Book Review: The Guards, By Ken Bruen

Over the years, I’ve created a formula for choosing a book for a summer vacation: Fiction, involves crime, and light enough to go with beer consumption. With this in mind I went with an Irish noir called: The Guards, by Ken Bruen.

I had never read a Bruen before but I love noir, and thought the Irish would have a good take on it. It did not disappoint. It was bleak, and hilarious; pithy, and poetic.

Jack Taylor is an ex-policeman, of the Irish Garda (Guards) the national force. He was fired for drinking and pissing off the wrong people. (He knew he was in trouble when the chief was giving him the: "Every man likes a pint every now and then but..." speech.) Now his job is finding things:

There are no private eyes in Ireland. The Irish wouldn’t wear it. The concept brushes perilously close to the hated “informer”. You can get away with most anything except “telling”.

What I began to do was find things…...

A woman whose daughter allegedly committed suicide, hires him look into the real reason for her death.

Doesn’t sound very funny does it? The case almost takes the back burner as Taylor narrates us through his drinking binges, his hatred of his mother, his failed relationships with women, his lack of money and his sordid friends. He begins the morning at the pub, where his “coffee” is topped up with Jameson’s. It’s like a very good Irish story teller at a local pub who you’re happy to listen to. He’s got his opinions on books, alcohol brands, music, the church, history, and of course the Irish. It’s charming and grim all at the same time. If you were a bar fly, he would be your best buddy.

Between blackouts, hospitalizations and hangovers, he actually works on the case, with the help of his dodgy friend Sutton. (Sutton has a murky past, probably ex-IRA and has killed people.) Taylor is a drunk and an amateur, and things often don’t go well. I would spoil it by describing some of the foul ups and surprises, but I can say it's laugh out loud funny. (If you like dark humor.)

I enjoyed Bruen's interesting chapter headings. It could be a title, a book or movie quote, or blankness. Sometimes even a bit of poetry like this:

… so smug believed-that desolation
had the limits full explored

I’m not much of a poetry guy, but that one stopped me in my tracks. The Black Irish blood in me can appreciate that sentiment.

If you like noir, and you get a kick out of Irish lyricism, you cannot go wrong with The Guards. Bruen has a series of Jack Taylor novels that I will explore further.

Cognitive Dissonance: Palinites Deny Reality

It's a mystery to me that certain right wing conservatives refuse to acknowledge that Sarah Palin has no business being in a high political office. On Friday, she had a rambling, incoherent press conference explaining that she is quitting her job as governor of Alaska just over halfway through one term. If you haven't seen the speech check it out:



She's toast right? Not to everybody. Read this job dropping piece from Republican big shot Roger Stone: Palin's Plan

This moment came last week for Sarah Palin and her husband Todd. Sick of the derision of the media for her unsophisticated country ways, her plain speaking and consistently being held to a higher standard than her critics, Palin had had enough.

She didn't actually say this was the reason of course. This is Stone's interpretation. Also, how is she plain speaking? To me, that means speaking coherently, getting to the point. Not saying: "You betcha" to important policy questions. How in her speeches or interviews does she come across as plain speaking?

There is a stock excuse from Palinites: that media elites tarnish her because it is all about class and urban snobbery. They say unfair things against her. Nothing to do with her being stupid. Harry Truman used to get cracks about his rough country manner, his hick accent and lack of university degree. But you wouldn't find many who thought he was stupid. Bubba Clinton was from Nowhereville, Arkansas and if anything that helped his popular appeal. But again, nobody accused Clinton of being stupid.

It's about being unintelligent and inarticulate. If anything, I think some of the media are overly kind to her. That weird resignation speech, the media were earnestly trying to interpret what she said instead of merely saying the speech was nonsensical.

Palin could accomplish nothing more as Governor to burnish her "experience" credentials. Nuisance lawsuits and ethics complaints from garden variety left-wing nuts were costing her hundreds of thousands of dollars and paralyzing state government. Palin's accomplishments as Governor in boom times where behind her. The lot of a Governor today is painful cuts and delivering bad news for the next 18 months. Who needs it?

Do I even need to comment on this? Stone reasons that she quit because she had some tough cuts and bad news to deliver, and who needs it? Just what we want in a President. Lincoln: "Well, the Civil War isn't going well, so I thought I'd quit. Maybe I can run again in 1868 when things calm down again." Good God, does this man believe what he's saying?

Palin has the most valuable commodity a Presidential candidate can have - a base. Roughly 23% of Americans and 68% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin. She alone has this kind of intense following. She alone can fill a large hall or small stadium anywhere in Republican Country. This is similar to the following that sustained Nixon through two defeats and his 'self-destruction' in 1962 to win the White House in 1968.

OK. A) Only 23% of Americans have a favorable view of her. And that math will win her the election? B) Stone uses another Nixon example. Ummm.., didn't he resign in disgrace and was the most hated political figure in American politics for a generation?

Here's a doozy:

Like Nixon, Palin needs some rehabilitation to her political image caused by the relentless attacks of the elitist media, the knife-work of the relatively talentless Republican Party pros like Steve Schmidt and her own self-inflicted wounds from the post election period that were born out of inexperience at this level of political combat. Like Nixon, Palin can re-make herself in the controlled environment of television. Instead of being tortured by smug media types like Katie Couric, Palin can demonstrate her better understanding of issues and articulate a case against Obama. She can be folksy and plain-spoken and above all, 'smart.' All hail the Conservative Oprah!

The first part about the elitist media is pure whining on Stone's part.(His memories of being picked last for sports when he was in school are coming back to him. Pathetic.)The stunner for me is that somehow, these Palinites are still blaming Katie Couric for how badly Palin's performance was during her interview. For example: Couric asked her what newspapers Palin reads to keep up to date on the issues of the day. She could not name one, even when pressed. Is this torturing somebody? The denial is clinical.

Look at the video of the newspaper question, and decide for yourself:



Almost every segment of the Couric interview, she comes off as batty. Stone however says that she's "smart"?

Here's his delusional view of the future:

Palin's "star-power," charisma, presence and genuineness cannot be discounted. No one can discount her moxie, her energy and her inspirational qualities. Her anti-elite middle-class message can have resonance again when the Obama economic policies likely fail. The Ivy leaguers and Hollywood crowd so high on Obama may be riding for a fall. The media has unfairly labeled her as "dumb." All she must do is disprove this...and she can have sixty minutes each week to do it.

Conservatives like Stone would probably be the first one to tell you that leftists are pie-in-the-sky unrealistic. The GOP are utterly shipwrecked.

Daily Salt Shaker Back From Ontario

I'll be back up posting today.

State of the Salt Shaker

The blog is going to be on hold for a little while. I'll re-start again in early July. I'm hoping to post a book review for The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman either late tonight or tomorrow.

I'll be doing some thinking on how to revitalize this site. I've had some great periods of traffic and I've had extremely slow times. Ultimately, my book reviews have given me the most long term traffic, so I'm thinking of heading in that direction. My policy is to only review books/movies/television that I enjoy. However, maybe I should treat blog as if I'm a reviewer for a newspaper, where like it or not, you are assigned books/movies/television to review and you have to write a column about it.

I think my political posts suffer from my lack of a coherent ideology. Partisanship is what drives successful political blogs. You get traffic from people of your stripe and you get the haters, who want to see what the enemy is up to. I simply can't do that. That bores me.

Be sure to get out and enjoy the summer in the next little while.

Hollywood Is the New GM

Forbes magazine listed the top earners for actors over the last year.

1. Harrison Ford
2. Adam Sandler
3. Will Smith
4. Eddie Murphy
5. Nicolas Cage

Yep, you read that one right. If that isn't a sign that Hollywood has no new ideas, I don't know what is.

I guess these washed up, cardboard cut-outs are what the public wants? When's the last time you and your friends talked about a great Eddie Murphy movie? 1983? Do people actually enjoy Adam Sandler movies? I guess so. Since my IQ is in triple digits, I find it hard to relate.

There was actually a time that I liked Nicolas Cage. Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona. Since then, he has done so many bad movies it literally makes me nauseous if I see his face on the screen. I feel like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, after his rehabilitation: "TURN IT OFF! PLEASE, TURN IT OFF!"

Will Smith. Hate to be a snob, but the Fresh Prince doesn't do it for me. All big laughs and high fives.

The only movie I can name from any of these guys over the last few years is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I saw about 20 minutes of it before turning it off. An 88 year old Harrison Ford, hides in a refrigerator at ground zero of a nuclear blast. The fridge gets blown into the air several miles, and lands in a thud. Ford opens the door, dusts himself off and walks away unharmed. It was so bad, a new phrase was added to the Urban Dictionary: Nuke the Fridge.

Nuke the fridge is a colloquialism used to refer to the moment in a film series that is so incredible that it lessens the excitement of subsequent scenes that rely on more understated action or suspense, and it becomes apparent that a certain installment is not as good as previous installments, due to ridiculous or low quality storylines, events or characters.

Hollywood is the new GM. They're going down. Those big budget, unwatchable movies with cardboard actors mean the studios won't be able to sustain themselves.

The Battle of Algiers Trailer

Lately, I've been somewhat obsessed with the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers. I wrote a review of it recently: here. Today, I did a simple youtube search and found the trailer. It gives a taste. It's one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

Snapshot of a Failed State

Recently I had seen, and written a review of the movie: Battle of Algiers. It depicts a successful guerilla campaign to force the French out of Algeria.

This movie had a great affect on me. I have been studying guerrilla/insurgencies/terrorism movements. It is with interest that I read this compelling AP article: In Algeria, al-Qaida extends franchise

What we see in Algeria is a failed state.

Four years ago, the Algerian terrorists — then known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat — were running out of steam.

Born in an insurgency in 1992, the group took part in a near-civil war the next decade that killed about 200,000 people. But its fighters had lost popular support after killing Muslim civilians. Many leaders had turned themselves in during government amnesties, and the group was weak from internal feuds.

So its new emir or leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, reached out to the superstar of international jihad: Al-Qaida.

(....)

Still, violence is persistent. Data obtained by the AP from Western diplomats in Algeria shows 85 significant bombings in 2008. Some 639 people died that year because of terrorism-related violence: 409 suspected militants, 158 security force members and 72 civilians.

This year, there were 64 bombings from January to April alone, with deaths of 19 civilians and 61 security force members. The data also shows 167 suspected militants killed amid police sweeps, army raids and aerial bombardments.

Construction entrepreneur Mohammed remembers his terror in February, when he and his son returned late from a construction site, unarmed. They saw five gunmen blocking the road and waiting for them, said Mohammed, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation.

Clearly, the lesson is that once terrorist, insurgent tactics take hold in a society, it's hard to get rid of them. The French are long gone but the civilian Algerians live a miserable life in fear of bombings and kidnappings.

The extent of Al-Qaida in North Africa is shocking to read. Quietly, that too is becoming a major front for the war on terror. The Europeans are seeing it spread to their own soil:

It shows that the battle against radical Islam in Algeria has become crucial — and not only for North Africa. Intelligence officials throughout Europe are convinced that AQIM [Al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb] wants to expand in their region.

A senior counterterrorism official in France, who was not authorized to talk on the record, told The Associated Press that his services work "daily, constantly" with Algerian security to contain this threat. He says at least six AQIM-related cells, dormant or getting ready for action, have been dismantled across Europe in recent years.

Last month, the Spanish judiciary announced it had caught 12 Algerians from a suspected support cell. And last week, Italian authorities issued arrest warrants for two Tunisians, two Moroccans and an Algerian suspected of plotting attacks on a church and a subway line.

"For now, we've been good," the French official says. "But we've basically been lucky."

This is a very disturbing article. It's seems like yet another smoking volcano in that region. After eight years in the war on terror, it seems the situation is worse, not better.

A Big Day on the Sports Calendar

NFL junkies get a taste today with the Draft. I'll also be flicking back to three hockey games. The decline of western civilization is going to have to go on without me blogging about it today.

UPDATE: The Detroit Lions picked Georgia QB Matt Stafford as the #1. According to Peter King he's already signed a 6 year, $72 million dollar contract. The Ford family owns the Lions. This is why Ford make crappy cars and lose billions of dollars every year. They are STOOPID!

Mortal Threat? Taliban Winning Pakistan Civil War

This is not how the Afghanistan campaign was supposed to work. The Taliban haven't been defeated and are taking over the neighbouring nuclear armed Pakistan.

Pakistan on verge of collapse

The capital of Pakistan was under threat last night after Taliban fighters threatened to overrun the volatile country and came within 60 miles of Islamabad.

It is feared the state is on the brink of collapse as Taliban fighters get closer to the nuclear powers of the country.

As violence broke out in the north-west corner of the country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan posed a 'mortal threat' to the world.

I can't stand the coverage of this war. In the hope of de-legitimizing the Taliban, nobody is reporting whether they have popular support or not. What is the Pakistani army doing? Sitting on their ass, because they quietly support and arm the Taliban? Do they plan to fight? I can't figure it out, because the media won't say.

For goodness sakes, what does this mean? If it's a mortal threat to the world as Hillary says, why don't they explain what is going on?

Firestorm Brewing About Possible Torture Inquiry: Time to Slow Down

Major publications are reporting of support for a possible inquiry into the use of torture, that was approved by the previous administration. This is huge. The Daily Salt Shaker pleads caution.

The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — President Obama left the door open Tuesday to creating a bipartisan commission that would investigate the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects, and did not rule out action by the Justice Department against those who fashioned the legal rationale for those techniques.

(...)

But under intense pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill and human rights organizations to investigate, the president suggested Tuesday that he would not stand in the way of a full inquiry into what he has called “a dark and painful chapter” in the nation’s history.

(...)

In an indication of the crosscurrents the president has faced in dealing with the issue, his own national intelligence director said in an internal memo last week that the now-banned interrogation methods had produced valuable information, contrary to the White House view that they had not been effective.

“High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the Al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country,” Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote to his staff last Thursday as the previously secret memos were released.

(...)

Bush administration veterans, starting with former Vice President Dick Cheney, have argued that the harsh methods helped prevent terrorist attacks. In an interview Monday on Fox News, Mr. Cheney called for the Obama White House to release additional memos that he said showed that the techniques were useful.

“There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity,” he said. “They have not been declassified.”

I'm going to plead humility here and say that I don't believe that an inquiry is the right thing to do at this time. There's still two ground wars going on, as well as the ongoing covert action against shifting/stateless terrorists. It's not time for a public shaming in the face of the enemy. Too much, too soon.

In the light of the terrorist attacks on 9-11, my crystal ball tells me public opinion will have less sympathy for terrorist scum that got waterboarded than top American officials who were desperate to prevent another attack. Torture is wrong, it should be stopped, it never should have happened. I agree. But, should we put an ex-President on the dock? (Because, that's what it will come to.) Think about the ramifications.

One can't help but think this is a cynical exercise by Obama to distract attention from the economy.

Now is not the time.

UPDATE: Congress would also have to answer, including Nancy Pelosi:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.

By contrast, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, Porter
J. Goss of Florida, who later served as C.I.A. director, recalls a clear message that the methods would be used.

“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”

That makes me think an inquiry will never happen. Not while Pelosi is Speaker of the House.

via: Andrew Sullivan

Time to Bug Out: The Growing Case For Isolationism

It's looking like there is a good argument to pull out of the Middle East all together. In the next little while, I want to make the case for it in writing. I'm going to start by taking six quotes, from articles that I have posted about on the Daily Salt Shaker in the last week or so, to get a flavor of some of the difficulties:

Pakistan, perhaps of the most concern, has some 12,000 madrasas, many of which are Saudi-funded. Wahhabism provides not only the breeding ground on which Islamist terrorism flourishes, but it also threatens to overshadow other, more moderate traditions within Islam.
-Foreign Policy

The victory, such as it is, will be short-lived. I'm increasingly convinced that Afghanistan's problem lies deeper than a recalcitrant Taliban or a gutless central government. It's a problem so profound that for the first time I have to ask: Should our troops just get out?
- Irshad Manji

...it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.'
- The Independent

By going to Ankara on his knees, he gave his seal of approval to a pungently anti-American Islamist government bent on overturning Mustapha Kemal's legacy of the separation of mosque and state.
-Ralph Peters

The Obama administration will ask Congress for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Democratic congressional sources said Thursday.
-CNN

Canadian officials contacted the Afghan government Tuesday to express concern about controversial new legislation that would reportedly allow men to rape their wives.
-CTV

Fake Global Warming Story From the Independent

Breaking News: Ice shelves on the ocean break apart, float! (Hmm.. what caused the Titanic to sink in 1912?)

I found this "yellow journalism" article in the Independent humorous. They're trying to sound the alarm bells about Global Warming but the story comes apart as you go along. I have to do a mini-fisking here. Climate warning as Antarctic ice bridge shatters

An ice bridge which held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place shattered at the weekend and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist has warned.

"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey.

OK. This sounds serious. Obviously a sign of Global Warming. Surely this has never happened before?

Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B, further north, in 2002.

Oh, so it has happened before. For the last 50 years. What about 100 years ago? Well, no humans went ashore in Antarctica then and hence we have no historical data on ice shelves. Serious scientific studies of the Antarctic weren't established until the mid 1950's. Essentially, they are saying that as long as we've been studying this ice, it's been doing this.

But here is the clincher, and it makes me laugh:

The loss of ice shelves does not affect sea levels – floating ice contracts as it melts and so does not raise ocean levels. But their loss can allow glaciers on land to slide more rapidly towards the sea, adding water to the oceans.

So it doesn't makes seas levels rise! I thought that is what you're supposed to think, as part of the Global warming doomsday scenario. Thanks for adding that in.

Also, apparently, it'll make glaciers slide into the sea? Is that how it works? That's not science. That's some hack writer who put that in the final sentence. Glaciers "expand" into the sea, because ice expands when it gets cold.

People read this headline, and read the first sentence and it reafirms their climate catastrophe scenarios. I don't understand why these media agencies slant, and make things up about Global Warming. What's in it for them?

Galloway Lapping Up the Attention

As I posted a little more than a week ago, it was a mistake to bar George Galloway from Canada.

With the ensuing controversy, he's become a media star. You can find reference of him in every major Canadian newspaper and he appeared via video-conference on CBC's The Hour. He's ratcheted up the grandstanding by asking Jason Kenny to debate him.

In a speech delivered live to more than 600 supporters in a Toronto church, the outspoken Galloway called the ban over his support of Gaza's Hamas government – a decision upheld hours earlier by a Canadian judge – as "foolish and counterproductive."

Loud applause greeted his challenge to Kenney for a one-on-one debate: "Let's book the biggest hall in Canada," said Galloway, "and you and I will debate these issues of war and peace and freedom of speech and censorship.

"You won't be able to hide behind your spokesman. You won't be able to hide behind your immigration officials that can't speak up for themselves (or) behind the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It will just be you and me and the Canadian public ..."

He continued, "It's just not credible, Mr. Kenney, to call a man touring the United States of America, playing to packed audiences ... a terrorist or a security threat."

He would have been greeted with almost no fanfare had they allowed him entry in the first place. Now he's a free speech martyr.

Funnily enough, we find new free speech advocates:

Or take the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) --perhaps best known for its human rights complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine.

As for George Galloway, the CIC maintains that people should be free to "draw their own conclusions" about what he has to say. The spectacle of the CIC leading the charge for freedom of speech is certainly absurd, but the depths of their hypocrisy reach even deeper.

Most people who supported barring him claimed it was not a speech issue but a security choice by a sovereign country. It certainly doesn't look that way, and ends up bringing you down to the level of the censors at the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Jason Kenney has had a lot of good publicity lately, but this was a really bad decision.

State of the Daily Salt Shaker

Starting next week, I'll be working on a project that I'm going to be focusing most of my time on. This will limit my time on the blog. I'm still going to keep this alive. This is my idea of fun, and I don't plan to stop. I will try to live up to the daily part of it. I expect more than one daily post as well. The change will be that the posts will come later in the day.

Business as usual today though.

(Ferocious BC Grizzly Bear pictured top left)

Saturday Morning, Pounding Your Fist on the Breakfast Table Article

As the Daily Salt Shaker has stated before, the Canadian government has a bizarre policy of paying groups to lobby them. Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail has an article on one of those groups:

Last week, Mr. Kenney bit back. He asked his bureaucrats to yank the CAF's $447,000 grant. "They can say what they want within the parameters of our laws, but they shouldn't expect a priori funding." Now the CAF is accusing Mr. Kenney of trying to stifle its right to democratic speech. According to executive director Mohamed Boudjenane, the government's real motive for punishing the CAF is most likely political. "They maybe decided to go after the Zionist vote, like Reisman and Schwartz and Tannenbaum - people who used to be Liberal."

With a budget of more than $1-million a year, the Canadian Arab Federation depends heavily for its existence on taxpayers' money. It claims this funding is used entirely for programs that help newcomers adjust to Canadian society, and to fight racism and Islamophobia. "Our activity as an advocacy group has nothing to do with our political activity," Mr. Boudjenane says.

But the CAF's website tells another story. The home page urges people to join protests against the "massacre on Gaza." It links to dozens of anti-Israel articles, and gives prominent play to the winners of a recent essay contest on "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." The website was developed with a grant of $60,000 from the federal Department of Heritage.

The CAF is a prominent sponsor of anti-Israel demonstrations, which feature people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and people calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the planet. One video shows a woman pointing toward the camera and declaring: "Jewish child, you're going to f------ die. Hamas is coming for you."

(...)

On top of the money it gets from Ottawa, the CAF also gets money from Ontario, Quebec and even the cash-strapped city of Toronto, which recently gave it $25,000 for a public media campaign to address the "misrepresentation" of Arabs and Muslims in the media. It got another $75,000 from Ontario's government to help victims of crime and to conduct a survey on discrimination against Arabs and Muslims. It and other groups also get income from conducting anti-racism education; the Canadian Islamic Congress (which is ideologically identical to the CAF), for instance, was invited by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to give "sensitivity" training to the people whose job it is to keep terrorists off airplanes.

Your taxpayer money at work. We're paying for this. It's almost beyond comprehension. It's against the law for me to cheat taxes and this is what the money is going to.

Assemblee Nationale Du Quebec Monitors Daily Salt Shaker Again

My good friends at the Quebec Provincial National Assembly have tuned into my humble site once again. I must say that I am flatterred.

This time they were checking this post: PQ Try Their Hand at Humour

They were on the site a few weeks ago looking at these posts:

Why Isn't Quebec an Independent Country?

Personal Responsibility Quebec Style

I just want you to know that I'm your biggest supporter. Vive le Quebec libre!

Super Bowl MVP Hat Tips Daily Salt Shaker

9 second video.