4500-year-old henge and stone circle cleared of discrimination

Isn’t it comforting to know that in this time of economic crisis, Western governments still manage to see to it that the public’s vital interests are protected? Take Scotland, for instance.

Earlier this year, Dean Herbert reported, in the Scottish Daily Mail, that the government of Scotland had successfully completed an Equality Impact Assessment involving audits by consultants on the Neolithic Ring of Brodgar in the Orkneys.

Happily, the stones passed their assessment.

To the outsider, they are a weather-beaten circle of rocks that have stood on a remote Scottish island for thousands of years.

But for officials at the Scottish Executive, the prehistoric ruins on Orkney are a potential hotbed of homophobia and racist hate crime.

The ancient Neolithic ruins have caused no discernible trouble since 3,300 BC but civil servants decided to investigate the ‘equality issues’ surrounding them – in case they discriminated against gays and ethnic minorities.

Now their findings on The Ring of Brodgar have been published in a nine-page taxpayer-funded report, one of many ‘Equality Impact Assessments’ (EQIAs) carried out over the past two years, costing the public purse up to 1 million pounds sterling.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Executive concluded the stones presented no immediate threat to gays and other minority groups – but recommended another check should be made in five years’ time. …

Last year, they conducted an assessment to find out if Scotland’s canals were homophobic. Again unsurprisingly, the canals were found to be reasonably gay-friendly.

photos of tolerant stones.

Julian Assange

The Pentagon is scrambling desperately to protect hundreds of Afghan informants whose names and locations were exposed in leaked military logs published recently by Wikileaks.

ABC News:

The Pentagon is adding workers to a team that is working around the clock sifting through the thousands of leaked secret documents on the Afghan war to determine whether sources have been compromised, ABC News has learned.

Sources also told ABC News that measures are being taken in Afghanistan to protect sources who may have been unmasked from Taliban revenge.

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DEBKAfile, in an article in its subscription-only version, is contending that Britain leaked the military reports published in Wikileaks.

Their arguments are that only US reports were leaked, indicating that the US was specifically being targeted. The (British) Guardian played the lead role in coordinating publication of a prefabricated storyline leveling several damaging accusations against the US and casting Julian Assange as a persecuted victim. The Guardian, New York Times, and Der Speigel all agreed to run the story as proposed and accepted the July 25 publication deadline without having actually read more than 2% of the documents.

DEBKA notes that all the leak documents cover six-year period ending in December 2009, their interval terminating at the point at which President Obama announced his new Afghanistan War strategy. DEBKA contends that the end point is deliberate, sparing Obama specific association with accusations arising from the leaked documents, but also implicitly warning that the next batch could be aimed his way.

The British motivation, according to DEBKAfile, would be Barack Obama’s systematic downgrading of the British-American special relationship on the basis of personal and ideological anti-colonialist resentments, specifically exacerbated by the administration’s vilifying BP over an unfortunate accident followed by accusations in the US Congress that BP played a role in securing the Lockerbie bomber’s release. Retired senior official from MI5 and MI6 are rumored to hold positions on BP’s board of directors.

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Meanwhile, despite MacRanger’s report that a US BOLO (“Be on the Lookout for”) had been issued for Julian Assange last week, Assange was not difficult to find.

He was quite recently delivering a self-congratulatory speech to journalists at the Frontline Club, at 13 Norfolk Street in London, in the course of which he revealed that sympathizers working inside the White House were sharing with him details of discussions about whether or not he should be arrested.

Assange previously boasted to Der Spiegel that he “enjoy[s] crushing bastards.”

Daily Mail:

A man with a metal detector has made one of the largest finds of Roman coins in Britain.

The hoard of around 52,000 coins dating from the third century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.

The coins were in a huge jar just over a foot below the surface, located by Dave Crisp from Devizes in Wiltshire.

Archaeologists believe the hoard, which sheds light on the economic crisis and coalition government in the 3rd century under Emperor Carausius, will rewrite the history books. …

It is thought the £250,000 find – known as the Frome Haul – represents the biggest single haul ever unearthed in Britain.

The hoard is one of the largest ever found in Britain, and will reveal more about the nation’s history in the third century, said Roger Bland, of the British Museum.

One of the most important aspects of the hoard is that it contains a large group of coins of Carausius, who ruled Britain independently from AD 286 to AD 293 and was the first Roman emperor to strike coins in Britain.

The hoard contains over 760 of his coins, making it the largest group of his coins ever found.

It is estimated the coins were worth about four years’ pay for a legionary soldier.

Carausius was a Roman naval officer who seized power in 286 and ruled until he was assassinated in 293.

‘The late third century A.D. was a time when Britain suffered barbarian invasions, economic crises and civil wars,’ Bland said.

As the London Times reports, a scientific offensive against the Anthropogenic Global Warming popular delusion is actively underway in Britain.

Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.

The Royal Society has appointed a panel to rewrite the 350-year-old institution’s official position on global warming. It will publish a new “guide to the science of climate change” this summer. The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause.

The society appears to have conceded that it needs to correct previous statements. It said: “Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect — there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements.” This contradicts a comment by the society’s previous president, Lord May, who was once quoted as saying: “The debate on climate change is over.”

The admission that the society needs to conduct the review is a blow to attempts by the UN to reach a global deal on cutting emissions. The Royal Society is viewed as one of the leading authorities on the topic and it nominated the panel that investigated and endorsed the climate science of the University of East Anglia.

A Baptist street preacher was arrested in Wokington, Cumbria by a police force lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liaison officer for the crime of stating aloud in public that homosexual acts are sinful.

If anyone wonders why many Americans are not eager to follow the political examples set by European countries in all things, I would recommend this story as a good example of policies not worth following.

Telegraph:

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Wokington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Mr McAlpine, who was taken to the police station in the back of a marked van and locked in a cell for seven hours on April 20, said the incident was among the worst experiences of his life.

In the Telegraph, Simon Heffer also declares the Obama Administration to be a disaster, and points to his failure as an object lesson for Britons to learn from. How the Chosen One has fallen.

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama’s regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons. …

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation’s having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.

Cyber vigilantism punishes kitten killing, adultery, and a variety of other things in China these days.

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Essex cockerel and hens victorious when fox invades their coop.

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The LA Times finds that Italians have better political scandals.

Reporting from Rome — The governor made off to a monastery after having affairs with transsexuals, but not before the cops videotaped a tryst, all flesh and white powder, and offered to sell copies to a magazine owned by the prime minister, who, at the time, was rumored to be entangled with an underage Neapolitan model.

Then one of the transsexuals, a Brazilian named Brenda, turned up naked and dead, her laptop computer submerged under a running tap. Oh, yeah, and the drug dealer who supplied cocaine to the governor and Brenda would meet his own demise. It’s an odd coincidence.

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Glenn Reynolds explains why the federal government has come to resemble Schlitz beer.

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Leo Grin, at Big Hollywood has a four part essay on Werner Herzog, Timothy Treadwell, and “Grizzly Man” (2005). Pt1, Pt2, Pt3, Pt4.

Big Hollywood is promising more in-depth reviews of significant conservative films.

Multiple hat tips to Karen L. Myers.

Alex receiving his dose of Beethoven.

Brendan O’Neill describes how in today’s Britain one of the dystopian predictions of Anthony Burgess has already become reality: Classical music used as a tool of social control.

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny. And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

The classical music detentions at West Park School are only the latest experiment in using and abusing some of humanity’s greatest cultural achievements to reprimand youth.

Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee.

Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of the UK to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local railway company decided to do something about the “problem” of “youths hanging around” its train stations. The young people were “not getting up to criminal activities,” admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they were “swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers.” So the railway company unleashed “blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi.”

Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. “They seem to loathe [the music],” said the proud railway guy. “It’s pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing.” He said the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich. (That last one I can kind of understand.)

In Yorkshire in the north of England, the local council has started playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at “troublesome bus-stops” between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Shops in Worcester, Bristol, and North Wales have also taken to “firing out” bursts of classical music to ward of feckless youngsters.

In Holywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters who were spitting in the street and doing graffiti. And apparently classical music defeats street art: The graffiti levels fell.

Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a “punitive slap on the chops” for low youth has come true. In Burgess’s 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to “the Ludovico Technique” by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.

Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that “Ludwig van” did nothing wrong, he “only made music.” He tells the doctors it’s a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.

The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite’s authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They’re so desperate to control youth—but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them—that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young people’s intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their willingness to engage with humanity’s highest forms of art, that they imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Paul Mirengoff, at Power Line, mocks the politically correct Pecksniffery on the part of certain Euopean powers about passports and the mysterious demise of Hamas weapons-runner Mahmoud-al-Mabhouh in Dubai at the hands of person or persons unknown.

Great Britain is unhappy that six of the 11 individuals thought to be part of the Mossad (or whomever) team used fake British passports bearing the names of Israeli citizens. Prime Minister Gordon Brown sniffed that “the British passport is an important document that has got to be held with care.” However, I’m confident that if the agents had possessed real British passports, they would have held them carefully.

The [Washington] Post also reports that Israeli citizens whose names appeared on the fake passports were “shocked to find themselves mentioned in the material released by the Dubai police.” No doubt. Israel’s position, though, is that “if there is concern about identity theft, those involved should consult a lawyer.” Always good advice.

But passport fraud and identity theft hardly exhaust the ways in which the slaying of Mabhouh affronts modern sensibilities. For example, the photos of the 11 suspects raise questions about the diversity of the team Mossad (or whomever) assembled. It includes only one woman (an attractive blond,naturally) and looks to be short on people of color.

There is also no indication that the team advised Mabhouh of his rights or offered him a chance to exculpate himself before he was killed. Indeed, from all that appears, no lawyer was present.

Finally, what about the carbon footprint of the operation? Did the team travel to Dubai in an energy efficient way? And how much electricity did they use once they arrived? Some reports say they used electricity to stun Mabhouh before killing him. Couldn’t he have been executed in a more energy efficient way?

A certain amount of nastiness is inevitable in today’s world. But this doesn’t mean that protocol, equal opportunity, and principles of good environmental stewardship should fall by the wayside.

The Telegraph reports that a week ago today, West Mercia police, obedient to safety regulations, left a five-year-old trapped in a submerged car for close to two hours waiting for properly-trained specialists to arrive.

The five-year-old girl, her-six year-old brother and their father Chris Grady were in the car when it plunged into the river Avon in Evesham, Worcestershire, on Thursday morning.

Mr Grady and his son Ryan, managed to escape from the submerged car. They were helped clear by police officers on the riverbank.

However, Mr Grady’s daughter, Gabrielle, was trapped inside the vehicle for 97 minutes before the closest police dive team, based in the next county, could arrive. The divers then took a further 12 minutes to rescue her.

The officers already on the scene were prevented from diving in earlier to rescue her by police safety regulations.

The little girl remained in a critical state in hospital yesterday while her brother yesterday began to make a recovery.

He was well enough to sit up in bed and talk to family at his bedside.

West Mercia police admitted last night that safety regulations barred normal police officers from jumping into rivers to try to save people.

A police spokesman said the closest available police dive team was Avon and Somerset constabulary.

“Their team arrived within 97 minutes of the original request being made.

“Once they had arrived it took only a further 12 minutes to rescue the child from the submerged vehicle.

“At the time of the original request Avon and Somerset Dive Team were involved in an underwater search for a missing person in Gloucestershire.

“Police officers are not trained or equipped to enter rivers in order to rescue people.

“They are trained and equipped to make rescues from riverbanks.

“The risk involved in untrained and ill-equipped officers entering the water in these circumstances are generally too high to contemplate.

The American Pseudo-Intelligentsia desires above all things that the United States should become ever more like Europe. The tragedy in Worcestershire demonstrates that the brave new Progressive world all tidily ruled over and arranged into order by centralized authority leaves no room for initiative, improvisation, and reckless courage, no room for humanity. Yet, in a real emergency, it is precisely the unruly individual, the human being willing to risk everything and to ignore the rulebook, that makes the critical difference. They’ve done an excellent job of eliminating people like that in the socialist bureaucracies of modern Europe, including Britain.

Van Halen performs Jump

British DJ Steve Penk put on the Van Halen hit Jump (3:48 video) after the M60 was shut down while police attempted to talk down a suicidal woman.

The Daily Mail reports that mental heath charities were not amused. The intended suicide did jump from the 30′ highway overpass, but sustained only minor injuries. Penk remains unrepentant.

Senior advocate of the European Court of Justice Paolo Mengozzi denounced British suspension of welfare benefits to wives of persons believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda or the Taliban in a 26-page written opinion which declared welfare support to be a human right. A final ruling is expected in a few months.

Terrorist spouses had previous appeals for restoration of income support, child benefit and housing assistance rejected in Britain and subsequently appealed to the European Court of Justice, whose decisions are binding on Britain’s Parliament and courts.

Daily Mail:

Ministers have halted benefit payouts made to the families of suspected terrorists to prevent the money falling into the hands of banned groups. …

Whitehall officials have refused to name the families involved in the test cases – but all three of the husbands are foreign nationals on the United Nations list of international terror suspects.

They have been linked by security officials to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban

The payouts to their wives include income support, child benefit and housing assistance worth ‘several hundred’ pounds a week.