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Need Heroes? Look No farther…
Source: Escorts double down in the face of clinic property destruction
Even before the terror attacks in Paris last week, the possibility of terrorists was the reason the Harper government gave for being so incredibly slow to accept Syrian refugees. When the news of the attacks broke Friday afternoon my time, it was literally minutes before I heard it in the office water cooler talk: “No wonder, there’s so many refugees there.” And of course we have the Governors of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, saying their states will not accept refugees, and the Premier of Saskatchewan asking our Prime Minister to put his ambitious refugee resettlement program on ice.
This is racist, indecent and inhumane garbage, and pants-on-head levels of stupid.
As a pacifist-leaning liberal arts major, I am pretty much the opposite of a military strategist. And if somebody like me can see how low the ROI is for terrorists to try to infiltrate foreign countries under the guise of refugees, then I have to conclude wilful ignorance (or worse) on the part of officials in higher levels of government, whose job it is, last I heard, to think strategically.
Radicalizing and training up a terrorist is an investment. Are you seriously going to put that investment on a leaky boat that may or may not reach its destination, and then, assuming the boat makes it, have your investment walk for months, sleeping rough, with little to eat, and provisioned with only what he can personally carry, only to have his route to the target country barred by intermediary countries that may or may not let him through? Then, assuming he reaches his destination, he still needs to learn to fit in with the society he intends to attack, enough to walk the streets unnoticed, and you still have to arm him, because he probably opted to carry food rather than explosives on his long walk.
The refugees fleeing IS are unlikely to be a useful source of terrorist recruits – if they agreed with IS, they would presumably be staying and fighting under their banner.
As the attacks on Paris demonstrate, there’s a much higher-ROI way of blowing up people in a foreign country: have their own citizens do the dirty work for you.
The narrative emerging after these attacks is that IS wants to create division and hatred. That they want to destroy what they call the “grey zone” of society, where Muslims and non-Muslims live and work together productively and peacefully. What will ultimately destroy IS, is expanding and solidifying those grey zones.
Domestically, it means combating Islamophobia and the othering of Muslims, and ensuring that Muslims are not excluded from the benefits and opportunities inherent in living in a well-to-do secular democracy. Failure to do so will only produce disaffected angry youth who feel like they have nothing to lose, a rich recruiting ground for induction into radicalism and ultimately terrorism.
When it comes to the refugees fleeing Syria, we need to get them safe, get them homes, and provide them all the support they need to adapt to their new countries and become full and contributing citizens.
Or, we can do IS’s radicalization work for them. All we have to do is watch while more children drown; let children freeze this winter; not find a place for all these families to be safe and call home; not give them full opportunity to belong when they get here.
Yet I still hear people everday proclaiming that we are ‘done’ with feminism and that ‘for all intensive purposes’ the sexes are treated equally in society.
Horsefeathers to those notions, I say.
It has come to the attention of credible journalists and serious Christian scholars, that Starbucks – owned by a JEW!!! – hates Baby Jesus, Christians, and Christmas, and has been trying to subvert and destroy Christian America(TM)’s sacred Christmas traditions, by gradually removing Christian imagery from its Holiday CHRISTmas red cups! Clearly the End Times are upon us, as persecution of Christians everywhere ramps up to levels unheard of in modern times!
I have undertaken to document Starbucks’ dastardly deed over the last 11 years, so that evidence of their perfidious treachery will be preserved – the Internet is forever!!! Below the cut: my trenchant analysis of the anti-Christian trend of Starbucks’ Holiday CHRISTmas cup imagery! Read the rest of this entry »
Almost every knitter or crocheter’s taste in yarn goes through a similar evolution as their skill progresses. When you’re just starting, everything takes forever, so thick yarns seem like a good idea – yay, fewer stitches makes more fabric! And you buy yarn based on how pretty the ball looks, without much concept of what it might look like once it’s worked up. Low-end yarn manufacturers, I’m sure, are aware of n00b yarn buyers’ purchasing habits, and pander accordingly. Which is why the yarn aisle at Michael’s is full of stuff like this:
What on earth could go wrong? I mean, it’s so cheerful, right? Unfortunately, the length of each coloured segment is such that when you knit or crochet it, you don’t get a pretty rainbow, you get a wild splatter effect that looks like a clown exploded. Hence the term, in the crafty circles in which I travel (not the mild-mannered granny circle!), “clown barf”. And here’s the thing: I have a tendency to buy yarn faster than I crochet it, so when I was a n00b and had not yet become a yarn snob, I unknowingly bought a lot of clown barf, before I had a chance to learn my lesson. And now that clown barf is languishing in a box in the basement, because I can’t possibly throw it out, but why would I want to work with it, when I also have Icelandic wool brought home from Iceland, and cashmere and silk blends?
Fortunately for the size of my stash, the Arbourist occasionally asks me to make something where fancee yarn would be inappropriate. Like this tea cozy (we recently Got Civilization and started using a teapot!). As you can see, cute on the ball (above); garish and splattery when made up. Read the rest of this entry »
We are putting this on the list of piano music that is too damn hard right now, but stuff I will eventually be able to play. Watch his hands after the first repeated section – what is going on is that he is alternating quickly between two sets of notes a 6th apart with the same hand. To the piano student, this is akin to trying to wipe your ass with the wrong hand while wearing mittens filled with bees. My piano teacher assured me that, like with all things, practice makes it easier.
A little background on what a Passacaglia is and an example of what J.S. Bach does with it.
Passacaglia – A musical form of the 17th and 18th centuries consisting of continuous variations on a ground bass and similar to the chaconne.
There are 20 variations in BWV 582/1. The first begins with a typical C minor affekt, “a painful longing” according to Spitta, similar to the beginning of Buxtehude’s Chaconne in C minor (BuxWV 159).[9] Numerous attempts have been made to figure out an overarching symmetrical structure of the work, but scholars have yet to agree on a single interpretation.[10] Particularly important attempts were made by Christoph Wolff and Siegfried Vogelsänder.[spelling?][11] Some scholars have speculated that there is a symbolic component to the structure of the work: for instance, Martin Radulescu argues that BWV 582/1 is “in the form of a cross”.[12]
There is agreement among most scholars that the Passacaglia builds up until its climax in variation twelve.[citation needed] This is followed by three quiet variations, forming a short intermezzo, and then the remaining five variations end the work.
Bach performer and scholar Marie-Claire Alain suggested that the 21 variations are broken down into 7 groups of 3 similar variations, each opening with a quotation from a Lutheran chorale, treated similarly to the Orgel-Büchlein written at a similar time:[13]
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Bars 8–12, the top part spells out the opening notes of “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland”
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Bars 24–48, a cantilena spells out “Von Gott will ich nicht lassen”
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Bars 49–72, the scales are a reference to “Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar”
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Bars 72–96, recalling the “star” motif from “Herr Christ, der Ein’ge Gottes-Sohn”
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Bars 96–120, ornamented figure similar to that in “Christ lag in Todesbanden” accompanies theme in the soprano then moving successively to alto and bass
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Bars 144–168 “Ascending intervals in bass recall the Easter chorale “Erstanden ist der heil’ge Christ”.
And yes, this was an organ piece originally.
Rachel Moran describes some of the ‘qualifications’ necessary in sex work prostitution.
“If we accept prostitution as ordinary work, then we should be able to speak about what the skills of prostitution are….
The ability to control your reflex to vomit.
The ability to restrain your urge to cry.
The ability to imagine your current reality is not happening.These are the skill sets of prostitution. These are the skill sets necessary to perform what some people would like to see normalized as ‘sex work’.”
-From Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution by Rachel Moran, p 224-225
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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