out there more and more blatantly.

If smoking were allowed in bars, that corner would be as empty as every other part of the sidewalk. Drug dealers would either be isolated, or they'd have to ply their trade in the bar itself. At that point, the bar owners would be responsible and risk losing their business or whatever happens. Although they could always pay off the police, as the Quickly Bubble Tea and Ozone skateboard shops on Park Street apparently do, at least in theory it would be more of a risk.

But forcing smokers to congregate outside enables some pretty hard-core types to hang out. The bar management knows, and to them it's just another amenity for their customers, without risk to the bar. The drunks and druggies like it, because the suppliers are there all the time. The drug dealers like it, because they have a lot of business and are protected by the smokers.

The decent working people like me don't like it, because our neighborhood looks and feels like the ghetto, even though it isn't in most areas. This evening, I saw some drug dealers on that corner, and they were obvious ghetto thugs wearing those garish pimp outfits favored by unassimilated negroes. So odd...this scene is right next to the post office, a nice Italian deli, and a nice veterinary practice, among other totally straight businesses. It's like the police and neighbors have stopped trying to protect the neighborhood. Now only drama will get people to do anything.

Alameda mosque celebrates 9/11

2011-09-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

This evening I happened to walk past the Islamic center on 8th Street and Santa Clara Ave. It was brightly lit, and I saw Osama bin Laden standing in the lobby. He was tall and thin, wearing a gold pillbox hat, long scraggly dark beard and Islamic white pj's. He was either dressed for a costume party or a skit.

This mosque is in a storefront, and they've recently expanded to another storefront across the street, that was recently vacated by a black church. I've seen some of the people who go to that mosque. They look poor and/or lower middle-class, mostly middle-eastern and black. There's no way they can afford the rent on both properties without foreign (Saudi) money.

Recently, they held a Da'wa meeting at the public library. A poster in the window of their new facility invites the public to a weekly Da'wa meeting, with free lunch. They used to be more low-key, but they've been doing more outreach since they've realized Americans are pussies. Me too, it didn't even occur to me to throw a rock through the window when I saw Osama. Oh well, here's my koran pic for the year, FWIW.

Concerned black man is concerned

2011-08-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

One of the usual public service posters on all local buses shows a picture of a 40-ish black man looking unhappy. The headline says something like, "This is personal." Well, you just have to read it. The text is about how someone in his family died of colon cancer and everyone should be screened.

Today, I took a bus driven by a black woman, who wanted to make a personal statement with her bus (not allowed, but some drivers do). She'd cut out the picture of the black man and taped it to the windshield of the bus.

One thing about this photo is, the man's eyes look right at you, no matter where you are. So through the entire trip, I had to avoid the stare of this black man in the photo. It was invasive, because it was just one more black person staring at me, as if the real ones aren't annoying enough, plus I knew he wanted to talk to me about colon cancer.

Banking on Oakland

2011-08-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

The government of California is sponsoring a new program to help illegal aliens open bank accounts at most banks. You don't need a social security number. Just a Mexican or Guatemalan consular card. If the bank requests a second i.d., your food stamp, welfare or Medicaid i.d. card will do. The ads for this program have suddenly appeared everywhere. Why not? If you're working off the books, it really is better to put your tax-free money in a bank.

Bank on Oakland

Don't live in Oakland? No problemo, there's also a Bank on San Francisco, and according to the website, they take even more forms of i.d. than Oakland.

Salieri's Birthday

2011-08-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

Antonio Salieri was born on August 18, 1750 (best guess, this isn't known for sure). I'm starting to think of him as the poster child for revisionism. As one YouTube commenter said, the classical period is a black hole, and there is a lot of good music we haven't heard.

Bin Laden leads Israelites to Beslan at Rossini Festival

2011-08-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

Via Opera Chic, police were called to the opening of Rossini's Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt) at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, due to some booing from the audience. British stage director Graham Vick used Rossini's opera to protest all forms of religious fundamentalism. In this version of the opera, Moses is like Bin Laden, and the Jews are Palestinians. Vick also managed to throw in something about Beslan. Luckily, tickets were only around $20, so some people booed and/or walked out, not so easy if you've paid a couple of hundred dollars to see a better production. Poor Rossini. Poor Europe.

The greening of Prussian Blue

2011-08-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Remember Prussian Blue, the twin girl folksingers who were a big hit at White Nationalist rallies a few years ago? I always had a feeling they'd end up rebelling against their white supremacist stage mom by dating black men or something.

Well, something like that...via Classical Values, it seems the twins have taken up smoking pot and have renounced their racist ways. Good for them. It must taken a lot of guts to walk away from all the attention they were getting for going along with mom's agenda.

Reformed nazi twin singers renounce racism, credit marijuana

Immigrant fails to assimilate, does well enough anyway

2011-08-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

I just killed a couple of hours, watching Antonio Salieri's Europa Riconosciuta on YouTube. I was impressed and looked him up.

According to the Wiki, Salieri's operas weren't performed after he retired, but people became more interested in him after that movie in which Salieri sabotages Mozart's career from envy of his greater talent. (He didn't, actually their rivalry was friendly.)

After Italian opera was phased out in Austria, in favor of the German equivalent, Salieri gave up his post as assistant opera director, in part because his German wasn't good enough. I wish I'd known this when I was discussing immigration and assimilation at Gates of Vienna, where many commenters seem to expect all immigrants to learn a new language. Salieri was a genius, and even he couldn't do what the assimilationists expect.

But it led to an opportunity. Gluck turned down a commission to write an opera for the opening of La Scala, and Salieri accepted it. After the opera, Europa Riconosciuta, was performed in 1778, it was never performed again, until La Scala was reopened in 2004 after three years of renovations, and Europa was revived for that occasion. That production is the one I saw on YouTube.

Norwegian shooter is a misogynist

2011-07-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

According to various sources from some cursory reading, no time to post links, but I'm sure other people will go into this in more detail, Breivik has made statements that he blames feminism for the problems of the West, and he blames his matriarchal upbringing for feminising him. He wants a society in which women know their place.

He wrote that he planned to hire two high class hookers before committing the terrorist acts. Apparently, he didn't do well with women. This is odd, because he is quite attractive, and the only thing that would prevent women from being all over him would be his personality. Duh.

He's reported to have targeted the most beautiful girl first. I can't find the number of female victims vs. male victims, but I'm curious if he targeted more women than men.

Gates of Vienna comments section reaches break-even point

2011-07-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

For some time, I've been complaining about the excesses of some commenters, especially the constant, casual misogyny. Sometimes the comments of very socially conservative anti-jihad people seem too similar to Muslim views.

Whenever these outbreaks occur, one or two of the few women regular commenters object. Sometimes no one bothers, as on a recent thread in which In Hoc something or other verbally abused non-regular commenter Mary Jackson for having the temerity to make an anti-natalist statement, which must never be done at GoV, because birth control is the cause of all our troubles, and the third world will achieve zero population growth someday, which will be a great comfort to the three or four white people left.

I was about to agree with Mary, but then decided not to bother, out of contempt. Sometimes I get bored with arguing about whether women should be able to control their fertility, because it's too retro. Later Dymphna deleted a few comments and read In Hoc something the riot act.

Yesterday, there was yet another misogynist outbreak, and this time I bit, because it was about a Norwegian girl who was raped by a Muslim, and some of the bitter misogynists blamed feminism. Someone named Fortress, who probably wandered in from one of those I can't get a date because black alpha men get all the white women forums, went off on even more rants, and others joined in.

A couple of things: they didn't like my using the word misogynist, because it's like racist, and shouldn't be used because...I guess men who hate women aren't misogynists, they're...misogynists, I can say that on my own blog.

Fortress also replied to one of my arguments by assuming I meant that women are slaves to men. I didn't say that. But making stuff up is what those people do.

The consensus was that the girl deserved to be raped, because, even if she wasn't a feminist, other women are feminists. I'm not making this stuff up. Then Mary Jackson observed, "Hardly worth being saved from Islam, is it?"

The problem here isn't that I'm uncomfortable with the misogyny of most GoV commenters. I can just stop reading, or stop commenting, and it will be no one's loss but mine, because my comments aren't all that, and I only contribute a very small token amount of money during the fund drives. The real problem is that if a new, uncommitted person reads this stuff, they'll wonder what the difference is between Islam and the Counterjihad.

Here's the difference: the Counterjihad people think Norwegian women deserve to be raped, because they're feminists and walk around like uncovered meat. Muslims, however, think Norwegian women deserve to be raped for being feminists and walking around like uncovered meat, and also that they deserve to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage (with the rapist).

So all women should support the Counterjihad.

Rape on the steps of Parliament

Witches and Californians and communists

2011-07-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

Here's an SF Chronicle article on ecosexuality that illustrates what could possibly go wrong with gay marriage. Austerites, don't read this, you might get upset.

Article

Annie Sprinkle, wife promote 'ecosexuality'

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle are a legally married same-sex couple, having tied the knot in Canada in 2007. But they don't consider lesbianism their primary sexual identity.

First and foremost, they're ecosexuals.

Taking tree-hugging to a whole new level, Stephens and Sprinkle have married the moon, the sky, the ocean, the Appalachian Mountains and the snow in a series of color-coordinated, nudist-friendly weddings that have attracted hundreds of people. And they've done it all in the name of ecosexuality.

Or sexecology. Or ecosexology. Or just plain ecosex. The number of variations is dizzying, and defining the terms often results only in more confusion.

But ecosexuality seems to be catching on, judging from Stephens and Sprinkle's well-attended EcoSex Symposium, recently held in San Francisco.

Asked to sum up the nascent ecosexual movement in a sentence, Stephens (who chairs the UC Santa Cruz art department) replies, "We're changing the metaphor from Earth as mother to Earth as lover."

Sprinkle, who has a doctorate from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco and has appeared in more than 200 pornographic films, offers a slightly more academic description: "Sexecology is the place where sexology and ecology intersect in our culture."

Packing at their Bernal Heights abode for a trip to Spain, where they plan to marry coal in the coastal city of Gijón, Stephens chuckles and asks, "Are we clarifying this or making it more confusing?"

Provocative approach

What is clear is that by championing ecosexuality, these two artists/activists/academics/sex-positive feminists are cultivating a humorous, theatrical and provocative approach to merging queer sexuality and environmentalism.

After getting involved in eco-activism, they noticed that expressing certain sexual identities at protests was sometimes frowned upon. Many environmentalists didn't want Stephens and Sprinkle's queerness interfering with their message.

"We kind of felt like we had to be on our good behavior," says Sprinkle, who hopes to see an "E" added to the LGBTQ alphabet jumble. "We're trying to find a place where queers, drag queens, differently gendered people and weird artists can be welcome."

A group fitting that description to a T gathered at the Center for Sex and Culture in mid-June for a weekend-long EcoSex Symposium orchestrated by Stephens and Sprinkle.

The symposium began with a ceremonial signing of the couple's EcoSex Manifesto. Excerpts from this document include "We celebrate our E-spots" and "We are polymorphous and pollen-amorous." Near the prominently displayed manifesto hung a photograph of Sprinkle lying down with her legs spread wide while Stephens waters the flowers sprouting from her vagina.

Partially funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the symposium also featured panel discussions, performance art pieces, lectures on theories of ecosexuality, open mikes, PowerPoint presentations and a catered vegan "ecosexi-love-a-licious" lunch. The whole thing was capped by an "EcoSexual Fire Tassel Twirling Striptease" by a burlesque performer named Lady Monster.

Naomi Pitcairn, who paid $76,000 to get into an Obama fundraiser so she could disruptively protest the imprisonment of alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, moderated the panel on ecosexual activism.

One panelist discussed the sex lives of the protesters who camped in a Berkeley oak grove for more than 21 months in an attempt to prevent the building of a UC Berkeley athletic center.

Not all ecosexual activism involves raunchy treetop shenanigans. Lately, Stephens and Sprinkle have been fighting mountain-top removal, a shortcut method of coal mining that's Stephens says is decimating the biodiversity of her home state, West Virginia. "They're being raped," she said. "There's really no other word for it."

Other presenters at the symposium outlined practical ways that ecosexuals can green their sex lives. Madison Young, a feminist porn star and executive director of a gallery that co-sponsored the event, discussed steps the porn industry could take to green its productions and incorporate educational plotlines into scripts.

Sprinkle suggested that people go skinny-dipping, sunbathe in the nude and use vegetables in the bedroom to bring their sexuality in closer union with the natural world.

Not everyone appreciates the work being done by these two dirt-worshiping priestesses of ecosexuality. Recalling their moon wedding, a ceremony attended by more than 350 ecosexuals, Stephens says, "The Los Angeles County Police Department tried to stop us by citing us as a threat to public safety."

Labeled as witches

Stephens and Sprinkle have also drawn the ire of Norwegian anti-porn feminists and Ohio fundamentalists. One minister there "lambasted us as witches and Californians and communists," Stephens says.

Park Street update

2011-07-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

The Quickly bubble tea shop is under new management, and even has a sign in the window that says smoking isn't allowed within 25 ft. of the store, i.e., they really don't want loitering. The past couple of times I've been there recently, that corner was entirely free of loitering, and the shop had fewer people, none of them grungy.

This evening, the shop was almost empty. I figured, the new management is honest, but most of their business is gone, without the drug dealers.

But the drug dealing is still going on, though in a scaled-down form. Only a few minutes before my bus arrived, I noticed a Southeast Asian man, balding and neatly dressed, loitering in front of a nearby Thai restaurant. He studied the menu, and anyone who wasn't attuned to this issue, would have taken him for a restaurant patron. But his menu study went on too long, and I knew something was up.

He walked down the street. A few minutes later, three trashy-looking Southeast Asian bumpkins arrived on the corner. As commenter LBD reminded me, they were probably Hmong or Lao, some of the scummiest and most primitive people on the planet. My bus arrived and I got on it, a bit disappointed to miss the transaction that I knew was about to take place.

My bus went down Park Street, and I saw the middle-aged guy down the block, studying the window of a former Japanese restaurant that was papered over, because the restaurant had relocated some time ago.

I'm not going to call the police about this. The situation has improved, and I don't think the will is there to completely clean up the area, so further effort from me would be a false gesture. I'll continue to spy, because I'm a yenta, and maybe I'll see something that's worth telling the police.

White people on the bus

2011-07-04T23:54:00.000-07:00

I had two recent experiences on public transportation, that illustrate a few things about race relations and public transportation. The bus system was really off today, both because of the holiday schedule and the extensive detours for the huge parade. We also had drivers who weren't the regulars for that route, and that made a difference.

This morning, a driver I'd never seen before, who was black but pleasant and chatty, accidentally passed by someone. I told him, but he seemed reluctant to go back for her. I said, she's an old woman with a walker, this will be a hardship for her, why not drive around the block. He was able to make a U-turn, and he picked her up. I'm 100% sure that, without my intervention, he would have gone on and let her wait for the next bus.

Yesterday, we also had a new driver, due to the holiday weekend, and there was a guy in a wheelchair who asked to be let out in front of his nursing home. The black driver refused, saying that wasn't a bus stop for this route, even though it was a bus stop for other routes. The disabled guy said all the other drivers let him off there, because the official stop around the corner had a curb without a ramp, so it wasn't appropriate for wheelchair users. I backed him up and said the other drivers all let him off at the easier stop. The driver, who was black but more ghetto and hostile than the driver from the second paragraph, finally complied, after much argument from the wheelchair guy and me.

AC Transit is mostly black. Some drivers are nice, and some aren't. White passengers, especially if they're old or disabled, have a serious disadvantage in this system. It depends on the route and who else is on the bus. On this route, most of the passengers are white, and it goes through nice, safe neighborhoods. This is the only reason I was willing to speak up for the other passengers. If it had been a black route, I would have thrown them under the bus, so to speak.

The incident with the old lady with a walker wasn't racial at all, because he didn't see her, but the wheelchair incident had some racial content, because it's routine for black people to make exceptions for black people, while they are more concerned with "the rules" when serving white people.

White people in California or any other place where public employees tend to be black, are screwed, if they have the misfortune to be old, sick and poor.

Black public employees are so angry at their white customers that about ten years ago, when I inherited a used economy car from my late boyfriend, I had to go to the DMV three times and show different black people my probate paperwork, for someone to finally allow that it was okay for a white person to inherit something.

Did Handel have Gourmand Syndrome?

2011-06-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

I can't answer the question, as I'm not a neurologist or musicologist, but my job as a blogger is only to ask questions, not answer them. I learned about Gourmand Syndrome at random, from looking up something else, but when I saw the description, I immediately thought of Handel.

Handel was known to be overweight and gluttonous, with a great interest in fine food and wine. He also had a series of strokes in middle age, which caused temporary paralysis on his left side. He was known to have a problem with anger management.

The various definitions of Gourmand Syndrome I found include quite a lot of traits that would fit Handel. Gourmand Syndrome is thought to result from a brain injury of the right frontal lobe, either from an accident or stroke. It sometimes coincides with paralysis on the left side, and is sometimes accompanied by poor impulse control.

Handel's mother and grandmother died of stroke, there was already a family history before his health problems started in middle age. Could it be that, instead of his eating disorder leading to his strokes, as most people have assumed, the causation was partly reversed? In other words, the hereditary tendency he already had, could have led to some undiagnosed brain lesion even before his first stroke in 1737, and whenever his eating disorder and weight problem showed up, it was already a result of undiagnosed brain damage.

This is hypothetical, just some connections I made from reading about Handel. I can't do any more than this, but I'm putting it on the internet, because Google searches may lead a more qualified person here, who will develop this better than I can.

Update: various sources refer to the paralysis being on his left or right side. The left side would be more consistent with Gourmand Syndrome. I'll have to read all the Google entries. No problem, it's so much more interesting than politics.

Americans are racists. Americans are anti-racists.

2011-06-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

I'm a troll on an international progressive forum. My mission there is to get a few progressives to be more racist and anti-Muslim.

I get a lot of abuse, and one of the most common things Europeans say to me is Americans are racists, etc.

The tide has turned, I think I'm getting some results. A minute ago, a European who agreed with me about Muslims suggested that the person who was defending them must be an American, because Americans are so clueless about how bad Muslims are.

The great cancer hoax: the brilliant cure the FDA tried to shut down

2011-06-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

via Dr. Mercola, here's a documentary on Dr. Burzynski, the inventor of antineoplastons, a cancer therapy with a high cure rate and no side effects. Various government agencies tried to put him out of business, and ended up patenting (stealing) his work. Mercola's summary is worth reading, as it's faster than the movie.

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business from BurzynskiMovie on Vimeo.

Mehserle released, may face federal charges--double jeopardy?

2011-06-13T23:35:00.000-07:00

Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle emerged quietly from a Los Angeles jail early Monday after serving half of a two-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter in the shooting of unarmed train rider Oscar Grant.

For people outside the Bay Area who have forgotten this story, the "unarmed train rider Oscar Grant" was shot while resisting arrest, after he and some other thugs terrorized passengers on a BART train. The "community" rioted, and the authorities placated the black mob by trying the white BART cop for murder, later downgraded to manslaughter.

Now that Mehserle has served his time, he may still be at risk from anti-white authorities.

Justice Department inquiry

Mehserle, now a parolee, is not in the clear. Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department, said the agency's civil rights division was still reviewing the shooting to see if it warranted federal prosecution.

Xochitl Hinojosa? This is some kind of Mexican Indian name, Aztec or something. Not even Spanish. In Mexico, people like this aren't spokeswomen for the Justice Department, they're oppressed peasants. But in America, Xochitl is empowered to stick it to the man.

Read the rest.

True crime story about the model minority

2011-06-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

I recently compained to the police about a gang of mostly Asian drug dealers. I wasn't going to post about it, but actually there is so much here that is instructive about immigration and crime in general, that it's worth sharing.

One problem with Asian immigration, is that not all Asian immigrants are Han Chinese, who, even though some are also involved in crime, in addition to being agents of a foreign government, are generally pleasant and productive. Then there are the other Asians. But most people have been brainwashed by the media to think of all Asian immigration as good, because some Chinese immigrants really are smart and decent. And who doesn't love Chinese food?

Park Street is Alameda's restaurant row. It's nothing fancy, but there are a lot of nice restaurants and shops. And yet, there is a significant grunge element. There are always "youths" of various ethnicities, loitering among the middle-class restaurant patrons.

When my old car finally died, I started taking the bus. So I inevitably noticed more details, instead of missing a lot, as do so many other car owners. This is a good point: maybe the progressive world view is partly enabled by car ownership.

I use a few different routes. I occasionally stand on Park Street, or used to. I noticed there were always a lot of really grungy-looking young people of different races, standing near my stop. I didn't think much of it. One day, I was at another stop, and a middle-aged white man with a bicycle was also there. He said something to the effect of preferring this stop to the one at Park Street. I was interested in the fact that other people had the same feeling of discomfort at the other stop as I did, and replied, I wonder what's going on there, it seems odd that there are so many people loitering on that corner. He changed the subject. I respected his avoidance of the possibly racially-charged subject.

One evening, I was at the Park Street bus stop, and witnessed an elaborate drug deal involving at least ten people, some of whom had been loitering in front, and two who arrived later. As soon as the two, a young Asian male and his black male accomplice arrived, the whole crowd went into their routine. The Asian male took his spot at a table in the window of the Quickly bubble tea shop, the black man stood in the doorway, and a few of the loitering youths passed around little bags.

I called the police later that evening. I didn't want the dealers to see me making a phone call. The next time I stood at that corner, the sidewalk was empty, and there were no rough-looking young people in the shop. I assumed the problem was handled.

About a week later, I noticed the activity had started up again. There was no longer a large crowd. Now everyone was more discreet. Fewer participants, different every time, but the same activity. Someone would stand in front of the shop with a cell phone, while others in the store would occupy a table. I saw this go on a few times. The most recent time I observed all this, one of the men at the table looked up and made eye contact with me. I knew that was the last time I'd use that bus stop.

I called the police again, and this time, the officer I spoke with told me they'd received hundreds of complaints about the Quickly bubble tea shop and Park Street in general, and that it would take them a while to build a case and make an arrest, but they'd call me when they did.

Yesterday, I was standing at a bus stop on the other side of town, when I noticed a young Asian male staring at me intensely, from an old car, even older than mine. We stared each other down, and I finally shouted, "what are you looking at, creep?" He drove away.

So that's my story. I don't think I'm in any danger, because I always carry a gun anyway, and now that I've been warned, I'll always be even more aware of my surroundings. I may discuss this latest incident with the police, but probably not, because the police wouldn't be interested in something that could be a coincidence, i.e., a creep who stares at women, not, a drug dealer warning a snitch.

This is basically the story of how a nice town gets taken over by thugs. Alameda is still a very nice place to live, except when you are forced to notice the evidence of decline. Most crime in Alameda is caused by commuters from Oakland. I'm not making this up. I read the police reports in the Alameda Journal, and most of the little blurbs refer to "an Oakland man." For years, I've been reading letters to the editor, and now online comments, calling for the bridges and tunnels connecting Oakland and Alameda to be either closed at night or monitored by the police. Everyone knows this would cause the crime rate to plummet, but it can't be done because most crime in Alameda is committed by non-white people.

It's not all black people, either. Quite a lot of it is done by the model minority. Now, these Asian thugs from Oakland are mostly not Han Chinese. They are Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians. These people are not as smart and nice as the Han Chinese, although their food is equally wonderful. I think the thug who stared me down yesterday looked either Mongolian or Tibetan. I love Mongolian barbecue. I haven't tried Tibetan food yet, but I've heard great things about the dumplings.

To sum up: Park Street in Alameda is official Oakland Asian gang territory. Without that scene, it's a completely respectable business district. People who have been seen observing the drug dealing have to avoid the area for their own safety. Polite white people don't discuss it unless they know each other very well, because it's racist. Only racists advocate monitoring the bridges and tunnels.

The Quickly tea shop personnel and/or owners are in on it. There is no way the people who work there could be unaware of the blatant, ongoing drug dealing in that shop. The bubble tea culture is a Chinese fad, and when I used to go to that shop, before I noticed what was going on, it was my impression that it was a Chinese business. Chinese shop owners have their own idea of what they can get away with.

There's a bait and tackle store on Central Avenue on the other side of town that sells drugs openly. It's owned by a Chinese guy. I haven't made a complaint yet, because the clientele, while a bit grungy, don't have the same aggressive gang vibe as the people who use the tea shop.

The vibe is why I complained. I actually have nothing against drugs, I just don't like the Oakland vibe taking over Alameda.

Non-partisan SFGate.com comments section: a trend?

2011-06-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

Today's online San Francisco Chronicle has a story about how the federal government is cracking down on small raw dairy farmers. There are only a few comments, but it made me so happy to see that most of the comments were concerned with the issues, rather than trying to blame one political party or another.

I've noticed this before at the Chron, and it's a welcome change from the depressing, artificial culture wars going on, on most of the blogs I read. I think the sane people, my people, can be found more readily on newspaper comments sections than on political blogs. The comments on this food safety article, as well as on all crime, immigration and Muslim articles, illustrate my favorite theme: that issues matter more to most newspaper readers, i.e. the general public, than the more showy but destructive identity politics on display on blogs.

Food safety chief defends raw milk raids

Huggable Hero

2011-06-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Danville teen wins award for nonprofit that brings soccer to Africa

From Contra Costa Times: Kyle Weiss, an 18-year-old from Danville who started a nonprofit that raises money for soccer in Africa, has been selected as a 2011 Build-A-Bear Workshop Huggable Hero.

The honor comes with a $7,500 educational scholarship and a $2,500 donation to the cause of Weiss' choice, according to the Build-A-Bear Workshop. He will also go to the company's headquarters in St. Louis to be honored with the nine other recipients. Almost 1,200 people applied to be honored as a Huggable Hero.

Weiss' group FUNDaFIELD has raised more than $138,000, according to the company, using the money to build soccer fields in several African countries, and to hold soccer tournaments and buy uniforms, soccer balls and other equipment.

Weiss and his older brother Garrett started the group after seeing the 2006 World Cup in Germany, The two, who grew up playing the sport, learned there was a pressing need for playing fields and equipment in Africa. Many San Ramon Valley youths, including his younger sister Kira, are also involved.

Build-A-Bear Workshop started the Huggable Heroes program in 2004 to recognize young people making a difference. For more information go to http://heroes.lovehugssmiles.com/.

-- Eric Louie

*****

A few notes: Danville is very, very white. I was once there a few years ago. It's really white and rich. Rich white people.

So when this rich white (Jewish?) boy went to Germany and heard about black people for the first time, he just had to do something for them.

One of the unfortunate consequences of reaching out to African soccer players is that it's inevitable that some of the beneficiaries of the program will come to America for youth soccer tournaments. Some of them won't go home. Some of them will end up in my neighborhood. Not Danville.

Kitty Genovese redux: Alameda Police and Fire Depts. watch man drown

2011-05-31T04:19:00.000-07:00

A woman civilian nurse finally retrieved the body. This reminds me of a similar incident a few years ago, when I saw a kitesurfer waving his arms and yelling for help. I couldn't believe he was really in trouble, because he was only about thirty feet out, and the water was only up to his shoulders. A lot of people stood around watching. Finally, another kitesurfer walked out to him, stood next to him and talked to him. Then they walked to the beach together.

Today's incident was probably suicide. Conditions at the beach are so mellow, it's hard to believe anyone could really need help. But in this case, the police and firefighters didn't do anything because they said they weren't trained to do land to sea rescues. This is kind of funny, in a sick way.

Update: very good comment at KQED blog

It is a sad state of affairs that Alameda has no plans to attempt water rescues. It is also sad that people blame the officers on duty. What people might not realize is a drowning victim and suicidal individual present very real risks. Should a rescuer have gone against policy and attempted rescue and failed the rescuer would face criminal charges, had the rescuer died, their family would have been left with no on duty death benefit, had the rescuer succeeded the rescuer could have been brought up on charges for going against orders. If there was a budget for water rescue, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. The rescue would have been attempted. Actual cases of people doing the right thing, of attempting to be heroes on duty, going against policy, have led to exactly the outcomes I have outlined. I know all would not have stood by if it had been a child drowning or a boating accident, but honestly it was a middle aged suicidal man with the capability to drag someone else in with him. The man was fully capable of walking to shore if he wanted…. What I do find more questionable however, is the fact a civilian was allowed to collect the body. If the scene was deemed safe, why not collect it yourselves. If the scene was not safe, why was the woman allowed in the water?

Filmmaker Lars von Trier banned from Cannes Festival for Nazi jokes

2011-05-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately.

“If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologize. I am not antisemitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a nazi.” – Lars von Trier

The problem here is that the people who are taking von Trier's shtick seriously don't have a sense of humor. This guy is hilarious, and he was totally channeling Mel Brooks. Could The Producers be shown in Europe nowadays?

From Heeb Magazine

The only thing I can tell you is that I thought I was a Jew for a long time and was very happy being a Jew, then later on came [Danish and Jewish director] Susanne Bier, and suddenly I wasn’t so happy about being a Jew. That was a joke. Sorry. But it turned out that I was not a Jew. If I’d been a Jew, then I would be a second-wave Jew, a kind of a new-wave Jew, but anyway, I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because my family is German. And that also gave me some pleasure. So, I, what can I say? I understand Hitler. I think he did some wrong things but I can see him sitting in his bunker. [Kirsten Dunst goes, "Oh God!" and hides uncomfortably behind Lars.] I’m saying that I think I understand the man. He is not what we could call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him … But come on! I’m not for the Second World War. And I’m not against Jews. No, not even Susanne Bier. I am very much for them. As much as Israelis are a pain in the ass. How do I get out of this sentence? Okay, I am a Nazi. As for the art, I’m for Speer. Albert Speer I liked. He was also one of God’s best children. He has a talent that … Okay, enough.

Best comment ever

2011-05-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was reading comments on Obama's middle east speech, I think the site was The Hill, I'm not sure. One of the early comments, by "Mary," said only "N."

Loitering

2011-05-19T03:27:00.001-07:00

This morning I saw a group of four 30-something SWPLs hanging out on a street corner. I looked at them and tried to figure out why I wasn't annoyed. Could it only be that they were white? Then I realized, it was because they were standing close together and facing each other. They weren't taking up a lot of space and facing outward, forcing other people to deal with them. An anecdote, but something I'll pay attention to from now on. I probably won't be able to draw any conclusions about white vs. black loitering patterns, because white people rarely stand around in groups on the sidewalk.

Why do some people think women think black men are more attractive?

2011-05-19T03:26:00.001-07:00

I'm not surprised that Japanese evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, whom I've never heard of, found that black women are considered less attractive by some random subjects. Well, of course black women are less attractive. You have to ask? But I'm really surprised his random subjects rated black men more attractive.

Can this really be true, or is this yet another flawed study? In real life, there still aren't all that many mixed-race couples. The white women I see with black men tend to be overweight and/or low class. Attractive white women usually date white men, obviously because that's what they prefer.

So if anyone takes this study seriously, there must be some other reason. I notice male HBDers are preoccupied with testosterone levels. Maybe they assume that the high testosterone levels of black men make them extra attractive to women, hence their willingness to believe studies like this.

Regardless of testosterone levels, most black men are as unattractive as black women, as well as being losers, and don't have access to most white women. If this study finds otherwise, it's wrong. Maybe there's a problem with a study designed and executed by a Japanese man, who can't possibly understand what he's studying.

Priorities

2011-05-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

A commenter at VFR laments the homosexualization of the military. He hesitates to recommend that his nephew join up.

Social conservatives seem more upset that they may have to serve with fags, than that the military is being used to advance Islam.

Update:

Indigestion

2011-05-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

From a VFR discussion of Claire Berlinski, who wrote something positive about Muslim immigration and was rightly dissed by all:

Garrick writes:

Why do unattached women travel abroad? To get boinked by the natives. I guarantee you she is presently having sex with Turkish Muslims and this accounts for her moronic, breezy attitude. Her website photos say, "I am available."

And I suppose men never travel to get boinked by the natives. There's also a discussion of homosexuality, in which Laura Wood and others recommend snubbing the gay partner of one's adult child.

Jim C. writes:

Is this [the original entry] from The Onion?

This reminds me of when Ian Jobling, before he gave up blogging, wrote that he felt so much less depressed since he stopped reading VFR.

Muslims on the bus

2011-05-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

This evening I took an AC transit bus from Oakland Airport to BART (a system of local trains, like the subway or metro). A young family boarded at the same time: a young black man, his slightly lighter-skinned wife in full burka, the black thing with the veil, and their toddler daughter. The father and daughter were dressed in ordinary sport clothes. I noticed the woman wore sneakers, and her nails were painted red, in the trendy way of leaving the bottom half unpainted. Only the top half of the nails were painted in red moons. The sharmuta!

The little girl was lively and made eye contact with me. I decided not to say hello, even though I often say hello to friendly kids. I thought the parents might feel threatened, since they were obviously fresh off the boat.

The reason I knew they were new immigrants is, the young man had no idea how to pay for the bus tickets. He spent the entire trip up front with the driver, chatting about the technicalities of how to use the bus system.

The conversation was in a foreign language that sounded like Arabic. I only recognised a few words, such as "transfer" and "Sudan."

The reason I'm telling this story is, I think it's a very bad thing that the bus driver spoke the same language as immigrants from the Sudan. And he was driving from the airport to the local train station.

I'll spell it out, because some people won't see the implications. If the young man and his wife were traveling to the airport instead of from it, and if they were carrying suspicious terrorist-looking baggage, would this bus driver look the other way? Especially if someone from his mosque asked him to?

Displacement? Sleight-of-hand?

2011-04-25T23:49:00.000-07:00

From an article on the tranny-bashing at McDonald's:

Crimes against transgender people are included in the state's hate crime law, but advocates who pushed for a bill that would have extended housing and employment protections say this shows that discrimination against the group is real. The bill passed the House, but was never brought to the Senate floor for a vote.

Bill sponsor Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk her fellow lawmakers, asking them to view the video of the attack that went viral last week and consider being a co-sponsor of a stronger bill in next year's session.

"Incidents such as this illustrate why the transgender community in Maryland and elsewhere needs to be protected through antidiscrimination legislation," she wrote in the email.

So this bill will protect trannies from being bashed by feral blacks?

Displacement:

A psychological process in which feelings originating from one source are expressed outwardly in terms of concern or preoccupation with an issue or problem that the patient considers more acceptable.

--Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine

Christian mob more genteel than Muslim mob

2011-04-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

I copied three stories from today's Gates of Vienna newsfeed. In each case, Catholic authorities have interfered with private business: an art exhibit, in which a controversial work of art was vandalised after the local archbishop denounced it; a movie, a comedy about a fictional pope, which the Vatican wants people to boycott; and a pub, which the local archbishop wants to prevent from changing its name to a more secular-sounding one.

I think stories like these, and the fact that they're so common, illustrate how unsustainable it is for people of different religions to live in the same area. In my ideal state, secular people wouldn't live near religious people. Then we could have art shows, movies and pubs without being picketed, pressured and vandalised by the faithful of any religion, and they wouldn't have to endure the provocations of people whose cultural sensibility isn't based on religion.

Fundamentalists attack Christ artwork

“Whackos hammer Piss Christ,” headlines Libération, in the wake of the destruction of a photograph showing a plastic crucifix submerged in urine by Andres Serrano. The attack, which was perpetrated by fundamentalist Catholics using hammers and screwdrivers, took place in the Avignon Museum of Contemporary Art. “Notwithstanding its provocative title, Piss Christ is not a trashy piece of work but a beautiful red and gold photograph,” remarks the daily — a view not shared by the archbishop of Avignon, His Grace Jean-Pierre Cattenoz who, a few weeks ago, called for this “rubbish” to be removed.” On 16 April, a crowd of 500 people took part in a Front National protest in front of the museum to demand that the work be taken down. Piss Christ, which was produced in the 1980s, has already been the target of a number of attacks by Neo-Nazis: most recently in Sweden in 2007.

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Changing pub name would be cardinal sin, says archbishop

The Archbishop of Westminster is backing a campaign to stop a pub changing its name and cutting a historic tie with the Catholic Church.

The Cardinal in Victoria was named in honour of Cardinal Manning, a 19th-century Archbishop of Westminster who worked to improve social conditions for migrants. It is a favourite of politicians.

The current Archbishop, Vincent Nichols, is to write to the Samuel Smith Old Brewery urging it to abandon plans to change the pub's name to the Windsor Castle. He said it would mean losing a reminder of the Catholic Church's commitment to the "social good".

Westminster council said the brewery had permission to change the interior of the pub but not the name or the sign. No one from the brewery was available for comment.

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Vatican reporter calls for boycott of Moretti pope film

(ANSA) - Milan, April 18 - A Vatican reporter for the Italian news agency AGI, Salvatore Izzo, called for a boycott of the box-office hit and Cannes Palme D'Or contender 'Habemus Papam', the latest film directed by top filmmaker Nanni Moretti.

The Catholic reporter's appeal appeared in the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire over the weekend as well as on the blog 'Friends of Pope Ratzinger' (Benedict XVI).

"You don't touch the Pope: he is the Christ's vicar, the rock upon which Jesus founded his church," wrote Izzo in an open letter. (For this reason) "let's make it fail at the box office".

Izzo also condemned the absence of outcry from the Catholic Church.

"Let's not trust the Catholic critics, even if they are priests, who absolve (Moretti) with a very curious justification: 'Moretti could have been even worse'," wrote Izzo.

He concluded, "We do not need 'Habemus Papam'".

The much-anticipated comedy about a newly elected pope who has trouble adjusting to his role shot to number one in box office sales after opening in Italian theaters Friday.

It garnered 227,132 euros in 380 theaters over its debut weekend, compared to 218,000 euros for the second best, the cartoon feature "Rio".

"I wanted to confront the fragility and inadequacy of this cardinal who is selected as pontiff, but within a comedy," Moretti told reporters at a presentation of the film in Rome on Thursday.

The film stars Michel Piccoli as a cardinal who, after being elected pope, is plagued by panic attacks and profound psychological crisis that lead him declare his refusal to be pope from his apartment overlooking Saint Peter's Square.

'Habemus Papam' will be among 19 contestants for the Palme D'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival May 11-12.

Moretti won the Palme d'Or in 2001 for 'The Son's Room' and Cannes' Best Director in 1994 for 'Caro Diario'.

'Habemus Papam' echoes to some degree Joseph Ratzinger's actual initial reaction to being elected pope after the death of Pope John Paul II.

"The fact of finding myself suddenly in from of this immense task was for me, as everyone knows, a real shock. The responsibility was, in fact, enormous," he said in one of many interviews with German journalist Peter Seewald in a book called 'Luce del Mondo', published last November in Italy.

The pontiff recalls in the book that he even considered resigning.

Stricter gun control needed--everything is too lax in America

2011-04-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

About that model minority:

Gruesome details revealed in S.F. teen's slaying

SFGate.com: After a 16-year-old San Francisco boy was shot to death over the weekend, the accused killer and accomplices discussed sawing up his body to hide his death, then bungled an attempt to set him ablaze, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The victim, Andy Zeng, was found dead inside a gasoline-soaked room of a two-story duplex in Silver Terrace early Sunday, a gunshot wound to his head, which was partly covered with a black garbage bag, police said. His legs were also covered with bags.

Police soon arrested a 15-year-old boy who told investigators that the shooting had happened accidentally while the two were playing with a .22-caliber handgun. The boy, whose name has not been released because he is a minor, has been charged as a juvenile with murder and attempted arson.

Police also arrested 18-year-old Jimmy Lei, who pleaded not guilty Wednesday to attempted arson and other charges. Two other teenagers who were arrested have been released without being charged.

A prosecutor outlined details of the case to Superior Court Judge John Allen, who ordered Lei held on $1 million bail.

The shooting happened at the home of the 15-year-old murder suspect, said Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai. When police arrived, the boy's father told them, "My son did this," the prosecutor said.

The boy said he had shot Zeng in the head by accident, Talai said. Afterward, the youth said, he called Lei and asked for his help, according to the prosecutor.

Lei enlisted three or four other youths, who soon arrived with three one-gallon containers of gasoline and other "equipment," including latex gloves, Talai said.

The body of Zeng, a sophomore at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, had been stuffed in a closet. Lei allegedly said it would be easier to dispose of the corpse if it were cut in half, and handed the 15-year-old a butcher knife, Talai said.

The boy told police "he couldn't bring himself to do it," Talai said. Lei then suggested breaking the victim's legs to make it easier to dispose of the body, the prosecutor said.

In the end, the group tried to set the room on fire and poured gasoline on the floor, but couldn't get their wet matches to light, Talai said. Lei smelled of gasoline when he was arrested, the prosecutor said.

Lei's lawyer, Samuel Lasser, said the accused gunman's story was self-serving.

"It's a very defensible case," he said of the charges against Lei. "He's a good kid - I don't have any information that he's been in any trouble."

Before a court hearing for the murder suspect Wednesday morning, District Attorney George Gascón said, "He wouldn't be charged with murder if we thought it was an accident."

Zeng's father, who did not want to give his name, said through a translator that the case showed the need for "stricter gun control - everything is too lax in America."

Marlene Tran, a community activist and family friend, described Zeng as "a good son, a good boy."

His family thought he was at a sleepover that night.

"They're totally devastated by all this," Tran said. "This involved their only son."

2011-04-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today I noticed a poster on a telephone pole near the big fancy health food store. The poster was advertising the grand opening, on Saturday April 9 (I missed it), of a halal and kosher butcher. The new butcher is in a small independent supermarket that had a butcher shop run by an Italian-American family, for as long as I've been living here, almost 25 years.

What's interesting about this grand opening, which I would have attended if I'd known about it, is that it was on Saturday, and it's also Passover. In other words, the new butchers are not Jewish.

There's also a little waterfront cafe that's hardly ever open when I'm in that neighborhood. It advertises "halal and non-halal" food.

I assume after there are enough Muslims here, the butcher shop will drop the "kosher," and the cafe will drop the "non-halal."

Update: oops, Passover starts April 18.

Desperate older white woman marries black rent boy

2011-04-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

Iraq war deserter seeks asylum in Germany

According to the article, Shepherd is employed part-time installing solar panels for his wife's parent's [sic] business.

He worked as a helicopter mechanic in Iraq, i.e. he wasn't in combat. In the video, he refers to American soldiers shooting at random when they couldn't see whoever was shooting at them as an example of an atrocity.

Update: Germany denies asylum for US military deserter

...Shepherd is married to a German woman and therefore has a residence permit, so he is not expected to return to the US where he would face charges, the report said.

Bangalore

2011-01-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

Frying pan to fire and back

2011-01-26T03:58:00.000-08:00

Young Israelis go crazy for Berlin

It seems young Israelis are moving to Berlin to get away from war and/or their parents. The above article is a puff piece, but when I read some of the other stories on the same subject, it was pretty unpleasant. The Israelis and Germans interviewed elsewhere referred to discussing the Holocaust and feeling more Jewish in Berlin. Icky...Israel must be pretty stressful, that people would leave for that.

There were only a few comments on the above article, but two had been removed. Those were probably the honest ones.

I also read some comments at a German-American forum. Quite nasty.

Which reminds me of another issue. American anti-semites criticize Jews for their ethnocentrism and dual loyalty. They ought to, say the commenters, be only American. Then why are there so many Americans on German forums? There are a few non-anti-semites at Gates of Vienna who are proud of their Danish ancestry. No one has ever called them on it.

I certainly wouldn't. It's easy for me to be Jewish, American, white and European. I'm one person, and those are all my cultural identities. I couldn't possibly stop being any one of those things, they're just who I am.

So of course I understand the Danish-Americans and German-Americans. Maybe complaining about "hyphenated Americans" is a polite way of saying "we don't like you."

The Israelis who move to Berlin haven't got the memo yet. Maybe the Jews who are fleeing Europe will share it with them.

Two faces of real feminism

2011-01-18T00:49:00.000-08:00

Le Pen daughter inherits French far-right leadership

For me, here is the money quote from this article:

Segolene Royal, who is competing to be the opposition Socialist candidate for president next year, said on Sunday that Le Pen was "a more credible and dangerous candidate than her father."

I wonder, will the misogynists be able to see the difference between Royal and Le Pen? Will it matter to them?

Why feminists and other sane people resist moving to the right

2011-01-12T00:08:00.000-08:00

via GOV news feed: POPE STATES WESTERN TOLERANCE HIDES LOSS OF IDENTITY
Condividi
(AGI) Vatican City - Speaking to the Diplomatic Corps, the Pope said that in the West "we are facing threats against full religious freedom" referring to "those countries in which pluralism and tolerance are considered more important, while religion suffers increasing alienation." According to Benedict XVI, one should condemn permissive legislation in Family Law, abortion and end of life issues, that today the Pope referred to as "attempts to oppose the right to religious freedom, in the name of new rights that are really the expression of selfish desires and have no foundation in human nature."

If the Pope really said this, either he's senile, his writers are idiots, or ... The problem here is that he talks about pluralism and tolerance as if they were bad things. Selfish desires have no foundation in human nature? Wat?

This gobbledegook is almost indistinguishable from Islamic ranting, minus the calls to beat women.

About that model minority that's not involved in politics

2011-01-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Mayor Lee pledges new political era

Jean Quan becomes Oakland mayor

Newly appointed S.F. Mayor Ed Lee and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan meet on the steps of the rotunda after Lee's swearing-in ceremony at City Hall on Tuesday.

The Chinese are taking over so fast, one could almost think the Mexicans and Muslims are decoys.

If I didn't "know" these people were Christians...

2011-01-11T01:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, I know, they were good Christians and all that. Of course, before the 1800's when musicians could earn a living from private patrons, most musicians were employed by various churches, which, in those days, required people to convert. How could any European composer be Jewish?

I won't take a position on whether Mozart had Jewish ancestry, but I'll just say that the usual way of disposing of the subject, to say, but it's well known so and so was a Christian, or whatever, doesn't mean anything. When I express curiosity over some famous person's Jewish appearance, I'm not referring to their religion. I mean, so and so looks like they might have had some significant Ashkenazi ancestry.

The Mozart family portrait, with Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, the portrait of their mother on the wall, and father Leopold, looks like a mixed family, i.e., Leopold is the only obvious non-Ashkenazi.

Of course there were no great Jewish composers before relatively modern times. They all had to convert if they wanted to work in that business. I'm not saying Mozart or any other great composer was Jewish, just that he and many other great composers don't look as Euro as some people would like.

Update 1/12: Encyclopaedia Judaica--Jews in Vienna 02: 17th and 18th century

Hatred by the townsmen of the Jews increased during the mid-17th century, fanned by the bigotry of Bishop Kollonitsch. Emperor Leopold I, influenced by the bishop as well as the religious fanaticism of his wife, and sustained by the potential gains for his treasury, decided to expel the Jews from Vienna once again. Though Leo *Winkler, head of the Jewish community at the time, arranged for the intervention of Queen Christina of Sweden on behalf of the Jews it was of no avail, as was an offer to the emperor of 100,000 florins to limit the expulsion.

The poorer Jews were expelled in 1669; the rest were exiled in the month of Av, 1670, and their properties taken from them.

The Great Synagogue was converted into a Catholic church, the "Leopoldskirche". The Jews paid the municipality 4,000 florins to supervise the Jewish cemetery. Of the 3,000-4,000 Jews expelled some made their way to the great cities of Europe where a number succeeded in regaining their fortunes. Others settled in small towns and villages. According to the testimony of the Swedish ambassador at the time, some of the Jews took advantage of the offer to convert to Christianity so as not to be exiled.

Update: 2% of American Christians have some Ashkenazi ancestry

Of course they do, and if appearance means anything, central Europeans are even more Ashkenazi than Americans.

Kosher is the new Halal

2011-01-10T23:13:00.000-08:00

This evening in Trader Joe's, I was surprised at how so much of the meat section was kosher. It was a lot more than what I remembered, last time I thought of the issue. In fact, there was so much kosher meat, it inconvenienced me, because that cut down on my non-kosher options.

I avoid kosher meat, not from anti-semitism, but because kosher slaughter is less humane than regular slaughter. TJ's doesn't have any meat labeled halal, but they do have a lot of lamb from New Zealand, from a local company based in Oakland, CA, Atkins Ranch.

After I learned at Gates of Vienna that most NZ lamb is halal but much of it isn't labeled as such, I e-mailed Atkins Ranch with my concerns, but never received a reply. I asked Atkins Ranch first, because I'd assumed they'd know more about it than Trader Joe's. I guess my next step would be to e-mail TJ's, but I didn't, because I don't like lamb that much, anyway, and my usual policy is to not take up an issue unless it's something I care about.

So this evening, when I noticed all the kosher meat, that took my concerns to a new level, because I eat a lot of beef and chicken, and there are fewer options for me, as a person who prefers to support relatively humane slaughter. Naturally, in the Bay Area, the majority of people who shop at TJ's have the same concerns. The only reason all this is going on blatantly, is that few Bay Area liberals even know about the issue, and if they occasionally read a letter to the editor or a blog post complaining about kosher meat, they'll assume it's from some anti-semite.

There's some truth in that, too...many of the people who rightly complain about Jewish traditions like circumcision and kosher slaughter do have other motives, aside from human and animal rights.

One thing I wondered about, was why there is so much kosher meat at TJ's, in a town with a tiny population of observant Jews, and a somewhat larger but not very large population of Muslims. Even though TJ's is all over the west coast and elsewhere, and they probably don't customize the food for each town, it's still odd. There just aren't that many people in the USA, compared to the general population, who keep kosher.

It occurred to me that the increased presence of kosher meat at TJ's could be some kind of stealth sharia. Just as some of that New Zealand lamb they sell was probably slaughtered in a halal manner but isn't labeled halal, the kosher meat could very well be on the shelves out of proportion to the needs of mainstream American consumers, in order to cater to the Muslim market, without being obvious about it. Muslims can eat kosher meat, it doesn't have to be halal, or rather halal can include kosher.

If I write all this to TJ's, they'll think I'm some neo-Nazi conspiracy nut, even though TJ's top management probably are using kosher as a code for halal.

2011-01-07T03:45:00.001-08:00

List of dead scientists

2010-12-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

2010-11-25T00:49:00.000-08:00

From sfgate.com:

S.F. Zoo gets a new, sad addition

Call it a witness protection program for swans. Blanche, the sole surviving swan at the Palace of Fine Arts' lagoon, has been moved temporarily to the San Francisco Zoo after the recent killing of her sister, Monday.

Animal Care and Control removed Blanche due to concerns about her safety, and she likely won't be back home until January when safety improvements to the lagoon are expected to be complete. More swans could join her at that point. Blanche, 13, will undergo a veterinary check-up at the zoo.

Five-year-old Monday's body was found Nov. 13, her neck snapped and beer cans littered among her feathers. The death came six months after their mother, Friday, was stolen.

Anyone with information about the death should call Animal Care and Control at (415) 554-9400. A reward fund leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible has been set up. Contributions to the fund can be made by calling (415) 554-9413.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=77747#ixzz16HYiDf2I

Stolen Yorkie reunited with 80-year-old owner

2010-11-12T02:12:00.000-08:00

Deuce, the pilfered pooch from Alameda, has been reunited with his 80-year-old owner.

A Stockton woman who had bought the Yorkshire terrier for $20 saw a news report Wednesday and realized that the dog was the one that robbers tore from Helen Bignone nearly two weeks ago as Bignone was out for a Saturday afternoon walk, said Alameda police Lt. Sean Lynch.

"There are so many good people in the world," Bignone said Thursday. "I'm on top of the world. Life is good, and people are wonderful."

The tipster purchased the 6-year-old male dog from a man and woman on the street in Stockton several days after the Oct. 30 robbery, an incident that generated outrage and a reward for the animal's safe return, Lynch said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/11/BAF81GAKTQ.DTL#ixzz153rcLIUt

2010-11-01T23:09:00.000-07:00

Street robbers nab 80-year-old woman's dog
Two men robbed an 80-year-old woman of her Yorkshire terrier in Alameda, police said Monday.

Helen Bignone said she had just left a clock shop with her dog, named Deuce, near Encinal Avenue and Fountain Street when she was confronted by two men in a car about 2 p.m. Saturday.

One of the men acted as if he had a gun and demanded both the dog and her purse, police Lt. Sean Lynch said.

When Bignone refused, one of the men pulled the leashed dog away from her while the other grabbed her purse, police said.

The men fled in a faded blue or green 1980s Honda or Toyota sedan, which had a primer-colored left-front quarter panel. They were described only as black men in their late teens or early 20s.

The stolen dog, a 6-year-old male, has a microchip implant that can identify it.

"I'm just really worried that whoever has him isn't treating him good," Bignone said Monday. "I'm just hurt. I just want the dog back. It isn't fair that anybody, particularly old people, can't just walk around without fear of being robbed."

Bignone said she actually can walk farther than Deuce. When the dog gets tired, she puts him in a cart she takes with her.

Police hope whoever is responsible or someone who knows who did the dognapping will have a "flash of humanity" and return it, Lynch said. "We'd like to get that dog back," he said.

"It's clearly a very despicable act," Lynch said. "Obviously, anytime you're going to take somebody's property, you're not a model citizen. But to steal both the purse and the dog from an 80-year-old woman who's just out on a Saturday taking a walk, it doesn't get more heartless than that."

Anyone with information about the dog's whereabouts is asked to call police at (510) 337-8340.

***********

Update: the article has been edited to remove the description of the men as black. Here is how that paragraph reads now:

The men fled in a faded blue or green 1980s Honda or Toyota sedan, which had a primer-colored left-front quarter panel.

Also, one of my comments was removed. The comment only referred to their race. I didn't use any vulgar or racist language.

************

Update: A suspect has been arrested. He claims to have let the dog loose in a park in Stockton, but earlier, he'd claimed he sold the dog. The SFGate article doesn't show a pic of the suspect, because he's black.

Article

2010-09-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

2010-08-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

2010-07-15T00:09:00.000-07:00