Fairey Gannet AEW.3

Found this critter in Pima Air Museum's back lot last month.

It's a British Fairey Gannet set up as an Airborne Early Warning aircraft, with a honking big radome slung beneath her.

The Gannet was unique for it's contra-rotating propellers (one turned in each direction to negate the torque effect) that were spun by what was in effect two separate engines each turning a shaft through what had to be the most complex gearbox ever designed. In flight, one engine could be shut down to conserve fuel and the plane could fly on the other, or both could run and give the plane serious power without serious P-factor trying to twist the plane opposite it's prop rotation.

The British Navy flew these from 1959 until 1978, when the HMS Ark Royal, Britain's last aircraft carrier capable of handing them was retired. Of the 44 AEW variants built, most were scrapped. 5 survive on display in Britain and this is the only one in America. Recently, one straight T-5 version without the radome was returned to airworthy flying status by Shannan Hendricks of New Richmond, Wisconsin, so hopefully we'll see that one on the airshow circuit before long.

Kinda cool--WW1 German U-Boat still visible on British coast.

After all these years.

Then:

Now:

More pics and story at the link.

A monster off the British coast: Rusting hulk of World War One German U-boat emerges after almost a century

Now this is crosswind!

Two planes give it their best try landing at Birmingham, England with a bit of a crosswind.



Needless to say, both aborted and went elsewhere. Sometimes, discretion is indeed the better part of valor.
Full story here.

Nice to know that it's not just the small planes that get screwed over by Mother Nature.

Sub Tour via Streetview.

Thanks to Tom in Alaska for the head's up on this,

Normally I find Google Street View to be intrusive to the point of offensive. Should I ever see one of their cars in my driveway, it may result in a shooting situation. However, in this case, they seem to have done something right with their digital tour of the ex-British submarine HMS Ocelot (S17) which is now on public display as a tourist attraction in Kent.

Click Here for Ocelot Tour via Google Street View

That's cool. You can move all through it and look all around via this thing. I'm impressed.

I also note that the British sold this sub when they didn't need it any more. They sell almost all of their old military equipment to whoever wants it, unlike us here where we destroy it all. If our government sold old subs, I'd buy ex-Clamagore in a heartbeat. Moored in fresh water it'd make a fantastic houseboat.

Britain is officially no longer great.

They say that you can measure a person by the quality of his or her enemies. Well if that's the case, The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is worthy of canonization looking at the sewage overflow of dregs and losers that are out celebrating her demise.

The flames of hatred: 30 years of loathing for Baroness Thatcher explodes in celebrations of her death.

I used to think of the English as always being classy and reserved, but apparently that was the old generation, represented by Baroness Thatcher. This new breed of chavs and professional layabouts that passes for citizenry in that country appears bent on demonstrating that the old ways of respect and courtesy are gone forever, along with all of the other attributes of British culture that made that country so respected the world over.

Damned shame.

RIP, Baroness Thatcher. You did more for England and the world than every one of your detractors and their countless illegitimate kids will ever do.

Brits dump the Browning Hi-Power

Well the British finally went and did it, cashiering their faithful old Browning Hi-Powers after fifty years or so of loyal service.

The new pistol: Glock's Model 17.

Browning gets the bullet! Army replaces trusty pistol with Glock handgun after 50 years

End of an era, indeed. Suddenly I feel so...not young!

Seriously, the Glock is a decent choice (even though Glocks, being plastic, have no souls) but I'm still not giving this one up though.

Why I could not live in Britain

Aside from the fact that they eat nasty food, drive substandard cars on the wrong side of the road and talk funny, I could not give my loyalty to a country that condones and even aids squatters who take over the homes of taxpaying citizens (a fast-growing problem in that once-great nation) while locking up another elderly citizen for merely placing a doll in her home's window.

What we're seeing here is a government that is totally indifferent to the will of the governed and inclined to give preference to any party in a dispute that claims poverty or fear of returning to his or her own country. I could not live under such a system.

On the other hand, I'll bet that I could make an awful lot of money by setting up a company that would instantly and painfully remove squatters from a house, especially if I could hire enough ex-SAS guys willing to make each and every squatter so evicted sorry that he or she was ever born. (You would think that the average Englishman would have thought of this by now, but apparently any semblance of manliness has been bred out of the breed.)

Any Brits that read this, please explain: What is UP over there? We here in America saved you from the Germans twice, and we still like you, but honestly, we can't save you from yourselves.

New rifle!

Got a new rifle yesterday, I did. Well not exactly "new"...it's one hundred and twenty five years old. It's a Martini-Henry MK. IV, a single-shot breech-loading rifle that took a black powder cartridge in caliber .450-577. It's old but tight and it appears to still be fully functional. (They built them good back then.)
I've wanted one of these for a long time, ever since I first saw the movie Zulu. These rifles were the backbone of the British Commonwealth military for quite some time, although this particular one is a bit too young to have been used during the Zulu War in 1879. (The Mk. II was the issue version back then.)

This was a military arm, as evidenced by the Royal Cipher (the crown) and the initials "V.R.", which represented "Victoria Regina" (Latin for "Queen Victoria"). Below that is "ENFIELD", which is where this one was made. Below that is the dtate of manufacture, 1886, followed by a lock inspector's approval stamp, placed there by the expert who inspected all such military arms upon his approval of that particular rifle: This one is interesting in that the Mark IV was produced for two years, in 1888 and 1889, yet this one is clearly dated 1886. This indicates that it was converted from an earlier Mark I pattern, as many were. Further proof for that comes from the fact that the Mark Number ("IV") is off-center. The receiver was originally stamped as a Mk. I and the "V" was added later when the rifle was converted to Mk. IV specs.
For those not in the know, in the mid-1880s, the British developed a new cartridge, the .402, which was superior to the .450 round. Accordingly, they began building martini-Henry rifles in this caliber, designating them EM Mk. I models. But about the time that they got going with this project, along came the .303 Medford cartridge, which was vastly superior to even this cartridge, and the Brits switched to that round instead. Since it was a serious logistical pain to try to stock the new round, plus the old .450-577 round plus this .402 round, about 64,000 of these .402 rifles were converted back to the older, less-effective .450-577 cartridge and used to arm the troops of British colonies. This is one of those rifles.The "KK.A" stamp on the lower edge shows that this rifle was "Sold out of service" or surplussed out from the Kirkee, India Arsenal, apparently in November of 1908. Like most of it's kind, this one was sent to the then-British colony of Nepal (The stock bears a faint Nepalese acceptance stamp dated 1908 as well) where it was stored and forgotten for many, many decades. The buttstock is a mish-mash of Nepalese markings and older British and Indian markings that were stamped out, most likely when it got to Nepal.According to the seller, a great guy whom I'd do business again with in a heartbeat, this particular rifle has been in the country well before IMA imported the bulk of the Nepalese guns,so it was almost certainly brought in as part of the first batch of Nepalese arms that were imported in the 1970's by Interarms, that great company built and run by the legendary Sam Cummings. (Thanks, Sam!) Now it's here at the Lair and it'll assume a place of honor in my gun room, waiting on the arrival of some vintage .450-577 ammunition and/or the tools that I'll need to reload ammunition for this old veteran. The breechblock is open, the barrel and chamber look great, and this rifle's voice will be heard again before too long, count on it.



Meanwhile, if you want to see Martini-Henry rifles in action, you can watch some being used here, in "Zulu".


I guess if I had a couple dozen equally-armed friends standing next to me, this rifle could come in handy during the next flash mob or London-style riot. Since it's likely to be just me and one or two others though, I think I'll echo the sentiment of poet Hilaire Belloc:
"Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not."

Granted, I don't have a Maxim gun (darn it...), but I do have an M60. It'll do in a pinch, I suppose.They should have had a few M60's at Isandhlwana. Maybe then they wouldn't have gotten shellacked so badly. (On second thought, courtesy of Lord Chelmsford's incredibly poor tactics, they'd have probably still been massacred even if every soldier there had been armed with a Minimi.)

Britain's out of control welfare state

While elements of the British government now protest the decision to cut convicted rioters off from lavish welfare benefits that all too often support able-bodied young men and women at a rate higher than that obtainable by many who actually work full time, we now see a ridiculous example of the British largess in the form of a family from Somalia who arrived in that country three years ago. Neither adult in the household has ever worked since arriving in England, choosing instead to jump right on the benefits wagon. They were living in a taxpayer-funded apartment but decided that it was "too far away from friends and relatives" so they moved into another home in a neighborhood that they liked better...and a house that cost 2 million British Pounds (or $3,200,000 US) and just slugged the British taxpayers with the bill...and that bill was accepted!

The new six-bedroon house for this family of welfare Somalians--people who aren't even British citizens--is costing the British taxpayers 8,000 Pounds a month, or $13,000 US! And that doesn't even include the othher welfare benefits that this family is soaking up.

Raj Sohal, the family’s previous landlord, said: ‘It was the first time I’d rented to an asylum seeker family. I did it because I felt sorry for them. The fact is they were on every kind of benefit available.

But were the Somolians grateful? Apparently not. Sohal told The People newspaper that they’d gone without paying the last month’s rent.

So the British government gave them money for the rent, and they just pocketed it and stiffed the landlord. Model citizens, eh?

It is unclear how many children the family have – but up to eight youngsters have been seen at the property. When approached by The People, Mr Khaliif said: ‘This is my house. We’ve got every right to live here.’

Question is, how many British citizens who actually leave their houses and go to work each day could afford to live in a place like that? And how does a family of non-citizens who have never held a job for even one day claim a mansion as a "right"?

Frankly I'm surprised that it's the welfare recipients that are doing the bulk of the rioting in Britian. You'd think that it would be the average taxpayer over incidents like this. It's no wonder that the wheels are rapidly falling off of that once-great country. And one has to wonder how much longer it will be until we start to see it happening here.

When the welfare train comes off the tracks--Britain's example.

So now we're going into another night of rioting in Britain. This will be the fourth night, and it's spreading from London to other cities now, spurred on by youth organizing attacks on specific businesses via social media. It all allegedly started when London police shot a career criminal after he shot at them with a blank gun that was modified to fire live ammunition. He reportedly struck a police officer but the bullet lodged in the officer's radio. In response, the thug's family and friends organized the first blow-up, but now it's just punks all over Britain joining in, including two girls interviewed by the BBC as they drink looted wine and boast that they're doing it to show the police and the rich that they "can do what they want". They also say that it's the government and conservatives' fault that they're out stealing.
When the interviewer asks them why they're looting and burning businesses in their own neighborhoods, they laugh and say "well it's because they're rich..."

And they're not alone. Most of the looting now seems to be focused on stores that sell jewelry, electronics, high-end shoes and other fashion wear...just bling.

If there's any sort of justice, every business that is looted or burned will re-open somewhere else and leave these punks to stand around befuddled like all of the rioters and looters in LA in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots did when the local Korean-owned businesses that they targeted--many of them places that they'd regularly shopped at for years--relocated when they rebuilt, leaving the looters with damned few places to buy stuff or shoplift from afterwards. Communities that allow this to happen should be punished for this sort of premeditated crime by the removal of every store within walking distance from the areas where such behavior took place.

Now in the short term, the authorities need to get a handle on this quick. The British Prime Minister David Cameron said last night that force would be used, including water cannons, but he was almost immediately contradicted by his own Home Secretary, Theresa May, who said that water cannons would NOT be used on the rioters and that they would try to get them to stop by "consent". What a great way to send the message to the criminals that the government doesn't have it's head on straight.

What I think they ought to do is come over here and borrow some of our cops for a few days. Send the Prince Georges County, MD police. They know how to control violent criminals. Send the LAPD. Where are those officers who beat down Rodney King? Are they doing anything this week? Hell, get Johann Meserle, the former BART cop who shot that scumbag Oscar Grant in Oakland a couple years back. Surely even in our own rapidly-sissifying country we've still got a few hundred police officers left who know how to lay the law down the old fashioned way: by laying the bad guys out.

I don't necessarily condone casual police brutality but there does come a time when you need to take your own streets back from the rampaging criminal element that's running amuck and threatening the safety and livelihoods of the people who depend on the police. Since the citizens in England cannot own or carry firearms to protect themselves, the police need to step up and start kicking some ass over there, and not stop until order is restored. Seriously. And if they've forgotten how, I'm sure that we can recruit some old-school police officers from cities like New York, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami to give them a few pointers and show them how it's done.

Oh--and another deterrent? One so powerful that even our government is afraid to use it? Simply make it clear that anyone convicted of any riot-related offense loses their benefit checks and public housing, permanently and effective immediately. If you're living off the public largesse, there should be a requirement that you either be model citizens or find your own way. Alas, there as here, there are too many people getting welfare checks these days who are eligible to vote and the politicians are too scared of them to ever consider making them angry. But in a Just world...

And they wonder why I no longer call Britain "Great".

An elderly farmer in a motorized wheelchair--one of Britain's few remaining tax-paying, productive citizens--shoots at what he believes to be a fox on his own farm and he accidentally hits two thieves who are there to rob an illicit drug-growing operation that was set up without the farmer's knowledge.

Police respond and take everyone into custody--the two shot thieves, two women who are in the dope shack, and the farmer. Everyone is eventually released without charges or any court sanction except for...you guessed it:
The farmer.

The injured men, aged 27 and 30 and from Basildon, Essex, were arrested on suspicion of possessing a firearm but were later released without charge.

Police found 50 cannabis plants in the rented outbuilding. Two women were arrested and they too were released without charge.

Although Mr Tibbs no longer faces any charges, he has now been left without his shotguns after Essex Police withdrew his firearms licence on the grounds that he kept too much ammunition at his farmhouse.

A police spokesman confirmed that two licenses held by Mr Tibbs for more than 20 years have been revoked.

He said: '[Mr Tibbs] is unfit to be entrusted with a firearm and may present a danger to public safety and peace.'

So this disabled senior citizen loses valuable firearms to his own government and is now left unable to defend either his livestock or himself, while the criminals who have been operating on his land and who may now be just a tad upset are free to go on about their business knowing that if they want to pay this old man a visit and express their displeasure, there's nothing that he can do to fend them off.

Pathetic.

I doubt the bin Laden's going to recruit this idiot any time soon.

OK, this news story about a muslim who tried to firebomb a pub in Britain is about the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

I found the video on the London Muslim blog, and a bit of searching took me to this news story about it.

Amir Ali got eight years in prison for that stupidly-executed but serious crime, and the world gets another example of why muslims tend to be viewed with suspicion almost everywhere they go, except at American airports where--of course--they are not to be profiled or discriminated against...because the ACLU and CAIR say that it would be wrong somehow.

Can anyone explain that to me?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Anyone?

EDITED: Of course I write and post this about an hour before this breaking news comes out.

Are they ever going to stop? Why are all of these radical muslims even here? If they hate the West so much, why are so many of them in it these days?

Good men die in rescue of New York Times scumbag

This is wrong on so many levels.

KABUL — British commandos freed a New York Times reporter early Wednesday from Taliban captives who kidnapped him over the weekend in northern Afghanistan, but one of the commandos and a Times translator were killed in the rescue, officials said.

Reporter Stephen Farrell was taken hostage along with his translator in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. German commanders had ordered U.S. jets to drop bombs on two hijacked fuel tankers, causing a number of civilian casualties, and reporters traveled to the area to cover the story.

Two military officials told The Associated Press that one British commando died during the early morning raid. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the death had not been officially announced.

The Times reported that Farrell's Afghan translator, Sultan Munadi, 34, also was killed. Farrell was unhurt.

Afghan officials over the weekend said about 70 people died when U.S. jets dropped two bombs on the tankers, igniting them in a massive explosion. There were reports that villagers who had come to collect fuel from the tankers were among the dead, and Farrell wanted to interview villagers.

The Times kept the kidnappings quiet out of concern for the men's safety, and other media outlets, including The Associated Press, did not report the abductions following a request from the Times.

So here we have a reporter for the New York Times, probably the most Anti-US publication that's actually based in the US, and he gets kidnapped while trying to work up another story that no doubt would have started out with something like "US air pirates murdered a bunch of poor villagers for no good reason when..."

Basically, he was there to to the Taliban's job for them--criticizing American troops and undermining their mission and morale. This is something that the Times did nonstop right up until the coronation of Barack Obama. But once their messiah took office, they had to choose a course of action--keep bashing a military that they hated, or quiet down on that since that military was now under Barack Obama and continued criticism of them would be criticism of him.

Apparently the decision was made. The Times has been pretty quiet as of late when it comes to bashing the military and trying to ferret out and publish classified information. But their people are still in the area, and when this one got grabbed by his fellow America-haters, British commandos found out where he was and dropped in to save him, tragically losing one of their own in the process--a true hero worth more than the entire New York Times staff put together.

Also killed was a native Afghani who was serving as a translator and who dreamed of a safe, stable Afghanistan, free of the Taliban. Farrell probably held him in utter contempt, but he too was a better man than Farrell. This man died trying to save his country; Farrell was only there to undermine his own.

Also ironic and hypocritical was the fact that the New York Times self-censored the kidnapping and refused to publish that "news", and also that they asked other publications not to publish it and the rest of the media complied. Now this is at total odds with their longstanding policy of printing every bit of information about the US war effort and agenda, even information that put our troops at risk and even when they had been asked specifically by the White House not to do so. But George Bush was President then, and the New York Times staff hated George Bush, so they did whatever they could to hurt the military and his policies, and if it meant that more US soldiers died...well that was just fine with the Times.

But now when it's one of their own...well they manage to orchestrate a total news blackout by virtue of the cooperation of complicit "competing" media outlets.

Kind of makes you wonder what else we never learn just because a few newspaper bigs decide that it's not in their interest for us to find out, eh?

The New York Times is garbage, unfit for fish-wrapping or birdcage-lining. It'll never be allowed in this house, and the day that it folds will be a day worthy of celebration by all Americans who love this country that it opposes. It's just a damned shame that two really good men had to die for that paper because one of it's Quisling reporters just had to chase down another anti-US story. Thank you for your efforts, Britain, and I'm sorry for your loss. However if there's any such thing as Karma, Stephen Farrell will get run over by a cab or choke on a hot dog immediately on his return to New York.

EDIT: Turns out that Farrell isn't an American--he's a British citizen. (Well that explains his anti-Americanism...he's clearly jealous). So the British Special Forces still traded a hero for a dirtbag, only it was one of their own dirtbags. And today, the New York Times is all mad because they were negotiating with the Taliban and because the soldiers blew the Taliban scum away, the New York Times now feels that it's standing with the Taliban has been harmed.

So I have a new idea. The next time that anyone gets kidnapped in Iraq or Afghanistan, we just call up the kidnappers and trade them Bill Keller, Editor of the Times, for whoever is being held. Then we call it a day and don't waste any more time or resources on rescue attempts. Maybe the Times would actually replace Keller with someone who appreciates his country enough to at least remember which side that he's supposed to be supporting. If it were the 1940's, Bill Keller would have been in federal prison for his seditious acts a long time ago.

How Britain is going to the dogs

By acting like dogs, of course.




I admit, when I first saw this story about a girl in England who views herself as a full-time pet, I was a bit envious of the guy. I mean, where did he find a chick who looks that good and has such low self-esteem that she'll do anything he wants her to no matter how stupid or degrading? But then I realized that a girl who thinks of herself as a dog and insists on being treated as a domestic animal probably wouldn't be much fun to have around after the novelty wears off, especially since she considers herself to feral to cook or clean.

19 year old Tasha Maltby has this to say about herself:

"I am a pet, I generally act animal like and I lead a really easy life," she said.

"I don't cook or clean and I don't go anywhere without Dani. It might seem strange but it makes us both happy. It's my culture and my choice.

The story goes on to say that her and her handler/owner/boyfriend/whatever are both unemployed. They live on benefits--the British welfare system--in a free house and--get this--they plan to raise a family even though neither of them work and they can't/won't support themselves, much less children.

Looking at the pic, both appear pretty able-bodied to me.

But they typify one of the problems in Britain today. The system there allows people who just up and decide not to work to apply for welfare and it gives them room, board and money to buy fashionable clothes and other toys while heavily taxing those who actually do work. This is one of the reasons that Britain is slipping as an industrial power--too many British people not working and the rest being taxed into the poor house. And what this does is cause those who earn money or have the potential to do so via talent, skills that are in demand, or just plain hard work to up and leave Britain for someplace that actually rewards success and allows them to keep what they've earned. Why else do you see so many British businessmen and entertainers coming to the United States and applying for permanent residency? They know that here, when they earn money, they'll be allowed to keep most of it. (At least until Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama gets to be in charge.) And as abused and overbroad as our welfare system is, at least we don't have a government policy that lets losers like Tasha Maltby and her pal Dani ride the system indefinitely while laughing at the working men and women who are really paying their rent and buying them dog leashes. And for every capable executive or other successful professional that leaves Britain to come here, they lose and we gain just that much more.

Still--if you're a hot-looking young gal who actually can hold a job, cook and clean, auditions are still being held here and neither Lagniappe or I will mind terribly much if you have a thing for dog collars and leads so long as it doesn't interfere with your work or chores.

Wow. Britain gets it right on immigration.

According to this Washington Times story, Britain is reportedly changing their immigration laws to require that immigrants to that country learn and demonstrate proficiency in English before they are allowed into the country. This is proof that whatever other failings Britain might have, a plethora of American Democrat liberals isn't one of them. Here, the only litmus test that our Dems want is the apparent willingness of an immigrant to show up on election day with their family members and cast ballots for Democrat candidates even if they aren't allowed by law to vote. (Anyone remember failed California congressional candidate Francine Busby telling illegal aliens that they don't need papers to vote or work on her campaign?)

Britain's current immigration set-up divides potential immigrants into three classes--highly-skilled workers, skilled workers, and unskilled workers. In Britain, the first two are eligible for permanent residency and eventually citizenship while the third class--the unskilled workers--are not.

I never thought that I'd say this, but I think that we need to follow Great Britain's lead, at least in this area. America can always use more skilled workers--scientists, doctors, and other degreed professionals or trained technical workers. We need to work on making it easier for them to immigrate and bring their skills and abilities to our country. At the same time, we need to set up a system under which unskilled laborers can come and take jobs in fields where workers are in high demand, but we need to do it in a manner that identifies them up front and allows them here for a set time period, requiring them to leave at the end of the time or in the event that they either stop working or commit ANY crime. We also need to ensure that citizenship rights are reserved for those that we really desire here--educated professionals who will contribute to America--and not uneducated people who do not know or want to learn our language and who most likely will only become a burden on our hospitals, schools, public assistance programs and jails.

And as I recall, Britain also does not grant automatic citizenship benefits to children of illegal aliens born in their country. So that's two for the Brits against none for the current Administration, both Democrats and Republicans.

My thoughts on the British

Now let me start out by saying that I like the British. Really I do. Dr. Who, Fawlty Towers and Are You Being Served have always been television favorites of mine, so don't think for one minute that I don't appreciate the British contribution to culture.

But my recent thread on manly guns has got me to thinking about the British. If you notice, three of my pics are British guns that have long histories of being wielded sucessfully in every corner of the once-vast British Empire. The British once colonized much of Africa, Asia and the Far East, and they controlled the oceans for a while too. They fought wars and did great things and rarely failed at anything unless of course they were fighting against us over here. They went 0 for 2 aginst us but still there was never any doubt as to the manliness of the Englishman back then.

But now the empire is crumbled, the colonies and great navy are gone and the English have retreated back to that little island across the channel from France, where they've even gone so far as to disarm themselves almost completely by outlawing private ownership of most firearms and destroying alomst all of them.

I had to ask: What happened? How did they fall to such a low point?

My theory is a simple one. I surmise that each nation will raise up a certain amount of real men each generation. These are the adventurers and swashbucklers, the risk-takers and the movers and shakers who strive and achieve and move that nation forward. Conversely each nation also produces a percentage of liberal wusses who live in the shadows of the real men. These second-tier males often grow up to become the teachers, the lawyers, the accountants, the hairdressers, the chefs, and they fill other positions that really don't require physical prowess, courage or testosterone. Every country gets some of both, even us here in America. We've had our John Waynes, our Audie Murphys, our Chuck Yeagers and our Neil Armstrongs, and we've also had our Jerry Springers and our Phil Donahues on the other end of the spectrum.

The British are no different, but my thought is that with all of their colonies and their military adventures, their real men all too often left the British Isles in search of adventure or fortune and never returned. Now liberals being both cowardly and lazy tend to stay close to home where it's safe and life is easy, and over the years, with the departure of so many of the real men, the English liberals eventually found themselves the majority in England.

Now I would not wish that on any country (except France of course) and England certainly suffered. The Liberal effeminate "men" decided that they'd all be better off neutered, so they voluntarily gave up their guns, and of course they outlawed the guns of the remaining real men and took those away too. We in America could only watch and see the pictures of the truckloads of firearms being destroyed in British scrap yards, and I shed many a tear at the destruction of those fine tools that resulted from the English self-castration movement. And predictably, with the only weapons left being those in government hands (which the liberal government is usually afraid to use) and those held by the criminal class, violent crime is off the hook and out of control and the English liberals can only quake in fear and lock themselves in their homes come dusk, abandoning their own streets and neighborhoods to the bad guys who now prey on the citizenry without fear.

I see this today and I can't believe that these are the descendants of the giants who once controlled Africa and faced down the Zulu hordes at Roarke's Drift. These cannot be the grand children of the proud sailors who fought the German Navy at Jutland in World War One, or the children of the noble RAF pilots who saved their country during the Battle of Britain in World War Two. Where have you gone, Winston Churchill? Come back, Maggie Thatcher. Someone's got to slap some sense into that once great nation before it goes the way of France and Germany and fades away into total irrelevance.

British Professor finds out the hard way that you don't disrespect American police.

On January 4th of this year, one of Britiin's academics decided that he was too important to bother with police officer in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I could have told him that it wasn't a good idea to try to brush off an American law enforcement officer who is trying to talk to you, or refuse to give that officer your identification. But he didn't ask me. He learned that lesson himself the hard way.

According to this story in the British Press, "Professor Fernandez-Armesto, professor of global environmental history at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of Oxford University's modern history faculty, was left "traumatised and disorientated" and with a gash on his forehead before he was charged with pedestrian failure to obey a police officer." Better yet, "In scenes of "terrible, terrible violence", as the distinguished academic recalled them yesterday, he had his legs kicked from beneath him and was pinned to the ground by five officers before being handcuffed to another felon and locked up for eight hours."

Yeah, that happens when you commit a POP violation here. (Piss Off the Police)

However, before anyone reads Professor Fernandez-Armesto's rather creative version about what happened that fateful morning, it would do well to read the actual police report written by the arresting officer. The report sheds quite a bit of light on Fernandez-Armesto's behavior and attitude, and after reading that, I can honestly say that I'd probably have locked him up too.

But the best comedy still comes from the Professor's own version.

The professor added: "He said: 'I am going to arrest you.' In the culture I come from this wouldn't mean that the conversation was over.

I guess in "his culture", "You're under arrest" means "let's debate this for a while."

"Naturally I was bridling. I had five burly policemen pinioning me to the ground, pressing my neck with really very severe pain. I'm a mass of contusions and grazes. I still find it incredible that an aging, mild-mannered professor of impeccable antecedent, should be the subject of such abominable treatment."

Do people in Britain actually talk like that? No wonder that this humble colony of ours beat them so easily. Our Revolutionary troops actually had testosterone.

The next day in court the charges were dropped - to the relief of the professor who feared a criminal record and the loss of his green card. (He also works at Tufts University, Massachusetts.)

Massachussetts. That figures. This guy fits right in with John Kerry, Barney Frank and those annoying Kennedys. But shame on the court for dropping the charge. He should have been hammered with Resisting at the very least, and if he is so scornful of our country and our ways, why is he worried that he might have to leave? His deportation should be a national ballot question in the 2008 elections.

However I really loved it when the Professor made this statement:

"It was a fantastic experience going into that detention centre and spending time with those miserable wretches of the earth."

Spoken like a true liberal. Champions of the poor, but only from a distance. When condemning conservatives, the poor are always spoken of as if they are nobility. But if one actually has to associate with them, they're detestable. Proving once again that a Liberal is someone who claims to advocate for the people that he would not allow into his neighborhood or family.

My advice to the Professor: If you think you got it bad in Atlanta, try that in New Orleans with NOPD.

Or wait until I get back to work. I'll lock your ass up too if you try to walk away from me and refuse to produce ID. This is America (Est. 1776) and we have our own laws here which you, as a visitor, need to abide by of face the consequences.

Good job, Ofc. Leonpacher, APD. I definitely have your back on this one.