Well, the big day is here! Last time we had one of these, back in 2017, I was guest-hosting America's Number One radio show and doing my best to provide play-by-play coverage of Total Eclipse Monday. Sample:
Don't forget to keep your special glasses to hand. People think that because the sun has gone all dark it's safe to look directly at it, but it's not. Bill Clinton was told this morning, 'Don't stare at the black sun.' And he said, 'That's just an Internet rumor from the Nineties.'
That's all I do come Eclipse Day: cheap jokes. July 31st 2000? Me in The Daily Telegraph:
My intern complained that I'd been going on to her for weeks about how great it would be, and then it's all over in two minutes. So I said, 'Okay, let's get out of the broom closet and go watch the eclipse.'
Etc.
But, if you prefer to take the whole thing seriously, you won't want for world-historical significance. According to one theory, because the Zone of Totality includes a certain town in Indiana, this is the big one, folks - the Rapture:
Rapture, Indiana. 💯 % 2024 Eclipse coverage. Here's a quick video of Rapture, Indiana, only a single house remains in this unincorporated town in Southwest Indiana. The 2024 Solar pathway travels the United States through seven towns named "Nineveh". Along this route is... pic.twitter.com/VEgf4RBHTs
— Ken Colbert (@KColbertReport) April 7, 2024
On the other hand, this so-called "Rapture" is an obvious Deep State false-flag operation:
This April 8th fake eclipse is man made... Right in the middle of the eclipse is a city called "Rapture"... We are living in the Truman Show...They are just laughing and mocking us... Don't forget He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best 💯 pic.twitter.com/Jh4O5DIgHd
— ALL SPORTS ARE RIGGED 2023 (@FormerNFLFan789) April 3, 2024
On the other other hand, I see the Quebec town of Ste-Hyacinthe is also in the Zone of Totality. That's named for the Polish saint who managed to pick up and carry away the statue of Mary from its imminent destruction by the Mongol hordes besieging Kiev in 1240.
Which may be the more relevant municipal nomenclature. If you have the misfortune to be, as I am, in the Zone of Totality, the eclipse is less significant than the massed ranks of crazies descending on the neighborhood. I am braced for looting and the traditional run on toilet paper ...but, alas, am not up to carrying statues.
~Meanwhile, back in the real world, and just two months from my court date with UK media censor Ofcom in the King's Bench Division, the modified limited hangout continues:
Pfizer accused of 'bringing discredit' on pharmaceutical industry after Covid social media posts
Watchdog rules company breached regulatory code five times including promoting unlicensed medicines
~Speaking of "the real world", is there any such thing these days? A real world depends on an agreed reality, and increasingly...:
Just one in four British Muslims believe Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel
Findings show 'failure of counter-extremism policy' and confirm a lot of 'work needs to be done' to challenge old anti-Semitic tropes
These aren't "old anti-Semitic tropes"; they're new and highly predictable ones arising from the decision, across the west after 9/11, to double the rate of Muslim immigration. "Work needs to be done"? What work would that be? And who's going to do it?
A more interesting poll would be of how many UK policemen "believe Hamas committed murder and rape" on October 7th. One in four? One in forty-four? British officialdom, for example, includes a Chief Magistrate who supervises three hundred judges in England and Wales and regards the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas as a "worthy" cause. The laughably misnamed UK "Border Force" is happy to arrest Israeli citizens landing at Manchester Airport because, in the words of the immigration agent, "I don't want you to do here what you do in Gaza."
"Work needs to be done"? Name a Muslim country that's less anti-Jew than it was fifty years ago. A century ago, a Jew could be Finance Minister in Egypt. Now, a Jew can't be, not in Egypt: when Joseph Cattaui's grandson dropped me a line about his once famous forebear, he did so from his family's exile in Europe.
And indeed exile in Europe no longer solves the problem, does it? This survey portends, at the very minimum, a somewhat un-peaceable kingdom:
A third of British Muslims (32%) want to see Shariah law implemented in the U.K. versus 9% of the public.
Younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas did not commit atrocities on October 7th, with the proportions rising to 47% among 18 to 24 year-olds and 40% among the university-educated.
As I wrote a week ago, it's simple arithmetic: demographic energy plus ancient pathologies equals your future. The three out of four British Muslims who don't "believe Hamas committed murder and rape" are what matters: They're the work that's already been done - by the British state on you, as your judges, policemen and border agents are all now acknowledging.
~As noted above, my first and second Statements of Claim against the UK media censor Ofcom have been accepted for judicial review by the High Court of England. The King's Bench Division will hear the case in June. Many readers have inquired about how to support this important free-speech case over Ofcom's throttling of honest discussion of Covid and its "vaccines". Well, there are several ways to lend a hand, including:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buying a near-and-dear one a SteynOnline gift certificate; or
c) ordering a copy of my latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it - ask Kathy Gyngell).
With the first two methods, one hundred per cent of the proceeds goes to a grand cause - and, with the last, a significant chunk thereof. And, in all cases, you or your loved one gets something, too.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with a rare Steyn media interview by Frank Haviland. Rick McGinnis's Saturday movie date found Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Ann Miller, Andrea Leeds and Eve Arden all in the same rooming house, and on Sunday Steyn's Song of the Week marked the first fifty years of the Abba phenomenon. Our marquee presentation was a special edition of The Mark Steyn Show with Conrad Black and Samantha Smith mulling monarchy.
If you were too busy spending the weekend trying to find a last-minute hotel room in Rapture, Indiana, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.