I’m grateful it’s so cold outside.  Not just bitterly cold, but skin-numbing cold.  Frostbite cold.  Not to mention windy, making the weather even more unpleasant, maybe dangerous.  (Much warmer though, than what the exiles face in the novel Quantum Cannibals)

I’m Grateful for Wood

Maybe I should go chop some firewood.  On a cold day like this you can go through a stack of wood pretty damned quick.  It’s supposed to cool down later this week, so even a full cord might not be enough.  Need to split a lot of pine to keep warm in this weather.

I’m getting old for that, though.  The usual ailments of age prevent me from swinging an axe like I used to, carrying armfuls of logs over to the fire.  Besides which, it’s cold out there.  Chopping wood warms you up, but it’s still damned cold.  Not only that, my city has banned fireplaces and wood stoves, unless they are some damned high-tech device that burn clean, that don’t emit carbon.  Hell, wood is carbon.  I’m carbon, everything alive is carbon.

I’m Grateful For Oil

Yes, keeping the wood fire burning is going to be a problem.  Maybe instead I’ll just phone the oil company to come fill up my tank.  But it’s not really necessary.  They have a formula that tells them when I need oil, and then they come on their own.  It’s real convenient, and I’m grateful for it.  I don’t have to pay the driver; the company just puts it on my credit card, and emails me about it.

Sure is a lot easier than sharpening my axe, standing outside and splitting pine, then carrying the whole damned thing inside.  My neighbors would be pissed at me anyways if I cut down the trees around my backyard.  Would also be in violation of municipal bylaws. Be a hell of a chore to have a sweet-smelling

fire, to keep warm naturally.  I sure am grateful to the oil company that makes the delivery.  I’m grateful for the rail companies, the shipping lines that bring the oil from the refineries.  Would be grateful to the pipeline companies that transported the oil, but the damned environmentalists blocked them.  So the heating oil in my tank comes from places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.  Those self-righteous “progressives” are forcing me to send money to some of the meanest places on earth.

I’m grateful, but those railways aren’t safe.  Ask the people of Lac Megantic, where an oil train that was parked for the night killed forty-seven people.  My town

is surrounded by railroad tracks, and I got to tell you, I don’t feel that comfortable when those oil cars go rumbling by.

I’m grateful for my electricity.  If it wasn’t so cold, my heat pump would be warming my house, wringing heat out of the cold outside air and stashing it inside.  I’m grateful for the dependable power that runs it, and for the ingenious people who thought of using winter cold to heat a home.

I’m Grateful I’m Not Progressive

Got to tell you, when I was younger I was one of those self-righteous “progressives” trying to get in the way of energy.  The government wanted to build a bunch of dams up north; the Indians and Eskimos didn’t want them to.  I was part of the team collecting proof that the natives could use in court.  To make a long story short, the dams got built, but the Cree Indians and the Inuit got really good deals that made their lives a lot better.  Hey, a community of four hundred people has its own five-million dollar airstrip, long enough to handle jets.

When I was living in a tipi with a Cree family, I didn’t get too bothered when the temperature hit forty below at night.  The head of the family, not me, was the one who got up before sunrise to bring in wood and get the  fire started, as I stayed snug in my sleeping bag.  I was grateful not to get up till the place warmed up.

I’m the head of the family now (okay, my wife is).  It’s my job to warm up the house in the morning.  So I trudge down to the thermostat, press a button a couple of times, and let the furnace do its job.  I could program the thermostat, but I like doing things manually.  It’s how I ‘rough it’ these days.

I don’t want to be an ingrate, so I ‘like’ and ‘share’ Facebook posts promoting rational oil development.  Yeah, I’m a real activist.  I write letters to my Member of Parliament, to my newspaper (digital edition).  I talk to people about oil, about electricity.  I listen too, when my Indian friends tell me of the risks of a pipeline, the treaties that were ignored, the people who were harmed.

Everything has its dangers, everything has its risks.  I’d be grateful if everybody bitching about oil thought about how much better it’s made our lives, about the dangers of having to live without it.  I don’t want to go outside now to split wood.  I’m too old, it’s too damned cold, and anyways I got rid of my axe a long time ago.

The post I’m Grateful It’s Cold appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

Sympathy for the Devil Victims

After the Islamic terror attack in Nice, politicians around the world expressed their sympathy with the people of France, sending warm thoughts and prayers.  Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada said “Our sympathy is with the victims.” Leung Chun-ying of Hong Kong expressed his “deepest sympathies” with the French people.  Hillary Clinton’s “thoughts and prayers” were with the families of the killed and injured.  Julie Bishop, the Foreign Minister of Australia’s “thoughts and sympathies” were with the victims and their families.”

In the meantime, security services were investigating the massacre, trying to figure out the motive and connections of a killer yelling “allah achbar.”  Same thing in Orlando, in Paris, and at many terror attacks.  Why did they do it, asked the investigators.  Were the terrorists acting alone?  Does this mean war?   Can’t be!

Let me save the investigators some time and money.  In each case the killer(s) did it for the cause of Allah.  They weren’t acting alone.  They were part of a network of 1.6 billion Muslims, whose religion demands that they subdue and dominate the world.  Even though the Orlando shooter and the Nice truck driver may have planned and carried out their killing by themselves, they were motivated by the entity known as “Islam.”

It’s a fragmented outfit, with members killing each other more than they attack outsiders.  Some of its adherents are the most vile, violent people on earth, but there are also sects such as the Sufi and Ahmadiyya who oppose any aggressive activities. Nonetheless, there have been close to thirteen hundred Islamic attacks so far in 2016, leaving twelve thousand dead, and fourteen thousand injured (with most of the victims being members of opposing Muslim sects).

This Means War

Islam’s record of violence is not a modern phenomenon, nor is the barbarity of ISIS.  Historians estimate that eighty million people died in the Islamic conquest of the Indian sub-continent.  Over a hundred and ten million black Africans were killed as a consequence of the Muslim slave trade.  Islam was not spread throughout the world by peaceful missionaries, convincing disbelievers of the beauty of their faith.  This means war.

There used to be resistance.  Much of India was under the thumb of Islam for over eight hundred years, but the population held on to its own beliefs, often under great duress.  When Islam conquered much of the Middle East, destroying Christian holy places, the Church, the European monarchs decided this means war, and the Crusades were organized to take them back.  They failed.  Islam moved on to conquer large swaths of Europe.  At the siege of Vienna in 1683, it appeared ready to over-run the continent.

“…throughout the camp that every man who has infidel prisoners was to put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. 100,000 infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasir-ud-din Umar, a counselor and a man of learning, who, in all his life had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives“.

That war hasn’t ended.  Only the resistance has wound down.  Large swaths of territory in France, Belgium, Sweden, and Germany, are “no-go” zones, no longer under control of their respective governments.  In other areas with significant Muslim populations, crime rates are soaring, as new-comers feel no obligation to respect the laws of the land.  Women and Jews are especially vulnerable targets.  The uber-wealthy pushing to increase immigration have walls around their compounds to protect themselves.  For the rest, the sense of security enjoyed by Europe, and even America, has dissipated.

An Invasion of Values

It’s not an invasion by an army.  It’s rather a set of values that has marched through the Gates of Vienna, this time unopposed by any armies, uncontested by a society that feels values are relative, there is no truth, and that the bad guy is the civilization that has brought untold progress and prosperity to much of the world.  Post modernism, moral relativism, keeps them from understanding what is happening, from realizing that this means war.

Is the fight over?  Is Western civilization about to crumble, to be overtaken by a misogynist, murderous intolerant ideology? Yes, if Western civilization refuses to recognize that it’s at war, a very old war.  Yes, if Western civilization refuses to resist the attackers.

One can only hope that as Islam presses its attacks, in places such as Paris, Cologne, Sweden, San Bernadino, Fort Hood, Orlando, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, it will be impossible to deny that we are under attack.  Sure, many officials deny that the terrorism has anything to do with an Islamic war on the West. It’s isolated incidents, criminals, mentally disturbed loners.  If there’s no army, no organization or terror network the officials can point to, there is nothing they are able to see.  Hopefully, these officials will be voted out of office by people who don’t have walls, don’t have armed security to protect the lives of their loved ones.  People who see the repeated attacks on their way of life, and understand that this means war.

Is Islam so different from the other two Abrahamic religions?  Judea was once a warlike, marauding state, fighting in God’s name.  That was well over two thousand years ago.  Christianity has a bloody history, especially in its record with South American natives.  Though intertwined, the monarch and the Christian faith were distinct entities. And the bloody violence ended hundreds of years ago.  Of the Abrahamic religions, only Islam is in a state of perpetual war.  Maybe they’ll evolve out of it, as did the others.  But can we afford to wait?

Here’s a suggested strategy for Western civilization:

• Identify the enemy: when a terrorist shouts “allah achbar,” believe that he’s doing it for the cause of Allah.
• Identify immediately  all acts of terrorism, rather than conceal or minimize them, whether in the US, Europe, and especially Israel (which has been the canary in the mine-shaft).
• Close all schools and mosques in the West which are funded by Saudi Arabia. The current wave of Islamic aggression has its roots in Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Wahabi movement
• Demand that the Saudi government, and especially Saudi clerics clearly and vehemently denounce and issue fatwas forbidding acts of terror against non-Muslims.
• Expropriate, or if necessary confiscate all critical infrastructure or entities owned by radical Islamic nations or individuals.
• Shut down Islamic propaganda organizations in the West, such as Al Jazeera, and CAIR, and the Nation of Islam.
• Deport any non-citizen who endorses terror against the West.
• Establish that support of terror is treason, with all the consequences that incurs.
• Governments must pacify their no-go zones, establishing government authority and control.
• Enact strict controls over all immigrants, including refugees entering the country. In wartime, it is not discrimination to keep out potential enemy forces.
• Teach the real history of Islam in schools and universities; its death count over the centuries, its role in creating the African slave trade, its taking of European slaves.  Teach that America’s first war was against marauding North African Arabs.  Explain the role of women, the fate of homosexuals, the intolerance towards non-believers.
• Fight an all-out war against terror organizations on their home turf, whether Iraq, Afghanistan or Qatar.
• Above all, have the will to defeat a ruthless enemy that has been coming for you for fifteen hundred years.

I look forward to the day when the imams, the muftis, sheikhs, princes and presidents loudly denounce all terrorism, when they encourage their followers to live peacefully with other peoples.  When they say to the infidels “our way is not your way, but you are free to live as you wish.”  Many, many Muslims already feel this way, but are being drowned out by the Jihadists. Unless they speak louder, this means war.

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