Saturday, April 26, 2008

[thought for the day] saturday evening


Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

[Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938]


... unless, of course, you want to call the Lizard Queen. If she does not manage the nomination, I feel we should all call her, on successive nights, at 3.a.m., on a roster basis, to offer our condolences.

3 a.m. is also the time my U.S. readers start to overtake the U.K. readers and are roughly equal in proportion:


3 a.m. is also a nice time for cuddling your one and only:


... or when you stare, alone, into the log fire, with that glass of cheer in your hand:


... or when you get over to Grendel's place to watch this classic clip:


... or when the Morlocks come for you:


The possibilities are endless.

[housekeeping] some celebratory notes

There was a Bunny birthday recently and I missed it. Oh woe. There was also a Rob birthday and I missed it. Oh double woe.

I nearly missed my father's day of demise [April 26th] but my header at least is a memorial in itself. Well I didn't miss it but got round to posting about it late. Hope the party was good up there, Dad.

Glimmer of light in that other matter which shall remain cryptic as I don't wish to think of it on this happy occasion.

Which leads to the main dish of the day - Easter and the renewal. This is the day we're now coming into when He rose from the dead and conquered death:

Христос Воскрес. Воистину Воскрес!

People of an Orthodox ilk round this neck of the woods are at the local Khram or Sobor and doing the all-night candle vigil.

Call me a choker but I think I'll just blog on the matter and do my own little vigil.

Missed the whole painted egg show this time round but do have the kulich [pictured below]. This is very light bread with icing on top and yummy with butter.

So young lady and family have gone without me as I crashed six hours ago and just woke up. Let me just check the answer machine - hmmm, nothing. They might have forgotten me. Such is life.

Just check the e-mail. Yo - she wrote. That's nice but it was hours ago.


Orthodox Kulich [below] is pretty yummy but has no preservatives or chemicals of any kind and thus is only good for the one day, after which it dries up very quickly. It's their equivalent of the hot cross bun.

[national identity] time the namby-pambyness stopped


This is not a post about power plugs but power plugs do help us understand national mentalities.

Above is the British standard and the plug itself is a work of art. Huge, square and chunky, with beefy pins set perpendicularly to the long, overkill-design earth pin, the designers would say, "Well, it's electricity, init, mate? Can't muck about with electricity, can we?"

Note the two tone, partly protected live pins as well.

The British mentality is to fret over the least thing, to over-legislate to circumvent the direst imaginngs and to take pleasures tepidly, for fear of exciting the senses. Take something like a political demonstration, for example. The least sign of precipitation, the chance of leaves on the line or heaven forbid, even the wrong leaves and that's it, matey. No demo.

Lord Somber has kindly despatched a copy of a Pajamas article on this matter:

The news this week that authorities in the English city of Bradford had apparently banned a St. George’s Day parade by schoolchildren because it might offend local Muslims appeared at first sight to be yet another example of timid British officialdom caving in to the demands of extremists.

The parade story was reported by several UK newspapers, and picked up by the blogosphere. The response was predictable ... but because Pajamas asked me to write about the story I spent some time reading the various reports in detail, and particularly reports from Bradford’s local media. And a rather different picture of events emerged.

Organizers had been planning the event with a local police team for some months, but last week the city council, citing police advice from higher up, said the event could not go ahead as planned because of “health and safety” concerns. In true Hillary Clinton fashion, they added that the decision had been taken “in the interests of the children.”

What appears far more likely — and what the parade organizers are saying — is that senior police officers failed to communicate with their colleagues who were involved in planning the event, and when they learned of the proposed route they became concerned that troublemakers, whether Muslim extremists or members of far-right groups, might have taken advantage of the parade to stir up trouble.

But if the police really feared violence they should have supervised the parade in sufficient strength to ensure that they were able to deal with it. Instead they gave in — not to extremism, and not even to the threat of extremism, but to the mere notion of extremism

The irony, of course, is that one of the aims of the event was to bring young people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds together, with the aim of eradicating the distrust that leads to the kind of trouble the police apparently feared.

There’s a legitimate debate going on in Britain about the failure of Muslims and other immigrants to assimilate, but it’s not helped by the authorities, or the media, looking for problems where they don’t exist.

At the end of a report on Wednesday’s St. George’s Day celebrations, the BBC News website invited the public to send in photos and video of events — street parties, fancy dress parades, and the like — with the following disclaimer: “Do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.”

The more gung-ho Americans would raise an eyebrow at this at the very least - at least those of a certain mentality would. However I think the same mollycoddling pc-ishness is at large over there. If you see a potential problem float past on the wind, rush out and nail it down in a plethora of legislation.

You have to wonder about the short-sightedness. Whether or not Muslims have any intention of "assimilating", to include Muslim youth in the 2000 schoolkids marching on St. George's day would have been a filip at the least, for this goal.

But to cancel the march - well that also cancels any possibility of progress, let alone robbing the marchers of the moral high ground where any attack would have been roundly condemned by all communities.

I noticed one of the commenters speak of multi-culturalism but I beg to differ. Take Australia, for example which, despite its claims, is not truly multi-cultural - it is a broadened culture which is still recognizably Australian. Despite British supposed inability to find cultural identity these days, this is surely rubbish. Of course there is a recognizably British tradition and English tradition which transcends the current nationality issue.

It's what parents in the colonies sent their kids to boarding schools to experience and what millions of visitors each year also come to experience. It includes St. George, tea, fish 'n chips and Trafalgar Square, Oxford and Cambridge, to name some things and requires no apology from any Brit of whatever hue.

[assumptions] things are not always as they seem


You know, when I went round the blogs in the last few days, the number of bloggers referring to "posting will be lighter" and who seem to have issues was eyebrow raising.

The bottom line is that we never know what's really going down inside with fellow bloggers or even friends in RL. A glance across at MyBlogLog here and I could name five of those immediately where I suspect things aren't completely happy at that end.

On Friday I had a meeting with a girl who was meant to have phoned the night before and had seemingly ignored my two e-mails. On pure speculation I went along so at least I could say I'd turned up.

Even though it had been arranged, still it was a shock when she actually walked through that door and on time too. I think you can imagine the opening topics after the greeting - what happened? What went wrong and so on. As became apparent - in that I'm helping her sort the trouble out even today - she had some major issues and these aren't just words - I saw the documents.

Ten days ago I got a phone call in the middle of the night from an airport. She assumed I was asleep but actually I was in the little room dealing with a health matter. When I phoned her back, neither number answered so I assumed she was p---ed off by that. Actually she'd had all her documents and phone stolen, had missed the plane and was stuck in the airport. She'd used her last local change to make that call.

Why do we assume that we have the cares of the world on our own shoulders but the other person doesn't? You can never tell from appearances and that's the bottom line here. You can never tell.

Cuts both ways though. Five years ago I assumed all was well when in fact a particular lady was playing me like a violin and getting deeper and deeper into subterfuge. Truth was I never tumbled to it, even when all the signs were there to see.

Three people have e-mailed me personally since yesterday [well actually 47 have but most of these were the usual matters], I've missed two birthdays in the last few days, three people in RL are feeling neglected and there are some health issues which we needn't go into. A friend flew in last week, called twice and has now flown out again. He's not going to understand that the phone had been cut off and then other things hit last week.

I know that each of these feels, maybe not peeved but a bit hurt by what looks like callous disdain, especially as I seem to be blogging jauntily, provoking as usual and visiting the same three or four blogs.

If it looks as if all is well, nothing could be further from the truth.

An inkling of this came out in two posts on Thursday but it was disguised to the point where Wolfie felt it was "overdramatizing". I smiled at that and poured a whisky and toasted him. Without going into detail, as the blog doesn't seem to be the place for that and I'd prefer to do an ostrich, I'm in - excuse the French - deep s-i- on four fronts, to the point where the two choices are to laugh or cry.

Today I'm going to have to call in some favours which I'd prefer not to do.

One of the blogfriends who e-mailed me has real health concerns. Another is at the end of the tether. One feels very hurt and rightly so. All with their own issues and troubles. How to cope with and help these friends? The issue seems to be one of over-extending - trying to take on too much with thin margins for error and when it fouls up, it fouls up big.

I suppose what I'm saying in this post is not to assume things which seem one way but might not be, in point of fact. And that applies to my own assumptions as well.

Personally, I think a combination of prayer, networking and grovelling apology might sort things out in the end. Otherwise I have no idea what to do.

Friday, April 25, 2008

[thought for the day] friday evening


Every time I fill a vacant office, I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.

[Louis Quatorze]

Same with blogrolling and memes.

[nationality] how russian am I?

This quiz is a load of garbage. It's "borsch" and "vam nravitsa" plus America does border Russia at the tip of Alaska. So I put in the wrong answers to get this result:

You are 100% Russian!

Great job!!!!! You did WONDERFULY!!!! Nice try!!! Were you born in Russia? How do you know so much about it??? Well, good job anyway!!!

How Russian are you?
Quizzes for MySpace


[nationality] how american am I?

The first time I did this wasn't gonna go down well with my Anglo or Aussie friends - 100%! So I went back and made some of the answers less American to get the score a bit below England/Oz. Here's how I went:

you are 100% American!!!

congragulations!!! your as American as they come. you fly a flag and support our country in every thing u do. you get upset when were down and rejoice when we win

how American are you?
Take More Quizzes


[nationality] how aussie am I?

OK - here's the second one:

You are 90% Aussie!

Spot on mate! A true blue aussie! Whether plonking down for a bit of telly and enjoying an ice cold vic bitter or singing Happy little Vegamite while chucking another shrimp on the barbie, you are always thinking Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!

How Aussie are you?
Make Your Own Quiz



H/T Nunyaa

[nationality] how english am I?

OK - here's the first one:

You are 90% English.

Congratulations! You may now take your place as a subject of Her Majesty.

"And did those feet
In ancient times,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?"

Well, no, but it's a cracking good tune.

How English are you?
Create a Quiz


H/T Cherie

[orthodox easter] today is good friday in pascha


So much has been written about the whys and wherefores of the Crucifixion.

The slightly insane Mel Gibson produced a gory film I’m still not sure about. I’ve also thought long and hard whether to run an article by Dr. C. Truman Davis, vice president of the American Association of Ophthalmology, which is also gory in its medical descriptions. It is not for the faint-hearted and if you can’t stomach such things, best to pass this over.

All I can say is, having read it, it wouldn’t have been a whole lot of fun for Him. The main focus of Easter is the resurrection but His death bears thinking about as well. Here is a fragment from the text which you can read the whole of here:

Every ruse imaginable has been used by modern scholars to explain away this description, apparently under the mistaken impression that this just doesn’t happen. A great deal of effort could have been saved had the doubters consulted the medical literature.

Though very rare, the phenomenon of Hematidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress of the kind our Lord suffered, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process might well have produced marked weakness and possible shock.

After the arrest in the middle of the night, Jesus was next brought before the Sanhedrin and Caiphus, the High Priest; it is here that the first physical trauma was inflicted ...

The symbol that all the fuss and vitriol is all about

I hope we can begin from a position further advanced than questioning whether the crucifixion took place - that much scholars generally concede. The real issue is if the resurrection took place. One such discussion is described here:


A critical debate on the question "Did Jesus rise from the dead?" took place recently between world-renowned atheistic philosopher, Dr. Antony Flew, and New Testament scholar, Dr. Gary Habermas. A panel of five philosophers from leading universities judged the outcome.

What was the conclusion? Four votes for Habermas. None for Flew. And one draw. One respondent to the debate, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, admitted against his own bias:

"I can neither explain away the evidence to which Habermas appeals, nor can I simply agree with Flew’s or Hume’s positions."


Dr. Flew was judged to have retreated into philosophical sophistry while evading a whole host of widely-acknowledged historical facts.

To me, a lot of the claims and counter-claims fall wide of the mark. In this thing you're not going to be able to prove or disprove but a more scientific approach would be to look at the most likely scenario:

The authorities ... to deflate the new religious enthusiasm ... used every expedient in their power. They harassed, arrested, threatened, and flogged the apostles [but] could not produce Jesus' body. Central to the preaching of the early church was the joyous assertion that Jesus had risen from the dead.

To produce the body would have terminated the issue once and for all. True - He could have been taken away and ended his days in Kashmir with Mary Magdalene but there is no sustainable evidence of this. The swoon theory is also a good one.

But there is sound evidence that ordinary jews thereafter turned to belief in this resurrection in the face of great privations and disdain. You don't do that sort of thing for nothing. And why would the authorities retaliate the way they did?

Sociologically, the notion of redemption through resurrection was a highly subversive doctrine in those days and in fact in any age. Metaphysically, if one concedes an evil force, then it's just logical it will throw up a host of counter-theories and the first step is to suppress anything likely to support the contention in the first place.

One of the more powerful supports which the notion of the resurrection enjoys is the attempt to imitate it both through the Moloch ritual "passing through the fire" which world leaders emulate at Bohemian Grove and through occult rituals themselves, particularly on Walpurgis night [coming up soon - keep your eye on your children, parents, around May 1st].

This notion of resurrection and reincarnation is ancient, powerful and persistent. The further notion that it was achieved in those three days of Pascha is not one likely to endear itself to the wider world.




The Pascha Ritual


Wiki gives this explanation:

Preparation for Pascha begins with the season of Great Lent. In addition to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, Orthodox Christians cut down on all entertainment and non-essential worldly activities, gradually eliminating them until Great and Holy Friday.

Traditionally, on the evening of Great and Holy Saturday, the Midnight Office is celebrated shortly after 11:00 p.m. (see Paschal Vigil). At its completion all light in the church building is extinguished.

A new flame is struck in the altar, or the priest lights his candle from a perpetual lamp kept burning there, and he then lights candles held by deacons or other assistants, who then go to light candles held by the congregation.

Then the priest and congregation process around the church building, holding lit candles, re-entering ideally at the stroke of midnight, whereupon Paschal Matins begins immediately followed by the Paschal Hours and then the Paschal Divine Liturgy.

Immediately after the Liturgy it is customary for the congregation to share a meal, essentially an Agápē dinner (albeit at 2:00 a.m. or later). In Greece the traditional latenight dinner is mageiritsa, a hearty stew of chopped lamb liver and wild greens seasoned with egg-and-lemon sauce.

Traditionally, Easter eggs, hard-boiled eggs dyed bright red to symbolize the spilt Blood of Christ and the promise of eternal life, are cracked together to celebrate the opening of the Tomb of Christ.

Dutch Easter - the persistent notion of "passing through the fire", also much emulated by the other side

The day after, Easter Sunday proper, there is no liturgy, since the liturgy for that day has already been celebrated. Instead, in the afternoon, it is often traditional to celebrate "Agápē Vespers". In this service, it has become customary during the last few centuries for the priest and members of the congregation to read a portion of the Gospel of John (20:19–25 or 19–31) in as many languages as they can manage.

For the remainder of the week (known as "Bright Week"), all fasting is prohibited, and the customary Paschal greeting is "Christ is risen!," to be responded with "Truly He is risen!"


Bit of fun

An article in The New York Times of May 11, 2002, written by Emily Eakin, reviewed a conference on ethics and belief at Yale University in April, 2002:

Eakin said Richard Swinburne, a Greek Orthodox professor of philosophy from Oxford University, used a probability formula known as Bayes's theorem to assign values to factors like the probability that there is a God, the nature of Jesus' behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death.

God overrides natural laws

“For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable,” Professor Swinburne said. “But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because He makes them operate.”

Swinburne gave his notes and calculations to the audience so they could follow while he did the math.

“Given e and k, h is true if and only if c is true,” he said. “The probability of h given e and k is .97”.

In plain English, Professor Swinburne's calculations allegedly show that the probability that the Resurrection really happened is a staggeringly high 97 per cent.

Many other academics have weighed into the defence of the Christian faith, the newspaper said. Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, noted, “It would be accurate to say that it's a growth movement.”

So there you go - ignore it at your peril. :) Finally, to all you good people out there [and bad] :

Христос Воскрес. Воистину Воскрес!


[freemasonry today] and the chinon parchment

Stumbled upon this page, Issue 43, 2007/8, of Freemasonry Today, the Freemasons' own publication.

Interesting that on the same page appears an article on the possibility of the Ancient Knights Templar being "absolved from their crimes".

What's interesting is that a modern Freemason publication should concern itself with a group whose connection with it is denied.

Of course the inclusion of the article is not conclusive, inasmuch as Jimmy Carter appeared in Playboy, Al Jazeera covers sport and Masons include pagans. On the other hand, the article, in using inverted commas, is taking a point of view sympathetic to the Ancient Templars.

This is interesting because the Modern Templars deny they are the old order, which was thought to have been disbanded although they do adhere to the original spirit of it. Further, they say that all Templars are Freemasons but not all Masons are Templars and that they are a modern philanthropic organization.

OK. So the evidence for absolution of the Ancient Templars' crimes is the Chinon Parchment. I'm not going to selectively quote from it - you can read it yourself - but what it essentially refers to is spitting on the cross and homosexual practice as a ritual of entry to the order.

Members confessing that this was indeed so were thereby absolved of guilt by the Pope. Forgive me if I'm wrong but the more I read of their own publications, the more connected they seem to be.

The next step, therefore, is to examine the ritual practices. :)

[anzac day] gallipoli - april 25th, 1915


Theo Spark made reference to this issue here:



We have a duty as a society to do more for those that have risked their lives for us to see that they have a life after their service.

Steve Green, of Daily Referendum, brought our attention to the injured vets who were heckled at that swimming pool:


One woman was so incensed that the troops were using the pool at Leatherhead Leisure Centre in Surrey that she told them they did not deserve to be there. The swimmer, thought to be in her 30s, is understood to have said: "I pay to come here and swim – you lot don't."

This theme was continued in America when Gloria Steinem who, in a country which has made it safe for her to live, decided to belittle John McCain's war service and the reaction was predictable:


McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five and a half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

Steinem defenders say "read the text of what she actually said". I did. Her focus was not, of course, on the war record - it was just to score points off McCain for Clinton. Yet the way she tried to illustrate McCain's ineptitude for office was to single out a lowly thing in her eyes - a war record. Even Hilary distanced herself from Steinem on this.


Therein lies the malaise - the majority of non-combatants at least appreciate, with a nod, that which the men and women defenders have done but at worst there are the examples we've just seen and it is no longer an isolated phenomenon.

The service people, I believe,
don't demand the sort of hero status you see in this Canadian reception above and yet surely they should be accorded that status in society? Surely they should be given the keys of the city and actively assisted by everyone from the government down?

And yet, because of the deep divisions over the subject of war itself [and count me as anti-war] there is a tendency to make this little logical jump to brand the people who actually go off to fight as part of the issue. The issue is who ordered them there - not them themselves.

In Australia, this was brought into sharp focus in Alan Seymour's 1958 play "The One Day of the Year":


In Australia, his best-known play is The One Day of the Year, which dramatised the growing social divide in Australia and the questioning of old values. In the play, ANZAC Day is critiqued by the central character, Hughie, as a day of drunken debauchery by returned soldiers and as a day when questions of what it means to be loyal to a Nation or Empire must be raised.


These days, the Australian young seem to be far more at one with the efforts of the service personnel and many make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli, where the tradition started. Though the ecological aspects of these pilgrimages are being questioned, the way the young have followed this remembrance is surely positive.

Nothing quite brings Australia together as a nation like this day, crossing all age, gender, religious and political divisions. How many commemoration services actually have the former enemy marching alongside you? As the British Daily Telegraph puts it:


In 2008, Anzac Day in Turkey has no parallel anywhere in the world. It defies all the traditional ingrained hatreds between the invader and the defender, the victor and the defeated. Anzac Day is a symbol of peace, forgiveness and understanding.

So here's a summary of the story itself:

On 4th August, 1914, England declared war on Germany and Winston Churchill wanted a strong demonstration of the Navy in the Dardanelles, with Constantinople as a final objective.
About 2 in the morning of 25th April, British Admiral Hamilton ordered the 1500 Australians of the covering force to the shore.
What was strange was that the maps issued to the officers bore no resemblance at all to the surroundings.
Instead of a flat beach and gently undulating terrain beyond, they were facing shrub-covered rocky formations and cliffs that nearly ran into the sea.
Before long, it became clear what had happened : the force had not been put ashore as intended, but in a small bay 2 km further north.
No matter where they had exactly landed, the Australian troops of the covering force did not hesitate to carry out their orders.
They immediately threw off their packs and stormed the heights closest to the beach.
Because the boats had landed in complete disorder, the beach itself was soon congested with new troops being landed without knowing in which direction to advance. After a couple of hours, chaos was complete.


They sent a message to Hamilton, who only said, “You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe."


According to some sources, this text gave the nickname "diggers", which the Australians would keep for the rest of their history.
Turkish sniping and bombs kept raining down on the Anzacs, who could only hope to throw the bombs back before they exploded.
The sea was literally red with blood.

For days after the landing, dead bodies would be washed ashore. One third of the troops died for 500 metres result.
As spring came to an end, a plague of flies fed on the unburied corpses, then dysentery and the water supply became a major problem.
The hostility towards their enemies gradually dropped and the Turks were considered as victims of the same deplorable situation. More than once 'presents' were thrown across no-man's land or messages exchanged.
Then the wind started blowing from the north, which led to sleet and snow. The temperature dropped far below zero and the troops had no winter equipment, which had arrived on the peninsula but had then been shipped back for some reason.
Soldiers froze to death while on guard duty, and the transport of supplies broke up completely. Fighting had become completely impossible. Turkish soldiers refused to advance against the enemy.
During the second week of December, the first phase of the evacuation was started.
Every night, numbers of small vessels came to Anzac Cove to pick up the sick and wounded first, then the prisoners of war and finally the soldiers.
The Gallipoli campaign had been a fiasco and it was one of many reasons the army became known as "lions led by donkeys".


The question of glorifying war, brought out in "The One Day of the Year", is valid. Yet no one who had been there would glorify war in any way and this helps explain the reticence of many real Anzacs, the oldest vets, to keep hashing over the details of the horror.

Redgum's song Only 19, puts it succinctly in the context of Vietnam. The images in this clip are quite moving:



One commenter on this YouTube said:


I can't bear this song without shedding tears. My brother, only 27 went over to Timor last year for war. He was meant to return in October 07. He didn't return untill April 08. He has done his share. 03 he crashed in a blackhawk. He only received minor injuries while he watched his mates die. Anyone in the army, force or even a reserve, good on you. You deserve every praise. We Love you.

Nice little non-debate going on with an Anonymous over at Theo's. Let's all remember such men and women on this day.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

[thought for the day] thursday evening

He trusted neither of these people as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.

[P.G. Wodehouse]

[life] love it or loathe it, you can't like it


Have to laugh. P.G. Wodehouse wrote, in The Inimitable Jeeves:
I've found, as a general rule in life, that the things that you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out to be not so bad after all; but it wasn't that way with Bingo's tea party. From the moment he invited himself I felt the thing was going to be blue round the edges and it was. And I think the most gruesome part of the whole affair was the fact that, for the first time since I'd known him, I saw Jeeves come very near to being rattled.

That's a pretty good description of a day today which began with an emergency call to come straight to the passport office and which then got steadily worse as it progressed. I've been all over town today trying to sort things out and stay sane. What ho - so unless something drastically alters, I think you're now seeing the last month of this blog.

Every cloud, though ... and today the young ladies decided to be magnificent. Worse things happen at sea, ha ha, I'm off to bed and I'll leave you with a Wooster number to cheer you up:



[meetings] more than one a day over here means fiasco

In this country, arrangements are fluid. You can make a time, arrange a place and the other will turn up at another time in another place or just won't turn up at all.

Throw into the mix a friend who has to attend to an ailing parent and a client who needs to find a time with you today and you're in a free floating mess involving multiple taxis and uncertainty.

When you don't have a mobile phone to sort it all out, so that it all has to prearranged before you leave home and tack onto that two commitments later in the afternoon which you can't escape plus one uncertain and guilt-ridden tryst - well, that's possibly your own normal lifestyle over there but it ain't mine.

Nice rule of thumb over here that each meeting you add to the mix exponentially increases the chances of it all falling apart.

Update: phone call from the office two minutes ago that on top of that they'd like me to present myself in there at a time which cuts across two of those meetings.

Fun day ahead.

[facebook] and the military


You've probably seen this:

Israel has sentenced a soldier to 19 days in jail for uploading a photograph taken on his military base to the social networking website, Facebook. The Israeli military declined to comment on the nature of the image, but said the soldier was serving with an elite intelligence unit.

A glance at the top right corner of this blog shows the Libertarian Party badge and I think it's ridiculous to try to impose a military modus operandi on a civilian population though it is the wont of the pollies, imagining themselves to be great military leaders, to do so - so much easier for them.

In the Anglo-West there has always been a separation of the two arms of society except in times of war and it's healthy they stay separated. So in that context the jail sentence is wrong. But that soldier was not on civvy street - he was a soldier on R&R and so the jail sentence was right.

The military operates under a code which is absolutely necessary for survival, especially in the life or death situation in Israel. Libertarians might not like that but it's necessary nonetheless.

There is a concept of collective responsibility in the military which guides its operations. The time to voice concerns is at the planning stage and a good leadership will allow ideas pertaining to the operation at hand to filter up from the ranks but the game plan is, by definition and by training, in the hands of the leadership group.

Once the course is decided though, dissidence must stop or else it will harm operational efficiency and that will lead inevitably to deaths. The enemy, in desiring to survive, is going to be pretty intense in exploring every chink in the armour and Facebook most certainly is a chink in the armour.

This soldier in the news report comes across as particularly wilful and it seems to me that 19 days is quite lenient - after all, he was giving succour to the enemy and with foreknowledge that he was doing so. Every military command knows that to allow this sloppiness in the ranks is going to harm morale in the long run and put the lives of thousands unnecessarily at risk.

Anyone who's ever been in uniform knows that there are no beg pardons in there and that the harder the unit, the more trained and experienced, the greater the chances of staying alive.

Now Facebook. Was there ever an organization less suitable for a soldier to be social networking on? You might like to glance at these posts here, here, here and here on the issue of that insidious organization and at this post on what's currently happening to Facebook.

So yes, the Israeli military seem quite justified in doing as they've done and his mates would not be too enamoured of him either.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

[thought for the day] april 23rd

It's only logical that the thought to round out the day would be that of Alice Duer Miller. Wiki explains:

In 1940, she wrote the verse novel The White Cliffs. The story is of an American girl who coming to London as a tourist, meets and marries a young upper-class Englishman in the period just before the First World War.

The War begins and he goes to the front. He is killed just before the end of the War, leaving her with a young son. Her son is the heir to the family estate. Despite the pull of her own country and the impoverished condition of the estate, she decides to stay and live the traditional life of a member of the English upper class.

The story concludes as The Second World War commences and she worries that her son, like his father, will be killed fighting for the country he loves.

The poem was spectacularly successful on both sides of the Atlantic, selling eventually approaching a million copies - an unheard of number for a book of verse. The poem ends with the lines:
... I am American bred
I have seen much to hate here - much to forgive,
But in a world in which England is finished and dead,
I do not wish to live.

[april 23 quiz] five to test you out

1. Which of David Ricardo, Ernest Rutherford, Charles Darwin, were not born in England?

2. What is the lowest land point in England?

3. The population of England in 2005 was estimated as: 52,387,500; 50,762,900; 59,214,200?


4. The largest natural harbour in England is at Portsmouth, Liverpool, Poole?


5. The third largest conurbation in England is currently: West Midlands Urban Area, West Yorkshire Urban Area or Greater Manchester Urban Area


The answers are below in white [need highlighting]

Ernest Rutherford, The Fens, 50,762,900, Poole, Greater Manchester

[england's day] st george - april 23rd


"In the early years of the last century socialists in England used to sing a hymn about their liberation from exploitation and under-representation: its title and opening line serves as the perfect envoi today. "England, arise! The long, long night is over!"

Labour might never govern in England again, which would serve it right, given the contempt it has shown for the English. It might well precipitate the end of the Union itself.

That was a process started in 1997 by Labour; and it has a logical conclusion of separation which would, once an English parliament were created, be clearly in sight.

The Conservative Party has its head in the sand on this issue, as on so much else: which is odd, given the sheer misery such a process would cause for Labour.

The Tories' prevalent and infantile cast of mind associates English nationalism with racism and other forms of evil.

Since the creation of an English nation would create an English citizenship equal to all who legally reside in that country, whatever their origins, such fears are groundless.

At the moment, the word "English" when applied to people is a badge of ethnicity; after independence it would become a badge of nationhood."


Some history


George was probably first made well known in England by Arculpus and Adamnan in the early eighth century.

The Acts of St George, which recounted his visits to Caerleon and
Glastonbury while on service in England, were translated into Anglo-Saxon.

Among churches dedicated to St George was one at Doncaster in 1061.


George was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers after he was said to have appeared to the Crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098.

Many similar stories were transmitted to the West by Crusaders who had heard them from Byzantine troops, and were circulated further by the troubadours.

When Richard 1 was campaigning in Palestine in 1191-92 he put the army under the protection of St George.

The European Union is the new enemy


England has fought off aggressors for centuries - the Bonny Bunch of Roses was always a plum target, to Napoleon and Hitler and now to the EU Monster which appears certain to succeed. Let there be no doubts in anyone's mind that they are the new enemy.

As Robert Winnett, at the Telegraph says:

England has been wiped off a map of Europe drawn up by Brussels bureaucrats as part of a scheme that the Tories claim threatens to undermine the country's national identity.

Check the map for yourself:



This will not stand.

You can do your bit here to defy the EU from consuming England.


Today is the day the EU is defied and eventually the monster will be mortally skewered, as he always has been in the past.

England will once more rise to nationhood, the ancient counties resuming their rightful subordinate places in the whole.

England rattles no sabres and offers no hostility to other home nations as long as they take care of their affairs and leave England to take care of its own.

St Andrew's, St Patrick's, St David's and St Piran's days are also important in the calendar and are respected, just as ours is. [I personally am a friend of Cornish independence.]


Thank you again, Ginro

This below is, of course, Beowulf rather than St George


Nu sceall billes ecg,
hond ond heard sweord ymb hord wigan.'
Beowulf maðelode, beotwordum spræc
niehstan siðe: `Ic geneðde fela
guða on geogoðe; gyt ic wylle,
frod folces weard fæhðe secan,
mærðu fremman, gif mec se mansceaða
of eorðsele ut geseceð.'



A sweeter note

To leave you with, the Nature of being English, according to Tiberius Gracchus:

The story really isn't the point here though - its the individuality, its the eccentricity (in England's that's a virtue) - there is a line in the Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo that what's worth fighting for is all the absurd Bolgers and Boffins and Bagginses- that's the same sense you get from Wallace and Gromit.

These two characters are crackers, they are mad, their lives revolve around inventions, cheese (particularly Wensleydale) and tea- but in some sense they are the essense of the whole of Western civilisation. Civilisation isn't just Michelangelo and Machiavelli, its Wallace and his efforts to get to the moon, its loving Wensleydale and its a dog knitting in a chair and rats with shades over their eyes, its merry eccentricity which is a value all to itself.

The absurdity of life is in many ways its essence - when we talk about freedom often we lose sight of the fact that freedom isn't just a political issue - its a personal issue as well.


To all English at home and abroad - greetings to you and may it be a happy day to remember. To our other friends - back soon.