Morrow on Narvey.

Walker Morrow reviews Jonathon Narvey's book below. I must be one of the world's most reticent reviewers, so I'll leave it to Walker to do it.

Review: A History of the Middle Eastside, by Jonathon Narvey

by Walker Morrow - 04/02/2011

A History of the Middle Eastside, written by Jonathan Narvey and published late last year, follows a long line of books exploring complicated political issues through satire. And it does it well.

Basically, History is a crime noir allegory for the history of Israel, starting with the influx of European Jews into Israel ( then known as Palestine ) in the late 1940's in the wake of the Second World War, and the Israelis' battle for independence following the withdrawal of the British from the Mandate of Palestine and the UN's creation of the Partition Plan for Palestine.

Review here: http://www.libertaspost.com/blog/2011/02/review-history-middle-eastside-jonathon-narvey.

I hope that in the spirit of good neighbourliness people will read books by our neighbours and friends in this field. Jonathon Narvey is one such friend, as is Walker Morrow. Anything else is a bonus. Narvey is a clever guy and a good writer. I haven't read the book above but my expectation is that he's done a fine job. Please let us know if you agree, and feel free to review this book as well. I might even do so myself if I can bring myself to write a review.

A Man on Fire: A Religious Tragedy

I love spaghetti western movies, particularly Sergio Leone movies with Clint Eastwood starring, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for example. Other good movies, Sam Peckinpah, like The Wild Bunch. I like what I can relate to, which is Western movies. So, somehow a movie about a Black guy who used to work as an assassin for the CIA and who is now a washed-up alcoholic taking on a job as a low-rent body guard for a Mexican businessman's little kid is not what I would have thought to be my cup of cerveza. A Man of Fire isn't promising to me on its face. But I've lived in Mexico City off and on for a number of years and I thought that if nothing else I might like to see some familiar scenery. The plot? Oh, well.

"In Mexico City, a former assassin swears vengeance on those who committed an unspeakable act against the family he was hired to protect."

We've all seen this type of movie many times before, a revenge flick.

A wave of kidnappings has swept through Mexico, feeding a growing sense of panic among its wealthier citizens, especially parents. In one six-day period, there were twenty-four abductions, leading many to hire bodyguards for their children. Into this world enters John Creasy, a burned-out ex-CIA operative/assassin, who has given up on life. Creasy's friend Rayburn brings him to Mexico City to be a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos, daughter of industrialist Samuel Ramos and his wife Lisa. Creasy is not interested in being a bodyguard, especially to a youngster, but for lack of something better to do, he accepts the assignment. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. Creasy's new-found purpose in life is shattered when Pita is kidnapped...

Let me wreck this for you if you're one who is interested in "suspense."

The body guard is protecting a little girl from the possibility of kidnapping. We know she's going to be kidnapped. There's no suspense there. It's what the movie is about. We know too that there is not one sane man on Earth who will invest a red, white and blue cent in a movie project in which a cute kid is murdered by Mexican gangsters because a Black movie star couldn't do his job properly. I would be so fucking outraged at the thought of such a movie that I might set the theatre on fire if ever I encountered such a vile thing on screen. And no, none of that is going to happen this side of Nazi Germany or North Korea. Hollywood won't do that to an audience. We know the girl is going to survive and return to her mom. There is no suspense here. But there is something that I found excellent in this story. I find it beautiful and fine for the soul. And we're talking a Hollywood movie here.

Not especially early in the film, some time after we've seen enough of the character to know enough about him to care, he sits alone in his room with a gun to his head and he pulls the trigger because he hates himself and wants to die. That, sorry to know too much about it, is pretty common. Suicide is easy once one makes up ones mind to do it. The character did, he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. That's what we would expect from any director other than Hitchcock, who killed off Janet Leigh in Psycho in the first third of the film. So nothing happens. Fair enough. The movie can now continue to the point the little girl is kidnapped and the hero fails to protect her. I could have lived well without ever having sat through all that. I was mostly bored by the recovery in hospital and the obligatory scenes of the still wounded hero accumulating an arsenal to do combat with the bad guys. Far more to my liking was what philistines might descry as excessive violence, which I think is about impossible in a good movie. There were some excellent scenes of torture and torment that I completely loved. And then came the good part.

The man on fire was not any longer some typical vigilante out to avenge a wrongful death. He rises and becomes the Wrath of God in the flesh. This late stage of the film is when our hero becomes a Classical Hero, a Tragedy. This guy with guns and bombs and big attitude is going to murder everyone. This is all or nothing, and we know, this being Hollywood, it's going to be All. It stays Tragic in that the hero is dying as he fights, bleeding and fading and not going to make it; and he carries on like he must because he is-- and because life is-- Tragic. Those who did wrong must pay, and he who had no will to live will live long enough to redeem his worthlessness as he becomes a sacrifice to the Good. Why did he survive his suicide attempt? Simply because the bullet in the chamber at the time was a dud. It misfired. He lived just because of that. Stupid, random, arbitrary chance allowed him to continue his miserable life to the point he failed to save a little girl from harm. Maybe it's me and I don't understand the nature of drama, but I hate the man because he failed. I want him to die. He must die because he failed, and I will cheer.

The girl survives, of course, and is reunited with her mom. On the other side of the story, the father is the schemer who set up what was supposed to be a fake kidnapping that would bring him money to rescue his failing business. Our hero confronts him with this, and also presents him with the gun our hero used to attempt suicide. He gives father the bullet that misfired. He leaves father to do as he will. Of course the bullet this time, unlike the first time, does fire. It's good drama because it's good religion. Our hero does die as he must, as he sacrifices himself to save the little girl he failed first time round. Then we can love our hero. He was saved from his vanity to do some great thing. He is redeemed. We are safe in a just world. We witness a right reckoning.

When I read the usual comments by the usual kiddies about religion being the root of all evil I just shake. My head. It aches. Those who complain in imitation of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are more than banal and philistine. They got no sense of the movies. That's not tragedy, it's comedy. But it's not funny. A Man on Fire is tragedy in the best sense. It's religious. A Religious Tragedy.

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

You can't go home again.

I was recently commenting at Green Mountains Homestead that I get homesick badly sometimes, and that in spite of it, I can't see myself going home to a nation run by Obama. Then, moments later, I read this.

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker posts this excerpt about the state of our nation.

Mike Riggs of the Daily Caller reports:

During an exclusive dinner hosted Monday by the Alfalfa Club, Obama adviser Valerie Jarret ...was seated at the head table along with several other big-name politicians and a handful of high-ranking military officials. As an officer sporting several stars walked past Jarrett, she signaled for his attention and said, "I'd like another glass of wine."

Garçon!

White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who was seated next to Jarret, began "cracking up nervously," our tipster said, but no one pointed out to Jarrett that the man sporting a chestful of medals was not her waiter.

"The guy dutifully went up and got her a glass of wine, and then came back and gave it to her and took a seat at the table," our tipster said. "Everyone is in tuxedos and gowns at this thing, but the military people are in full dress uniform."

For full story with comments please turn to:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/02/valerie_jarretts_arrogance.html

I am ashamed. How could people vote for a government like this? Egyptians at least didn't have a choice in the scum-bags ruling them. We do. How did it come to this? What are we going to do?

Rotberg on Egypt

Howard Rotberg, publisher of Jamie Glazov's latest work, available at www.mantuabooks.com., has a post up about Egypt that's worth reading. Here's the introduction:

Howard Rotberg

Egypt: Freedom for Whom?

By Howard Rotberg, Lawyer and writer

One has a natural sympathy for the Egyptian protestors who bemoan the lack of freedom in Egypt under Mubarek. But the question must be asked: Is there any significant movement in Egypt to accept responsibility for developing a political culture based on liberal freedoms and constitutional democracy?

Please turn to the link below:

http://www.tolerance.ca/Article.aspx?ID=103687&L=en

Creduleft (3)

James R. Copland, Paul Howard writing today at City Journal, cover the issue of vaccinations in the Modern world, and in that we see that it's not just Muslims acting like European peasants in the Middle Ages: some up-scale Californians are as superstitious as many Muslims we might meet. I extend that to most Leftists, those who are so wrapped up in the pseudo-science of scientism that they are as credulous as witch-burners and pogromists in Russia. Those who rail about Sarah Palin are no different from those who, in earlier times, were on about witches and Jooos. It is credulity.

Writing about the growth of whooping cough in California, Copland and Howard state: "[M]ore and more parents, worried about the vaccine’s supposed side effects, are choosing to delay vaccinating their children—or not to do it at all.". California, not Nigeria.

[....]

Parental concerns about vaccine safety are mostly wrongheaded. Plaintiffs’ lawyers, eager to translate junk science into jury awards, have long spread misinformation about the dangers of vaccination. They’ve been especially successful among the affluent and well-educated, presumably because those groups have greater access to vaccine pseudoscience.

[....]

In California’s wealthy Marin County, public health official Fred Schwartz reports that parents are “signing waivers to opt out of immunizing kindergarten-bound children.” About 7 percent of all children entering kindergarten in Marin County are unvaccinated, the seventh-highest percentage among California’s 58 counties. It isn’t surprising, then, that Marin County accounts for 15 percent of all California whooping-cough cases, despite having just 0.67 percent of the state’s population.

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0202phjc.html

We might argue that if the intelligentsia in Marin county, the richest and smartest and best educated in the nation, are subjecting their children to whooping cough, then they must know something we idiots who like Sarah Palin do not know. And I agree. They know scientism, a ludicrous belief in science as religion. Their children die due to this credulity. How different are those in America's wealthiest and most successful neighbourhoods different from Muslims obscurantists in Nigeria?

From an old post here, look at Nigeria and other nations to see if there is a significant difference between those places and people and Marin county, California.

Polio is spreading most rapidly in Nigeria and Indonesia, and new cases have cropped up in Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mali, Cameroon, Chad and Eritrea. All told, the number of polio cases worldwide has dropped drastically, from 350,000 in 1988 to 483 in 2001. But last year the figure rose to more than 700.

Rumors have been circulating in Indonesia that polio vaccinations are contrary to Islamic dietary law and are a plot by Christians to secretly sterilize Muslim women and introduce the HIV virus. Similar rumours precipitated a 2003 Nigerian outbreak, when Muslim leaders in the country's northern Kano state forbade inoculations for 10 months. The declaration was later rescinded, though the polio virus has since spread across Africa and to Asia.

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2005/11/polio-in-islamic-countries-is-said-to.html

Sarah Palin is an idiot. Using a cell phone will give you brain cancer. Using a cell phone will make your dick drop off. Or vaccinations will make you go blind.

Muslim clerics' warning of U.S. plot hinders measles vaccinations

The human cost of the paranoia fueled by jihadists. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

KANO, Nigeria -- Accusations by Islamic preachers that vaccines are part of an American anti-Islamic plot are threatening efforts to combat a measles epidemic that has killed hundreds of Nigerian children, health workers say.

Government officials play down the anti-vaccine sentiment, but all the measles deaths have been in Nigeria's north, where authorities had to suspend polio immunizations last year after hard-line clerics fanned similar fears of that vaccine.

Nigeria, whose 130 million people make it Africa's most populous nation, has recorded 20,859 measles cases so far this year. At least 589 victims have died, most of them children younger than 5 and all in the north, the Nigerian Red Cross and the U.N. World Health Organization say.

Southern Nigeria, which is mainly Christian, had only 253 measles cases, and no deaths.

Health services are much better in the south. But the anti-vaccination sentiment in the north, evident from interviews with parents, seems to be a factor.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/03/muslim-clerics-warning-of-us-plot-hinders-measles-vaccinations.html

Yuppies in Marin county, peasants in Nigeria, the Middle Ages? Who can tell the difference any more?

Creduleft (2)

Everything is terrible in the world today because America makes it so. America is a capitalist country, and because of that they not only destroy the environment of North America, they destroy the entire eco-sphere in a mindless and evil pursuit of profit for the greedy few who care not about anything other than mere money and power. The American government is evil in large part because it is run by the Jooos. Everything about America is evil, and the Jooos are the worst of it all. It's simple. Those who don't understand this are stupid like Sarah Palin. This is what we believe.

And now, for some corrective, is a wonderful piece on idiot nostalgia. I love this piece below, and I hope and expect that most here will feel at least as positively about it as I do.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s..html

Modernity is beautiful.

The Killing Trip

I travel for the sake of discovering my own life, making my wandering and poking into a matter of examination of me. Others travel, sometimes on the very seat beside me, for reasons I cannot phathom, to get drunk and laugh at parties at world-renowned archaeological sites, to meet some guy to marry, to say they saw, to watch birds, to eat in fine restaurants, to do any number of things it wouldn't occur to me to think of. I think about them and ask what it all means, why they do what they do and care about it. Everyone has his own voyage of discovery, and mine is one too. I ask others, and sometimes I just wonder, but mostly I have no opinion because I don't know, and I can't know. The lives of others are mostly a mystery, as is mine to me.

Recently there was a smallish piece on the Internet about movie hit-men, comparing different Hollywood versions of the same kind of man engaged in professional murder for hire. Travellers of a different sort, they all act from different motivations, having reasons I cannot phathom, strange people doing something I don't understand.

Of all the movie hit-men I've seen over the years there is only one who interested me as a literary character, Joubert, an Alsatian in Three Days of the Condor. I read the book long in advance of seeing the movie on television recently.

Joubert: Would you move from the window, please?
Janice: I won't scream.
Joubert: I know.

I am taken with the girl's quiet Stoicism, and with the assassin's quiet acknowledgement of it and his grasp. These are people I would like to travel with.

I spent some time in the jungle some years ago with a man who had killed more people than I can grasp. I can't understand how one can kill so many people. And yet, for all his killing, he will die a virgin, never having penetrated anyone meaningfully. He was the difference between a machine and a poet, the two making, the latter creating. In my travels I have seen these things. I am left considering the nature of the soul. Some don't scream. I know this, too. I know the road.

Molly Norris has no Gurkha

Molly Norris is still underground, in hiding from jihadis who want to kill her. They want to kill here in America. American men rose up in her defence but-- but no, they didn't. That's why Molly Norris, ex-Seattle cartoonist girl is still in hiding from jihadis. Maybe too she's hiding because she's ashamed of American men and doesn't want to see them roll their eyes and shuffle off to play video games if she calls out for help. The incident below is not an exact parallel with Norris's case. In the following there was a man on the spot, directly able to act. Molly Norris had the FBI, she had her friends, she had those around her in Seattle, she had all the men of America and some of those now resident in Canada to step up to defend her. But no one did. She fled the city and changed her name and gave up her life as it was for the sake of living in fear under some other name. No man came to her rescue.

Lone Nepali Soldier Defends Potential Rape Victim Against 40 Men

Whoa...holy cow! Every once in a while someone in the world comes along and reminds us what a true hero really looks like. A 35 year-old Gurkha soldier named Bishnu Shrestha was riding a train when he suddenly found himself in the middle of a massive robbery. 40 men armed with knives, swords and guns stormed the train and began robbing the passengers.

Bishnu kept his peace while the gang snatched cell phones, jewelry and cash from other riders. But then, the thugs grabbed the 18 year-old girl sitting next to him and forcefully stripped her naked. Before the bandits could rape the poor girl in front of her helpless parents, Bishnu decided he had enough.

“The girl cried for help, saying ´You are a soldier, please save a sister´,” Shrestha recalled. “I prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister.”

Here's the part of the story that makes you cheer. He pulls out a kukri (i.e. a knife) and proceeds to kill 3 of them, injure 8 of them, and causes the rest to flee. During the battle, he suffered a severe knife injury to his left hand, from which he's now recovered.

Photos, video, and comments here: http://www.logiccool.com/blog/591281-lone-nepali-soldier-defends-potential-rape-victim-against-40-men/

Found at Instapundit.
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