The Ballad of East and West

This one's for LL. The Ballad of East and West, by Kipling.


Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
``Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?''
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar,
``If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
At dusk he harries the Abazai---at dawn he is into Borair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tonuge of Jagai,
But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen.''

Read the whole thing here, if you like.

It ends like this:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Chesterton hated Kipling and I like Chesterton lot. I also like Kipling.

Rumours that I charge about on a horse around the Compound with a saber may or may not be true.

LSP

Autumn Equinox. Hippies, You're On Notice.

Today's the Autumn Equinox, which pagans celebrate as a kind of harvest festival. They'll set up a little altar with some idols, mess about with a wand and an apple and invoke a couple of spirits, like the Goddess.

Sometimes they'll wig-out a little around a bonfire.

Maybe do a little magicke.

And that's all harmless, right? Yeah, until you wake up inside a Wicker Man and it's on fire.

Pagans

There are unconfirmed reports that several large forces of irregular cavalry are moving in the direction of Austin and San Francisco.

Hippies, you have been warned.

LSP

Horsing Around

Some of my parishioners are afraid I'll come off the horse(s) and die. "Don't go so fast, Padre!" they say. They are serious horse people.

Parishioner

I reply, "Don't worry, if things get tippy I'll just hold onto the pommel thing." 

"Saddle horn," they reply.

Grace Slick

Walk, trot, canter, gallop, run!

Arm the Kurds.

LSP

Get in the Saddle

"For a so-called horseman you sure don't seem to do much riding, LSP," I hear you say, pointedly. Well not so fast. Monday being as good a day as any, I pulled on my Ariats, loaded a Circle Y in the truck and headed off to ride.

Keena

Which is what I did, on Keena, an old Polish Arabian mare who used to race and still has plenty of go. But I didn't push it, just walk, trot and a few short canters around Mesquites.

Front Office

Great to be back in the saddle again and next time I'll open things up a bit for a gallop. Good for mind, soul and body, provided you don't come off and break, obviously.

Ride on,

LSP

Vermin In A Destroyed City

Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya, makes a powerful case for the self-evident, that Arab civilization has broken down. He is, understandably, unable to find a single, overarching explanation for this. Here's a snapshot:

"Is it any surprise that, like the vermin that take over a ruined city, the heirs to this self-destroyed civilization should be the nihilistic thugs of the Islamic State? And that there is no one else who can clean up the vast mess we Arabs have made of our world but the Americans and Western countries?

"No one paradigm or one theory can explain what went wrong in the Arab world in the last century."

Powerful stuff and you can read the whole thing here (via Breitbart).

But, in deference to author, could it be that the answer to his question lies within Islam itself?

Just a thought.

God bless,

LSP

Orde Wingate

For the benefit of everyone, and especially those readers interested in irregular warfare, today's focus is on the remarkable, if unconventional, Orde Wingate.

Born in 1903, Wingate secured a Commission in the British Army as a Gunner and went on to learn Arabic at London's School of Oriental Studies (SOAS). This took him to secondment with the Sudan Defence Force and the command of 300 troops which he trained to ambush Muslim slavers and poachers. 

After being recalled to England in 1933, Wingate was assigned to the Palestinian Mandate in 1936, where he went on to form irregular units of British and Jewish Haganah volunteers, called Special Night Squads. The SNS attacked Arab terrorists with effective ferocity; Moshe Dayan claimed that Wingate "taught us everything we know", and while not a Jew, Wingate, who was an ardent Zionist, became a celebrated figure of the Jewish community.

At the outbreak of World War II, Wingate was invited by General Wavell to assist with operations to drive the Italians from Ethiopa. He did just that, creating and training the guerrilla-style Gideon Force, which succeeded in restoring Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne in Addis Abbaba. Awarded a DSO for his efforts, Wingate returned to England and went overseas again, to the Far East, where the sudden Japanese takeover of Burma forced him to India.

From India, he gained permission to create a "deep penetration" strike force, the Chindits, who operated far behind Japanese lines. These fought with controversial success until Wingate's untimely death in March, 1944, when his transport plane crashed into the jungle. He is buried in Arlington cemetery.

Wingate was undoubtably eccentric and didn't much like wearing clothes. One British Officer was surprised to discover him naked and crying on the floor (through frustration? grief?) after an SNS operation and he would often give orders in a state of "undress". This confused some of his more staid colleagues.

The pioneering Chindit commander can be credited for laying some of the groundwork for the Israeli Defense Force's later success, and I have an odd feeling that when I was younger I met some of the people he trained. 

We could do with a few Wingates to launch against ISIS.

God bless,

LSP

Kerry Goofs. Again. Arm the Kurds

America is great and Texas is awesome, but our Secretary of State 'droid needs some tuning, because it's NWO DAARPA designed logic circuits aren't quite up to scratch.

When questioned about the U.S. non-war against the non-Islamic Islamic State, the ketchup fortune traitor-bot stated:

“If you’re more comfortable calling it a war against this enemy of Islam then please do so. We’re happy to call it that.”

Pamela Geller

So I guess we're at war with Pamela Geller. And Israel, and Christianity, and everyone else who lives in the "House of War."

Nice one, Kerry. 

Anti-Jihad

In other news, the enemy of Islam is scared of being deprived of virgins in the afterlife if they get killed by Yazidi women. There are several of these, fortunately.

Tower Hamlets?

The non-Islamic Islamic State has women fighters too.

Arm the Kurds,

LSP

It Rained

After saying Mass at one of the Missions I went out to my truck to drive back to the compound. Dark clouds had rolled in, low and thunderous. Then lightning filled the air and it began to rain. It didn't stop.

Some of you may think that this is a boring story and of little consequence. If you lived here you would not think that.

According to Reuters, a solid quarter of all Americans support secession.

Right on.

LSP

Loserheart, Jocks Bottle

The polls are in and the Scots, once known for their bravery, have voted against independence. In close-run polling, the formerly courageous Scots voted to remain subjects of the United Kingdom by a 55% -45% majority.

According to one political commentator, "The Scots evidently want to remain under the jackboot of a sinister Old Etonian cabal lead by the weirdly incompetent David Cameron."

Another pundit put it more simply, "Jocks bottle."

Good luck, Scotland.

LSP

SECEDE

"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed... Whenever government becomes destructive to life, liberty, or property [i.e., the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it... It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." 

— American Declaration of Independence (1776)

Maybe the time has come. A lot of Scots sure seem to think so, and Spaniards, and Ukrainians and Texans, to name just a few.

What's going on, why would this be? Because our governments are so obviously beneficial to us? Like, we're getting so much benefit from Washington here in Texas.

But "what difference does it make?" Not very much if you like being ruled by Hillary Clinton and her poverty-stricken friends inside the Beltway.

Don't get me wrong, I love Great Britain and Scotland too, but my take, for what it's worth, is that Texas should hold a referendum. Run Wendy Davies and her crew of carpetbaggers out of town and confederate with the sane Western states. 

Shill

Rumours that Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, is a sock puppet controlled by a sinister Bilderberger trifecta of Soros, Buffet and Bill Gates, are true.

That is all,

LSP

Walking in Texas? Take a Gun.

They say that walking's good for you but in Texas you don't know what you'll find. 

Some Crew, All Wigged-Out In The Woods

Packs of wild dogs, turkeys, fierce hogs, maybe a dove or two and the occasional wigged-out crew of freaks, holed up in the brush, trying to "find the gig" and get back to Austin.

Mind How You Go

So I like to take a 12 gauge. 

Be safe,

LSP

Jefferts Schori, Episcopal Bishop or Two-Bit Space Alien?

Katherine Jefferts Schori is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC). But we have to ask, is Jefferts Schori a bishop, or a no-account, two-bit, space alien?

Here's what Jefferts Schori had to say about the Islamic terror attack on the World Trade Center:

"I saw a pickup truck a couple of weeks ago with a waving American flag painted on its rear window. As I walked through the parking lot, I realized there was something written on the tailgate – the word ISLAM stood out first. Finally I saw the whole sorry slogan, “everything I need to know about Islam I learned on September 11th.” How will we change hearts that seem closed to learning more about peace?

"Are we willing to recognize and then proclaim that as children of Abraham, Christians, Jews, and Muslims share that vision of a healed world that Micah paints for us?"

Here's what people in Saudi Arabia were saying:

"Then we all knew it wasn't an accident. We heard sporadic yelling in the streets and happy shouts from Saudis in our own hospital. In the terminal cancer ward, patients were hooting and screaming “Down with USA,” much to the horror of the American nurses tending them."

Maybe the Saudis weren't, you know, Muslims.

And maybe Jefferts Schori isn't "off-world."

LSP