Not sure if this vid will embed properly or not. Either way, it’s worth a look.

If the vid won’t play for you, you can always click here to see it anyway.

And some people wonder how I can be a monarchist…

Well, this ought to shut up the naysayers (a few of ’em, anyway). HRH Prince Henry of Wales (aka Prince Harry) may not have made it to Iraq like he was hoping to, but he sure as hell managed to get his ass in the grass in Afghanistan! And damned good for him, too. An Aussie mag, a German paper and Drudge sprung the story a while ago, and Britain’s Defence Ministry confirmed it today.

From Drudge:

They’re calling him “Harry the Hero!”

British Royal Prince Harry has been fighting in Afghanistan since late December — and has been directly involved in gun battle, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The prince, a junior officer in the Blues and Royals, and third in line to the throne, has been a “magnificent soldier” and an “inspiration to all of Briton.”

Prince Harry is taking part in a new offensive against the Taliban.

The Ministry Of What You Should Think has more:

“His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary,” said the head of the British army, Gen. Richard Dannatt. “He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else in his battle group.”

In an interview from Afghanistan that was made public Thursday, Harry told the BBC the deployment is “massively important” and a “turning point” in his life.

“It’s very nice to be sort of a normal person for once. I think it’s about as normal as I’m going to get,” he said, adding that he doesn’t miss anything from home, even alcohol. The prince often made headlines for his partying.

[…]

Harry has often complained he would quit the armed forces unless he is allowed to fight alongside his colleagues. When he graduated from military college in 2006, Harry told an interviewer he wasn’t going to put himself through military school “and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country.”

After his deployment to Iraq was canned, about a dozen defence officials quietly hatched a plan to send the prince to Afghanistan, CBC correspondent Adrienne Arsenault said.

A handful of journalists were invited to observe Harry on the battlefield under the agreement they would not report the information until the deployment had ended. The news blackout was intended to reduce the risk to the prince and his regiment.

CNN gets in on the act, too:

He was deployed 10 weeks ago and his fellow soldiers were sworn to secrecy.

The prince’s status is currently being reviewed, the Ministry of Defense said.

Harry is third in line to the British throne and serves with the Blues and Royals

His main role has been as a member of a group called Joint Tactical Air Control, or JTAC.

“As far as I’m concerned I’m out here as a normal JTAC on the ground and not as Prince Harry” he said.

In a recent interview with CNN correspondent Paula Newton, Prince Harry said, “At the end of the day I like to sort of be a normal person, and for once I think this is about as normal as I’m ever going to get.”

And in a pre-deployment interview with the British Press Association, he said: “If I’m wanted, if I’m needed, then I will serve my country as I signed up to do.”

The head of the British Army, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, said Harry’s deployment had been kept secret after striking an agreement with the media.

British and international media — including CNN — had agreed not to report Harry’s deployment because of security concerns for him and his unit. The military confirmed the operation after a U.S. Web site broke the news blackout.

Dannatt said: “What the last two months have shown is that it is perfectly possible for Prince Harry to be employed just the same as other Army officers of his rank and experience.

All I can say is: Damned fine job, lad! God bless you, and come home in one piece.

Seeing as how I seem to have a bad case of bloggers’ block up the wazoo lately, I’m getting a little hard up for stuff to write about.

So, for lack of anything better, I guess I’ll just smack up whatever it is that I trip over that either tickles my funnybone, leaves me going “what the hell…?” or both.  Today’s entry is under the “both” heading.

And, I promise, just as soon as I can jar something loose from this rickety damned skull of mine, I’ll be right back to howling my lungs out about things that actually matter.  Until then, I’m afraid you’ll just have to sit through stuff like this… Sorry. 🙁

British man puts out kitchen fire with aunt’s oversized underwear

LONDON – They went from baggy knickers to the ultimate hotpants.

A fire department official in Britain says Jenny Marsey’s miraculous underwear saved the day by doubling as an emergency fire blanket during a kitchen blaze.

Marsey’s nephew, John, was frying bread in her kitchen in Hartlepool, northeast England, on Sunday when the fire broke out.

He grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of washing to smother the fire – a wet pair of his aunt’s size 18 underwear.

The nephew’s quick thinking saved the kitchen but left Marsey’s underpants slightly scorched.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Marsey. “My family could have been in hospital but the knickers saved the day.”

A fire brigade spokesman said that the general principle – using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire – was a sound one.

As for using underwear: “Clearly it depends on what size you are,” he said, “but I don’t want to go there.”

Dear gawd… I really do need something to set a fire under me…

It didn’t take me long after I sat down in front of my PC today to stumble over Paul Jackson’s latest offering at the Calgary Sun, “Appeasement is pure folly.” As most of you already know, I have a bit of a habit of checking out what’s on Paul’s mind from time to time. Sure, he sometimes comes off a little too pro-American for my taste but more often than not, he has a habit of being spot-on.

In today’s column, he talks about a little something that was passed on to him recently:

A remarkable document came into my hands the other day from a Republican friend in Washington and it is something that should be read by all patriotic Americans and Canadians.

It should also be read by lib-lefters, appeasers, sell-out artists and cowards in all western democracies who want the U.S. and Britain to pull out of Iraq, and the U.S., Britain and Canada to pull out of Afghanistan, and the West to just give in to the demands of fanatics such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

It’s entitled Europe — Your Name is Cowardice and was written, strangely, by a German, Mathias Dapfner, CEO of the huge publishing house Axel Springer (AG) and published in Germany’s largest newspaper Die Welt.

Alright Paul, you’ve got my attention. And after a bit of digging around, I find myself agreeing with you; this is definitely something to file in the “must read” column. The problem is: which version?

Ever since German periodical Die Welt published the editorial by Mathias Döpfner on 20 November 2004, there have been literally dozens of versions of it popping up here and there around the internet, in just about every Western language you can care to name. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — like I said, I consider it a must-read — but the problem is that a lot of the English-language translations of this editorial that have been circulated via the Internet include alterations and additional invective that weren’t present in the original. Judging from the quotes in the article, Paul must have gotten one of these. Not that I’m trying to beat Mr Jackson over the head or anything but if we’re going to quote someone, let’s at least do our best to get it right.

So… before I get any more long-winded than I’m already being, let’s cut this short. Reproduced below is the most accurate-to-the-original translation that I could find (thanks to Snopes). Even without the extra barbs, it’s still damned good…

UPDATE: for those looking to split hairs, click here. 

A few days ago, Henryk M. Broder wrote in the Welt am Sonntag, “Europe — thy name is appeasement.” It’s a phrase you can’t get out of your head because it’s so painfully true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and Gentiles their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated far too long before realizing that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized the Communist Soviet Union and the former East Germany, those parts of Eastern Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideological alternative. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and we debated and debated and were still debating when the Americans finally came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting the only democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word “equidistance,” relativizes the fundamentalist Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to condone the 300,000 victims of Saddam’s torture and murder machinery in Iraq and condemn the actions of George Bush in the self-righteousness of the peace movement. And in the end it is also appeasement at its most grotesque when Germany reacts to the escalating violence of Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by proposing a national Muslim holiday.

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership realize that there is a form of crusade underway, an especially perfidious one of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims targeting civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies. This is a conflict that will likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century, waged by an adversary who cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but is instead spurred on by such gestures, mistaking them as signs of weakness.

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for staunch anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, and Bush — supported only by the persuasive Social Democrat politician Tony Blair — recognized the danger in the Islamic war against democracy. His place in history will need to be evaluated a number of years down the road.

In the meantime, Europe snuggles into its multicultural niche instead of defending the values of a liberal society with charismatic certitude and acting as a positive center of power in a delicate balance between the true global powers, America and China. We instead present ourselves as the world champions of tolerance against the intolerants, which even Otto Schily [Germany’s former Federal Minister of the Interior] justifiably criticizes. And why, actually? Because we’re so moral? I fear it’s more because we’re so materialistic.

For his policies, Bush risks the devaluation of the dollar, huge amounts of added national debt, and a massive and lasting strain on the American economy — because everything is at stake.

Yet while America’s so allegedly materialistic robber baron capitalists know their priorities, we timidly defend the benefice of our social affluence. Just stay out of it; it could get expensive. We’d rather discuss our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage or listen to televangelists preach about the need to “Reach out to murderers.” These days, it sometimes seems that Europe is like a little old lady who cups her shaking hands around her last pieces of jewelry as a thief breaks in right next door. Europe, thy name is Cowardice.

Well, I finally managed to find Her Majesty’s Prime Minster Stephen Harper’s speech at the 90th anniversary of the assault on Vimy (thanks to Daimnation for finding it first). The footage seems to be via Lowell Green over at CFRA in Ottawa.

Damn good speech and definitely worth taking the time to watch — and that’s coming from a guy that usually finds himself bored to tears by speechs.

A little behind the herd here, I know but what can I say? I’ve been away for a bit. The recent act of war by Iran against Britain has, understandably, created more than a little bit of navel-gazing in its wake. Not a big surprise, when you take a minute to think about it. There was once a time when Britain would have never stood for that kind of crap (anybody out there remember the Falkland Islands?). Not now, it seems.

I was going to go on at some length about this but, as happens from time to time, somebody else not only beat me to it, they did it a lot better than I would have. So, just what do I do when someone has the audacity to outdo me like that? Simple: I steal their stuff and put it here for you to look at.

The following is from last Saturday’s TO Sun and is by UWO prof Salim Mansur; a man who quite probably has the firmest — and arguably, the bluntest — grasp of the Islamofascist mind of anyone in the country. Here’s his take on the issue, with no further needless commentary from yours truly:

Iran finds weak West

By SALIM MANSUR

The insolence of the thuggish regime in Iran is rising in inverse proportion to the self-abasement of the West and, in particular, the European Union.

The hostage taking of British sailors by Tehran was a move to test the resolve of Britain and its allies in responding to provocation bordering on an act of war.

Tony Blair’s failure to respond in a manner that could not be misread by Tehran for the immediate unconditional release of British sailors only confirmed the clerical regime’s estimate of the West as unwilling to contend with Iran’s expansionist ambitions in the Persian Gulf region.

Tehran learned from its experience of taking American diplomats hostage for 444 days that the West could be shown for being a paper tiger as China’s Mao had once described it.

The latest Iranian hostage taking should be seen in a wider context of Tehran’s strategic objective of being recognized as the leading Islamic power in a multipolar world wherein Europe and the United States are no longer dominant, and in the United Nations the countries of Asia and Africa provide for the majority bloc of voting members.

Iran’s ascent to the position Tehran’s clerical regime aspires might only be realized by dividing the Arab opposition to its ambition, defying the Security Council’s various resolutions to stop its bid to acquire nuclear capability, and securing Russian-Chinese support to nullify any threat of EU singly or in combination with the U.S.

From the outset of Iran’s 1979 revolution the regime’s supreme clerical guide, Ayatollah Khomeini, maintained the road to Jerusalem and the “liberation” of Palestine was through Karbala, the Iraqi site of martyrdom for the Shiite Imam Hussein and his family. In other words, the Persian Khomeini offered the Arab-Palestinian nationalists the example of Shiite martyrdom as the means for waging war against Israel.

Iran has succeeded in dividing the Arab states by positioning Hezbollah as its fifth column in the heart of the Arab east, and by financing the Hamas among Palestinians. A fragmented Arab world nursing innumerable grievances is unable to counter Iran’s age-old Persian ambition reincarnated in Islamist ideology and financed by bulging oil revenue.

The EU negotiations with Tehran to cease its no longer secret nuclear program in return for assistance to construct nuclear reactor for civilian use has proven to be a charade.

European trade with Iran has grown over time, and commercial interests of France, Germany and Italy trump any EU concerns over Iran’s race to become a nuclear power.

Nuclear capability is the guarantee the clerics seek to make Iran’s position in the Middle East invulnerable to external challenge. Domestically it would make the clerical regime more formidable even as Iranians increasingly loathe the totalitarian rule of Khomeini and his political progeny.

Tehran’s probing of Britain’s resolve by kidnapping its sailors could be indicative of the British mood being the same as in the rest of Europe, of appeasing and accommodating Iran. If this is so and clerical rulers of Iran are proven right, then only President George Bush stands between Tehran’s ambition and its consummation.

But the Bush administration is beset with problems exacerbated by a swing in American mood in the direction of European appeasers.

The clerics in Tehran will wait out the remaining months of Bush in the White House for they know too well the Democratic party of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and taking British sailors hostage is their endgame move to run the West out of the Middle East.