Saturday, November 17, 2007

[neue universität] scharia-freie zone bei mekka


Es sind gerade mal 120 Kilometer Luftlinie bis Mekka, dem wichtigsten Heiligtum des Islam. Hier, am Roten Meer, unter der sengenden Sonne der saudiarabischen Wüste, in einem der reichsten und zugleich konservativsten Länder des Islam, soll eine Insel des freiheitlichen Denkens entstehen: die King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

36 Quadratkilometer groß, 12,5 Milliarden Dollar teuer - auf dem Campus sollen 2000 Studenten, und 600 Fakultätsmitglieder aus aller Welt ab 2009 mit feinster technologischer Ausrüstung und international vernetzt Spitzenforschung betreiben.

Merkwürdig!

[blogfocus saturday] of bones and birthdays


1. While I post on irrelevancies like Liberty Dollars, Colin Campbell gets down to the meaty issues [wonder if Welshcakes could whip this up into something]:
Spotty is a great admirer of large animal bones. A bone like this keeps him busy for about a week.
2. Ross Fountain thinks the BPC wants seriously watching:
“Couch potato”. The British Potato Council wants the expression stripped from the Oxford English Dictionary and replaced in everyday speech with the term "couch slouch". It says the phrase makes the vegetable seem unhealthy and is bad for its image.
3.You remember the blog graphs? Dave Cole now explains all:
In an HTML page, the first thing you do is tell the browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or whatever takes your fancy) that the file is written in HTML. You do this with the very first thing you write - . In the blogs as graphs pictures, that tag is represented by a black dot, and it’s where everything starts from.
4. Tiberius Gracchus has something important to announce for last Thursday [I'm always late with these things]:
Its my birthday, I'm 27 and therefore ancient! Also worth noting that today is World Philosophy Day - so everyone get those thinking caps on!
Happy birthday, Tiberius - come and blow the candle out!

[go slow] normal service soon

Downloading humungous file. All memory being used. Back soon.

[love] it excuses everything, no matter what the cost

You know the type of thing - the two young lovers with eyes only for each other. He sees a flower shop and grabs a dozen roses to thrust into her hands while the storekeeper gazes on approvingly, whispering: "L'amour, l'amour."

They waltz down the street, upsetting fruit carts, skip across the street causing a five car pile up and when the cops finally catch up with them, the kindly boys in blue smile at each other and forgive the young lovers everything.
Cambodian-born Rindy Sam told a court in Avignon that she was "overcome with passion" when she saw a painting in July.

"I just gave it a kiss. It was an act of love, when I kissed it, I wasn't thinking. I thought the artist would understand," she said.

Restorers have been unable to remove the lipstick and have unsuccessfully used 30 products to get rid of the stain.
The owner appears not to have been impressed and Ms Sam was fined 1500 euros for the desecration. Should the owner get a life or is he right that women, particularly young women, think anything's all right as long as they're young and carefree?

Do you remember that scene in Naked Gun where ketchup accidentally squirts on Leslie Nielsen's shirt when the two lovers are buying hot dogs from a stand and he jokingly squirts Priscilla Presley back, then they both squirt it all over the vendor and everyone laughs?

In love, any jolly jape is all right, don't you think, no matter what the consequences and to whom?

Or not?

[thanksgiving] that we don't get bird flu

Thanksgiving is coming.

Ian Grey reports that Bird Flu has been discovered at a Turkey Farm in Suffolk.

[higher education] free of money not free of talent

The House of Usher, otherwise known as Pollock Halls of Residence

If I read him correctly, which I might not have, I feel Doctor Vee himself misses the point here:
Proponents of free higher education miss the point of higher education. A degree is supposed to be a signal to employers that you are talented. For this signal to work, a degree has to be costly to attain.

After all, if it was easy to get a degree, any old fool could get one. This would lead to the ‘devaluation’ of degrees that people so often talk about. The point of making a degree costly is to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

Of course, degrees are costly anyway. Not in a monetary sense, but in a time sense.
My reading of that is that the good Doc's original usage of the term “costly” was indeed referring to money. In that situation and as I commented at his site:

Costly in effort, surely, in hours studied but not in terms of money.

IMHO, education should indeed be free in monetary terms but there should simply be high mark quotas on A levels as there were when I matriculated.

This is a fundamental principle – overall monetary cost to a family should not prevent the higher middle students, the ones who will fill most places in business and industry, from attending their selected courses.

Scholarship material will be given free entry anyway but we're not talking about those here. We're talking about the student with talent and some potential who'll eventually fill the middle to mid-upper rungs in an organization.

Sometimes that talent doesn't fully realize itself until the student actually embarks on the course. Sometimes the talent shows itself to be there but the dedication is not.

There is a self-actualizing tendency here. There are fine state schools but there are a hell of a lot who have enormous problems, at least in England and the chance of talent being developed anyway is mired in social issues and instability at staff level.

So no, I'm not arguing that the floodgates should be opened but make it difficult on the basis of matriculation marks, not money. Once you tie higher education to money, then the product is politicized.

Friday, November 16, 2007

[blogfocus friday] latin notes


1 Tuscan Tony notes a quite strange phenomenon:
This was the bizarre spectacle that greeted me when over in Florence for the Remembrance Sunday knees-up at St Mark's Church (always the sound of a loudly torn curtain or two accompanied by a distinct whiff of sulpher whenever I enter the place for some reason) - a gondola, 200 yards downstream of the perfectly foul, excrable and tourist encrusted Ponte Vecchio. For those non-student of Italy, gondolas live in quiet isolation on the lagoon in Venice. The River Arno does not do gondolas - or so I thought. The gondolier was obviously using one of those cheapo mickey mouse Wal-Mart $ 99 sat-navs - long punt home, too.
2. Pasticciera notes the inexorable move to the holiday season via adverts:
Here in Italy, I know we're moving into the holiday season by the arrival of the TV food ads, most notably the chocolates, led by our beloved Alba based Ferrero Rocher and by the eternally popular Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. They haven't rolled out the Christmas version yet, but it can't be too far down the line when the battle of the Pannetone hit the airwaves.
3. Welshcakes notes the other side of the Italian character:
By Sunday evening violence had broken out all over Italy, with police stations being attacked and scenes of unbelieveable destruction around the Olimpico Stadium in Rome. I can understand fans wanting to vent their anger but is that going to bring him back? Is it going to make anybody listen? Of course not. What good anyone thinks further violence will do is beyond me .

[liberty dollars] translated for the non-financial

Welshcakes said she didn't understand the last post so this is as simply as I can put it. Correct me, afficianados, if I go wrong.

Money is only an agreement between buyer and seller that the paper or coin tokens exchanged are worth a fixed amount. If both agree and in fact everyone else also agrees, then that's currency. What makes them even better is if they're backed by something solid everyone agrees is valuable, e.g. gold.

If a government gets into the act and declares:
1.there will only be one currency and any other is illegal;
2.that it is not based on anything more solid than the government's word that one dollar is worth one dollar,
... then all is well as long as you use that currency within the country and the government acknowledges that the paper in your wallet belongs to them and is worth the face value on the paper.

Everything comes down to the word and reputation of that government. When banana republics issue heaps of their currency, the government's word is worth nothing and inflation goes into 1000s of percent, rendering the notes and coin worthless.

The U.S. And British governments have had good international reputations, which is why, in Russia, dollars were always seen as “hard” currency. However, if the government's reputation becomes shaky, as it has done recently or if people don't trust them anymore or if the power over money is given to someone else like private bankers, as it has been in the case of the Fed in real terms, then that is enormously worrying because the value of the dollar or pound is under threat.

That's where the smart financial mind reduces liquidity and gets into commodities and other things which have solid intrinsic value independent of the whim of the government. In other words, safe money. The government won't mind too much if it is just a few of their cronies and some others who are doing this but they wouldn't want a run on the dollar.

That is, they would view dimly any attempt by the ordinary pleb like you and me to buy up solid value such as gold or silver. Basically, people would start trading in this rather than in the worthless paper money. The government doesn't want the average punter to be aware of this and controls the release of gold and silver onto the market.

Into this comes the Liberty Dollar which is, as detractors point out, a scheme. One man set up a company which minted silver coins and backed its paper money with real gold, i.e. If you wanted to cash in that dollar, you'd get real gold in return.

The security is only the word of the man who runs the company. As long as the company trades and the government abides by the agreed rules, the deal is safe. In a stable society like the U.S., where very few suspect anything nefarious is going on up top, there's no reason to feel that this man will cease trading. If he does, he owes money in a big way. He doesn't play about and invest the gold in stock – it is stockpiled. The money is there, even if there's a run on the stocks, unlike with banks who use your deposits for their own risky ends.

The weakness of the scheme was shown yesterday. The law states that the money can't be used as currency – only the greenback can be used for that – but the definition of currency is fluid. If I pay for my fruit with gas, that's technically currency but wouldn't be clamped down on most like.

However, if a growing number of traders agreed to honour the “gas” currency, if people got to hear of it and started dealing only in gas and not paper money, then the government gets interested. “Legal” therefore means any barter or exchange is OK as long as only a few people do it. When a lot do it, it becomes illegal in the government's eyes.

They have a point because there's a hell of a lot of investment around the globe depends on the solidity of the dollar. If enough people backed gas as the medium of exchange, the government would be in increasing trouble and the nation's economy could even collapse - on paper. In real terms it would not collapse because gas is a viable alternative currency within the country between those people who are happy to use it as such.

Then you'd have a situation where in one town, gas is the medium and in another – scrap metal perhaps. This situation is intolerable for the simple reason that the government don't actually control the currency in the first place – the bankers behind them do that and the banks would see all their profits go up in smoke overnight.

Therefore the organs of state – the military and law courts and so on – are going to be brought down on anyone bucking this system of control. A more fanciful reason is that if the military industrial complex, hand in glove with the financiers, were planning, say, a credit crunch or a general collapse so that they could:
1.make profits on the collapsed market ;
2.assert control over the lives of the citizens in a way not possible in peacetime,
... then people must have worthless greenbacks in their hands or bank accounts so that this can be achieved. Anyone holding real money is beyond their control.

Totally fanciful, of course. Your government would never do that – ask George and Gordon, who never tell lies.

Back to the Liberty Dollars. They work fine as long as the rule of law applies in the country and free enterprise is a reality. Neither the banks nor the government, who are in cahoots with the central bank, can do much unless, that is, they can prove or feel there's a better than even chance of a case that the LDs were being used “as currency”.

Protestations from the company that the dollars don't even look like U.S. Currency would cut no ice – if people were trading in them, then the government feels it has a case against the company. This was the situation yesterday.

Now ordinarily, this would mean prosecuting the company but yesterday they omitted that step and just took it all – the gold, scrip, accounts, documents – everything. So I return to the statement above:
As long as the company trades and the government abides by the agreed rules, the deal is safe. In a stable society like the U.S., where very few suspect anything nefarious is going on up top, there's no reason to feel that this man will cease trading.

Again - as long as the government abides by its own rules and the spirit of those rules.
In the case of the Liberty Dollars, the government did not abide by the agreed rules. Therefore everyone who bought LDs has now lost everything.

[liberty dollars] thursday's theft by the state

Via Sackerson, who comments:
[D]igging out wealth with your own hands gave you a certain independence from government, and a taste for even more freedom. Perhaps that's the underlying theme of gold: intrinsic value that can't be stolen by rulers;
... comes this about the Liberty Dollar:
I sincerely regret to inform you that about 8 this morning a dozen FBI and Secret Service agents raided the Liberty Dollar office in Evansville, Indiana. For approximately six hours they took all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum, and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars that were just delivered last Friday. They also took all the files and computers and froze our bank accounts. We have no money. We have no products. We have no records to even know what was ordered or what you are owed. We have nothing but the will to push forward and overcome this massive assault on our liberty and our right to have real money as defined by the U.S. Constitution.
Holders of Liberty Dollars, as can be seen here, would have had money backed by commodities. It was not illegal, it was not unconstitutional. It did challenge the fiat money which is under the control of the Fed and seriously undermined the ability of that body to precipitate the crisis in 2009-12.

The theft of this gold and all the scrip is illegal but because it was done by the Feds and at a critical time immediately pre-crisis, they have got away with it.

Here is the State's explanation.

Here is a detractor warning that Liberty Dollars are scam but admitting, in the same article:
“The police said there's nothing they can do about it because it's a voluntary currency,” he said. “I was floored.” Even the U.S. Secret Service, whose task it is to guard the nation's currency, is aware of Liberty Dollars.

But Kevin Miller, resident agent in charge of the Spokane field office, says, like any private currency, the silver coins are legal when accepted voluntarily.
That's the only issue - they are legal. Therefore the State has taken legally held assets.

[gordon brown] can he legally be challenged as prime minister

Oath sworn by Gordon Brown MP, 1988:
We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.
Philip Davies’ Early Day Motion 266 concerning Gordon Brown’s signature on the Scottish Claim of Right. The EDM reads:
That this House recognises that the Prime Minister is a signatory to the Scottish Claim of Right in which he declared and pledged that in all his actions and deliberations the interests of the Scottish people `shall be paramount’; believes that by declaring that the interests of the Scottish people should come first he has committed himself to discriminating against the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland; considers this to be incompatible with being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in which office the interests of all UK people should be equal; and calls on him publicly to disassociate himself from and withdraw from the Scottish Claim of Right.
The alternative, of course, is that Brown withdraw from the Prime Ministership of the United Kingdom on the grounds of his undoubted conflict of interest. This is no legalistic nicety – I would welcome legal opinion, e.g. from Tom Paine, that a challenge to Brown could be mounted on the basis of this evidence.

That's before we even start getting into Blair's and his Bilderberger associations, the lying ... hounds. In any other country, precedent and protocol demand that a PM resign after lying and in the UK too there has been precedent for ministers resigning for lying.

Blair
even accused Brown of lying.

Why does Brown not resign?

[nigersaurus taqueti] best not to snooze on the grass

You remember that cow they reportedly found in Africa? Well, there've been developments, apparently:
In a journal article and an interview, the paleontologist, Dr. Paul C. Sereno, said this 30-foot-long dinosaur, with hundreds of teeth in its broad, squared-off jaws, had probably lived on ferns, horsetails and other ground vegetation. The 110 million-year-old species was discovered in Niger and is related to the North American dinosaur Diplodocus.

The researchers reported yesterday that the dinosaur, named Nigersaurus taqueti, had a short neck, delicate bones and a habitual head posture pointed directly toward the ground. This was a ground-level browser like modern cows.
There are many questions here:
1.Why the rows of incisors if it was cud chewing? Did it eat woody substances?

2. From how much of the animal were the conclusions drawn? It's true you can get a good idea just from a thumb or an incisor.
Of course, the claims of 110 million years are more of the same as:
1.Evolution has been shown to be seriously flawed;

2.Radio-carbon dating also has serious flaws;
... neither issue being seriously explored within the scientific community – just entrenched positions being argued which is bad science. Here is another, for example, commenting on the carbon dating. The argument that it is the surrounding rock, not the fossil which is dated, is still a circular argument.

Just as the Creationist attempts at “science” have in many cases shown more zeal than science, so the scientific community's attempts to cover up flaws is unworthy of them. You can take your pick on references to this in many fields.

The thing is - there is abundant evidence that certain things in the metaphysical appeared to have happened and these can only be evaluated against the sum total of the human psyche over the period of humanity, from Egyptian theology to the human genome itself, not by radio-carbon dating or theory that presupposes that the metaphysical does not exist, e.g. Darwinianism.

Equally, there is ample evidence in the fossil record and to attempt to debunk the fossils themselves seems pointless. Clearly some broader method of analysis, eliminating prejudice, is required.

One can start by assuming that the biblical accounts and the fossil record both hold water and proceed from there. That would appear to be the true empirical method [and I'm sure you understand the difference between empirical and experimental].

Thursday, November 15, 2007

[eu monster] sarko versus stagnation

Can't help but be impressed:

"The unions are doing Sarkozy a fantastic favour," said Jacques Marseille, an economic historian at Paris university. "This strike has offered the right an historic chance to seize the moral high ground and say they are on the side of justice and progression, while the left supports privileges and conservatism."

All previous attempts to reform the special pension regimes have ended in failure and some media have compared the showdown in France to the fight between Britain's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the powerful miners' union in 1984-85.

To some degree their overall aims are the same -- end the decline of their respective nations, reward merit and hard work, and force the unions to accept modern economic realities.
Sarkozy is much more a pragmatist and his willingness to compromise rather than bludgeon is perhaps more dangerous than the Thatcherite heavy hand.

However:

It's interesting which side to support. Of course France must reform but at the same time, the EU wants France in line so that it can proceed with its agenda - Sarkozy is their man for this. How much is for France and how much for the corrupt EU bosses is an uncertain point.

[country quiz] five well known nations

Questions

1 … has the highest tea consumption per head in the world, a tourist attraction in the south is a stone high in a castle, the capital in the south translates as black pool and their arms seem paralysed when they dance.

2 … likes to decorate the roofs of its houses in the capital in bright colours, has many sulphur springs, has a very old parliament, people usually work two jobs if they can get the work and they have just had a record catch of fish.

3 … lost its nationhood in 1603, one of its main rivers was linked to the Seine, its summer temperatures can reach 38 degrees but not often and it invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.

4] … has three capitals, has a country stuck in the middle of it, the San people were the first to settle there, had the Leander Starr Jameson fiasco, its president denies the link between HIV and AIDS and has a dispute over the Orange River.

5] … had a little problem with Antigua over gambling, has had scandals over teapots, chief crop is wheat, has a problem with Russia over its border, makes no claim in Antarctica and and John Deere lived there.

Answers

Ireland, Iceland, England, South Africa, U.S.A

[indigenous population] now a question of survival [2]

Regarding this post from last evening, there are conflicting thoughts running through my mind. First, there is Wolfie's reply, when he says:
In comparison the UK is a Shangri-la of tolerance but thanks to deprecating weakness and naivety of the political left we are committing social suicide and in the interests of multiculturalism the totalitarianism that these refugees have fled will take root here on our shores to plague them once more. Western society has lost its nerve, its self-belief and we need to find it once again.
Then there is a conversation today between a client and myself. I shan't embellish it but tell it as near as I can remember. I don't get many over here reading my blog because the issues are not local and the language is a bit too difficult.

However, this time he knew the issues from last evening's post and asked how far I could trust what the woman had said. I said I trusted her but because I'd been over here 12 years now, I wasn't in a position to judge.

Him: But how did you let this situation develop?

Me: Personally, I didn't because I was over here.

Him: How did your people let so many in to the country?

Me: There's a virtually unrestricted policy and they come in in huge numbers – all the extended family, it seems - they settle in an area with a large population of the same ethnicity and expand. After some time, all the local services and shops like that butcher are changed to serve the new group's needs.

As you read yesterday, local government have to provide special housing for them, of higher quality and with no waiting list, unlike the indigenous population.

Him: But who exactly are they? Where are they from?

Me: From the Commonwealth countries, as long as it's not Australia, New Zealand, Canada or South Africa – they don't want those coming in and taking British jobs – that's why they changed the patriality laws.

Him: But who? Who let them in?

Me: Technically Immigration and the FCO I think but I'm not exactly sure. Doesn't much matter because in the end it's Blair and Brown.

Him: Look, we don't have a democratic tradition over here but you do – aren't you supposed to be the cradle of democracy? So why don't you throw the government out?

Me: Not possible. It's not a democratic country. There are elections, as in Russia but they don't mean much.

Him: Come on!

Me: For a start, it's Prime Ministerial rule. The former chamber of review, the Lords - it's now been crippled and the members must now be elected which gives the PM enormous power. Secondly, there's no veto – the legislation can be sent back down but can't ultimately be rejected. The PM runs the show.

Him: So throw him out.

Me: Not possible. He's always in a safe constituency which has virtually never returned the other party's candidate. Technically the PM must come up for review every five years but he's only reviewed by the people in his constituency. The people of the country get no chance to review him. So they take it out on their local members elsewhere and the government changes from time to time but on fundamental issues like MPs' salaries and immigration, the parties are basically in agreement.

Him: So why don't the newspapers shout about it – you've got a free press.

Me: The press, which we call the MSM, is owned. Only articles in line with editorial policy are allowed. The blogosphere shouts all right but only a miniscule proportion of them are read by the wider public. The wider public is in a state of ignorance.

Him: But even so – something like a council providing council flats for immigrants and not the indigenous population must cause resentment.

Me: It does.

Him: So why don't local members raise it in Parliament?

Me: There are private members bills and they can, technically, ask questions but generally that's controlled. Still, Brown was asked about this.

Him: And?

Me: He stalled – he didn't directly answer and it all fizzed out into nothing.

Him: And so it goes on, an aggressive minority telling a community what to do.

Me: Seems that way but then again, I'm over here, not over there.

Him: If it goes on, there'll be civil war.

Me: I've been thinking the same thing. The Brit is a patient creature, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes but when his anger is really aroused, it's not pretty.

Him: You know in Chechnya yesterday, the President decreed that wedding dresses cannot be worn lowcut any more.

Me: That's the type of thing the ordinary muslim is up against.

There was a dissatisfied pause. Then he resumed.

Him: But if the government didn't want them in, they wouldn't let them. I mean, if they really wanted to avoid this situation, they could do something about it. This is an alien culture to what you have.

Me: Of course they could stop it but they never do. People request political asylum – they're allowed in. Plus all the illegals.

Him: But that's madness. There'd be blood if they tried that over here.

Me: The Brit is soft. He's all into love and tolerance and multiculturalism and let's celebrate everyone else's festivals but our own and so on – they've been educated this way since the early 70s. So when an aggressive group organizes and demands things their way or you die, the Brit is all confused and doesn't know what to do.

They know they couldn't try it on in Russia and that's why Russia may have its problems but doesn't have that particular one. There's a really aggressive type of Islam over in Britain which there just isn't here. It peers through two eyeholes in a hijab and refuses to assimilate. That's because it thinks it's going to win the battle between the cultures.

Him: Wasn't there some politician years ago who warned you guys about this?

Me: [smiling] There was but no one listened. He was vilified. Besides, that was more about colour but this is religious. The thing is, you can't say anything because even the ordinary Brit labels you a racist. If you're talking about the average muslim and saying you don't like him and his habits, there might be a point to the accusation. but if you say the country is heading for civil war as a result of crazy government policies, you're still labelled racist.

Him: [low whistle] You guys have got problems.

[war quiz] your war this morning - ww2

Bonus point - is this Yamamoto or Rommel?

In World War 2:


1.One side were the Allies. Who was the other within Europe?

2. The 1939 Russo-German pact was known as the Molotrop- Ribbentov, Molotov-Ribbentrop or Molotov-Hindenburg?

3. Total personnel deployed were around 70m, 100m or 200m?

4. The incident which sparked it was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Phony War, the invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbour?

5. The German loss in Stalingrad was in 1941, 1943, 1945?

6. Chamberlain's policy was popularly known as apparatchik, appeasement, appraisement?

7.The German offensive style of war was called Beerputsch, Blitzenstraf, Blitzkrieg?

8.The period after Poland fell was referred to as the Phony War, Western Front, Cold War?

9.The Narvik Debate brought down von Ribbentrop, Molotov, Chamberlain?

10. The generally accepted Japanese mastermind for pearl Harbour was Nagumo, Hirohito, Yamamoto?

Bonus point - is this Yamamoto or Rommel?

Answers

The Axis, Molotov-Ribbentrop, 100m, the invasion of Poland, 1943, appeasement, blitzkrieg, phony war, Chamberlain, Yamamoto.

[u.f.o.] have you seen one recently

Flashback to 1981 ... seen over Vancouver Island in British Columbia and made public by the British Ministry of Defence in 2006.

A group of former pilots have re-opened the U.F.O. Issue and are demanding the government stop sweeping it under the carpet:
"We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997. "Instead our country needs to reopen its official investigation that it shut down in 1969," Symington said.

"We believe that for reasons of both national security and flight safety, every country should make an effort to identify any object in its airspace," said a statement from the 19 former pilots and government officials from around the world.
This blog's position is that it is neither here nor there if they actually do exist. The important thing is people's attitudes. To broaden this, various bloggers and I have been bringing news of Common Purpose doings and have been connecting dots.

Something like that, as with U.F.O.'s, is going to polarize opinion and the most annoying people are those at both ends:
* the blind believers who rush to judgement, fill their sites with garish colours and loudly proclaim in Capitals, vigorously underscored, that it is divine judgement and that you MUST believe. These people are pains because they add zero to the debate and encourage the other two types below;

* the blind deniers who automatically scoff, irrespective of evidence to the contrary and immediately utilize catch-phrases to label those putting the idea. These people are intensely annoying, often utilizing restrained site layouts and reasonable language to lull people into believing they've actually examined the issue;

* the joker who runs a cartoon or makes a little aside on the issue and he's just as bad as the scoffer because what he presents is a fait accompli, assuming that all sane people think it's a joke.

* the "eminently reasonable" who either don't bother to examine the evidence or flick through it in their rush-rush-rush way and then pronounce, in their wisdom, a most reasonable position: "Well, of course there might be some but many, of course, are just delusion or forgery." He may well be right but how the heck would he know? Is this not sheer lazy ignorance?
The people with whom we can do business are those in the centre, like these pilots, who ask questions, wonder why they are scoffed at or ignored and who detail, without the need to utilize adjectives, just what did happen, as far as they can see.

They might be scamming but then again they might not. They might be mistaken but then again, they might not. But they have to be allowed to tell their tale and if they fail to convince – well, at least we can put it in the “too hard” basket and remain agnostic about it.

This blog has a real problem with the four types detailed above because they act mindlessly and contribute zero or even less than zero – they offer disinformation. Perhaps that's their purpose or more charitably, perhaps they're too scared to face unpalatable possible truths. Then again, they may be disinterested or have no time.

Me – give me the thought out truth any time, however unpalatable, provided it can be supported dispassionately.

A 1952 photo of a purported UFO over Passaic, New Jersey, from an FBI document [courtesy Wiki].

[blogfocus wednesday] the purpose of blogging


1. Matt Sinclair thinks it's about local government accounts:
Next, Limavady have a web tool I've seen on a few council sites. Basically it reads whatever you mouseover. Who is that catering for? If you're a blind person surely you aren't able to mouseover things so that they are read to you. The only people I can think of who could use such a tool are the extremely dyslexic and illiterate. If anyone knows I'd love to know who it is targetted at.

In the meantime all manner of fun can be had pushing the button in the bottom left of the page and then mousing over various items (although it doesn't appear to work on this computer - consider it a kind of lottery). They're all quite upbeat apart from "Payments" which sounds a little bored.
2. Meeyauw is quite clear that it is about cats and dogs:
See Buddy in the back of the chair? Scout never voluntarily sleeps with the cats. Amelia says that Scout fears them. Yet Sunday, when it was so cold and windy, Scout crawled into Buddy's chair for warmth. She is wary of him, because she fears Buddy's violence as much as Sophie does.
I am once again proudly hosting Cats on Tuesday while Gattina is in warm and sunny Egypt.
3. Harry Haddock is quite sure it's about binge drinking, condoms and perverted Jacqui lovers:
Binge drinking is a terrible problem that will finish us all. However, it will not be a long term problem because all of todays children (yes, all of them), are going to die from obesity by the age of 12 because of adverts for sweets on said telly in between children's programs that are no longer made in this country. ~ I know this because I have seen it on the BBC.

Their parents will be unable to save them, because the women, who have all suffered from the 'glass' ceiling at work and are forced to work part time in bars, are dying from cancer caused by passive smoking. The 'men', when they are not raping and beating up the women, are dying from a combination of mad cow desese, bird flu, foot and mouth, and bacon sandwiches. I know this because I read it in the Guardian.

Their sisters cannot take them to hospital because they are all pregnant at the age of 14, and have been banned from driving for shooting a war veteran while trying to steal his mobile phone, after obtaining a gun from the man in the sweetshop who has branched out due to the sugar ban. I know this because it was in the Sun.

The ambulance and police will be unable to attend as they have all been sent on diversity training courses after refusing to help a Muslim who was wearing a burka who was on fire at the top of a ladder due to health and safety. I know this because I read it in the Daily Mail.

However, none of this affects me. I know this because I wear a condom.
4. Finally, Matt Wardman thinks it's about falling in love and makes the wry observation:

I wonder if he is related to Highlander.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

[indigenous population] now a question of survival

Foreword

Having prepared a couple of fun pieces – a blogfocus with Matt Sinclair, Meeyauw, Harry Haddock and Matt Wardman, along with a “wartime” quiz and having had good stats all week, I'm now going to commit blogging suicide by putting them on hold until tomorrow morning and instead running a piece which landed in my lap and which would possibly not lead to peace and harmony in the world.

Introduction

There's a lady from Britain who's been observing the blogosphere debate on racism, including that on my blog, and she's finally broken silence and spoken up via e-mail.

As she's living on the “front line”, so to speak, she had to send this anonymously, for fear of reprisals, should the wrong people read it.

I know her identity from her e-mails and her political views are a bit left wing for mine - she does not accept my references to PC madness, for example, my take on the EU or why I'm against relativistic multiculturalism.

I can further reveal that she detests the BNP and the blind prejudice and race-hatred of their leadership, she does not consider herself particularly Christian, I know she's not Jewish and she is from a group I am not enamoured of – leftist teachers.

That's why this letter from her is all the more astounding – one really wouldn't expect it from this source. I need to warn you I've invented a town, Beckford, to protect her. I also need a suburb of that town which I'll call Lochley and I'm changing her name to – oh – Jane Smith, all right?

The Letter

At the risk of sounding “Some of my best friends are Jewish”-ish, let me say at the outset that I have fought racism all my life.

I had , and still have, Muslim friends; I have employed Muslim women to clean my house and would vouch for their honesty – you could leave any amount of money or jewellery around and they wouldn’t touch it; and I have taught many hard-working Muslims and other asylum seekers / refugees who have told me their tragic stories and for whom I would do anything I could.

One of these was a stunning looking woman from Eritrea whose husband had been murdered for the crime of being a Christian. This lady came to every English lesson she could and did everything to try to integrate.

But within three years, she was being “got at” by some of the Muslim women for wearing western dress, having western friends and for entering a building with a cross on it.

Another was an educated Algerian woman who had lived through terrifying threats to her life and that of her family; her one-year-old child did nothing but scream for the first 6 months they were in Britain.

And what did they find in Britain?

Kindness and help in many ways, certainly, but also people throwing stones at their windows at night and shouting:

“Out! Dirty, lying asylum seekers.”

How terrible to reach what you think is safety and to find that waiting for you. I think the perpetrators of those disturbances should be re-educated and dealt with severely for they betray all that our country stands for – or used to.

However, the term “political asylum”, which was what these two and others were seeking, has become a joke for what the majority are seeking is “economic asylum”. Again, I know they are trying to flee hopeless lives of dreadful poverty and I sound harsh but they are not political asylum seekers.

And this, I believe is where “racism “ or “prejudice” sets in.

Most of the people I knew in Lochley, Beckford, a district with a very large Muslim population, could not have cared less about the colour of the incomers’ skin. What they did care about, though, was what was happening to their community, which they saw dying before their eyes:

The local butcher’s closes and a halal butcher’s replaces it. No Lochley person will go in there, not so much because of the way the animals are slaughtered, which few of them know much about, but because they are made to feel uncomfortable in the shop – in their own city in their own country.

Personally I don’t think we should have halal butchers in Britain but we can’t do anything about it as it’s a similar method, isn’t it, to that used by kosher butchers which we have always accepted? The difference is that the Jews respect the laws of the country and that I will come to.

Then the pubs close because the Muslims don’t use them. OK, that’s their choice but if you are an old fellow who has lived in Lochley all his life and enjoyed an amble down for a pint of an evening, you are likely to resent this.

Then “coffee shops”, which are obviously men-only, spring up all over the place. What are we doing accepting this in a country where we are not supposed to have “no go” areas for women?

The schools havebecome 75% Muslim: I used to think a mixture was a good thing and still do if the base culture of the host country is the accepted one in the school – with pupils, of course , learning about other cultures in a healthy way – but now your children can no longer have nativity plays, send Xmas cards in school or sing carols.

So if you are a parent with any money at all, you are going to use it to get your child into a private school or you are going to move, however tolerant you think you are. British people are still, I believe, basically tolerant – look how they have embraced foreign food of all kinds – and it takes a lot to make them “turn” en masse but that is what I believe is happening now.

Then people see the incomers seeming to receive all sorts of benefits and immediate access to good housing, when the indigenous population feel that they can get no help.

In Lochley, whole rows of larger council flats were built to house the large families of the immigrants and some of the community leaders would demand that extra washing facilities – which they had not had access to in their own countries - be fitted as they had to wash so many times a day for prayer.

All this the indigenous population stand by and watch, whilst feeling that they themselves will never be able to save a deposit on a house.

The health service becomes overwhelmed. One of the things I used to try to impress upon the women via my lessons was that in Britain a doctor’s appointment is for one person – not you AND your 7 children all in one go!

Can you imagine the resentment that watching this causes among, perhaps, old folk in Britain who have no understanding of what these people may have been through? What they DO understand is that they have paid into the system all their lives and now that they need it they are way down everybody’s list.

I get the bus from Lochley to the school where I'm teaching and later the colleges every day. Now, about 5 years before 9/11, one morning I looked around the bus and suddenly thought, “I don’t know – there seem to be a lot more women wearing the hijab.” [ It’s of course up to them if they want to wear the hijab and I actually like bright, sparkly, Punjabi dress.

But it didn’t stop at the hijab. A lot more fully veiled women started appearing, especially after 9/11 and I know because some of them told me that they had been instructed to veil by their religious leaders and husbands because they felt their culture to be under threat.

In the college I saw women who had been beautifully dressed and made-up suddenly change to full Muslim dress, without a scrap of make-up. [This happened in 2003.] Again, you may say, “That’s up to them” but it’s not up to them when a teacher can’t hear their answers, because of the face veil, or when they won’t remove the face veil for passport or college security photos.

Now. I would be willing to bet a lot of money that SOMETHING AKIN TO THE RELIGIOUS POLICE operating in many Muslim countries is already operating in Britain, stopping and inspecting the women, looking for a trace of make-up or nail varnish as they do in Saudi / Iran.

I can’t prove this but I’ve seen too many frightened women for it not to be so. [You may be able to find out more because you obviously have access to sources that I do not, Mr. Higham.]

Certainly the non-hijab-wearing women were “got at” by the others until they succumbed – I saw and heard this many times. So an Afghan woman who had come to Britain because she didn’t want that oppression for her daughters ends up veiling herself all over again.

Things changed on the teaching front, too: I am a great believer in using rhymes and song in language lessons – I don’t need to tell you why or the sort of thing – and suddenly you could use neither any more because the women – or their husbands – think that to sing, recite or read anything other than the Koran is sinful. [I read the Koran when I was about 25 and I didn’t find anything about that in it – but then, I didn’t find a lot of things in it that it is purported to say these days.]

When preparing for the “old” exams – you know, the one where you had to take an object in to talk about – all that two intelligent, educated women with engineering degrees from their own country would talk about was the Koran.

During the preparation, they told me there is to be a great war between our two civilisations, theirs would win and I and everybody else who wouldn’t convert would die.

Nice thing to say to the person who's been trying to help you, huh? They said all this without batting an eyelid, as if they were discussing their shopping lists.

Another student, preparing for a high level Cambridge exam, would write about nothing but Islam whatever the topic set. I just could not get it into her head that the first marking criterion is always relevance.

I went to my boss about it and she was very worried for she had seen this sort of thing before: a trap set for us so that the woman could bring a case saying we were stopping her writing about Islam. So we just had to let her carry on and fail. What kind of pedagogic integrity is that?

We caved in about punctuality too. I taught a 3-hour class that was supposed to start at 9.30 but the women would come when they liked, even 11.30! OK, I know many of them had difficult lives, with husbands who would not allow them to leave the house until they gave permission, and I also know that some came from countries where they walked miles to get to school and no one cared what time they got there.

I also accept, to an extent, that it was better to get them in to learn SOME English than to insist on punctuality with the result that they wouldn’t come at all. But some of these women hoped to get jobs eventually. What favours were we doing them by not teaching them that in Britain time-keeping is important?

Then there was the creche issue: The building had a free creche for the children of women attending the classes but it only opened from 10.30-12.30. That was all that Beckford County’s funding would run to. OK, it was inconvenient but it wasn’t the end of the world: most of these women had extended families living with them; it wouldn’t have hurt granny or even grandad to help out for an hour, would it?

Instead, they would complain bitterly all the time or expect me to put up with crying babies or hyperactive toddlers in the classroom. I would just say “No” because I was not a childminder and there was a safety issue – it was a mirrored room, for god’s sake – but the women just couldn’t see this.

I never said a word outside the institution but things like that get around and of course Lochley people resented the complaining, especially as most of the students were not fee-paying.

There was also the “prayer break / prayer room” issue: I used to have to stop for 20 minutes in one 2-hour class for the students to pray. OK, they have set times when they are supposed to do so, but why, then, sign up for a class that partly takes place during that time? How do they expect to learn anything, given that they don’t even turn up on time in the first place?

At Ramadan, the Muslim students in both colleges would demand “prayer rooms”. Now, you know how tight classroom accommodation is in most educational institutions, but this had to be found, for the whole day, every day – otherwise the college would be hauled in under the Race Relations or some similar Act [an Act which I supported, by the way, because I am old enough to remember “No coloureds” notices in adverts for rented flats, etc.]

If I was a practising Christian I would probably decide that I could pray anywhere, but if I felt I had to formalise it I would go to a church. Beckford is not a city without mosques.

We tried so hard to provide good, accessible English classes for these women. Once, when the building was to be closed for maintenance for 2 weeks, we moved the class to a centre one bus stop away:

“Oh, no, teacher – too far!” was the cry. These women had got on a plane with false documents and travelled, illegally, thousands of miles – and they wouldn’t take a two-minute bus ride to help themselves?!

I used to get so mad, Mr. Higham – and it was often a superhuman effort to keep my mouth shut and thus keep my job!

Some of the women used to attend an “Arabic” class on a Saturday morning: as far as I could tell, they learnt no Arabic; they learnt to chant the Koran and that the west was evil. And Beckford Council were funding this!

Finally, we are letting all sorts of dodgy types into the country: I taught an Iranian man who claimed to be working for an organisation which did not exist. He also claimed to have been taught at one of the colleges the year before he entered the other. No one in the first college had heard of him.

I became suspicious of this man because everything he told me about himself turned out to be a lie. I did some looking up and concluded that he was either avoiding the Iranian draft [his age fitted and as long as you are a student you can avoid it] or he was gathering intelligence on Britain – or both.

Without asylum status entitling him to free classes, how could he afford to stay in Britain and pay for his studies? Who was funding him and why would they? That is just my theory.

So my conclusions are these:

In a country in which women have, within living memory, fought for equal pay and rights, a group of [mostly but not wholly] newly arrived women are, under instructions from the men of their community, trying to turn back the clock.

Their behaviour also encourages some men to think in the old: “If she’s not dressed modestly, she’s asking for it” way. This leads to anger among British women. And how long before they try to impose these ideas on dress on indigenous women?

I am using indigenous / British loosely here, as of course some of the Muslim women I am talking about were born in Britain or have Brit nationality – but you will know what I mean, Mr. Higham.

“Political asylum” is very rarely that. Most “racism” or “prejudice” in Britain is born of economic factors plus some ignorance. We are making so many concessions that we are losing our own cultural values.

We do not know who is in our country.

Mr. Higham, if you haven’t read Ed Husain, “The Islamist”, do try to get hold of it. It mostly deals with the recruitment of young men born in Britain into extremist organisations but I would say it’s a “must” for anyone trying to understand what is going on.

This quote from one of the immigrants is chilling:

“We considered democracy as idolatrous because it does not allow for the One God to control mankind”.

Thank you for your time,
Jane Smith

My reaction

I can honestly say that I see none of that over here in the former SU. I live in a Muslim republic and perhaps that's why – it's already a given and they don't feel on “the front line” in defending or pushing the religion.

Ten minutes from now, two Muslim girls will arrive to do my flat and they wear no burquas. I don't recall ever seeing a burqua being worn, now I come to think of it. The girl I'm sweet on is Muslim. 80% of my clientele are Muslim. If it was an issue, I'd tell you.

So what is happening in Britain [leaving all the other nations out of it for now – the Sudan, Algeria and so on]? Also, if this account is to be believed and I've never known this lady exaggerate before, then these “incomers” have an unmitigated gall demanding such things.

But worse are the timid councils who are running scared and caving into such insufferable demands. I can say right now that if I was currently over there and a situation like this arose, I'd stonewall the miscreant.

Regulars know enough of my character to know that would be so. I'll go further – indigenous people in any land are not to be dictated to by immigrants from any generation.

[get rich quick] mutley, cityunslicker and an icelander


While Mutley's doing it his way:
My friends Mr Unslicker and Mr Newman make a great deal of money dealing in stocks and shares and such like. They are rich Tory bastards – and I have hatched a plan to join them, - be warned when I am rich I shall pretend not to know you – because rich famous people have rich famous friends. Apart from the women readers obviously – I shall drag you all out of the gutter when I am rich!
... and Cityunslicker is doing it his way, an Icelander is doing it his way. Sometimes it's hard work, sometimes it's just sheer luck and a bit of nouse:
Ómar Antonsson, a farmer at Horn in Hornafjördur, southeast Iceland, is making profits from selling stones from a beach on his land to the US, where the rocks are used for quality swimming pools.

“These stones have been here beneath my feet since I can first remember and I’ve never seen anything profitable in them,” Antonsson told Fréttabladid.

Antonsson said the stone export began by coincidence. “I was transporting concrete materials to the East Fjords because of the operations there. Some men from Arizona saw the materials, then just knocked on my door and said they were interested in doing business with me.”
Maybe I can export snowflakes.

[bobbies] available now in replica


"Terrorism can hit us anywhere from any place," Brown has written and he should know exactly where it's coming from to help jolly along the network of surveillance and tracking of a grateful population.

The Sun said the measures would include boosting the use of properly-trained door staff who could identify possible threats at potential targets.
Properly trained?


The Bobby as he used to be - now only available in replica from good antique dealers.

[nigerian scams] it's good to be loved

In the light of the recent letter David Farrer received about the Olympics [:)] and of the dozen or so I've received recently, I felt it would be churlish not to reply. Would you, dear reader, kindly check the letter below for any errors and comment in the margin?
Dearest Madam Tinunbu,

Delighted to read your letter and appreciated your epithet for me: "Dearly Beloved". You see, I haven't been doing so well of late in the love department and to know that you love me - well that's more than my poor heart can stand.


So sorry to hear that your efforts towards the abolition of the slave trade are meeting with such fierce resistance and that it's all so expensive. Of course I'll rush you the $12 000 immediately but in this day and age, Mme Tinumbu, I'm sure you'd understand I need to make sure you're for real.
There are so many scammers out there e-mailing people right now.

Would you therefore simply and quickly verify your bona fides before I proceed, as set out below?


Your full name _____________


Full address ___________


Bank to whom my donation is to be sent ___________


Your account no. __________


Type of account ___________


Your mother's maiden name ___________


Your S.W.I.F.T. code no. ___________


Please e-mail, by attachment, specimen signature [twice for verification].


With great love from the bottom of my heart to you and your extended family,


Jamette Highamele [Ms]
Wonderful lady. Just wonderful.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

[tip of the iceberg] preconditions now in place

Click on pic and scrutinize.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." [ Friedrich Nietzsche]

People of my ilk who never got beyond Economics 101 will be lost. People in the know know all this already. If you're a small punter, you'd best read this – if I understood it, you can too:

First the news

Bank of America Corp., the nation's second biggest bank, said Tuesday it will take a $3 billion debt-related writedown in the fourth quarter and warned its losses could grow as the market wrestles with the fallout from the housing and mortgage-lending slump.

Mortgage-related writedowns across the banking industry were more than $40 billion in the third quarter, and the fourth quarter could end up being worse.

OK, so all that is known. So is this.

Investors have been bracing for fourth-quarter writedowns for a while, but the amount was larger than many were prepared to hear. As a result, volatility has returned to virtually all corners of Wall Street.

There's more

You'll remember Bear Stearns bailed out its two defaulting hedge funds, pouring $2.3 billion dollars of its own money into the hedge funds.

In the last few weeks, the ratings agencies -- Moody's, Fitch and S&P -- have been re-evaluating their ratings on hundreds of Collateralized Debt Obligation contracts, including securities that they'd previously given AAA ratings to.

Now, on Thursday evening, ratings agency Standard & Poor's slashed its ratings of the securities in Carina CDO Ltd, a CDO managed by State Street Bank.

State Street are going to let the assets be liquidated. Now, a widespread fire sale of securities by CDOs could further exacerbate declines in sub-prime-mortgage bonds.

Minor blip, no?

There's widespread fear that if there's a major sale of CDOs, then a "market price" will be established, and that will force other institutions to "mark to market" -- write down their assets to the market price, which in many cases is "nearly worthless."

Many investors may only invest in AAA but if these are downgraded to CCC minus, they lose all. This bears remarkable similarities to 1927-29.

More for the mix

FASB Statement 157 becomes effective on November 15, requiring companies to clearly designate which of its assets are "marked to market," and which are "marked to model" Level 3, valuated by computer algorithm.

In the following months, companies are going to be required by this accounting rule to clearly identify how much they have in "Level 3" marked to model assets, and this will further pressure these companies to provide realistic prices for them.

And what?

It means that with a set market price, the overinflated buying and selling is going to be seen for what it is and confidence will fly.

The bubble has started to deflate

When comparing these international financial crises, the details are always different, but they're all remarkably similar in the following ways, as described in "The bubble that broke the world":

A debauched and perverted use of credit, occurring at exactly the time that the survivors of the previous financial crisis have all died or retired; a huge asset bubble; the securitization of credit; and an upsurge in corruption. All of those elements are enormously present today.

Example of the mentality

On the sub-prime securitization market’s difficulties, Fitch answered some questions [don't know who FPA is, doesn't matter]:

FPA: “What are the key drivers of your rating model?”

Fitch: FICO scores and home price appreciation (HPA) of low single digit (LSD) or mid single digit (MSD), as HPA has been for the past 50 years.

FPA: “What if HPA was flat for an extended period of time?”

Fitch: The model would start to break down.

FPA: “What if HPA were to decline 1% to 2% for an extended period of time?”

Fitch: The models would break down completely.

FPA: “With 2% depreciation, how far up the rating’s scale would it harm?”

Fitch: It might go as high as the AA or AAA tranches."

We have here serious incompetence, arrogance and greed, all mixed in together, like the Billionnaire Boys Club. This is the key factor in the whole unravelling which is about to hit the world financial markets and goes part way to explaining Japan's flight from the dollar.

Russia, with its oil, is also keenly interested in the health of the dollar and doesn't like what it sees.

Why can't the players see what is happening?

There is an intrinsic optimism to players of the markets, a belief in the immutability of the market, of the essential economic theories they learned at university and honed in practice.

Above all, there is a firm belief that “the situation can be handled”. Tweak here, tweak there and it comes back on track.

I have a different model to work on and it says that rampant greed and clever little CDOs will not only come back in their faces but will bring everyone else down as well. This model of mine also says that there are those hanging around in the shadows ready to snap up the pieces.

Another take of some interest

Three familiar features of the universal delusion include:

* First, the idea that the panacea [cure-all] for debt is credit.

* Second, a social and political doctrine, now widely accepted, beginning with the premise that people are entitled to certain betterments of life.

* Third, the argument that prosperity is a product of credit, whereas from the beginning of economic thought it had been supposed that prosperity was from the increase and exchange of wealth, and credit was its product.

* When you add to that the securitization of credit [which in itself is bad enough], then financial markets are heading for a fall.

One last aspect from that article

Markets tend to go into severe crisis when the last of those who went through the last one are dead and gone. The new crisis, therefore, is a new one to the participants, who will go to great pains to point out the "historical differences", whilst not dwelling on the similarities.

Like Calvin Coolidge did, they'll talk up the recovery whilst not accepting the root cause - the delusionary greed and the arrogance that they can play the market and continue to win.