[hyperlinks] fuel for the big machines

In these days of aggregators, RSS feeds, OPML and who knows what else, where does this leave the humble hyperlink?

It seems very much to me that it is still used by the big machines to assess a blog's "value" or "worth", even though it is only tangentially connected with this. Which raises the next question as to how important hyperlinks are.

I think it was Thunderdragon who ran a post on "Are You a UK Blog?" So I took the test some group had set up and discovered that I wasn't a UK Blog. As you can imagine, this came as somewhat of a shock, as 43% of my readership was UK at that point, followed by 29% from the U.S, 8% from Canada and 6% from Australia.

The reason they offered was that not enough UK bloggers were linking to me. Hmmmm. Now as you know, I run Blogfocus and generally speaking, gratuitously link whenever I can so I hardly saw how they could have been right in that.

So I followed back a number of links I'd included in my own posts over a one week period and realized that while I was thanked on my own site, the fellow blogger often didn't carry that back to his/her own site. And that "carrying back" is where one's assessment as a blog comes from by the machines.

Disclaimer - many, like Welshcakes Limoncello, Colin Campbell, Tom Paine, Tiberius Gracchus, JMB, Lady Macleod, Lord Nazh [whom have I missed?] are kind enough to backlink pretty regularly and a sprinkling of other kind souls from time to time, as distinct from regularly visiting, which then includes good folk like CityUnslicker, Two Wolves, Grendel Grendel, Ian Appleby, Shades and so on but many others simply … don't.

I believe in the principle that one needs to say something fairly significant in the first place to warrant being linked but perhaps if we all became just a tadge more "gratuitous" in our usage of the facility …

Whoa, I hear you say - I've added you to my blogroll - what are you moaning about? Yes, it is a wonderful thing to be in someone else's blogroll and no mistake - it's certainly some sort of confirmation that one is appreciated and no mealy-mouthedness about this whatsoever.

However, for the big machines, sadly, this is not enough. They require hundreds of links in order to be slightly more than a blip on the blog radar. While this might seem unjust, I hardly see how they can do it differently, without prying into people's site stats.

I blame Readers like my Google Reader and bloglinks in part for the situation too.

Second disclaimer - what brought all this on was not my own overall stats which I'm delighted with over this silly season nor the refusal of these people to recognize me as UK [I have a significant U.S., Canadian and Australian readership too] but the position in Technorati of one particular lady I'll not name and her situation incensed me.

Quite frankly, Technorati is anomalous in its decision making.

She is languishing with an "authority" level in two figures whilst another male blogger I checked is up in the hundreds. And yet I see her in many places and the latter gentleman only on the "correct sites" which curry favour.

In short, she's not getting just return for her efforts and I'm sure she'd never ask for it. She'd also say and I agree, that the important thing is just to be read, not commented on or linked. Still, if only half those she visited linked back to her, mentioning something in a throwaway aside, perhaps, her "authority" would shoot through the roof.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

[abortion] it's not as easy as all that

It's nowhere in the "About" on this site, nowhere in the posts, this blogger has hitherto left the issue alone. Until now. Worred about powerful lobbies? No. It's just a bit personal, that's all.

My position is that I have no position.

Tim Worstall comments on Amnesty's decision to back Woman's Choice in certain circumstances and that it has no right to broaden its charter to take in other issues - it's hard to argue with him on this.

Abortion?

Though the man hates it, should he ask her not to? I don't mean rant and rave and tell her it's evil and all that because she can deal with that more easily, I think.

No, I mean asking her quietly not to kill our child.

I imagine that's far more traumatic for her. Did I do wrong by not asking? I felt she knew how I felt about it but I didn't say anything. Was I abetting a felony?

And the next day, when she went off there in the taxi alone because she wanted it that way, did I do wrong?

And when she allowed me to see her the following day and I held her in my arms, did I do wrong? Was I condoning a crime and telling her that it was quite OK to do that every time now?

I have no answers to these questions. She was 34.

[rain] when it sets in

She was 14, I was 15 and the other day I found some letters from her in that green ink, rounded hand and read them again, always returning to the day at the end of summer when she went back home to the country and I had to return to school, to the big smoke.

We had two hours to ourselves on that shoreline and walked in the shallows, went up onto the cliff and all of it in steady rain. Do you love swimming in the rain, the drops pinging the surface of the water, blending with the foam and tingling on the skin?

I adore it and just walking in it, both of you soaked to the skin. You can dry out later. Sailing in it is also a buzz - there's a soft whoosh to steady rain, isn't there, entirely different to patter patter or driving rain?

These days I love the expression "rain setting in" because it means going out onto the balcony, with the rain falling past, centimetres from the metre and a half wide window opening, splashing up at you from the sill, you with your coffee in your hand and I don't care any more about anything bad, only the good things, the romance of rain.

Wiki says:

Many people find the scent during and immediately after rain especially pleasant or distinctive. The source of this scent is petrichor, an oil produced by plants, then absorbed by rocks and soil, and later released into the air during rainfall. Light or heavy rain is sometimes seen as romantic.

Yes, yes, yes.

All my most romantic moments, even the apocalyptic moments have been in rain. I can even imagine the final apocalypse will be in rain. Don't say "acid rain" and spoil the mood. That's the sort of spoilsport thing I'd say.

You want to know how we parted - not my childhood sweetheart, I mean my last love not so long ago? No? Well I'm going to tell you anyway. We went to the Pyramid and there's a restaurant up top and the whole roof is glass [not one sheet, mind - there are girders].

This day the changeable set menu was excellent, the music playing was the best and the rain was thundering down on the roof. How appropriate for a final, parting meeting. She told me many months later she'd gone back there a few times hoping to recapture that time but it had been a one off.

Some people love when the rain clears, the sun peeps out and a new dawn comes. Not me. It always means her new dawn with someone else and mine alone.

I adore rain. When it sets in, that is.

[blogfocus saturday] telling it as it is

Click for the big pic

1. The capital letter loving Clare strikes a blow for all menopausal women:

Q: How many women going through the MENOPAUSE (or PMS) does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One! ONLY ONE!!!! And do you know WHY? Because no one else in this house knows HOW to change a light bulb! They don't even know that the bulb is BURNED OUT!! They would sit in the dark for THREE DAYS before they figured it out (as long as the TV and beer fridge still worked). And, once they figured it out, they wouldn't be able to find the stupid light bulbs despite the fact that they've been in the SAME CABINET for the past 17 YEARS!But if they did, by some miracle of God, actually find them, 4 DAYS LATER, the chair they dragged to stand on to change the STUPID light bulb would STILL BE IN THE SAME SPOT!!!!!

2. A most unusual student also tells it as it is:

After calling around the agencies to sign up (they'll contact me if there are any jobs), I headed down to Ludlow College. Today was the results for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) students across the land, and it's all over the news. For the last year, down at Ludlow College, I've been doing an evening class to improve my CV. I've got my MCSE (Monkey Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications under my belt (or rather my rosette, as monkeys don't wear belts!) already, but I've been studying for a GCSE in the Alutiiq language.

3. BobG tells it how it is on gun control:

The same goes for the Brady Campaign; they make more money by demonizing inanimate objects than pushing for better criminal control. Most firearms used in crimes are not bought from licensed dealers or gun shows; they are stolen or bought from other criminals, something which has been known to the law enforcement community for years. Of course, we can't be distracted by the facts, can we? I think I need another cup of coffee...

4. Omnium tells it how it is on the topic of sheer boredom:

In today’s Turkish Daily News (TDN) one could find an article about Hamam owners claiming that the baths and saunas in 5-star hotels do not reflect Turkish culture are going to start a campaign to promote the traditional Turkish Hamam.

That’s it.

Today’s most important story . . . for hamam owners.

And for most readers: A banal story.

So how to attract reader’s interest?

A kingdom for a headline!

5. I can't give you an abridged version of Kareno's miracle but it's amazing and you should read it. She tells it as it is and even includes a picture:

The principal asked me in a stern voice if I have insurance and the secretary kept patting my back. I was crying as if it's the end of the world or worse and only managed a nod. The caretaker got into my car and drove forward a bit, away from the pole. And that's when it happened dot dot dot

6. Martin Kelly has surprisingly sided with Neil Clark, thereby incurring the wrath of the blogosphere and here he tells it as it is:

In certainly one of the more creative if bizarre slurs I've ever been on the end of, it's been suggested that if I were an American colonist in 1776 I'd have supported slavery. But the piece de resistance must be the argument of one Conor Foley that those who hold my view are potentially liable to prosecution for war crimes. Time out, I think. There is, of course, a Third Way out of this situation - one I put forward while being accused of supporting kidnapping for ransom.

7. Shirl of Bristol tells it as it is about her bump on the head:

Heartache is that news of a bang on the forehead, a dent not a bump, is not the best way to say, "I've been feeling better lately, finding that the quiet of my days away from the computer and all things netterly, have really done me some good". If I had posted this yesterday (as said to Liz), I would have been without the new facial feature. Hope is (without jest) that I'll soon be in fine fettle again.

8. The Reactionary Snob sees some logical snags in the tagging of schoolkids and tells it as it is:

Secondly, one would presume that if the little angels realised there was a tracking device in their blazer they would just leave their blazer in the locker, or cut the tracking device out? Or, no doubt, some young Alan Sugar would make a fortune out of carrying a number of other pupils blazers in his bag as he sat in the classroom and they skive off...

At some stage there needs to be a Kizzie feature on her Darfur diaries. the only question is when.

Hope to see you Wednesday evening. Cheers.

[oily tale] beyond the pale

Another place, another oily tale

You know, I can really relate to this. It looked, on the surface, as if it was Russia flexing its muscles again, squaring up to an arrogant Germany:

Russia has cut oil supplies to Germany in the past month, its pipeline monopoly said on Friday, blaming the reduction on Russia’s number two oil producer LUKOIL.

But the real story then appeared:

But traders said on Friday the most recent development was linked to a trading dispute involving only LUKOIL. ”It is the same old story. LUKOIL likes having direct supply deals with refiners and doesn’t like selling all its crude to Kishilov,” said a trader with a Russian company.

Sergei Kishilov, a prominent Russian oil industry figure, has run the operations of Sunimex for over 10 years. Sunimex is a monopoly importer of Russian crude to Germany, including to the Schwedt refinery.

Leaving crude oil and looking at the psychology of individuals, if I were head of a Russian Oil Company [please contact me, boys] and there was real "stick" between myself and some jumped up fellow countryman who'd managed to gain the monopoly on oil supply, under my nose, to one of the major economies in the world and if I had to deal solely through this jackanapes instead of directly with my customers, I'd cut off his supplies too.

It's all very well saying it's childish and people in Germany will suffer and all that but this is outrageous. Not only would I not supply this person, I'd try to get all other suppliers in my country to refuse too. This Kishilov is beyond the pale.

[manifesto soon] being rewritten

All right, the "About" is now ready and pretty well tabulates what I'm about. If you want to know about me, try clicking here.

[g.h.w. bush] 1000 points of light

George Herbert Walker Bush, humanitarian and visionary

Foreword

NewsWithViews.com [a right wing Christian think tank] says:

Dr. Robert Assagioli, founder of psychosynthesis, believed it is possible to train the "will" (speaking on this at an Edgar Cayce Conference was Dr. James Windsor, vice-president of the Mental Health Association of Virginia). Assagioli was a disciple of Alice Bailey (perhaps the leading occultist for the first half of the 20th century), whose first works were published by Lucifer Publishing Company, and who emphasized the need for a "new world order" and "points of light" connected to "service."

An example of Alice Bailey's thinking, from The Externalization of the Hierarchy:

…out of the spoliation of all existing culture and civilization, the new world order must be built...

GHW Bush

David С Whitney & Robin Vaughn Whitney, The American Presidents, 9th ed., Nelson Doubleday Inc, Guild America, NY, 2001, pp 433-459, wrote of GHW Bush at the Republican Convention, August, 1988:

He celebrated the nation's complexity with a captivating poetic image, calling it "a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky." He called for a gentler nation and he said the President "must be a shrewd protector of America's interests and he must be an idealist who leads those who move for a freer and more democratic planet."

… but contrasted this appeal to the celestial elements with:

The campaign was criticized by many as being the most negative in recent memory with campaign commercials showing convicted murderers and sewer sludge.

On September 11, 1990 the President addressed a joint session of Con­gress on live television:

"Out of these troubled times, a new world order can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and I live in harmony." In poetic language the President said, "a hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor.

Today that new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak."

George back up this last pledge with:

Each day of the war television audiences around the world viewed detailed military film of the destruction and the accuracy and effectiveness of an astounding array of computer- and laser-guided bombs and missiles which had never before been used in any military conflict.

Which was in keeping with his earlier inaugural address:

President Bush called on Americans to "make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world." He went on to say "A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree."

He backed up his "new, refreshed world" pledge when:

He reluctantly attended the [eco] summit, but he refused to sign the biodiversity treaty. He did agree to sign a global warming agreement even though the U.S. was criticized for taking positions in the negotiations that weakened the treaty. President Bush was faulted for failing to take a leadership role in world environmental issues and was accused of undermining the summit.

George showed his concern for the needs of ordinary Americans in his domestic policy:

Beginning with the threat of war in the Persian Gulf, the price of petro­leum shot up, roiling international markets. With market instability and the approach of possible hostilities, the U.S. economy slipped into reces­sion. When the war ended so quickly, with so few casualties for Americans, there was an immediate burst of optimism and the economy slowly began to turn positive in the spring of 1991.

By summer, however, the huge national debt, the scandalous mismanagement and failure of the Savings and Loans banks, and the still high rates of interest mandated by the Federal Reserve Board brought the enthusiasm to an end.

American business and American consumers had built up historic levels of debt in the 1980s and were using profits and earnings to pay it down. Banks were turning very stringent in their requirements for borrowers, and citizens and businesses alike were curbing new purchases. As a result the economy again began to register negative growth and unemployment rose.

Looking back on his record, Whitney says:

The President had proven himself to be a powerful and convincing international leader. He had, largely through his own personal efforts, conceived, assembled, and effectively led an unprecedented international military coalition against a strong military dictator [… but …] despite all these successes, the American voters insisted on focusing on their own economic insecurities.

This, of course, was rather unfair on GHW, who explained to the General Assembly of the UN., February 1st, 1992 how he was "a shrewd protector of America's interests":

"... what is at stake is more than one small country. It is a big idea. A New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, and security, freedom, and the rule of law ...

[The war in Iraq is] a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, ... our fifth objective, - a New World Order, can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace

... Now we can see a new world coming into view, a world in which there is a very real prospect of a New World Order. ... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."

It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance.

Tony Blair was clearly inspired by the same inspiration which had inspired GHW's rhetorical "sacred principles" and here was his own effort:

"At the time of the election, there will just be 1,000 days to the new millennium - 1,000 days to prepare for 1,000 years, a moment of destiny for us." [BBC feature, July 20th, 2004]

… and again in the Guardian, October 3rd, 2001:

"This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again; Before they do, let us re-order this world around us."

Forget education, the environment, the economy, the law, medicine and welfare. The most important thing for any leader to focus on, as I'm sure you're all agreed, is 1000 points of light.

A little dwelling in Belgium in a withered landscape - I'm sure certain readers understand.

[new world order] sorry this took so long

Lord Nazh reacted to this:

… let me quote from May 1st, 1776 …

and this:

…driving GHW Bush's New Order in Iraq [are you aware he had certificates issued to troops afterwards thanking them for taking part in his New World Order?*] …

and this:

… * I have a copy of this certificate and will try to find it then post it here ...

with this:

I love you James, but you need serious help :) What 'quote' from May 1st 1776 are you referring to (no link was provided)? And hurry up with the NWO cert please, as a friend of mine didn't get one (who indeed served in the war in Iraq).

The quote

It is from Adam Weishaupt (code named Spartacus) and you'll see the date in bold in the text in the hyperlink. To help out in English a little, these were their objectives:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments

2) Abolition of private property

3) Abolition of inheritance

4) Abolition of patriotism

5) Abolition of the family

6) Abolition of religion

7) Creation of a world government

There are two main objections to the Illuminati from 1776 having any significant world influence:

1] It was a society created by a small group of kooks in Bavaria, small time stuff and Weishaupt saw himself as some sort of mega leader of them;

2] They were suppressed in a general crackdown on all secret societies in 1785 and that was that.

There are a number of objections to the objections:

1] A detractor, John Robison, a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and a member of a Freemason Lodge there, wrote “Proofs of a Conspiracy”, a copy of which was sent to George Washington, who replied that he was aware that the Illuminati were in America and that they had “diabolical tenets”.

2] The Catholic Encyclopaedia writes: When the great international convention of Freemasons was held at Wilhelmsbad (16 July to 29 August, 1782) the "Illuminated Freemasonry", which Knigge and Weishaupt now proclaimed to be the only "pure" Freemasonry, had already gained such a reputation that almost all the members of the convention clamoured for admission into the new institution.

Moreover, in 1783 the anarchistic tendencies of the order provoked public denunciations which led, in 1784, to interference on the part of the Bavarian Government. As the activity of the Illuminati still continued, four successive enactments were issued against them (22 June, 1784; 2 March, and 16 August, 1785; and 16 August, 1787), in the last of which recruiting for the order was forbidden under penalty of death.

These measures put an end to the corporate existence of the order in Bavaria, and, as a result of the publication, in 1786, of its degrees and of other documents concerning it—for the most part of a rather compromising nature—its further extension outside Bavaria became impossible. The spread of the spirit of the Illuminati, which coincided substantially with the general teachings of the "enlightenment", especially that of France, was rather accelerated than retarded by the persecution in Bavaria.

3] Winston Churchill, in 1920, wrote: "From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.

It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

4] If only for the level of detail I include this next piece as an objection, admitting freely I can't attribute it and therefore don't insist it be taken as definitive:

1785 - An Illuminati courier named Lanze is struck by lightning and killed while traveling by horseback through the town of Ratisbon. When Bavarian officials examine the contents of his saddle bags, they discover the existence of the Order of the Illuminati and find plans detailing the coming French Revolution. The Bavarian government attempts to alert the government of France of impending disaster, but the French government fails to heed this warning. Bavarian officials arrest all members of the Illuminati they can find, but Weishaupt and others have gone underground and cannot be found.

Oct. 11, 1785 - Bavarian authorities raid the home of an Illuminati member named Von Zwack. They discover Illuminati documents which show quite clearly that they plan to bring about a "universal revolution that should deal the death-blow to society...this revolution will be the work of the secret societies, and that is one of our great mysteries."

5] Another weak objection is from a woman who hides behind a pseudonym, Svali, purportedly ex-Illuminati and though it is not established, neither has it been definitively debunked in all I've so far read. She says, of Weishaupt:

Q: Is this the same Illuminati that was created by Adam Weishaupt in Germany?

A: Weishaupt did not create the Illuminati, they chose him as a figurehead and told him what to write about. The financiers, dating back to the bankers during the times of the Templar Knights who financed the early kings in Europe, created the Illuminati. Weishaupt was their "go fer", who did their bidding.

Ignoring points 4 and 5 then, safe ground appears to be that there was an organization formed in 1776 into all these ancient mysteries, they caused sufficient concern outside of Bavaria that Washington and later Churchill took their continued influence seriously, they did cease as a publicly listed body in 1785 and that a lot of their guff has been passed down through other bodies.

You'll have noticed the "financier" reference but I base my view on them on current source material, not this. I prefer to stay on safe ground.

The certificate

Click on the pic for a better view:

Here is the naval seal [click for better view] …

… and a close-up of the text …

I stand corrected on the word "troops" and realize now it was "marines officers". I understand the certificate was not distributed to all ranks but there seems sufficient detail to indicate Bush was into this stuff.

I'll do a further post looking at two of his speeches and though it won't pass the "I want it signed in triplicate and specific allegations of treason made" merchants, it is still quite indicative of the mindset of the man who took the Allies to war in Iraq, a war I didn't actually object to at the time, by the way, being then something of a neo-con.

[revelation] in the middle of the night

Watching Anakin ride off in high dudgeon to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his mother

What do Liz, JMB, Welshcakes and Anakin Skywalker all have in common at 3.38 a.m. on the morning I have to go back to work?

Comments, snippets and incidents from all were playing on the mind, repeating themselves and making me uneasy and suddenly I woke up.

Liz had written "I'm a crappy Christian", which bothered me [by the way, check the name of her post], then later commented on my site "isn't that a coincidence" and though the topics were different, it chimed in with the way I was thinking.

The more and more moral I get on this site, the less and less Christian I actually get in my general behaviour. My fallings-away are increasing and you'd have picked up my aggressive tone in the feminism posts.

Then JMB and Welsh. Looking back at my major post on the F-ism word, I have to admit to being genuinely puzzled by their reactions. Instead of tearing me down as a Jagger or French would do, they took it personally, especially Welshcakes and that's the first time I realized how much women's rights had actually meant to these ladies at the time and maybe still even now.

So I went back and re-explored, checked each link, did some reading of the early feminists and now - what Christina Hoff-Sommers was going on about started to come home. The early writings were really about equality, rights, the ending of an oppression and the movement was equally open to campaigning for other oppressed groups as well.

In short, it was sane. This accorded with my student memories and the things we were up in arms about in those days.

Now I went over the other, later guff I've recently read on F-ism, like: "all men are rapists" and the like and suddenly the penny dropped about what had gone down in the women's movement. It had been hijacked. The thing I was railing against was not the same thing my lady friends were fondly remembering. Different other animal, in fact.

Contrast these two statements:

1] This movement has been around for a long time, since before the turn of the twentieth century, when its sole purpose was to get the vote for women. Over the years it has evolved to deal with other pressing concerns for women. [JMB]

2] the very 'institution of sexual intercourse' where male and female each play a well-defined role will disappear. Humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphously perverse sexuality" [Alison Jagger]

Totally different - one the injured and measured cry for equality and the other - something far more sinister - in its own words, the ending of sexual intercourse between male and female and a "return" to the "polymorphously perverse sexuality " of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now as a Christian, I immediately recognize this for what it is and don't for one second blame Alison Jagger. Grievance and anger allowed her to write such dangerous tripe. It has zero to do with women's rights and everything to do with the ravings of my implacable enemy, which includes and let me quote from May 1st, 1776:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments

2) Abolition of private property

3) Abolition of inheritance

4) Abolition of patriotism

5) Abolition of the family

6) Abolition of religion

7) Creation of a world government

In other words, the same force driving the new-feudalism on, driving GHW Bush's New Order in Iraq [are you aware he had certificates issued to troops afterwards thanking them for taking part in his New World Order?*], driving the pagan, drug fueled nightclub scene [and don't tell me it's not because I was part of it until four years ago], driving on the disintegration of society today.

It's insane and it's possessed, knowing no debate or reason.

It's the same force driving credit and the debt economy to frightening levels and driving us to war, it's the hijacking of Pomo which Cassandra writes about and in the very word "driving" lies its insanity. Think about when you were last so angry you didn't stop until you had struck back and said something hurtful to the other. But your momentary satisfaction turned to ashes and that was to the satisfaction of someone else.

Think about Anakin Skywalker [and no - I haven't taken leave of my mind].

That scene [in the pic above] where he learnt that some evil bods were holding his mother hostage in a desert village on Tatooine and maltreating her, he rushes there, holds his dying mother, then loses his rag completely and razes the village to the sand - men, women and children all put to the sword [echoes of Sudan?]

I'm speaking here, people, of how real evil [and you call it what you will - an entity, a dark side of our own nature, what you will] plays on our genuine grievances [e.g. inequality for women] and invites us to do our worst.

It "suggests" certain embellishments so that instead of equal rights, we now have the call for indiscriminate intercourse with men, women and children, under the banner "freedom for the oppressed" and as part of that, 650 campuses are forced to watch academic staff parading around as giant vaginas - it's the betrayal of the trust by the young in the decency of the old. It's all of this and more.

It's the values of a society turned on its head.

Therefore the women's movement becomes the misandry movement, therefore the gay movement becomes the paedophile movement and always, always, the direction is downwards to depravity, never the other way to decency and all the while the rhetoric speaks of "new dawns", "new reawakenings", "man taking his place in his new destiny" and so on.

Blairite, Broonian and Cameronite type vague postulatings, in other words.

Beneath the rhetoric, the real agenda - 3000 new crimes on the statute books, laws of breaking and entering on suspicion [are you aware of the R.I.P. Act?], iris scans, summary detention at airports, rampant cross-border sex slavery [how?], refusal to deal firmly with any moral issue in the society but allowing the real crazies to hold forth with impunity under the banner "freedom of speech".

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happened to the women's movement, the gay movement, Islam, post modernism and all the other originally legitimate grievances - they were hijacked by the cynically "perverted", in Jagger's own terms.

This nearly drove a wedge between my lady friends and myself except that the ladies didn't allow it to happen, which I call a triumph for human common sense and sanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're speaking here of the insanity of evil, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. It's now rampant, we're in the middle of it and we're all marching off, someway down the track, to another needlessly induced and meaningless crisis, followed by war.

And Johnson said, remember:

Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

And whilst we're on quotes, the one which Poirot delivered to Mlle de Bellefort, as the latter was seeking revenge on her erstwhile friend for wrongs done to her:

"Mademoiselle, I beseech you, do not do as you are doing."

"Leave dear Linnet alone, you mean?"

"It is deeper than that. Do not open your heart to evil."

Her lips fell apart. A look of bewilderment came into her eyes.

Poirot continued, gravely. "Because if you do - evil will come. Yes, very surely evil will come. It will enter in and make its home within you and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out."

Jacqueline stared at him. Her glance seemed to waver, to flicker uncertainly. She said, "I - I don't know." Then she cried out defiantly: "You can't stop me!"

"No," said Hercule Poirot, "I cannot stop you." His voice was sad.

After the killing is finally over [for the nonce], stepping back to survey the handiwork

* I have a copy of this certificate and will try to find it then post it here.