Some crap really does just boggle the hell out of the mind, doesn’t it? Take, for example, the recent colossal kerfuffle over yet another twit who thinks he’s found the tomb of Christ. 🙄

Here we have some dork — and James Cameron too, it turns out — burbling on like he’s some kind of authority when, in fact, he’s nothing more than just another media hack:

A Canadian filmmaker and author claims to have new scientific evidence that could have profound implications for Christianity.

Simcha Jacobovici, from Toronto, is expected to reveal at a news conference in New York on Monday that a tomb he explored under a Jerusalem apartment building once contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

Further, he suggested that the tomb, stored in a warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquity Authority outside Jerusalem, may contain microscopic remains of the Christian saviour’s DNA.

[…]

The boxes were inscribed with the names: Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.

A quick peek around the net reveals that our little Mr. Jackoffski (pictured at right) is an Israeli-born Canadian, and received a B.A. with Honours in Philosophy and Political Science from McGill University. That’s right, two degrees: one in bullshitology political science and the other in bafflegab philosophy.

Philosophy, of course, is a Greek word that means “why do something about it when you can drone on endlessly about it with needlessly big words” that was best described by Ambrose Bierce as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” Let’s face it, kids; the only thing you can really do with a degree in philosophy is teach philosophy. And I think everybody here already knows what I think about a degree in polisci…

But enough about what he’s got. Let’s see what he hasn’t got. I wonder if he has any degrees in…

Archaeology? Nope.
Anthropology? Nope.
Theology? Nope.
Okay, how about codicology or philology? Nope.
Damn. The guy’s gotta at least have one in history, right?? Nope.

The article could just as easily — and just as accurately — be headlined: “Dude With Camcorder Says Outrageous Shit.” But you just know that the MSM and all the usual loopy Lefty suspects are going to be all over this like maggots on Saddam Hussein. Okay, tell ya what we’re gonna do…

Just for the moment, we’re going to forget that I’m Christian and therefore already know that Christ’s tomb is empty and this dolt is just yapping out of his arse. Let’s just examine his excuse for methodology for a few seconds, shall we?

University of Toronto mathematician Dr. Andrey Feuerverger calculated the odds at one in 600; while Dr. James Tabor, chair of the department of religion at the University of North Carolina, placed the odds at one in 42 million.

“If you took the entire population of Jerusalem at the time and put it in a stadium, and asked everyone named Jesus to stand up, you’d have about 2,700 men,” Tabor said. “Then you’d ask only those with a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary to remain standing. And then those with a brother named Yose and a brother named James. Statistically, you end up with one person.”

So here we are, over two thousand years later, and some twit finds a tomb with the name tags of “Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.” All of these were common names at the time. It’s like finding the tomb of “Jim son of John, Rob son of Jim, Linda, Jenny, John and Mike.” It means virtually nothing. The most important thing though, is that this whole theory hinges on one grasping compulsion: if this is, in fact, a tomb containing the remains of Jesus, Mary and Joseph themselves, then the mitochondrial DNA from the “Jesus” remains absolutely must be consistent with mtDNA from the “Mary” remains. There is no way around this whatsoever; NONE.

So, without further ado, allow me to throw in the monkey wrench (from the same article, no less)…

According to Jewish custom, the bones have long since been reburied in unmarked graves in Israel. But tests conducted at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., on DNA obtained from the Jesus and Mary tomb and show that the two individuals were not maternally related.

Not… Maternally… Related… How’s that for lowering the boom? Ah, but what’s a little snag like that when your head’s so far up your ass you chew your food twice? You don’t really think that you let inconvenient little things like a few piddling facts get in your way when you’re a card-carrying kook, now, do you? Hell no; you just decide to pull a Homer Simpson and pull your arms out of the tar with your face. Undaunted by having his little attention-whore balloon popped, he promptly shifted gears and fell back on the same old, tired, predictable, discredited, Gnostic bullshit…

“Perhaps Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as the DNA results from the Talpiot ossuaries suggest and perhaps their union was kept secret to protect a potential dynasty – a secret hidden through the ages,” narrator Ron White says in the documentary.

“A secret we just may be able to uncover in the holy family tomb.”

Gimme a friggin’ break. Okay… Let’s assume for a minute that “Mary” isn’t genetically related to anybody else in the tomb; marriage would be a reasonable hypothesis to explain her presence. But married to whom? There are four sets of male remains in that tomb, folks, and nary a marriage certificate to be found. It’s an assumption perched on a presupposition built on a conceit. All in all, a pretty rickety affair.

On the bright side though, for a change, the gobsmacking of this idiocy isn’t confined to just folks like me. For example…

“It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave,” Kloner said. “The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time.”

Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker’s claim that the James Ossuary – the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel – might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.

“I don’t think the James Ossuary came from the same cave,” said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. “If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus.”

Nice to see scientists being scientists for a change.

Where, oh where, oh where do I begin with this one? Let’s face it, boys and girls, we all knew damned well that it wasn’t going to be too long before the Librano$ got to the point where the itch to get their hands back on the national till and back to the business of buggering up the country got to be just too much not to scratch. Lo and behold, in the Commons yesterday, the Fiberals got that collective hind leg up behind their ears and went at it like a 70-year-old viagra addict in a $2 cathouse with a fistful of fifties.

On the off chance that you’ve been either spelunking or in a coma for the last few days, here’s what happened: Greener-than-thou Steffy took his stiffy a little too seriously yesterday and led the Kyoto Kook parade even further off to the Loopy Left when they passed Bill C-ThroughRoseyGlasses (AKA Bill C-288), demanding that the Conservative government under HMPM Harper come up with a plan to meet Kyoto’s “why yes, the moon really is made of green cheese” targets by 2012 . . . within 60 days. Yup, two months. Bibbitty-bobbitty-boo; just like that. Come to think of it, I do know exactly where to begin with this! Now why in the world didn’t I think of it in the first place?? It’s so obvious…

Dear Santa,

Thank you very much for heeding my letter that I sent you back in November. I know that I asked for a Rae Bomb and I should have trusted in your judgement (after all, you’ve been at this a lot longer than I’ve been around). The gift of Steffy “no relation” Dion as national UberGrit is clearly MUCH better and more fun than a Rae Bomb would ever have been. I’ll never doubt you again.

Your friend,
Dennis

This really is an early Christmas present for a guy like me. And it fits in so nicely, too, with the theme that I was going to work on before I got so rudely interrupted there…

Just who the hell does little M. “Do You Think It’s Easy To Make Priorities” think he is, anyway? This little arsehole — along with the Blocheads and Taliban Jack!’s YGBKMP — actually has the gall to demand that Harper do in two months what his party, and he himself as environment minister, utterly failed to do in more than a decade in power: come up with a plan to implement Kyoto by 2012.

And if that didn’t get your bullshitometer up to the redline, try this one on for size: li’l Steffy himself said, on the record to columnist John Ivison, that there was NO POSSIBLE WAY TO IMPLEMENT THE KYOTO TARGETS WITHIN THAT TIMEFRAME and that “energy will be the next crisis for the economy of the world.” See for yourself (emphasis mine, of course):

Dion admits Liberals’ Kyoto goal impossible

National Post 2006-07-01 John Ivison

OTTAWA – Former environment minister Stephane Dion has conceded that a future Liberal government would be unable to meet its Kyoto commitment of reducing greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels.

Mr. Dion, a candidate for the Liberal leadership, said that if he became prime minister after an election next year, he would try to reduce emissions, which are thought to contribute to global warming.

“In 2008, I will be part of Kyoto, but I will say to the world I don’t think I will make it. Everyone is saying target, target. But … it is to be more than to reach a target. It’s to change the economy. It’s to have resource productivity, energy efficiency when we know that energy will be the next crisis for the economy of the world.”

Canada signed up to reduce emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but government statistics suggest they are currently around 35% above that level. The Conservative government has said it will not be able to meet Canada’s targets for the first-phase of the Kyoto accord — an admission that has led Liberal critics to charge that the Tories have abandoned Kyoto.

The Liberal party maintains its climate-change plans would meet the 2012 deadline. Mr. Dion is the first senior party figure to cast doubt on that claim.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said Mr. Dion’s comments were cause for concern. “It is concerning that the Liberals were prepared to mislead Canadians on the Kyoto targets even though the former Liberal environment minister now admits the targets were unachievable.”

Mr. Dion defended the Liberal record on Kyoto by saying Canada signed on for far-tougher targets than many other countries. “If France does nothing between 1990 and 2010, their emissions are likely to grow by 4%. If Canada does nothing, emissions grow by 44%.”

He said the election of George W. Bush, and the subsequent U.S. decision to pull out of Kyoto, left Canadian industry, and some Cabinet ministers, uneasy with the government’s climate-change plan. [of COURSE! It’s all Bush’s fault!! Gimme a fucking break 🙄 -D]

Mr. Dion advocates binding commitments for industry to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions through a domestic trading system. Companies able to cut their emissions below target levels could then sell credits to less energy efficient businesses. He said he is also working on environmental tax reform and would put the environment at the centre of government. “All my ministries will be green. Maybe I’ll make one department of industry and the environment — a department of sustainability. That’s not a commitment, but if you want to change the mind, you have to change structures.”

So, he does nothing, admits that nothing can be done, and then screeches like a shrill schoolmarm at the Tories for not waving the magic wand and making it all disappear. The Grits even try to accuse Harper of “act(ing) like an emperor” if he chooses to ignore their little parliamentary temper tantrum (which I think he should).

Hell, even Green Party Ubertreehugger Elizabeth May isn’t being fooled by this bullshit publicity stunt. I can’t help but wonder, though… Which do you think is going to get through the Fiberal-dominated Senate first, hmmm? The Federal Accountability Act (which would make the kind of corruption that is the Grits’ stick-in-trade one hell of a lot harder in the future), Bill S-24 (the Senate Tenure Bill), or this little Grit-spawned publicity stunt? Anybody feel like laying some money down on it?

All I can say is: Please, please, please let this trigger an election!! And let it happen BEFORE John Q. Canuck has the chance to doze back off again. Let it happen before the Canadian public can foget that Dion has flip-flopped on everything from Kyoto to Afghanistan to antiterror legislation. Real quick, in point form:

• Librano$ sign Kyoto (a pipe dream), do nothing, blame Tories
• Librano$ pass antiterror measures, now call them draconian
• Librano$ send troops to Afghanistan, now want to run away
• Librano$ to nominate candidates based on crotch plumbing, not merit
• Librano$ get to boot for Adscamâ„¢, Dion welcomes back scammer into the party fold

It’s one thing to be a populist; it’s another thing entirely to make a political career out of twisting in the wind of public opinion. I could go on, but why bother? The facts are that he’s out of touch with regular Canadians, he’s an elitist and he’s weak. The Grits picked everybody’s third choice to lead their party and, as the ads said, Stephane Dion is NOT a leader. Never has been and never will be. The little snot even mewled like a petulant child when someone pointed out that there really IS a problem with wanting to be the leader of one country while being a citizen of another!

Yup. Best Christmas present a little Rightwing nutjob like me ever got. Can we go to the polls now?

. . . Unless we give ourselves over unquestioningly to the bloated bureaucracy of the environmentalists, which will lead us to the Promised Land of Kyoto; flowing with the milk and honey of granola-grindin’ Gaia-goodness.

So speaketh the High Priests of The Environment and all their apostles; with one voice, for apostasy against Kyotology will not be tolerated. And don’t fool yourselves, this shit really has become one hell of a lot like some loopy cult. As Pale, over at IAM(also)CANADIAN, put it a few days ago [links added]:

The Church of Kyotology reminds me of Scientology (without the cool alien thing!)

Kyotology attacks free speech. Any questioning of the god Kyoto results in cries of “Global Warming” denier!

Kyotology says that public statements against Kyotology such as writing anti-Kyotology letters to the papers and in blogs is a “Suppressive Act” – a high crime, according to “Introduction to Kyotology Ethics.”

In accordance with this policy (and others like it), Kyotology has tried to silence all criticism.

Kyotology betrays the trust of well-intentioned people by falsely claiming to have a scientifically-proven technology to save the world.

Couldn’t have said it better myself (which, of course, is why I plagiarized Pale). The maniacal, rabid reaction of the enviro-Left to anyone that doesn’t unquestioningly bow down before whatever the latest prophecy of doom happens to be is downright alarming. You don’t even need to outright argue with them to get yourself branded a heretic, either. Just asking for clarification or, Goddess forbid, proof 😯 of their wild claims is enough to earn you the kind of contempt usually reserved for twitchy loners parked near playgrounds with cars full of candy.

Before we go any further, let’s get a few things straight, shall we? I like the outdoors, Bambi’s mom is pretty damned tasty (especially as sausages) and when I go fishing, I have this funny habit of wanting to actually eat what I pull out of the water. Hell, I even used to work for Greenpeace, for cryin’ out loud.  So yes, I do give a shit about the environment, just not for the same reasons as the Cultists of Kyoto. So, you ask; if I’m such an environmentally-friendly guy, why do I have a problem with Kyoto?

Actually, I don’t have a problem with Kyoto, I have a lot of problems with Kyoto. AND with the whole “global warming” thing in general. Going into each and every damned one of them here and now would make for one hell of a bulky posting — and likely give me carpal tunnel syndrome in the process — so what I’m going to do, just for a start, is to list a few of the things about “global warming” that get on my nerves. I’ll get into each one in more detail in later rants but for now, here are the the beefs that just pop off the top of my head:

1. They’re bullshitting me.
   “Global warming,” as in the human-cause-only scenario that’s being shrieked about so much now, is only a theory and is NOT scientifically proven as a fact like we keep being told.
2. Ad Hominem cuts no ice with me.
   And that’s the method of choice for the EnviroNazis that come up against anyone that questions them. As Orwell once said: “Some things are true even if The Daily Telegraph says they are true.”
3. Environmental science has been hijacked by political agendas.
   This has been happening since the fall of the Soviet Union left an assortment of Marxists and other miscellaneous malcontents adrift in the sea of their failed ideas, looking for someplace to put in to port.
4. Their story keeps changing.
   Their mid-range prediction for temperature rise in the next 100 years has dropped by more than a third and they chopped the mean sea-level rise prediction by more than 50% — just since the last IPCC report in 2001. I have yet to find any number that isn’t constantly getting fudged. Who’s running these figures? The guys at Enron??
5. I’ve heard all this before.
   All the same different dire predictions, the same rhetoric against critics, all of it. Just with a different boogeyman. None of the predictions came true.
6. They are fanatics.
   As Churchill once observed, “a fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” And, like true fanatics, they adamantly refuse to listen to any explanation not approved for their consumption by the high priests of their “movement,” no matter how sound the reasoning may be.
7. They misrepresent themselves.
   They claim a “consensus” amongst experts even when those same experts — like Dr. Christopher Landsea, a leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms, who resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report because the IPCC was “motivated by pre-conceived agendas” and was “scientifically unsound” — have no such unanimity whatsoever.
8. Even if they DID have it, consensus does NOT equal truth.
   Once upon a time, consensus was that the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth and Milli Vanilli were singers. And we know how those turned out.
9. They attempt to silence those who disagree with them.
   This, more than anything else, is a sure indication that there’s something rotten in Denmark. You don’t need to read Nineteen Eighty Four to know that anybody that wants their side to be the only one heard has only their interests in mind. Truth is a funny thing; it doesn’t need to be the only voice heard in order for it to survive. It does just fine without any suppression of dissent being needed.

Not a bad list for stuff just off the top of my head. Keep an eye open for the next few days or so while I address each one separately.

Sometimes you find things in the darnedest places. Anybody with eyes and ears is aware of the numerous culture clashes that have been biting at our collective backsides across the country — and most others in the free Western world — for years now. From veils on drivers licenses to kirpans in schools to friggin’ Sharia law in Ontario, the traditions and values that form the foundations of our very way of life are being slowly, relentlessly chipped away at, one by one. I’ve known for decades (and flung it from my piehole at just about every opportunity) that it’s only a matter of time before Western societies start to say, “NO MORE. We gave you an inch, you took a mile. Now you will either live by the rules we set or live someplace else. You have no say in this and neither does anyone else. We tried that and it failed; now we do it the hard way.”

Don’t fool yourself, either; it will happen. Despite what those who would turn our civilization inside out say, there are too many of us who simply don’t have it in them to go quietly into the night. Horrors from the fields of Sharpsburg, to the meatgrinder that was the Somme, to the leveling of Dresden and Hiroshima bear witness to just what we’re capable of when some threat to our way of life awakens the dark things that slumber beneath our civilized veneer.

Fortunately, our inner demons are slow to rouse, and rarely fully awaken. But it really only was just a matter of time before heels began to dig in; even here in nice, tolerant Canada. The only question was, where? Ironically, the answer came from what some consider to be pretty much the un-ballsiest region of the country:

HEROUXVILLE, QUE. — A sign at the entrance of this rural Quebec town says: Herouxville welcomes you.

Unless, that is, you plan on stoning a woman to death, sending your kids to school with a kirpan or covering your face other than on Halloween.

The town council of Herouxville, a sleepy town dominated by a towering Roman Catholic church, has adopted a declaration of “norms” that it says would-be immigrants should be aware of before they settle in this town. Among them, it is forbidden to stone women or burn them with acid.

Children cannot carry weapons to school. That includes ceremonial religious daggers such as kirpans, even though the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Sikhs can carry kirpans in schools.

However, children can swim in a pool with other children — boys and girls alike — because they can’t be segregated.

And for the record, female police officers in Herouxville, 165 kilometres northwest of Montreal, can arrest male suspects. Also part of the declaration is that women can drive, dance and make decisions on their own.

You’d think that most of those things would go without saying, wouldn’t you? But many people would be surprised to learn just how many people come here from Outer Backwardsistan or wherever-the-hell and think that the only rules that matter are the ones that they bring with them (not to mention how far backwards some are willing to bend over to accommodate that mindset)…

Honour killings in Calgary:
What Mukesh and the Dulays didn’t know was Kulvinder’s brother Daljit, furious over the marriage that went against the family’s wishes, hired a private investigator to track down the couple so he could carry out a so-called honour killing.

Female cops in Montreal second-class:
The article, published in the October issue of the internal newsletter L’Heure Juste, is part of a series of features on different religions and cultures, and aims to assist officers who find themselves in potentially awkward situations, said a police spokeswoman.

“That’s the reality,” said Insp. Joanne Paquin. “If we don’t understand the differences of all those cultures, maybe we won’t respond the right way.”

But the Montreal Police Brotherhood insists the force has gone too far, accusing it of denigrating its female officers by suggesting they can’t do the job alone.

Husbands banned from prenatal classes:
Pendant plusieurs mois, le CLSC de Parc-Extension a refusé systématiquement que les hommes assistent à ses cours prénataux pour accommoder des femmes musulmanes, hindoues ou sikhs.

Si des femmes souhaitaient quand même suivre un cours prénatal avec leur conjoint, elles étaient obligées de se rendre au CLSC Côte-des-Neiges ou au CLSC Métro.

Gender-restricted times at public swimming pools, weapons in schools, blocking out gym windows if there’s women in them, a pic of a veil on your driver’s license (or passport, even), the list gets exhausting if you think about it too much. Each and every one another chip out of the foundation that props up all the freedoms that we have so cavalierly come to take for granted.

And — golly gumbucks, who’da thunk it? — the usual suspects over at the Ministry Of What You Should Think and all the others in the standard list of malcontents are, naturally, hollering their pointy little heads off with all the tired, old, predictable accusations…

But some Muslim leaders have called the code a thinly-veiled example of xenophobia.

“Racism is coming out of the woodwork now, and it’s not being obscure or subtle,” said Salaam Elmenyawi of the Muslim Council of Montreal.

Of course it is. 🙄 Anything that isn’t complete capitulation to somebody else’s way of life that they trundled over here from wherever must be racism.

Well, guess what, smartasses? That bullshit doesn’t seem to be packing as much of a punch as it used to. More and more people — whether they be in Canada, France, the Netherlands or elsewhere — are beginning to demand a real debate on the issue of what has come to be known as “reasonable accommodation” that doesn’t involve hysterics and accusations of bigotry. You’ll note that I said DEMAND, not ASK FOR.

And the more you look, the more you realize that the loopy Left and its cadre of multicultists just isn’t up to that task. After all, hysteria and slurs are all they have to work with…

I cracked my Freeps this morning and whaddaya know? News, both good and annoying. The annoying part is the my city is currently harbouring Michigan’s Matt David Lowell, a Yank deserter who has chosen to tuck tail and scurry north of the border rather than do the duty that he swore to do. The good part is that this little bugger has just gotten the word from the Immigration and Refugee Board on how his application for refugee status went.

Refugee from the United States. From arguably the freest country in the world; a place where you can go from baggage handler to billionaire; where nobody ever starves, anybody can vote (and “anybody can become president; that’s one of the risks you take” 🙂 ) and political dissidents have a habit of not disappearing. In different circumstances, I could probably laugh my balls off at that idea.

But these aren’t different circumstances. This is my country and this gutless prick is trying to pass himself off as a refugee. The Immigration and Refugee Board issued their decision in typical bureaucratic style, taking eight damn pages to say one lousy word:

Fuggeddaboudit.

But the recent immigration board decision likely means Lowell could be shipped back to the U.S. within the next year.

His punishment for desertion, the board’s decision reads, wouldn’t “amount to persecution or . . . cruel and unusual punishment” — factors that can lead to successful refugee claims in Canada.

Gee whiz, the damn bureaucrats got something right for a change. I just have one question left: what the hell’s with that “shipped back to the U.S. within the next year” bullshit? What’s the God damned holdup? I haven’t been able to confirm it, but I’m pretty friggin’ sure that this bastard probably has a warrant for his arrest south of the border.

In other words, he’s a wanted criminal. Canada and the US have an extradition treaty, remember? That means that if somebody commits a crime in Canada and then screws off to the States, they ship his sorry ass right back to us. That treaty works both ways.

Remember what happened the last time some American scumbag tried to hang his hat on this side of the border? Everybody totally flipped their wigs. Some even suggested that he should be stuffed in a trunk and dropped on the American side of the border, and not necessarily on dry land. So why the deafening silence over Lowell’s presence in my home and native land?

Oh yeah, I forgot; Lowell’s not a scumbag. He’s not some gutless waste of skin who VOLUNTEERED for military service in time of war only to — when the time came to actually DO his duty — tuck tail and run, leaving the other men in his unit to pick up the slack. No, no, boys and girls. The high an’ mighty Matty Davey Lowell is that Holiest Of The Holies of the anti-military nutjob cult: a Conscientious Objector.

What utter bullshit. This asshole wasn’t drafted, he volunteered, just like every other soldier in the American Armed Forces. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting into; he signed up after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. There is no way in hell that he couldn’t have known that he was going to get sent into combat. Say what you want to about the US military’s admittance standards when it comes to intelligence, but they aren’t THAT damned low. Now, he pukes up the most relentlessly recycled of the trendy antiwar pap right on cue to anyone that will listen: “I wanted to go to Afghanistan, not Iraq!”

More bullshit. This shithead wants us to think that it’s been soldiers’ God-given right down through the ages to pick and choose what orders they follow and what ones they don’t. Any idiot knows without even joining the army that, especially in wartime, soldiers exist for three reasons and ONLY three reasons: killing, dying, and doing as we’re told. Pretty it up and dump whatever euphemisms you want on it but those three are what it all boils down to, because that’s how you win a war. Period.

So spare me the song and dance about how this chickenshit’s supposed morals. He’s a coward, plain and simple.  People with principles don’t run for the hills, they take a stand.
Finally, while we’re blowing wind out our asses about conscientious objectors, bear this in mind: Fred Topham was a conscientious objector. Because of his faith, he refused to carry a weapon but he sure as hell didn’t run away, either. For those of you not familiar with “Toppy’s” story:

On 24th March 1945, Corporal Topham, a medical orderly, parachuted with his Battalion on to a strongly defended area east of the Rhine. At about 11:00 hours, whilst treating casualties sustained in the drop, a cry for help came from a wounded man in the open. Two medical orderlies from a field ambulance went out to this man in succession but both were killed as they knelt beside the casualty. Without hesitation and on his own initiative, Corporal Toham went forward through intense fire to replace the orderlies who had been killed before his eyes. As he worked on the wounded man, he was himself shot in the face. In spite of severe bleeding and intense pain, he never faltered in his task.

Having completed immediate first aid, he carried the wounded man steadily and slowly back through continuous fire to the shelter of a wood. During the next two hours Corporal Topham refused all offers of medical help for his own wounds. He worked most devotedly throughout this period to bring in wounded, showing complete disregard for the heavy and accurate enemy fire.

On his way back to his company he came across a carrier which had received a direct hit. Enemy mortar bombs were still dropping around, and the carrier itself was burning fiercely and its own mortar ammunition was exploding. An experienced officer on the spot had warned all not to approach the carrier. Corporal Topham, however, immediately went out alone in spite of the blasting ammunition and enemy fire, and rescued the three occupants of the carrier. He brought these men back across the open and although one died almost immediately afterwards, he arranged for the evacuation of the other two, who undoubtedly owe their lives to him.

This N.C.O. showed sustained gallantry of the highest order. For six hours, most of the time in great pain, he performed a series of acts of outstanding bravery and his magnificent and selfless courage inspired all those who witnessed it.

London Gazette, 3 August 1945

For his valour and courage under fire, Frederick George Topham was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award on the British Commonwealth for the recognition of valour in the face of the enemy. The next time you want to call some chickenshit like Matt Lowell a “conscientious objector,” take a second to consider what yardstick you should be using to define that.

As for Lowell, the bottom of the Freeps article has this little tidbit:

IF YOU GO

What: Public meeting for those interested in resisting the Iraq war and offering support to military resisters.

When: Thursday, 7 p.m.

Where: Tolpuddle housing co-operative, common room, 380 Adelaide St., at King Street, in London.

Who: Speakers, including a local war resister.

“Local war resister.” Gee, I wonder who that could possible be? So it looks like little Matty’s going to try to cash in his Andy Warhol minutes. Feel free to turn our and make your opinions known as well.

Hey, Matty…
You say that you’re “so sick of running” and “don’t want to have to look over [your] shoulder every day, wondering if this is the day somebody comes to [you] and says, ‘What you did was wrong’…?”  The solution is simple: get your worthless little chickenshit ass the hell back to Fort Lewis, stand in front of that Court Martial and face the consequences of your choice.

You say you’re no coward; I say prove it.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to part two of my run for that li’l old fatwa brass ring. In case you missed yesterday’s post on this, I’m putting up a few YouTube vids that were filmed inside some British mosques by an undercover reporter with Channel 4.

So far, so good. Keep that hate mail rolling in because, you know, that’s the best way to get a guy like me to toe the line.