Friday, December 07, 2007

[regions] only within the national whole

We're going to keep blogging on this thing. It's as simple as this - there are democratically elected governments, yea, even the traitor Brown ... and then there are the euphemistically named qangos and NGOs. Behind them is the money.

Only a madman would speak out against this real power. Call me mad. Here is the latest, from the CEP:

So it would appear that Peter Davidson (who sits on the governing body of Unlock Democracy) sees the destruction of England as a nation - or indeed Britain - a desirable outcome.

I suspect that this is his website, on which he explains:

I would also endorse the proposal that the Committee of the Regions should be elevated in stature from the toothless body it currently represents to become the second legislative chamber of Europe.

Toque quotes author Frederick Forsyth:

[He] was once approached by the East Midlands Regional Assembly to become an ambassador for the region. His reply was a joy to read:

Regionalism, behind its mask of local democracy, enhanced prosperity for all, but in truth standing for millions more unaccountable gravy-slurping jobsworths, has got to fool enough of the people enough of the time…

But you run into a group of people far more numerous than yourself, just as committed to the retention of England as you are to its disappearance, just as smart and just as moneyed. Before the fight is over you and yours will have learned the hard way that this old country of ours is not yet prepared to be led into the knacker’s yard.

In the spirit of Frederick Forsyth I respond to the regionalists over at Our Kingdom:

Phil Davis in the Guardian signed off his Guardian article by informing us that he ‘chairs the Campaign for the English Regions’. [I was] shocked because I thought we’d buried that particular organisation when we were victorious in the North East referendum, so I emailed Phil who told me:

Nationalism is not an ideology, but a disease (of the soul)…Hope you recover...

[S]uch a statement shows contempt not just for the Scots and Welsh - who have recently voted for national government of their own - but also for the majority of the world’s population who elect their government along national lines.

Toque refers to the North-East in particular and here's an interesting thing. I myself have been extolling the virtues of Northumbria but there is one distinct difference. My Northumbria is under English control, it's part of a greater England, of which it is an earldom. Even that stout yeoman, Englisc Fyrd, remembers the true regionalism with affection.

The neo-regionalists, on the other hand, are under the control of the EU monster, an alien seed seeking to insinuate itself into someone else's country..

That distinction makes all the difference in the world. If you look at the flag above, which requires the Northumbrian colours somewhere in it, it is quartered with the English flag, not the EU's.

And yet the EU seeks to hijack this vague nationalism and somehow twist it into a version of itself. We need to be on our guard about quislings within our borders twisting the structure to suit themselves, an analogy yesterday being the cult leader who tries to redefine something which requires no redefinition, the ulterior motive being personal power and control.

He does it by appealing to vague innate feelings within each person, harnessing them, redirecting them and then carrying the person away on a tide of emotion. Pure 1930s all over again.

Interesting that I'm integrally involved in "the region as part of the nation" over here where I live and the notion of the region as part of and a major contributing factor to the national whole is a process which has very nearly been reachieved. We were discussing this only yesterday in the light of the different post-election political map.

In every nation, let it be the same but let artificial constructs like the CFR controlled SPPNA [which Bush, Martin and the Mexican allowed into being in March, 2005] and the EU monster go the way of all things.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

[facebook] nice to see it confirmed

All that needs to be said about this has already been said. Do not join Facebook unless:

1. You would like your private details leaked and shared with government;

2. You plan never to leave Facebook [as it's near impossible].

Have a good day.

[omaha shootings] three ways to view them

Before we even start, the shootings were tragic and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

After that comes the inevitable analysis and this falls into three camps:

1. Those who read no further than than news sources:
A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people before taking his own life in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms. Five more people were wounded, two critically.

The gunman left a suicide note that was found at his home by his mother, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. TV station KETV reported that the note said he wanted to "go out in style."
... and conclude from that that America needs to revoke the gun laws in the light of yet another senseless citizen shooting.

2. Those who read no further than than news sources, patriots draped in the American flag, defending the constitutional rights of all citizens to bear arms. They will say that the Omaha shootings are not related to the gun laws issue. Already on this blog there's been a lively discussion about these laws here and here.

3. Those who are prepared to read far more widely than news sources and then filter the mass of material through the filter of past substantiation and logic. For such people as these, the name Omaha is quite well known in a number of contexts.

The Franklin Cover-up is well worth a look, particularly its being ruled as a hoax then that overturned nine years later, together with the MK Ultra cover-ups [see either orthodox sources like the Church hearings or read books like Trance Formation and Thanks for the Memories] which point to Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, as one ongoing source of human misery.

In the light of all that, it is scarcely surprising that Omaha hosted the latest in the attempts to disarm America. If your mind is so constructed that you can reject 100% of this material out of hand, then I have one question. O'Brian's and Taylor's books make quite detailed and specific allegations against, among others, Kissinger and Cheney.

Why, in a litigious society like America, did these two statesmen not act immediately to slap a libel action on the two authoresses for gross defamation and fabrication against the United States itself? After all, Bing Crosby and others labelled the Church hearings as treasonous [though the allegations were later substantiated].

Why has all this material not been debunked? And while we're at it, why hasn't the testimony of Paul Bonacci and Johnny Gosch been finally and irrevocably shown to be demonstrably false? Those who point to the 1990 grand jury judgement that it was a hoax and Bonacci's subsequent imprisonment fail to mention the 1999 Judge Urbon award of $1 million to this star witness who was supposed to have perpetrated the hoax.

So, coming back to the original question of gun laws, if I were an American and I'd seen all this testimony about my gallant leadership and how the organs of state are utilized [not a pun on Cheney], I'd feel the right of Americans to bear arms in that Most Dangerous Game - Life in America - is a most fundamental and necessary right indeed.

Interesting that these tragic shootings took place about the same time as this.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

[december 5th] day for me to remember


The first thought which comes into my head regarding my mother is "energetic", energetic to a fault.


She'd never sit still. If we were watching the football, she'd be bustling round doing things and giving scornful glances as if to say: "You great lugs, sitting there when you should be up working." Didn't matter if it was a night match, it was the same.

If we went, as a family, which we didn't often, to someone's birthday or to dinner, it would be off with the coat and gloves and into the kitchen to help, often reaching for a tea towel before anyone said: "No, no, you're a guest." No one ever did say that because she'd have it all done with whilst they were still talking. They weren't fools.

This attitude of wanting to have the thing done and onto the next job has come down to me and I can't help wanting things settled, for example in Blogpower, so that we can get onto the next issue. I took less money for my last car for precisely that reason - I just wanted the thing over and done with.

She was canny as well - there was no way to fool her and when someone came at her with a tall story, the wry lift of the eyebrow was usually enough. She adored children which was just as well because they were her job and there are many today who look back on their mothercraft nurse with affection and a little awe.

The awe was because she was a stickler for the old ways. The bathwater was never deeper than six inches for toddler safety, one had to learn to say no to a child to bring the child up with good values and yet she never laid a hand or slapped any child except me - once - when I was two and pulled the knobs of the radio. Even then it was a tap, otherwise I would have remembered.

This is going to sound stupid but I'm typing this now at the table, rather than in the armchair because I half suspect she might be watching me slouching. Father too.

Despite this, she wasn't stern and if I was looking for a way to describe her, the old military rule of "fair, firm and friendly" is closest to the mark though I'd say loving rather than friendly. The type of love which never speaks but one knows it's there. Sense of humour too. The wry grin was her trademark.

If either my father or I accused her of something - throwing out a piece of equipment or washing a motor, she'd say; "Oh yes, all of that and more." She couldn't be insulted, she couldn't be hurt or so it seemed and in a male household, she held her own. In fact she held it together.

I always had to look someone in the eye if I was speaking to him, I never ate with my mouth full, used a knife and fork properly, wasn't allowed to slouch in a chair and so on. Came in handy during my military days later.

On such occasions as today, there is a tendency to wax lyrical, to eulogize. I shan't do that because she wouldn't. And yet she was as susceptible to the compliment, the flowers, the attention, as any woman. To be taken out was her delight, even if she could have cooked it better herself.

That was the other thing I took for granted - I just thought all women cooked superbly until I got into the wife business. Then I realized how spoiled I'd been for grub. In those days it was always the heavy, cast iron pressure cooker for the veg and the grill for the meat. Except on Sundays when it was the roast and I couldn't get enough of those tatie quarters.

As you'd expect, the house was clean enough to eat your meal off the floor and it was shoes off at the door if the weather was inclement. Only in Russia are they more obsessive about shoes inside. The venetian blinds and curtain rails constantly needed cleaning and that was my father's job. Another thing he was roped in to do was to wash up after the meal. This was never questioned and sometimes they got me into it too.

On our motoring holiday, she'd sometimes get me in free overnight wherever we were and if wasn't clean enough, that was the end. One day she sold our house because the price was right. More than right - it was apparently way over the odds. Both my father, from his work and me from university, came home that Thursday to discover we were moving.

Interesting about my dad that he put up with all this sort of thing but I suppose he knew when he was onto a good thing and her sixth sense for a good deal never, in my experience, turned out to be wrong.

Naturally, with such a go-getter, we could only take so much before we ran for cover - my father to the workshop and me to a friend's. Never fazed my mother though and the meal was ready when we returned. That's one reason I love the grandmothers over here.

They have no mental equipment to enable them to perceive that someone might not want to have their chunky broth and torn off hunk of bread. It's just taken as read and a person must have rocks in the head to refuse a grandma's cooking in this country. It's just so delicious. So it was with her.

Not that she ate this herself though. Oh, no, she was of the sparrow variety - a nibble of salad here, a couple of mandarins there - well eight or nine, actually - and the olives which I never got to love, though I can eat them today if served.

Ice-cream was her Achilles' heel and if it was from an ice-cream shop, she was gone. In the later years, when she had lost a lot of her powers, the mention of ice-cream had the intellect alert and the smile would come to the face.

As you'd expect, she could not abide a fool nor amateur dramatics. One day when I came home from school with a nose which had been bleeding several hours, supported by two stout schoolmates, one on either side and I was deposited at our front door, my mother came out and told them: "Uh-huh. He'll live."

The schoolmates were mortified as my dramatics had been pretty effective. Once inside, it was time to drop the act and just clean up the nose. She wouldn't let me out to play though and had the doctor see to me next day.

She adored Yorkshire though it had nothing to do with her - she came from other parts [see photo above]. That was my father's thing. Didn't like the snow though and that was one reason for the move to Australia. I don't really know then, from whence I picked up my love of the Russian winter.

So here I am before you this evening, a product of many influences but most certainly of my my mother, whose birthday is today.

Happy birthday up there, mother. My underpants were clean on today, I promise. Yes, yes, I cleaned my teeth after supper. Yes, I've done my homework. Yes I know I had two girls here now cleaning the flat and I could have saved the money but I'm not you, am I?

You were ... are ... a one-off.

[charisma] and the lure of the cult

Being an overweening egotist himself, this blogger can't understand the lure of the cult. At least he can understand it but can't feel the pull.

Remember the teen series Beverley Hills and how Kelly was lured into one of these cults run by one of her professors? [Yikes, Higham thinks ... there but for the grace ...]


Reminds this blogger of Jim Jones, of which one google entry opens:
This was a Christian destructive, doomsday cult founded and led by James Warren Jones (1931-1978).
Now there are a whole lot of things to say about this:


1. He used a sort of pseudo-Christianity as his springboard to lure people in. It was presented as Christianity for modern times, tuning in with many anomalies and vagaries in the bible and stressing the "free love" aspect, interpreting it as free sex, as distinct from the real Christian message of platonic love for one's fellow man, a completely different message.

Looking specifically at Jones:
His intention was to create an agricultural utopia in the jungle, free from racism and based on socialist principles. People who had left the organization prior to its move to Guyana told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and of a mass suicide plan, but they were not believed.
And that's the key - what could have been a social experiment - inter-racial free love - became quasi-religious and the behaviour by no means matched the message. Also, there is always an element of socialism in these things. It's a mix of Christianity and Marxism, the former voluntary, the latter coercive. Dangerous brew.

2. There are distinct tendencies in such men [and it is usually but not always men]:

a. Egotistical yet personally not whole. Overcompensation for an inferiority complex [e.g. Charlie Manson];

b. Perceived as highly intelligent and well educated, concerning himself with the macro-issues of the world [either incapable or not interested in the day-to-day details of public life] and able to use articulate rhetoric to convey his message but when that message is analysed, it's found to have little actual substance.

As the most astute Agatha Christie observed, in N&M:
... carrying you away on a tide of emotion ...
c. Often with some sort of inner drive of a twisted nature, e.g. satyrism, lust for serial killing, whatever. In other words, possessed and a little other-worldly. As a sidelight, a good sign that the guy's finally gone over the edge is when he adopts the cassock, the robes, the one-piece garb, such as with Neo;

d. Needs a following to support and justify his excesses but once he has the following, not satisfied with the organization he's set up and feels the need for some sort of denouement [e.g. Manson and Jones];

e. Having had a tough time, e.g. Manson's time in prison and basically being, inside the psyche, a "wrong 'un". Look at such people in history, look, for example, at Clyde Barrow - look at his psychology. The correlations are uncanny;

f. Personally very dangeous if crossed and capable of turning savagely on former friends. See the Jonestown beatings as an example of those who dared to deviate or dissent.

3. The Method

He gathers followers through his charisma, his up front charm, his assiduous attention to women, knowing how to give the compliment and when to apply it and through offering a vision of a new world of love and peace where all the old muddling, hatreds and cruelty are all swept away and in its place some sort of utopia, of course with him as the head of it and his few "chosen" accolytes at his side - his henchmen and favourite concubines.


A Messiah fixation with a twist.

Another thing he does is identify "the enemy", i.e. any who have both the insight and the power to oppose and stymie him. His methods are not nice and there's no depth to which he will not stoop to silence dissent. As he becomes more powerful and more "family" join him, he sends them out to do the dirty work e.g. Manson again.

One method is to crucify the reputation of former accolytes who broke away. Now the very nature of this girl being an accolyte in the first place is that she has a screw loose and therefore she is not psychologically capable of opposing and only damages herself in the process, turning people against her.

Just been watching Die Hard again and it was a motif running through it. John McClane [Willis] was immediately viewed as a kook, a crazy, all sorts of things and why? Because he was presenting an idea, i.e. that a major hotel [citadel] had been taken over by terrorists, a concept which no one particularly wanted to believe.

Don't forget, his reputation had already been tarnished in his earlier gung ho ventures and he had a habit of seeing conspiracies which ultimately turned out to be so. People liked him personally but humoured him with his weird ideas. Analogously, don't forget Sackerson's blogname - They Laughed at Noah.


Back to our new Messiah. His theology, such as it is, is that Christ had a good idea going but didn't take care of the fine detail. He, the new cult Messiah, will supply that fine detail tuned into modern and future times and invokes all the religious and spiritual imagery, in other words, hijacking the "image" of the Christ, to add drive to his recruitment.

Whoa! That is seriously weird stuff. Not only that but as any real Christian can tell you, the central aspect is firstly redemption and secondly love your brother. In the message of Jones and other messiahs, there's no redemptive aspect - a warning bell for real Christians.

And now to the point of this post. What if a blogger knows one of these budding messiahs already? What if the great man is already inside the citadel, so to speak and is about to open his campaign? What should this blogger, as someone who instantly recognizes the type because he himself possesses many of the preconditional traits - what should he do?

Apart from posting a post like this, what should he do? Especially as he is now surely high on the hit list and expects his personal reputation to be tarnished very soon, most cogently? One of his own dear lady friends even suggested, some time back, that he should be sued for unsubstantiated remarks.

So what should he do?

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

[end of year] easy does it

I just said over at Blogpower and expand on it here that we shouldn't read too much into end of year blogging blues.

Many fellow bloggers are going into hiatus over the festive period and those downunder will go for their long break. It might look like the blogosphere's falling apart but it's not doing that.

There is weariness after a tough year and more than a little sickness, especially for me. My greatest concern is university end of year, with all its statutory requirements which are a pain in the neck. Blogposts are therefore, by definition, curtailed for now. My aim is one post in the morning and two in the evening until the week before Christmas.

I'm also going hell for leather on my four books, which are being condensed to three. I'd love to get them posted at my Lit blog before too long.

So, I'm not personally planning to go anywhere and my whole agenda for the next few weeks is to get out of things - academic pressure, buying of presents, pre-Christmas compulsory drinks and so on. My other agenda is to visit other blogs as much as I can and try to get a Blogfocus up soon.

Monday, December 03, 2007

[hawaii] calling russia

Now is this weird or is this weird? A New Englander, possibly to avoid leaf-peepers, settled at Maui and is writing of boogie-boarding:
"I don't see fins on you guys. Things in the water have fins. Things in the sky have wings."

Fortunately, in spite of his shamanic sense of metaphor, the know-it-all smartass in me was able to keep quiet, so we weren't kicked off the beach all together. Still, he was right. Even with a decent boogie board, it is tricky as hell to effectively move out there once you get past the white water... and ironically, with 5-15 foot waves, the white water is the part that frikkin' kicks your ass the most! So, I guess today's lesson is: If you're a crazy a-hole who likes to go boogie boarding in the rain, be sure to wear some fins.
So he's talking maybe 80 degrees, Fahrenheit, right? OK, so let me tell you that we're under snowdrifts here and it's minus 14 degrees just now and the sun went down an hour ago. What a world.

Possibly last post for the evening, people, Have to ease back into it, like.

[northumbria] remember the '19



The year is 1019. Northumbria, now accepting its final role as an earldom, cedes its northernmost territory to Scotland and assumes its eternal and rightful place as part of England. The ancient Northumbrian flag is in the right sidebar and under it, the ancient Northumbrian Tartan.

From Lindisfarne to the Humber, from the sea to the West Riding - all are welcome guests to our fair earldom. Now there is a proposal for a new Northumbrian flag and yet an ancient one, taking into account its final historical status. That flag can be seen lower right here.

G-d save Northumbria and England. This blog now bends its knee and pays tribute to the honour of being considered a Northumbrian [please don't utter the term Northumberland] and thereby, an Anglian.

[blogpower roundup] 4th of this series now up

JMB is a blogger who is very important indeed in the BP firmament. If you'd like to see Blogpower at work in one post, may I recommend the 4th Blogpower Roundup. Top job, JMB

Do look through it for an entertaining read.

[glitch] normal service soon

Yes, I was shut down by my provider - they simply pulled the plug. Now the weekend's over, they've let me back. But it won't be fully back until this evening. First post then.