Try That Somewhere Else

This one’s been boiling around the kettle of my fevered brain for a while now, but a comment from Reader TopCat last week brought it steaming out.  His comment was a quote from Raspail’s The Camp Of The  City  Saints, which I had read (in the original French, as part of a class assignment) right after it was first published, but almost forgotten about.

I shouldn’t have.  Here’s the quote:

“Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door…”

…and it is one of the most perceptive statements ever made on the topic of mass immigration.

However — and I’m not excusing it — I can almost understand why a tired and cold immigrant might, in extremis, decide to burn a piece of furniture.  There is an extenuating circumstance.

There are no extenuating circumstances for immigrants who arrive in this wonderful country, and then try to set about changing it into the shithole they just left.  We all know about the Communists of the Frankfurt School, of course, and they were (and still are) aided and abetted by our own locally-bred Commies of the Red Diaper persuasion.

And then there’s this little development [sic] :

A video circulating widely on social media has gained widespread attention, claiming that 402 acres in Texas have been purchased to build an “Islamic city that will govern itself.” The project, known as EPIC City, is linked to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) and is at the center of intense scrutiny and speculation.

EPIC announced plans in early 2024 for what it described as a “historic project”, a residential and commercial development near Josephine, Texas, roughly 30 minutes from its Plano-based mosque, as reported Daily Mail. The project includes proposals for 1,000 homes, a school, a shopping complex, and a central mosque, intended to serve a growing Muslim population.

There has been some opposition to the building of this little self-created ghetto:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched more than a dozen state investigations against the development, claiming that EPIC City officials want to impose Sharia law within the community.

…as well he should.  As this article points out:

Deep in the heart of Texas, just outside of Dallas, is the new community of Epic City, a totally Muslim City. Amy Mek sees it as the beginning of the end. It is a big change for Texas. That’s certain.

The problem with Islam is it is a total way of life, political, social, religious, and there can be no other way. Sharia Law cannot coexist with the US Constitution. The US needs people to assimilate.

The project will feature a mosque at its center, surrounded by houses, townhomes, apartments, Muslim schools, parks, gyms, and other facilities.

Many Texans are expressing concerns about EPIC City. Some see it as creating a separate Muslim-only area, which they fear could lead to segregation.

They worry it might become a “no-go zone,” where non-Muslims feel unwelcome. Critics also fear that introducing Sharia law could conflict with U.S. laws and values.

“Could” conflict with U.S. laws and values?  How about “will definitely” do all that? As this article states:

Supporters argue that EPIC City is about religious freedom. Except it’s not simply a religion. It’s a complete life plan.

Of course, the Muslims deny all that:

EPIC City developers said that is simply not true, and its newly-hired attorney Dan Cogdell has called the state’s opposition to the community flat out “racial profiling.”

It has nothing to do with race, you MuzzieSymp fuck;  it has everything to do with culture — and Muslim culture, at its very core, sets out to suppress any culture that isn’t Muslim*.  To argue otherwise is to invoke the oh-so-Muslim practice of taqiyyah — lying to infidels in order to further Islam.  Here’s more from that Green Diaper lawyer:

“If this were a Presbyterian church in Red Oak or a Catholic church in Waxahachie, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said on Friday’s airing of “Morning in America.”

Yeah, let’s conflate the hostile and murderous Islam with Presbyterians and Catholics, by all means.

“It’s because they’re Muslim. It’s just that simple,” Cogdell added.

Damn right it is.  And now for the taqiyya:

Cogdell told NewsNation the community does not intend to impose Sharia law as the state of Texas accuses.

“They have no intentions of that. There are 7,000-10,000 that attend the current mosque. There are lawyers, judges, doctors, politicians that attend that church,” he said. “It’s just absurd that that allegation is even being made at this point.”

I know that at some point the WhatAbouts (like this asshole Cogdell) are going to ask me how I feel about the enclaves of Orthodox Jews that are sprinkled about, and my answer is that I have no problem with them — not because they’re Jews, but because Orthodox Jewry is not about forcibly changing U.S. law into Talmudic.

In other words, I believe strongly in the freedom of association (and of religion) embodied in our First Amendment — but not when such association or religion sets about changing our nation and our Constitution into fucking Shari’ah.  If you don’t think that’s their goal, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in Africa (see the link immediately above).  And feel free to consult a poll (any poll, in any country) of Muslims to see under which set of laws a majority of them would want to live.

The Constitution, as the man quite rightly said, is not a suicide pact.

And speaking of majorities:  typically, it doesn’t take a majority of Muslims in a population before the shit starts spraying off the fan blades;  as I recall, anything over 15-18%, and the fun starts.  Sometimes it’s even less.

Make no mistake, this EPIC City thing, if allowed to survive, would not be the only settlement of its kind.  Pretty soon they’d spread throughout the United States like cancer cells in a chainsmoker’s body.  I leave it to your imagination as to what the end result of that would be.

And if you think that EPIC City (or Cities) would not become a breeding ground for Islamist extremism, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

As I see it, though, opposition to EPIC is following a bureaucratic path:

“The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the East Plano Islamic Center and affiliated entities have not obtained the required authorizations or permits needed for construction.”

That’s fine;  but if those authorizations or permits are denied, expect lawsuits:  lawsuits that the Muslims might win.  And then what?

Better, I think, to put the issue onto a binding referendum in the November elections.  (The referendum question has to be simple, e.g.:  “Do you think that the state of Texas should allow Muslims to create Muslim-only settlements in Texas?”)

Let’s see how the good people of Texas feel about this.


*My original thought was that I’d test the Muslims’ protestations by recruiting a few beautiful Texas gals, dressing them in the skimpiest-yet-legal clothing, and have them strut past the EPIC mosque during Ramadan, just to see the locals’ response.  (Of course, they’d be accompanied by a few good ol’ Texas boys — carrying concealed guns, as is our right under both U.S. and Texas law — just in case someone might want to harass our young ladies for only doing what they are allowed — nay, encouraged — to do here in the Lone Star State.)

Alternatively, I’d support the application of any Christian church, ditto a few Christian bookstores and a parochial school or two, to apply for building- and business permits inside the boundaries of EPIC City, just to test the veracity of their “Oh noes we’re not exclusively Muslim!”  claims.

I welcome a discussion of the Christians’ chances of success.

And yes, I’ve spoken about this topic before, and also here.

Piling On

There are many times when I wonder (as do many of you) why I bother with the Daily Mail, which is a truly horrible publication.  (It’s difficult to call it a “newspaper” because so much of it is utter rubbish.)

However, I can deal with “rubbish”.  It’s when they publish outright misleading falsehoods that I get upset.  Here’s an example:

Never mind “correlation” not being related to “causation”;  the difference between “causation” and “coincidence” is even greater.

As we read this silly article, only in paragraph eleventy-hundred do we come across this embarrassing factoid:

Progressive Furniture, a division of Sauder Woodworking based in Claremont, North Carolina, announced its plans to close down and fire all 30 of its employees by the end of the year. 

The firm grew to be the seventh largest furniture manufacturing company in the world – and was a much-loved brand, selling high-quality traditional and modern homeware at Walmart, Target and Home Depot. 

Uhhhh Lauder may be large — and it is — but its tiny 30-employee subsidiary?  Much less so.  But it gets worse.  You see:

Although it is an American company, its main supplier was based in Rosarito, Mexico. That manufacturer, Baja Wood, was responsible for more than 60 percent of Progressive’s inventory.

So Progressive is really just an assembly- and shipping operation?  (That would account for its tiny workforce.)  But what about this Baja Wood?  In fact…

…the Mexican supplier’s internal dilemmas resulted in [Progressive’s] demise.  Problems began back in January, when about 60 of Baja Wood’s 320 employees rallied in front of the factory in protest of reduced hours.  Government labor investigators were called upon to evaluate the situation and production halted.  However, once the investigation was closed, Baja Wood never reopened. 

So that’s why Progressive failed:  its major supplier went tits-up.

Trump’s tariffs, despite the screaming headline, had sweet fuck-all to do with it.

In future I think I’ll just stick with the Mail’s T&A content.

Caveat lector.

Unequal Treatment

I see that OzPM Anthony “Commie Rat” Albanese has invited President Trump to visit that mouse-infested shithole of a country.

Of course, the POTUS wouldn’t experience anything like the Kafka-esque nightmare of trying to visit Strylia that ensnares ordinary folks (like me) — no “visitor’s visa” necessary for him, oh no — and of course he has his own airliner to get there which means he doesn’t have to endure the total assholiness of Qantarse (see here and here, for just two reasons never to fly on their poxy airline).

I don’t see that there’s much benefit for Trump to go there, anyway — especially as their governing political party are a bunch of steaming Commies who make our Democrats look like ultra-capitalists by comparison.

Fukkem.

Quote Of The Day

Man, it sure is difficult to come up with a single quote of the day, nowadays.  I should just post a transcript of all the responses by WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — who (unlike her Biden-appointed predecessor) is not a DEI hire and actually knows what she’s doing — but let’s just take this one, made in response to this action by the White House:

Gone are the days where left-wing stenographers posing as journalists, such as yourself, dictate who gets to ask what.

Is it So Wrong that I’m falling in love with her?

The PPV Phenomenon

Making a living from writing is extraordinarily difficult — ask me how I know this — and I have often been tempted to put much if not all of my non-novel writing behind a paywall (SubStack, etc.).  There are two problems with this action:  the first is that my blogging has never been a serious attempt to make money, which is why I have to resort to the occasional ad hoc  beg-a-thon for crises, and Patreon for “subscription” support.  (And to those of you who participate in the latter, thank you again:  you have no idea how much it helps.)

The second reason I don’t charge for access is that to be perfectly frank, I don’t think my blogging is that valuable in the grand scheme of things, and charging for access would be somewhat… impertinent on my part.  Put baldly, anyone with a little spare time can find pics of beautiful women, cars, guns and so on for themselves.  As for my commentary:  well, I know that many people — in the beginning, anyway — told me that my blog made them realize that they weren’t the only ones who felt this way, especially whether it came to political outlook and social perspective.  Of gun love, we will not speak.  But is it all that valuable?

And that’s all I care to say about that.

What I really want to talk about is how the various online media are starting to charge readers, most often not for their entire opus, but for certain articles only.  Here are a few examples:

  • The Daily Mail:
  • The Sun:  and we all know about
  • PJMedia: 

This, as opposed to other outlets who have pretty much set upon putting their entire publication behind a paywall, like The New York Times (lol never gonna happen), The Epoch Times, Britain’s Daily Telegraph and so on.  In several cases, I would really like to read their stuff but I can’t afford the subscription — not individually, but cumulatively, all those subscriptions would add up to a considerable amount which I cannot possibly afford.  (Ditto TV/Internet streaming services, but that’s a story for another time.)

Look, I don’t have a problem with any of this.  It costs a great deal to run a media company — although I would argue much less than when they were reliant on newsprint for their distribution — but even with the economies of Internet publication, they still have to pay for content (writers, photographers) and production (editorial/site maintenance staff etc.) as well as hosting bandwidth, which means that they have to charge for access.  TANSTAAFL, and this is as true for them as for any other business which offers a product to consumers.

We consumers have been spoiled in this regard, because when the Internet started, so much of the content came free and we became spoiled thereby.  So now when we get confronted by a paywall, we get all huffy and say, “It ain’t worth it!” and in many cases it isn’t.

I know that many people find my reading of the often-dreadful Daily Mail inexplicable, but let me nevertheless use them as an example for how I treat the mini-paywalls.  Here’s an example of yesterday’s Mail headlines:

I find this interesting.  If the Mail thinks that Gold-Digger story is enticing enough to make me want to join their little subscription club, they are sadly mistaken.  (Given the profile of their average reader, however, they may not be altogether wrong.)  And the prurient reader will find several examples of the Pineapple Sack type, all for free.

The only one of the four example articles which interests me at all is the one about pay-per-mile driving charges, not because it would affect me or most of my Readers, it being a UK phenomenon;  but because if the stupid Green Nude Heel program were to be implemented Over Here by various Green politicians of the Biden/Harris/Obama stripe, it would very much be relevant.  And as I so often say:  stuff that happens Over There will often make its way Over Here at some point, so we need to be vigilant.

Anyway, while there may occasionally be a paywalled article in any of the places I frequent for my daily news, generally speaking the PPV aspect is mostly an irritant — and as I’ve illustrated above, often not even that because the topic, details and/or commentary thereon is of little interest to me.

What I’m discovering is that there are a few writers / commentators whose stuff I might be tempted into paying for on a subscription basis — Victor Davis Hanson and Jordan Peterson come to mind — but honestly, they are few and far between.

And Megyn Kelly would have to broadcast her show in the nude to get my subscription dollar, and maybe not even then.

I am not at all averse to media putting adverts and commercials in their product to generate revenue, similar to what newspapers and broadcast TV stations have always done — provided that said ads are not too large, too many, too obtrusive or too repetitive.  And the internet print outlets have only themselves to blame for the arrival of services like AdBlock, when the ads suddenly started shouting at me or auto-loading some fucking mini-movie which interrupted my reading.  I know the rationale for such commercials — I worked in the advertising business for years — but I reject it utterly.  There is a reason why TV channels could only run a few minutes’ worth of commercials per hour back in the day, and that’s because when the commercials became all-pervasive and a considerable irritant, then government had to step in and we all know what happens in such cases.

Anyway, what we’re dealing with now is a media environment which is constantly changing, much as the broadcast media changed with the arrival of cable.  All I can say is that everyone, from the DailyMail to PJMedia to Insty to humble bloggers like me, needs to be aware of their limitations.

I think I know mine, but I’m not so sure about the big guys.