The Turkish broadcasters of the endlessly fascinating Simpsons cartoon – surely one of the most brilliant creations of the age – have been fined for blasphemy.

Blasphemy! Well done, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie!

This is from ANSAmed:

Just about everything that could be said and written about the super-popular cartoon ‘The Simpsons’ had been, except that it was blasphemous. Now even that ”milestone” has been reached, thanks to the watchdogs of Turkey’s television stations under the Islamic-leaning government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the newspaper Hurriyet, Ankara’s Council of Radio and Television (RTUK) has handed down a TRY 52,951 fine (about 23,000 euros) to the private broadcaster CNBC-E for having broadcast an episode of the cartoon in which ”God is mocked”. In the episode, God goes so far as to offer coffee to the devil. In the eyes of RTUK, this ”can be considered an insult” of a blasphemous nature, and the cartoon was held to encourage young people ”to drink alcohol during New Year’s celebrations in New York City”. What’s more, ”one of the characters insults the religious beliefs of another to induce him to commit murder”, ”the Bible is burnt in public” and ” God and the devil are represented in human form”. ”In a country in which the head of the government thinks that a TV series must be historical documentation, it is entirely normal that the RTUK fails to understand the jokes in a cartoon,” said Hurriyet op-ed writer Mehmet Yilmaz.

Remember the Ayatollah Khomeini said “There are no jokes in Islam.”

As well as the death of freedom, and the death of music, the rise of Islam spells the death of laughter. Those gone, could anything worse happen to humankind?

Let’s blaspheme while we may.

And let those who object accept Bart Simpson’s repeated invitation to his enemies: “Eat my shorts!”

These pictures illustrating the fatuous, rude, jeering behavior of Vice-President Joe Biden during the October 11, 2012, vice-presidential debate between him and Paul Ryan, come from PowerLine:

Not only did Biden lie about the administration’s attempted cover-up of the 9/11/12 murders at the US legation in Libya, but he put on a clown’s performance with grinning, grimacing, and shouting his opponent down, while smugly defending the indefensible, apparently impervious to the fact that a national tragedy has recently occurred.

It wasn’t a debate – only one side arguing his points – but a bullying session. And as Joe Biden, the bully, was under the orders of his Party, he personified the Democrats in all their collective nastiness – the bullying Party.

This is by Libsmack, who sent it to us. Very catchy.

Reuters reports:

A French magazine ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday by portraying him naked in cartoons, threatening to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a lecherous fool.

A video film made by a Californian Coptic Christian which mocks  Muhammad and which the Obama administration is absurdly blaming for the Islamic world going up in flames and al-Qaeda murdering a US ambassador in Libya.

The drawings in satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of U.S. and other Western embassies, the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Riot police were deployed to protect the magazine’s Paris offices after it hit the news stands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing the turbaned figure of Mohammad in a wheelchair.

On the inside pages, several caricatures of the Prophet showed him naked. One, entitled “Mohammad: a star is born”, depicted a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The French government … had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons …

“We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists,” said editor Stephane Charbonnier, who drew the front-page cartoon.

“It shows the climate – everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want – to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave,” he told Reuters.

We like what Charlie Hebdo have done (though we don’t think the cartoons are great). We applaud their courage. But  – only a “small handful of extremists”? Are most of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world serenely tolerant of criticism?

One cartoon, in reference to the scandal over a French magazine’s decision to publish topless photos of the wife of Britain’s Prince William, showed a topless, bearded character with the caption: “Riots in Arab countries after photos of Mrs. Mohammad are published.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized the magazine’s move as a provocation.

So much for the Liberté part of the French national motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

“We saw what happened last week in Libya and in other countries such as Afghanistan,” Fabius told a regular government news conference. “We have to call on all to behave responsibly.”

Except Muslims. They can behave as irresponsibly as they like. Because the French government is afraid of them.

Charlie Hebdo has a long reputation for being provocative. Its Paris offices were firebombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Mohammad, and Charbonnier has been under police guard ever since. …

The French Muslim Council, the main body representing Muslims in France, accused Charlie Hebdo of firing up anti-Muslim sentiment at a sensitive time.

“The CFCM is profoundly worried by this irresponsible act, which in such a fraught climate risks further exacerbating tensions and sparking damaging reactions,” it said.

It is the expression of opinion that must be stopped, you see, not the “damaging reactions”.

Well, that may not be entirely fair:

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the authorities had rejected a request to hold a march against the Mohammad film in Paris.

We wait to see what will happen to the Charlie Hebdo offices, and to Stephane Charbonnier. We hope for his safety. But the savage war of Islam against the rest of us will go on until the West uses all its weapons, of law, argument, wealth, political and military power, and mockery to crush the murderous Muslim hordes storming out of the Dark Ages.

(Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon via Creeping Sharia, where you can see the rest of them – here.)

This short story was written by the late Ronald Chandler, a little-known fiction writer and putatively a distant British relation of the famous American detective-story writer Raymond Chandler. It dates from the late 1980s, but was only found in 2011 among his effects which had been stored in an attic since his disappearance in 2002.

We publish it here for the first time. We think it may cast some light on the debate as to who and what is to blame for the present recession in America.

The Long Good Buy

So the recession is over. At last I can tell the story of the part I played in averting disaster.

Everybody all at once seemed to know the central fact, that the germinal cause of the nation’s economic and moral decline had been isolated, and wide agreement if not complete unanimity had been arrived at as to its nature:

Materialism.

Or, in common parlance, Greed.

So far, so good. But the persons operating against society under the influence of that insidious motive were not yet identified. I decided to put a stop to this subversion. I saw it as my patriotic duty to separate the goats from the sheep and bring the goats to justice.

It was tough going. Fingers pointed everywhere, but no one could finger anybody in particular. Just what sort of acquisitive lunatic was frantically storing up treasure for himself?

Way I saw it, just like if you want to find who’s splashing cash about in the barren reaches of the Third World you look for who’s buying sugar, in the First World maybe it’s cars.

The chase began. Hot foot on a cold trail, I knocked on doors of houses with garages, wandered through multistorey carparks and waylaid drivers, interviewed prospective customers in the glassy premises of motor dealers, strolled through used-car lots, and put my question:

“Can you tell me, sir (or madam), just where is the borderline between need and greed?”

Here’s what I found:

The one-car man (or woman) puts it at the yearning for two cars; the two-car man at the hankering for three cars; the three-car man at the slavering for four cars; and the four-car man, when at last you’ve been ushered into his presence, turns out to be an ascetic on principle, with a withering scorn for what he calls “the gross materialism of contemporary society”. As for the five-car man, his PR spokesman delivered this message: “My client believes in the Marxist slogan ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his need’ and instructs me to add that if you don’t do what you’re told you won’t get anything at all.”

I was getting nowhere. Barking up the wrong boulevard. I needed to think. I nipped into a public building and took the weight off my feet. I looked about me. Empty shelves on all sides. What had they once held? Books. And then it came to me in a flash.

I knew the louse I was after.

You see, when it first became known that the country was  in for a recession, there were many good, wise idealists who didn’t see it as bad thing. They put it that at last folk would be able to turn their attention to the things of “real value”, like culture, since the mad race after material things would just have to stop when the money ran out. But it wasn’t very long before these fine souls opened their eyes in wide dismay when they found that the theatres were closing, the orchestras starving, the art galleries emptying, and the library collections were being broken up and sold abroad. They just had not understood that “real values” cost real money.

All the best things in life cost a lot.

And even crummy things cost something.

That was the clue I’d been looking for. Even crummy things cost something. Those words burnt their way into my brain. And I knew that I was after the no-car man.

It is the no-car man, hoarding his pennies in the piggy and his pounds in the Co-op Bank in pursuance of his plot to abandon himself to the luxury of his first set of wheels, having long coveted his neighbour’s re-sprayed Mini, who is your true, hardened, compunctionless materialist. More often than not he’s also a no-dishwasher man, a no-refrigerator man, a no-microwave man, a no-centralheating man. All these things he wants. Also a water-heater, a clothes washer, a television, a telephone, a computer, a bathtub, an overcoat … The arm of his avarice would reach to the bottom, if there were a bottom, of the catalogue of our consumer civilization.

I caught him alright. This hedonist. This voluptuary.

He was on his way home from his second moonlighting job that evening as a waiter in a strip club. He came quietly.

Of course he had his story to tell. You wouldn’t believe the gas he blew. All about how if he had a car and a refrigerator and a dishwasher and could keep a bit warmer he’d have better health, and more time for the finer things of life. The lies he told! He claimed, for instance, that he didn’t want a car or a telephone just as a Thing, not just for itself, not just to show off with, but as an instrument to help him earn his living.

What a heart-string harpist he was!

He said if his wife had a clothes washer and a vacuum-cleaner she could get out of the house more. They could get to the theatre maybe, or to hear some music, or to read books in the libraries.

This was too much for me.

“You wrecked all that, chum,” I snapped. “I’m the guy who tumbled to your little racket, remember?”

And I told him to save it for the Great Court of Public Opinion.

But the verdict was a foregone conclusion. He was the goat alright. And he knew it.

See the post immediately below, Who lit the Flame?, on the White House “leaks” of  secret information, to the endangerment of agents’ lives.

Video from Reason TV

As a follow-up to our post Questions of statism, March 1, 2012, which stimulated a lively debate on the question of whether there should be a legal right for parents and/or  the state to kill unwanted children, and to what use the dead bodies might be put, we quote the greater part of Jonathan Swift’s essay, A Modest Proposal.

Please note:  it is a satire.  

Cruelty and oppression moved Jonathan Swift to fierce indignation. This was his most forceful expression of it.

*

A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty’s prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating: and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.

Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor’s feast or any other public entertainment. But this and many others I omit, being studious of brevity.

Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand.

I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and ’twas indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. …

As to my self, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect: I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

(From Creeping Sharia)

Meet Sunny.

A Sunny day is a happy day.

Here she talks about those super-villains, Millionaires and Billionaires. And Thousandaires.