Sunday Post

 

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

Oh, sister, you don't know the half of it:

After Manchester, Mrs May raised the official "Threat Level" from Mildly Perturbed to Somewhat Disturbed or whatever it was, and in order further to reassure the public put soldiers on London's streets. Soldiers aren't really much use at stopping homicidal car drivers or random stabbers. To do that, you'd have to ban motor vehicles and sharp knives, which, given the fecklessness and decadence of Europe's political class, I wouldn't entirely rule out. Absent that, it's unfortunate that the London carnage occurred before Katy Perry, Justin Bieber & Co had had a chance to hold their stupid, useless, poor-taste all-you-need-is-sentimentalist-delusional-crap pop concert for the victims of the Manchester carnage. Maybe they'll cancel it, or maybe they'll make it a twofer.

Meanwhile, even as the politicians trot out the rote response that these attacks "won't change us", everything changes: more armed police, more soldiers, more bollards, more security checks - and smaller lives, fewer liberties, less free speech. London Bridge still stands, but everything else is falling down, in Britain and Europe. ...

The Islamic supremacists want to kill as many infidels by whatever means are to hand. Nor are statistics relevant: If you've lost your only child because she went to an Ariana Grande concert, that's 100 per cent of your kids who are dead. When it comes to deceased loved ones, the only statistical pool that counts is your family, not the nation or the planet.

This is a heartless sophistry from, in large part, the very same people who supported the policies that imported these pathologies to the west. It seems, at a certain level, incredible that you can have two major terrorist attacks in Britain's capital and second largest city in the days before a general election - and yet it will make no difference to Thursday night's result. For who among the major parties is offering any alternative to the disastrous, destructive conventional wisdom?

This is not the London that survived the Blitz. That London had citizens who were stoic in form and who moved with purpose.

This London is no stranger to Islamic terrorism because it refuses to face it. In this London, people "run, hide and tell" because neither they nor their police have means to defend themselves. Their feet - "mechanical" - leave bouquets where seven people were stabbed and run down because such futile, empty gestures are the done thing. This London will get used to dwindling crowds too scared of yet another attack and fewer freedoms and privileges as armed soldiers patrol the streets. Terrorist attacks, as London mayor Sidiq Khan pointed out (before inserting his foot into his mouth with his "... no reason to be alarmed ..." fib) are:

... part and parcel of living in a big city ...

Indeed. Let's just get used to these things like fires, diseases and air raids. Why have a city at all?

If the people of London don't care to eliminate the real reason why people are knifed to death and run down, why should anyone else?


Also:

More than 1,500 people were injured when panic swept through a crowd of Juventus fans watching the Champions League final in a piazza in the northern Italian city of Turin, authorities said Sunday.

The Turin prefect said in a statement that the crowd "was taken by panic and by the psychosis of a terror attack," fearing that a loud noise was caused by attackers. The source of the loud noise that triggered the stampede remained unclear, officials said.

It's like people fear the possible.

Oh, they do!




Please, dear God, yes:

Conservative Senators may have found a way to kill the late Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger’s private member’s bill proposing to make the lyrics of O Canada gender neutral.

The Senate sponsor of the bill to change the national anthem, Independent Senator Frances Lankin, says the “partisan” moves of a “small group” are usurping the majority’s desire to pass the bill, either by holding it up and not allowing it to get to the third reading vote in the Senate, or, if it does come to a vote, by hoping their new amendment to the bill passes, sending it back to the House.

The bill, C-210, officially known as An Act to Amend the National Anthem Act (gender), proposes changing two words in the English version of O Canada from “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command.”

On May 18, Conservative Senator Don Plett moved an amendment to the bill at third reading, replacing the words “in all of” with the words “thou dost in.”

  

If the amendment—which would still make the lyric gender neutral—was to pass, the bill would be sent back to the House, where a new sponsor for the bill would be needed, given Mr. Bélanger’s death in August 2016 of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (also known as ALS and Lou Gehrig’s disease).

However, according to House rules, changing the sponsor of a private member’s bill requires unanimous consent, something Sen. Lankin said she believed would be unlikely, given some Conservative MPs’ opposition to any changes to the national anthem. Without a sponsor, the bill would die.

North Korea not fazed by sanctions:

North Korea "fully rejects" the latest U.N sanctions against its citizens and entities as a "hostile act" and will continue its nuclear weapons development without a delay, its foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday expanded targeted sanctions against North Korea after its repeated missile tests, adopting the first such resolution agreed by the United States and Pyongyang's only major ally China since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.

The sanctions resolution "is a crafty hostile act with the purpose of putting a curb on the DPRK's buildup of nuclear forces, disarming it and causing economic suffocation to it," the foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency. DPRK is short for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

"Whatever sanctions and pressure may follow, we will not flinch from the road to build up nuclear forces which was chosen to defend the sovereignty of the country and the rights to national existence and will move forward towards the final victory," the spokesman said.

And now, some quiet music for the evening: