"A penny for the old guy"

Old Man and a Bucket of Shrimp

This is a wonderful story and it is true. You will be glad that you read it, and I hope you will pass it on.

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favourite pier.

Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, to onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.

Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida ... That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive.

Every day across America millions wondered and prayed that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive.

The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle.

They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged on. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft...suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it - a very slight meal for eight men. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait....and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued after 24 days at sea.

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull... And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

Reference: (Max Lucado, "In the Eye of the Storm", pp...221, 225-226)

PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was the founder of Eastern Airlines. Before WWI he was race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became America's first ace. In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he flew missions with the combat pilots. Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American hero. And now you know another story about the trials and sacrifices that brave men have endured for your freedom.

As you can see, I chose to pass it on. It is a great story that many don't know...You've got to be careful with old guys, you just never know what they have done during their lifetime

CRUMBLING PILLARS

Reading about the recent riots in Melbourne, the corruption at the heart of Labor politics (and in some nooks and crannies of the Liberals as well), Labor's woeful defence of union thievery and thuggery, the mendacious and subversive theories regurgitated on a daily basis by 'their' ABC, and so-called 'academics' chosen for conformity to ideological prejudices and affirmative action quotas who propagate flawed, illogical and dissembling claptrap from their bully pulpits and stifle any/all dissenting voices,............ gives the following excerpt a peculiarly familiar tone:

Among Lenin’s contributions was the theory of the vanguard. Since it was apparent that the proletariat masses were unlikely to rise up, Lenin argued that it was necessary for a relatively small number of vanguard leaders -- professional revolutionaries -- to advance the revolutionary cause by working themselves into positions of influence. By taking over the commanding heights of labor unions, the press, the universities, and professional and religious organizations, a relatively small number of revolutionaries could multiply their influence and exercise political leverage over their unwitting constituents and society at large.

It was Lenin who introduced the concept of the “popular front” and coined the phrase “useful idiots” in describing the masses who could be manipulated into mob action of marches and protests for an ostensibly narrow cause of the popular front, which the communist vanguard was using as a means for a greater revolutionary political end.

The malevolent and corrosive worldview called communism did not die with the collapse of the Berlin wall, it merely metamorphosed into the Alinskyite swill we witness controlling the minds and actions of so many of our political and media elites. 

We need to encourage a revolution of political will on the part of conservatives to make the necessary choices to repair the broken walls of our culture and in doing so to suffer with courage the 'slings and arrows' of the legion of media loudmouths (useful idiots) which are sure to follow. 
Even if it means losing their seats at the next election. 
That takes real guts and implies that the necessary decisions are significant enough to irrevocably change the direction of the country within three short years.

Look at Labor in Victoria, they at least have had the courage to make decisions based on their convictions. Unfortunately these 'convictions' do not serve the majority of ordinary citizens, but the unions and ideological masters controlling Labor. 

Our only hope is a return us to the structures and values that made Western culture the foundation of most that is good in this dangerous world.

Good bad, bad good!

Sun Tzu's 'principles' seem rather similar to Saul Alinsky's 12 Rules for radicals. It reinforces my observations that the totalitarian mindset is more about theft and corruption than it is about the creation of new ideas:

1. "Undermine everything that is good in the land of your enemies.
2. Implicate the ruling class of your enemies in corruption and turn their youth into drug addicts.
3. Undermine the standing of all leaders by frequent scandals.
4. Do not hesitate to use the lowest and most repulsive creatures as collaborators.
5. Use all means in your power to impede the activity of the government.
6. Spread sectional disputes in the land of your enemies.
7. Incite the young to struggle against the old.
8. Devalue the traditions of your enemies, destroy all authority.
9. Organise sabotage and withdrawal of labor.
10. Sap the fighting spirit of the enemy by sensual desires and soft music.
11. Make the enemy believe in total sexual freedom, turn his women into whores.
12. Buy the services of traitors and infiltrate the enemy state with spies."

If one digs into any  socialist ideology you always find a creative idea/tradition/philosophy that has been stolen, corrupted and twisted into some scrofulous parody of its former self. Marxism itself is a corruption of theological truths with God erased and the state inserted on the throne.

A more current example has to be marriage. How tradition which has existed in most civilisations for millennia has recently been twisted, distorted, excoriated and turned into its opposite, i.e. something that is now supposed to be a symbol of hate rather than the symbol of love it has always been. 

This was once seen as a perfectly normal point of view. Now, in the historical blink of an eye, it has been denormalised, and with such ferocity and speed that anyone still brave enough to express it runs the risk of being ejected from public life …

What we have here is the further colonisation of public life by an elite strata of society – the chattering class – and the vigorous expulsion of all those who do not genuflect to their orthodoxies. Whether you’re a climate-change denier, a multiculturalism sceptic or, the lowest of the low, someone who believes in traditional marriage, you’re clearly mad and must be cast out. [Brendan O’Neill]

The social impact of this illiberal liberalism will be dire. 

Smith on Dalrymple

Peter Smith provides a pithy review of  Dalrymple's book 'Spoilt Rotten', which I have had the good sense/fortune to read and will in due course add to my collection.
A rather perspicacious excerpt:

Human relations more generally, he suggests, have been caught in the sentimental mindset where obligations and duty have run second place to an entitlement to be happy. He looks at the disintegration of family life and the undermining of the institution of marriage aided by “intellectuals” who see it as standing in the way of state power wielded by them.

Labor unashamedly totalitarian, Libs need some cojones.

As egregiously incompetent as Victoria's Labor party so obviously is, you have to give it kudos for the bold and apparently unashamed way in which it sweeps aside all systems antithetical to its own in its push for totalitarian rule for the unions (its paymaster and ideological asherah pole).

Judith Sloan: 

But you have to give it to Dan the Man Andrews and his comrades, they really know how to get on with the job, to punish their enemies and install their mates in well-paid positions.

Seconds after they had been sworn in:

- The government construction code was abolished;

- The move on laws (unionists and their mates blockading businesses)were rescinded;

- Right-of-entry for union officials was made easier;

- The East-West Link contract was cancelled and Victorian taxpayers have paid in excess of $600 million for nothing (real figure will forever be fudged);

- All the members of the water boards were sacked

- The board of Ambulance Victoria was shown the door and an egregiously generous settlement was made with the ambos who had (illegally) defaced public property and refused to deal with the Coalition government, knowing all along that they would be generously rewarded for their political support;

- The Victorian Efficiency and Competition Commission was abolished and all the workers were sacked, notwithstanding the entreaties of former Labor premiers, Bracks and Brumby (they are both out in the cold; sensible advice is not welcomed by the Andrews government);

- The board of VLine was sacked.

Would that the Liberals could be equally forceful in their attempts to transform the institutions that continue to white-ant every policy they hesitantly put on the table for the good of Australia. In tactics straight out of Alinsky's 12 Rules for Radicals, Labor trash and ridicule the man they have set up to be Australia's most hated person, the Prime Minister:

 RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

When are the rusted-on voters of the Labor going to realise that Labor the political party, who act increasingly like the political organ of Big Union, cares about as much for the rank and file of this country as the union demonstrably does about its rank and file.

Consider Bill Shorten's 'deal' when he was a union boss and where the workers were dudded in a deal to give Shorten political advantage. Consider the Gillard government supporting and paying for a union boss (Thompson) who spent ridiculous amounts of money on personal entertainment, sex, and his own political goals, all out of the pockets of some of the least paid workers in Australia. Consider the current defence of Union thugs who have been shown to be nothing more than
Down-under-Mafioso thugs who bribe, steal, stand-over and manipulate.

C'mon Liberals, find some balls guys, that is while we still have a chance.

Homage to Dine

Watercolours 'wrapped' in techno plastic: see http://mikes365artproject.blogspot.com.au/

Kachow!

Roger Kimball has a way with words, and could that claim be any better illustrated than through this put-down of the global warming clownfish which occupy so much of the lame-stream-media space these days:

I regard the whole Green Lobby as a cocktail composed of three parts moralistic hysteria mixed with a jigger of high-proof cynical opportunism (take a look at Al Gore’s winnings from the industry) fortified with a dash of beady-eyed left-wing redistributionist passion. You can never be Green enough, Comrade, and if the data show a 20-year “hiatus” in global warming (so much for Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick), that’s no reason not to insist that capitalist powerhouses like the United States drastically curtail their CO₂emissions right now, today, while giving egregious polluters like China a decade or more to meet its quotas.

The age of Nietzsche.......

These days whenever I read the news or, on the rare occasion subject myself to watching the news on TV, I am saddened at the state of willful blindness exhibited by most participants.  (2 Corinthians 4:4)

The worldview of the 21st century has become that of emotion over reason and comfort over distress, or as Solzhenitsyn puts it: 'the cult of material well-being'. 

Truth no longer exists in 'discussion' or 'debate' which renders such activities nothing but an airing of opinions. And the really frightening thing about that is that when reason is replaced by opinion and no one will be swayed by convincing argument then anarchy rules. When anarchy rules the only way to bring resolution is through power. Which is why the political process has become one of attaining power at all costs. Politically nothing of any value remains except concessions, attempts to gain time and ultimately betrayal. Shortens 'reign' as a union supremo illustrates that perfectly, hence the current attempt to discredit the commission.

It is also the reason why a demonstrably 'good' man such as Tony Abbott is so vilified in the press and therefore in the minds of many ordinary Australians. The anti-Abbott hate propaganda is unrelenting, extreme and willfully mendacious. 

Of course history shows us that the result of political chaos is totalitarianism because when reason fails the only alternative is power and the strongest wins. And when the strongman is in power?

Well; we are all the architects of our own fate willingly or unwittingly.

ITS A SCAM PURE AND SIMPLE!

With all the double-speak doing the rounds about how all 'climate change deniers' are in the pay of the nefarious 'big-oil' barons, I put it to you that so-called big-oil hasn't seen numbers like these since the early days of real robber barons and highway robbery...which is what the 'climate-change' spruikers actually are: robber barons and Nietzschean thieves:

The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth …

That also includes the climate change consulting market, which a recent report by the journal estimates at $1.9 billion worldwide and $890 million in the U.S.

Included in this sub-segment, which the report shows is one of the fastest growing areas of the climate change industry, are environmental consultants and engineers, risk managers, assurance, as well as legal and other professional services.

Figures for the climate change consulting market are expected to more than double in the next five years … 

The unintended consequences of Culling, Suttee and the Green religion.....

“Psychoanalyst Walter Langer wrote, ‘People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it often enough, people will sooner or later believe it.’”

If you believe that all of life has evolved from a common ancestor, it logically follows that all living things are equally valid and therefore no life form has the intrinsic right to impose itself on another. 

As evolution increasingly occupies the throne of worldview 'dominance' we should not be astonished that there exists the concomitant shadow of a simultaneous devaluation of human life with a veneration of animal life.

The inevitable result has been a philosophical shift where it becomes permissible, even desirable (see: Planned Parenthood), to kill millions of unborn humans every year, whilst at the same time people are willing to spend millions of dollars on the preservation of a handful of beached whales, even those not threatened with extinction.

"When man loses his sense of his place in the universe, all sorts of confusion arises. In India, while cows are elevated, widows are denigrated and neglected, having lost their identity and value within Hindu culture when their husband dies (before the British banned the practice in the 1800’s, widows were customarily burnt on their husband’s funeral pyre, a practice known as Sati or Suttee after the Hindu goddess of the same name)." (Marc Ambler, CMI magazine, Published: 11 October 2012)

Consider how the Green religion has negatively impacted the earth because of our post-modern tendency to place feelings above reason:

"For decades, conservationists used culling as a means of managing expanding herds. While not relished by conservationists, humane culling was seen as a necessary evil to properly manage the size of herds so that they could still be supported within their habitat.

A looming change—with consequences

Over the past couple of decades, however, culling has been fiercely denounced and resisted by ‘deep green’ lobbyists. Much hand wringing goes on in the belief that man has no right to kill elephants or any other creature and alternatives such as contraception were investigated. While this went on, elephant populations continued to grow and habitats were severely harmed as the elephants stripped vast areas of all trees in their desperation to find food. This in turn led to a deleterious effect on other species as ecosystems were destroyed. In some Southern African parks where culling had been stopped due to this opposition, elephants began to starve as their populations grew beyond the ability of the area to support them, quite analogous to the seemingly miserable conditions of domesticated (sacred) cows in India." (Ibid)

Cecil's legacy

I do not like trophy hunting because I cannot understand the motivation to kill for 'sport', but I acknowledge that some do and that they are not always 'bad guys'. In fact some good friends are hunters, albeit of feral creatures such as rabbits and foxes. There are also the necessary 'cullings' undertaken by conservation parks. Plus I have no doubt that were my family or friends lives dependant on it I would shuck my displeasure and assume the role out of necessity.

I think that many in today's world have become so removed from 'real-world' activities involving blood and sweat that their worldview has become infantilised. Any/all(?) blood shedding is viewed as something terrible, a perspective I believe to not only be inadequate but spiritually damaging as well.

Yes! We do need to conserve, protect and steward the creation as the cultural mandate instructs us to do, but we are also to be particularly careful of how we can be influenced by the zeitgeist more than we should and what we call unnecessary or vile practices. Reason should trump our 'programmed' repulsion, although having said that I realise how much emotion has superseded reason in our post-modern society.

Interestingly this whole debacle highlights quite clearly the intellectual hypocrisy behind those much vaunted secular values of relativity and non-judgement!

I have attached what I consider a rather informative response (albeit from a utilitarianist w/v) to a blog on the issue of Cecil's demise:

"Here’s the thing though, with a billion dollar industry on the line, ranches are incentivised to protect big game like lions and rhinos and elephants.  Since the popularity of big game hunting has taken off huge tracts of land have been converted from farm land to safaris and lion, rhino, hippo and elephant numbers have increased, not decreased.  You also reduce the likelihood of poachers since ranchers are compelled to protect their investment.

The same simply does not apply to national parks in their current format, poachers run rampant, the funding is pitiful at best and so on.

Also Presidents of the US have a long a rich history of big game hunting, Teddy Roosevelt (the guy who invented the entire idea of national parks) was a very keen hunter and conservationist and long advocated the capitalisation of big game hunting as a means to conserve species like the buffalo.

The unhappy fact is those 9000 wealthy tourists contribute more to conservation in a year than you ever will in your entire life.  As deplorable as it is I’d argue that the suffering of a few animals to ensure the entire species survival is a price I’d happily pay.

The needs of the many outweigh the few in this instance, there is simply no better motivation to conserve resources in today’s society than the promise of a buck or two.  I don’t like big game hunting any more than you do but I can not deny the effectiveness of it either."