For over a year the media has struggled to try and define just what exactly the movement was. Now they have a definition.

Sarah Palin.

I don’t know what planet Kleinheider lives on, but here on Earth the MSM hasn’t had to struggle at all to label the tea party movement the ugly expression of the angry, gun-toting, racist, ignorant, unwashed and despicable masses (ie, non-coastal whites). That particular classist depiction has been around for years, and as soon as folks started to get together and speak up, they were tarred with it. Read the whole thing for more crazy assertions and petulant left-wingish whining.

On the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner radio show, Woods was the butt of jokes all week.

“Thankfully, Tiger, you didn’t marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas,” one parody suggests in song, she would have castrated him.

“The Grinch’s Theme Song” didn’t stop there: “The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaant?”

As one blogger, Robert Paul Reyes, wrote: “If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great’s accident would have been barely a blip in the blogosphere.”

The darts reflect blacks’ resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America’s whitest sports and assumed the mantle of the world’s most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.

Woods apparently refers to himself as a “Cablinasian”, a synthetic abbreviation designed to capture at least some of his Thai, Dutch, African American, Native American and Chinese ancestry. Am I the only one who thinks the notion that having less-than-100%-pure European blood makes one a “brother” is just as racist as the notion that having less-than-100%-pure European blood makes one a “mud person”?

Or am I missing some sort of nuance, here?

Brit Stuart Varney vs. some crazy & incoherent Hollywood douchebag. I don’t usually see folks mix it up like this on TV.

BFIfilms:

This film is tricky to describe: is it a boat study, a film-poem, an experiment, a picture postcard? One thing is certain: it’s a rare colour snapshot of the Thames and London in the 1930s – and it looks quite magical.

Its artistic qualities may look a bit old-fashioned to us today; the slow pace, orchestral music and moody colours definitely belong to a bygone era, strikingly peaceful and undemanding. Yet colour film was still a novelty for audiences in 1935, and the photography (using the new Gasparcolor system) succeeds in accentuating the sharp contrast between the vivid green banks of the countryside and the drab tones of the industrial landscape. (Sonia Genaitay)

For an interesting effect, slide the “orchestral” volume to zero, open this in another tab, click play and listen while you watch the oldie above.

The dustbin of history is waiting. Don’t keep it waiting too long, eh?

Sheesh.

What was especially noteworthy about his Virginia speech were the diversions Obama took from the prepared text. Because of Obama’s improvised moments, this speech was different than the usual fare he offers. We didn’t get the normal dosages of post-partisanship or even “elevation.” Virtually every time Obama deviated from the text, he expressed the partisan anger that has so poisoned the Democratic party. His spontaneous comments eschewed the conciliatory and optimistic tone that has made the Obama campaign such a phenomenon. It looked like the spirit of John Edwards or Howard Dean had possessed Obama every time he vamped. While Paul Krugman probably loved it, this different Obama was a far less attractive one.

[...]

What makes Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson speech especially relevant is where he went when he went off script. The unifying Obama who has impressed so many people during this campaign season vanished, replaced by just another angry liberal railing against George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Exxon Mobil, and other long standing Democratic piñatas. The pressing question that Obama’s decidedly uninspiring Jefferson-Jackson oratory raises is which Obama is the real Obama–the one who read beautifully crafted words from a Teleprompter after his victory in Iowa, or the tediously angry liberal who improvised in Virginia?

Maybe we can elect whoever it is who’s writing his speeches.

In the spirit of Brian’s critique, I offer this tidbit:

It sounds mad: shipping UK-caught langoustine thousands of miles to be processed, then back again to be turned into breaded scampi and put on sale. That’s what leading seafood producer Young’s started doing last year, triggering a storm of protest from environmental campaigners.

[...]

In the past the scampi was shelled by machine in Scotland. Now it is taken first to container ports like Grangemouth and loaded into containers, which are in effect giant freezers.

They are shipped to Rotterdam before being loaded onto a huge container ship alongside around 7,000 other containers for the long haul to Bangkok.

The key part of the process takes place in Thailand, as the langoustine are peeled by hand – the way consumer research says we like our scampi.

The long journey home from Bangkok takes the frozen, peeled langoustine through Rotterdam again before a short hop across the North Sea to Grimsby, where the scampi is breaded – and then delivered to our supermarkets and our plates.

[...]

The company submitted research to the independent Carbon Trust. The conclusion was that shipping scampi to and from Thailand is no more environmentally damaging than peeling it by machine in this country.

Mike Parker, deputy CEO of Young’s, says the science is on their side.

“What they found was that there was no difference between the two, and the reason for that is simply that by moving from machine processing here in the UK to hand processing in Thailand saves a lot of energy, and obviously a lot of the CO2 emissions associated with that.

“But at the same time the C02 emissions associated with shipping to Thailand and back are actually very, very low.”

Eat globally, save the planet! Or at least, do no more harm.

People like Gagnon don’t want to solve problems (or even identify problems), they just want to feel morally superior and special, even at the cost of destroying civilization. I wonder if Gagnon, an accountant, works for a firm that ships things (potatoes, lumber, designer clothing, whatever) around the country, or if he works for a little “sustainable” shop that only services customers who live within walking distance? If the former, I think the morally correct thing to do would be to quit immediately – because if you want to call for the destruction of wealth, you should lead by example and destroy your own first.

The sale of imitation samurai swords could be banned by the end of the year, the Home Office announced today.

Importing or hiring the weapons could also be made illegal following a string of samurai sword attacks in recent years.

Breaching the ban, which is targeted at cheap imitation samurai swords rather than the more expensive genuine collectors’ items made by licensed swordsmiths in Japan, would result in up to six months in jail and a £5,000 fine.

There’s no end to the list of objects an angry or criminal-minded person could use to commit mayhem… Will the Home Office ban them all before addressing the actual problem? And if yes, why not just cut to the chase and fine or jail people for being raised poor and being poorly raised?

I expect in a few years GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) will be replaced with RWS (Running With Scissors).

The PDF posted by FIRE was created from a 1-bit bitmap – all the pixels are either pure black or pure white, which makes it a little tricky to read the poorly-redacted RA names via the usual method of cranking up the contrast. Since the scribbled ink was less dense than the ink of the type, I tried treating those pixels as noise, but Photoshop’s noise-reduction filters didn’t do much (I think they need different noise pixels on multiple color channels to work effectively?). Then I tried applying a gaussian blur to push the pixels out of their pure black and white states to get me some grayscale, which worked fine. After playing with tonal levels a bit, I got the following image:

Click for a slightly larger version. If anyone wants to see the process repeated on an image rasterized at a higher resolution I’d be happy to make another. Anyway, it may be difficult to read, but I think it’s pretty clear that the name isn’t [REDACTED].

UPDATE: BTW, the subject line is just intended as a mashup of Orwell and college stoner-speak, the sort of thing an RA might say if versed in these things, not anything directed at TJIC.

Since March 2002, Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz has sued or threatened to sue in England at least 36 writers and publishers – including many Americans – who have documented his financial contributions to al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups, through his Muwafaq (Blessed Relief) foundation, and the Saudi National Commercial Bank he owned. Everyone settled with bin Mahfouz, – except me.

England’s libel laws favor the individual’s rights over the public. They allow bin Mahfouz and other terror financiers, known as “libel tourists,” to veil in secrecy their funding of al Qaeda, other Islamic terror organizations and global propagation of radical Islam. British laws earned the U.K. the label—“libel capital of the Western world”—and rained wealth on Britain’s libel bar.

Bin Mahfouz’s legal “victories” in London had the desired affect he and other Saudi terror financiers sought – silencing of the media even in the U.S. where the First Amendment protects writers and publishers. But American book and newspaper publishers are not willing to risk expensive lawsuits in London. Many refuse to publish even the most comprehensively documented reports on alleged wealthy Middle Eastern funding terrorism.

Ehrenfeld told the British courts where they could stick it. Outstanding!

(Note that the link to Amazon in the article leads to the presumably out-of-print first edition – an updated version is available here.)

Additionally:

Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.

I predict lots of ugly violence.

Since the wild excesses of crazy front-man Hussein broke up the band in ’03, his two bandmates have been reduced to touring as “Kim Jong Ilvis and his Flock of Seagulls”… Word is VH1 is already planning a “Where are they now?” episode.

Seriously, what wonderfully ridiculous goofs! The West seems unstoppable.

(subject line ht)

Coming to America

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2007
SPEECHES
AEI World Forum (Beaver Creek, Colorado)
Publication Date: July 23, 2007

The movie Coming to America tells the story of Prince Akim from a beautiful, peaceful, exotic monarchy called Zamunda in Africa. The King of Zamunda holds a fabulous ceremony for his crown prince Akim (wonderfully played by Eddie Murphy) attended by all the kings’ men and all the kings’ horses. After a display of rigid protocol, preceded by a generous sprinkling of petals followed by a wild but well-choreographed dance, Akim is introduced to his bride-to-be. The future queen has the figure of Jennifer Lopez and is clad in a long, golden evening gown. She has black curly hair that falls down to her waist, and the sunniest of smiles–quite a handy asset if one’s main job is to bare one’s teeth in pleasure at all times, even if one feels no pleasure.

But Akim has been corrupted by modernity and, contrary to the tradition of Zamunda, he wants to fall in love. He wants a bride who talks back, has her own mind, and loves him not for his position but just for himself. He violates protocol by taking the bride-to-be aside. Akim then asks her about her ideas, her outlook on life, and her hobbies. To every question prince Akim gets a well-rehearsed mantra: “whatever you want, your highness.” A frustrated Akim then asks her to bark like a dog–and she proceeds to do as the prince demands. As Akim storms off in exasperation we are left wondering when the poor woman will be pardoned.

Prince Akim, having just rejected the bride-to-be in Zamunda, must find a new one. He decides to look for one in America–in Queens to be precise. Akim finds his princess, the daughter of a “McDowells” tycoon.

***

Life in Somalia was no Zamunda, with cool breezes and a benign king, where animals and humans interacted in peaceful non-verbal understanding.

In 1969, twenty-three days before my birth, Somalia’s infant democracy was toppled by a member of the army. Mohamed Siad Barre did what Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia were doing at the time. They killed, jailed, or chased away any man or woman who might be a threat to their power. My father, Hirsi Magan, was one of those who were jailed. My first memories of him are of me, my brother Mahad, my late sister Haweya, my grandmother, and my mother sitting, just after sunset, under a large tree we call the talal tree, cupping our hands and praying for him to be released. Our prayers were obviously heard, for after a while (I had no sense of time then: a while could extend between a month to a year) he was able to escape with the help of a close clan member who happened to be the director of the prison where my father was held. This clan member was ultimately betrayed and executed.

Diseases were common in my Africa. I got malaria, measles, a terrible form of pox which covers your body in boils, and hepatitis (also called yellow fever) where one’s eyes are almost closed off with pus. My grandmother was attached to her traditions. She shunned all pleas to have us treated by modern doctors as ignoble, and instead force-fed us homemade herbal concoctions. Or she would have the local imam write verses of the Quran on a wooden board, rinse them off into a bowl, recite some verses, and spit into the bowl. I then had to drink that. Children’s diseases like measles came and went, but my yellow fever resisted grandmother’s potions. So Grandma took the next step that the tradition of her forefathers dictated. She took me to the local blacksmith. Grandma and two of my aunts bared my chest and pinned me to the ground. Meanwhile the blacksmith heated long iron rods with endings in the shape of nails. All the while I watched him and screamed with the terror of what was about to happen. When he pressed the iron rods into my chest I fainted from the pain.

After a few days I finally got medical treatment at the hospital in which I was born. When I recovered weeks later, Grandma had forgotten the modern intervention and was bursting with pride that the blacksmith had cured me. I have retained three little scars on my chest from that “treatment.” By the time Grandma embarked on the next superstition of genital cleansing (applied to all three children, including my brother Mahad), I had been through quite some childhood discomfort.

Meanwhile my mother was forced to spend most of her time and creativity in feeding us properly. She had to smuggle food into the house, thus dodging Barre’s rules of rationing. She went about looking for help within the clan structure to get passports, airline tickets, and money. And at the same time being a mother to us, a daughter to her difficult mother, and a wife to her ever-absent husband. Every decision Ma made to sort our lives out was offset with another of Grandma’s traditions. For instance it was against Grandma’s tradition to eat eggs and fish, so she threw them away (despite all the effort and risk that Ma had invested to get us those eggs and that fish). According to Grandma’s gods, carrying certain foods after sunset from one particular direction to another would result in tainting the food by evil spirits. Of course, food-smuggling could only take place after sunset.

Russia’s communist model imposed on Somalia by Mohamed Siad Barre disrupted nomadic life and provided no better alternative. Our household was the tragicomic face of that disruption. I was taught that communism (we pronounced it as Shu-i) was bad. My father–Abdeh–wanted a democracy like America’s. Capitalism did not exist in my vocabulary. We wanted to be like that far away place called America, not knowing what it looked like. America was good and Russia was bad. Russia armed our dictator Afwayne and put ghastly thoughts into his head such as making us queue for food in the heat.

Saudi Arabia presented its own challenges. There was no food problem and the houses in which we lived (except in Mecca) were large and airy. Saudi Arabia had its own peculiar cruelties, but these weren’t deemed bad by Ma–even though she suffered from them the most. When my father did not come to pick us up at the airport in Jeddah after our long journey to join him, Ma was denied entry into the country. Eventually when we were allowed in, she had to face daily humiliation as no one would attend to her when running errands. She was doubly discriminated against: she was a woman and black.

Saudi Arabia is where I first met my father. He gave us love, discipline without physical punishment, and encouraged our curiosity. But most often he was away. His absence upset Ma. She had a bad temper and would shout at him and throw things around. This resulted in longer absences, and Ma just remained upset most of the time.

After the Friday prayers, Ma and our visitors would speak to us about physical punishments. In Somalia people were being hanged, jailed, and tortured. We were taught that that was bad. Unjust, ungodly, cruel. In Saudi Arabia the stoning of women, the amputating of the hands of thieves, and the beheadings of those who had committed shirk (a great sin against God) were described as the requirement of sharia, or the law. In this twisted reasoning the system was excused and the victims were portrayed as bad and deserving of punishment.

In 1979, we were deported from Saudi Arabia and came to Ethiopia. The whole family was relieved–everyone that is, except Ma. My memories of Ethiopia are more pleasant but also filled with tragedy. I found the openness and kindness of the people unforgettable. In Ethiopia we did not have to be separated from the men. There were no veiled women around. We played and went to school and learned to speak Amharic. More unpleasant are the memories of poverty. The sheer number of beggars on the streets and hordes of men, women, and children with parts of their limbs missing because of leprosy.

I also can remember distinguishing the early contours of what later in my life would become clear: that my father’s dream of a liberal, sun-filled Somalia was not going to happen. What was supposed to become the grand opposition to Siad Barre fell apart due to infighting, clanism, and corruption. Young men lured into Addis Ababa by the SSDF to rescue our young nation from Afweyne’s death grip were sent to the border of Somalia and Ethiopia. They were poorly trained and badly armed, but full of the fighting spirit that the Darod and Isaq clans were famous for. Some of those who played with us and taught us poems would never return; others came back with no legs or arms. There were no wheel chairs, so they just lay on mattress and woven mats, chewing qat and reflecting on youth lost.

Kenya was much better than Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia–but still no Zamunda. It is there that I learned to speak English. In Nairobi I evolved from a child to a teenager to a young adult. My father left us after a few more fights with Ma. Haweya and Mahad, both brilliant, dropped out of school when they hit 15. In Kenya I read to escape the collapse of our family. I enjoyed reading. We didn’t have many books at our disposal. At first there were the Lady Bird books. Fairy tales: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Little Red Riding Hood; The Three Little Pigs (now probably banned in the UK); Goldilocks and the Three Bears; The Ugly Duckling, etc. Then came the Enid Blytons: The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. After that my English was good enough to read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys; and later the girly romances from Mills & Boon and the Harlequins and Danielle Steele alongside several Barbara Cartlands. There were also the thrillers of Frederick Forsyth, Jeffrey Archer, and Robert Ludlum and the dirty books of Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins. Real literature was just for school. You read Shakespeare, Jane Austin, and George Orwell in class. These books were covered and were handled with respect. After reading them you returned them to the teacher’s desk and put a cross next to your name indicating that you had returned the book. Through these books, my imagination was introduced to Britain, America, and Russia–with Russia always being the sucker.

In Kenya I also had my first flirtation with radical Islam. It is in Nairobi that I met Sister Aziza with her message of a pure Islam. This wasn’t my grandma’s Islam with her amulets, her conversations with her forefathers, and her initiation rites. The true Islam of Sister Aziza resembled the one in Saudi Arabia. Suddenly terms like “jihad,” “Jews,” and “martyrdom” were back. And it was not only Sister Aziza; there were many other Kenyan Muslims and Somalis getting scholarships to Medina to study the true and pure Islam. The rationalizing of cruelties was back. Though life in Nairobi was relatively easier than in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia, Kenya was no Zamunda. Daniel Arap Moi was a corrupt president, a dictator like Siad Barre who murdered his opponents and whose reign was defined by the divide-and-rule principle common to African tyrants. He set tribes against each other and managed to remain in power. All this was condemned. The promise of Sharia was not.

Civil war in Somalia made me mature faster than I otherwise would have. I was 22 when Osman Musse, a distant cousin seeking a bride, approached my father. My father, who had returned from Ethiopia, agreed. What motivated him? In the clan system women are worth even less in wartime. Somalia had just collapsed and the clans had reverted back to the old cycle of blood feuds. Our clan had lost power and land. In such a context, Osman Musse’s proposal was manna from heaven. Marriage to a man outside of the clan or a non-Somali was unthinkable. My father was burdened–in his perspective–with five unwed daughters. So unlike Prince Akim’s father, mine did not have the power to send me to America to find a husband. I had no way out but to bark like Akim’s bride-to-be. Not to a prince but to a half-wit who was convinced I was going to provide him with six sons.

I found the real Zamunda not in Africa but in Europe; in a small and stubborn nation called the Netherlands, won from the sea. The streets were clean, the buses arrived on time. They had every gadget imaginable. Everything was free and accessible. It is there that I found my freedom. It is in Holland that I discovered the strength to say no to my father and my clan. I got help from the Dutch police, from the social workers, and from ordinary citizens. The Dutch government gave me permanent residence within three weeks of my arrival. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So I learned the language. I did odd jobs and went to college. I did what everybody talks about these days: assimilate. And I enjoyed most of that process.

Then came 9/11! Muslims everywhere cheered. Not all cheered, but those who did made history. I took part in debates; I wrote op-ed articles. I argued that there was a link between the attacks and the failed assimilation of Muslims in Holland and in Europe. The suicide killers of New York and Washington were motivated by belief and not poverty. Education in civilization was the answer and the emancipation of women for the Dutch Muslims. For that I was threatened. My generous and naïve Dutch friends had no idea what to do. So they sent me to America. When I returned to Holland and to the parliament, I refused to adjust my message to the polls of the day and thus caused my party and the coalition some headache. The jihadi elements in society continued their threats. Meanwhile, Theo van Gogh, the nation’s greatest provocateur, and I made a small film with verses from the Koran on women’s bodies.

Theo was killed on the second of November 2004. I was sent to America, for the second time, to find security. In 2005 I returned to Holland, despite wanting to stay in America. Had I stayed in America, the timing and the message it would have sent was terrible; I would be rewarding Bouyeri if I did not go back, so I did.

In September of last year I returned to America for good. Three unrelated incidents led to my arrival here:

• I had accomplished in parliament what I wanted to and did not want to run for office again. I felt that my message was stronger and more effective in America. After a number of applications for a job with different think tanks I decided on AEI–one of the few wise decisions that I made in my life.
• A judge in the appeals court of the Netherlands had honored a court case my neighbors had made against me in which they argued that I was a threat indirectly to them and their property.
• Rita Verdonk, the previous minister of integration and immigration, revoked my citizenship, citing a documentary about my having told lies during my asylum application.

If you look beyond the hilarity in the movie Coming to America, what you will see is a picture of America that is off-putting. Queens (where Akim hopes to find his queen) is a nasty and violent place. All of the McDowells, except the girl Akim falls for, are greedy, superficial, and unwelcoming. New York appears to be a cold and monstrous place compared to the luminous Zamunda. The Waldorf Astoria (perhaps meant to portray the grandeur of America) looks staid and badly in need of a revamp.

My experience could not have been more different. All the Americans I have met have been very hospitable, cordial, helpful, and full of good advice. Chris DeMuth called me just after I resigned from parliament and offered me a permanent fellowship at AEI. Since I have come to America last year, my colleagues and their spouses have only shown me kindness, generosity, and friendship–all the way to yesterday’s whitewater rafting and last night’s line dancing.

There is no Zamunda in Africa. Perhaps Queens is a nasty and monstrous place, but, ladies and gentlemen, there is no place like America.

“now probably banned in the UK”.

Heh.

What an asshole:

SUNAPEE, N.H. – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Many leftists love this argument… Since we don’t have the ability to solve all the world’s problems, how dare we try to solve any of them? It ignores the fact that some problems are more important than others, that some are more easily solved than others, that some problems, when solved, create more good than others, etc.

And of course I have yet to hear one leftist politician (well, any leftist, really) apply this objection to the police force (or IRS), which suffers from the similar problem of not being able to prevent all crime (or tax evasion).

Any fan of the books knows the story already, and I don’t want to ruin it for those that don’t, but briefly: In Harry and his pals’ fifth year at Hogwarts, the stalwart headmaster, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), is in the process of being overthrown by Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), a Ministry-appointed prig who wants to whip the students into shape for their upcoming wizardry exams, the OWLs. Her blind allegiance to standardized testing, not to mention her relentless chipping away at civil liberties, recall a certain U.S. president, but the analogy is never overplayed.

You know, that’s just what I thought – British author J. K. Rowling, a former dole recipient who pulled herself so far up by her bootstraps that she’s now one of the wealthiest people in Britain, aimed her critique of bureaucratic perfidy at (wait for it) …an American President?

What won’t a leftist sneak a Bush critique into? I’m half-expecting to start seeing rants about our lame-duck administration in restaurant reviews. WTF!

Via Pajamas Media:

Former KGB agent and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov explains how the KGB worked from within American universities to demoralize our society in a generation.

Poking around a bit turns up part 2:

These interviews are from 1984. I guess the MSM (or, as it was known back then, the M) wasn’t interested in this guy, and he was forced to resort to videotaping a discussion with someone hanging around in the lobby of the motel he was staying at. Some other fascinating bits below the fold:

No such thing as a grassroots revolution.

Disposable heroes of the revolution / useful idiots. (insert your own Crooked Timber joke here)

The KGB, it loves the hippies! Oh yes.

Complicit journalists.

Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian national, faced murder charges for killing an American soldier in Afghanistan with a hand grenade when he was 15-years-old. In a surprise ruling, the presiding judge at the war crimes tribunal Monday, said he does not have jurisdiction to try Khadr under a new 2006 law.

The judge said according to the new law, each detainee must have been officially designated as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” He said Khadr had only been designated an “enemy combatant.” The judge did say, however, Khadr could be recharged if he undergoes a new hearing to determine his status.

Ridiculous.

* unless it was full of cash and stored in a freezer, of course.