[next james bond] who's a pretty boy then

[davos] one bomb would do the trick

[slavery] in deepest, darkest britain

Tale of deepest, darkest Africa?

An undercover reporter was offered several children for sale by their parents in Nigeria: two boys aged three and five for £5000 ($A11,231), or £2500 for one, and a 10-month-old baby for £2000.

Teenage girls — including some still pregnant — were willing to sell their babies for less than £1000. One international trafficker, tracked down in Lagos, claimed to be buying up to 500 children a year.

Nope - Britain. To be specific:

Impoverished African parents are being lured by the traffickers' promises of "a better life" for their children, thousands of miles away in cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester. But, once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent means to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits, totalling tens of thousands of pounds each a year.

Nice to know the old ways are still being observed. Lovely people in the world, aren't there?

[dolly] would you eat her?

Dolly

The USFDA assures everyone that everything is all right:

After reviewing numerous scientific studies, the US Food and Drug Administration found that food derived from cloned cows, pigs, goats and their offspring is as safe to eat as products from conventionally bred livestock. Stephen Sendoff, director of the FDA's food safety division, said: "The likelihood that anything would go wrong from a food safety standpoint is unimaginably small."

Well, that's a relief - departments of state's assurances can always be fully trusted, can't they? The hallmark of state administrators is competence, after all.

You have any issues with that? By the way - love that name "Send-off". Yes indeed. :)

[quantum of solace] don't we all need it?

Nice article with Daniel Craig commenting on Quantum of Solace:

It is a direct sequel to Casino Royale, beginning an hour after that film ends, with Bond devastated by his betrayal by true love Vesper Lynd.

"He had his heart broken at the end of the last movie and that certainly is a spur for him in this one," said Craig, 39, straight from the set in sharp grey suit, crisp white shirt and cufflinks.

"I'd be lying if I said there wasn't revenge in his heart. But it's more than that. That spurs him on, but that's not what the movie is. It's not a revenge movie. It's about him figuring a few things out."

Producer Barbara Broccoli said the film, directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, The Kite Runner), mixes Bond's "inner turmoil" with action - and of course gadgets - as he tries to stop a shadowy cabal trying to bring down the world economy.

Nice premise but can't help thinking it's a bit risky coming out with this directly. I know I'm doing the same on this blog but I've always been prepared to go up in smoke, which appeared to happen two days ago. Still, s'pose they know what they're doing. I like that Bond, in Craig's words:

"...wants his closure."

On the title itself, Craig says it's about:

"that spark of niceness in a relationship that if you don't have, you might as well give up."

"That spark of niceness." After the really unpleasant things which happened this morning via my e-mail, I'd have to agree wholeheartedly that that's what life is all about - that spark of niceness.

As for James Bond, he's a sad case. He's looking for niceness but thinks it can come through the barrel of a gun. Similarly, I was offered friendship today by someone telling me he had the power to "eat me for dinner", to destroy me but he'd give me one last chance and let's be friends. Interesting ideas on closure, solace and friendship.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap unless one of the two is of a forgiving nature and is willing to turn the other cheek.

[tyranny] we stand up or we go down

Wikipedia image called 'Telescreen'

The Reactionary Snob comments:

Apparently students will not be allowed to access the student loans facility if they do not sign up to ID cards. But wait a second! ID Cards are going to be delayed (nobody saw that coming - this lot's record with large scale IT projects is woeful. I wouldn't trust them to finish a wank on time let alone a major project). And not only are they being delayed they may end up not being compulsory.

Englisc Fyrd continues:

And so the saga continues, Labour get told "No" but they keep rephrasing the question until they get a yes. Of course that's if they bother to ask the question in the first place.

Now, in the light of a nasty e-mail this morning calling me:

... an attention seeking control freak, a delayed adolescent, stupid enough to get sucked in to the agenda of a thoroughly vindictive liar ... I'll kill your blog for ever [which I'll now add to my testimonials]

... it's clear that, just as we have to stand up to this sort of thing in the blogosphere and keep blogging until people like this really do shut us down, so we, as citizens have to stand up to ID cards because the moment we meekly accept them, it's the thin edge of the wedge.

And for those of a theological bent, let's not forget it was written about 2000 years ago that there'd be chips in our right wrists or foreheads in order to "buy or sell", as they put it.

For sheer literary power though, you can't go past this as a final comment:

I do apologise if my glee is obvious, but these disingenuous bastards deserve to see their flagship; full of cannonball holes, listing badly with the rigging falling about their ears; slip serenely, unmissed, unwanted and unloved beneath the cold grey waves.

Yes, I’m enjoying the sight of HMS ID Cards wallowing, holed beneath the waterline, as the venal, mendacious poltroons who launched and sailed her try vainly to make her appear watertight. May every politician be so visited by the lies and fraud they perpetuate in such graphic fashion.

My goodness, can that man write or can that man write!

[medical advice] mousemedicine

Think Mousie's going to be struck off for this gratuitous advice:

* If you are choking on an ice cube simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. Hey Presto! The blockage will instantly remove itself.

* Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold while you chop.

* If you suffer with high blood pressure, simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.

* If you have an irritating cold, take a large dose of laxatives, then you will be afraid to cough or sneeze.

* Contact lens wearers: keep your eyes snug and warm this winter by adding a few drops of chilli sauce to your cleaning solution.

For more of these helpful hints and the very best medical advice, Mousie provides over at his place.

[girls smoke] the new generation

I question the figures:

[A] Bath University-led team said "aggressive targeting" of women by tobacco firms was behind the rise [in female smoking in Russia]. Researchers monitoring 7,000 people over 11 years found 7% of women smoked in 1992, compared with 15% in 2003, the Tobacco Control journal reports.

Manufacturer British American Tobacco said the increase was due to Russians having more money for cigarettes. [However] the researchers, who also included teams from University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said tobacco advertising had been virtually non-existent in the Soviet Union. Companies invested heavily in developing the market, promoting smoking as part of the new 'western lifestyle' [Dr Anna Gilmore, lead researcher]

[O]nce the break-up [of the Soviet Union] started, the nationalised smoking industry disintegrated, allowing the big tobacco firms to push their products. The report said the firms became "rampant" and by the mid-1990s it was estimated that half of all billboards in Moscow and three quarters of plastic bags in the country carried tobacco advertising.

Lead researcher Dr Anna Gilmore said: "There can be no doubt that the marketing tactics of Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and the like directly underpin this massive increase in smoking that spells disaster for health in Russia.

The reason I question the figures is that I'd estimate now that, of the younger girls I know and see over here [up to 25 years of age], maybe 70% smoke and that might be a conservative estimate.

The issue today has become sidetracked because of, for example, the U.K.'s heavy handed and draconian legislation which I commented on here and here - the idea of the government legislating on the matter is anathema to millions of people and those pushing such legislation now have a nice label attached - anti-smoking nazis.

The moment government does these things and the blogosphere attaches a catch-all label, all real debate flies out the window and it's back to the good old entrenched positions all over again.

As in climate change.

This, in turn, leads to this sort of thing and most people, including myself, would agree with the publicans. It then makes this sort of thing so much harder.

On the other hand, non-legislative national campaigns can be effective for a short time. In Australia in the 80s, there were two major campaigns I recall. "Slip, slop, slap" was aimed at reducing skin cancer and was pretty effective. It became quite cool to sport a white nose in the sun and to wear a hat and light shirt on the beach, as a counterweight to the image of the bronzed Aussie.

Another campaign was against smoking and there were buses which toured schools, replete with videos, smoking machines and stats. These targetted young kids and the obvious question was how ethical it all was - libertarians might say not very. The bus was popular with the kids though because of the "show" the young people manning the bus put on and the kids definitely thought the issue through.

Some time ago, this blog drew attention to the dangers of female smoking as more insidious than male but what effect would such a post have on a girl? I'd say next to zero.

I'm in a position to talk to hundreds of girls a week about it but as most readers would suspect, the best result such a campaign would achieve would be marginal, at best. Girls parrot the words and agree 'oh yes, it's a terrible thing' and they'll tell you how terrible all their friends are smoking [but not them] and then they'll go to the club that night and of course they're all smoking.

Sites like Parentingteens are virtually nowhere - convincing parents themselves but how many teen girls would read a site like that?

They're much more likely to read this and there's no mucking about here - it's straight into it, pushing girls smoking and these sites are all over the place, interwoven with porn on Google searches - interesting how the tat industry is so keen to associate smoking and teen sex as part of the new youth and a whole generation is being pied-pipered into it.

This is the most balanced site I can find but again, how many girls are going to tune into it?

I have absolutely no idea what to do to stem this tide. Labelling anyone who raises concerns over young females smoking immediately puts that person in the "anti-smoking nazi" camp and I'm dead against government legislation on the matter.

So where to go from here? I just hate seeing wrong things succeed and right things get nowhere.

[almost back] with friends like this

I'd like to thank the person or persons who hit my Mac yesterday and wiped out the MacOS. My mate asked what I expected with a post like the last one.

You did well, my friend. It's almost back but it's been an effort. More later.

UPDATE: 04:04, Sunday, local time

Finally off and running with the latest version of MacOS with lots of goodies and though it took 11 hours to complete the job, it was worth it. As for whether I'd run a post like the last one again - on occasions, yes. The number of people who read it, as distinct from commenting, was gratifying but it wouldn't want to be all the time, mind.

Now, a little post on smoking, time for a snooze and then some more "accessible" posts later today [providing I don't get hit again].

Have a lovely Sunday, readers.

[research] following the scent to one's doom

Gustave Doré’s illustration of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”, 1868 [courtesy of Wiki]

There are no great revelations here but this post just charts the thinking which takes place once you start researching something. It's an insight into fragmented circumstantial snippets and how they are sometimes enough when checked against previously accumulated data.

I started researching Hans-Gert Pöttering:

From 1984 to 1994 he was chairman of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence. Hans-Gert Pöttering is known as an enthusiastic European federalist and an ally of Angela Merkel. He has stated that his priority will be to rejuvenate the European Constitution. He lives in Bad Iburg near Osnabrück. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 1979, one of only 14 members of the European Parliament who have served continuously since the first elections.

This is what he's about, from the Euro-News soft interview:

"We are not expecting the Treaty to fail, because if we assume it could falter, failure is either guaranteed or very probable. That is why we must do everything in order to make the Treaty a success, and get it ratified - whether it is by referendum, like in Ireland, or by national parliaments, both procedures are equally democratic. The choice of one method or another is down to the traditions in each member state. Each country decides how to ratify the Treaty, be it by referendum or by parliamentary ratification - both are democratic. And we want to do everything possible to ensure the Treaty is ratified so it can come into force from 2009.

And here are his tactics in achieving his goals:

Last week a group of more than 60 MEPS from all over Europe tried to demonstrate against refusals to hold referendums on the treaty. The group, including MEPS from the UK Independence Party and the Tories, had protest banners forcibly removed from the chamber and their calls for points of order ignored. Now Mr Poettering has asked the Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee to give him the power to stifle all protest moves.

If we can put to one side Wonko's understandably emotive language, the gagging action itself has certainly been mentioned in a few places and his closeness to Merkel and her closeness to the Bertlesman Foundation and its closeness to the Bavarian Bruderheist are interesting. This sort of thing comes out of such an association:

“In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army.” The Federal Chancellor announced, “We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace.” [Bild 23.03.2007]

Increased powers of political decision should be conferred on those states which have adopted the euro currency. “The euro group should have a special role in designing the future of the EU”. [zur Zukunft der Europaeischen Union; Guetersloh 21.02.2007]

The Bertelsmann Foundation [which] publicised [the conference], claimed that “the hand-picked circle of participants … covered all the great geographical areas of today’s European Union, EU candidate states and the USA.” The theme was the “strategic reorientation” of the EU.

The nature of the language is indicative of the mindset. Incidentally, this group is active in seeking to "ethically" regulate the internet. You only get into their funding sources indirectly.

For example, the awards to New York students were partly funded by Carl and Lily Pforzheimer and Carl H. Pforzheimer Jr. was an intergenerational investment banker with an oil and gas family background. He's connected with Citybank/Group which in turn brings you back to J.P. Morgan, which brings you to the New York Fed and the F.O.M.C. and the current fun the western world is having. this brings you to Morgan Stanley, which then takes you back to Europe to the Round Table [can anyone remember the shape of the Arthurian Table?], which in turn takes you back to the Bertelsmann foundation.

Now, against this, I have, somewhere down in the vaults, other data of a different kind. Example - for years, the U.S. government denied there was a thing called MK Ultra. Now, under the 30 year rule, it is public knowledge. It involved the covert experimentation and psychological trauma training of human subjects. Much of the expertise came into America under Operation Paperclip and others.

So far, that's safe ground.

Where the ground becomes less safe is placing weight on the tenuous testimony of one such San Diego based "trainer" who said the following in an interview with HJ Springer, Chief Editor CentrExNews.com. in 2000:

When I was in San Diego, human experimentation was still going on. Jonathan and I were investigating the effects of certain drugs on inducing trance states and assisting with programming. We would take the data, and download it into a database ... and then send it to Langley.

Russian, German, French, British, Canadian, and US trainers all worked together ... There is also a lot of trading back and forth of members in these groups. A Russian trainer might come to the US for a while, complete a job, then go back, or vice-versa.

How much evidence has come out? Or the MK-Ultra documents that have been declassified, shown as real, and people still ignore it.

All you can do in this situation is hope other corroborating evidence comes out, which it fortunately has. Now MK Ultra is out in the open, books like Trance Formation of America start to make more sense. And the battery of institutions mentioned in psychologist Dr. Colin Ross's keynote address at the 9th Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation, April 18, 1996, on dissociative techniques, suggests that there is little accident in what is going on:

Orange County, California, Columbia University, Cornell, Denver, Emory, Florida, George Washington, Harvard, Houston, Illinois, Indiana Universities, Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, New Jersey Reformatory, Bordentown in Tennessee ... Ohio, University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Princeton, Stanford, a couple of universities in Texas, Wisconsin, the Bureau of Narcotics. Eli Lilly was the big supplier of LSD to the CIA. McGill, NIH, NIMH, National Philosophical Society ...

.. and some of the personalities involved, either knowingly or unwittingly:

James Hamilton, Harold Abramson, Carl Pfeiffer, Louis Jolyon West at UCLA, Ewen Cameron at McGill,Carl Rogers, Martin Orne, Maitland Baldwin [work on monkey brains], George White, Harold Wolff was at Cornell, Raymond Prince, R. Gordon Watson, John Mulholland, G.H. Estabrooks, J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles and hallucinogen research by Daniel Friedman, connected with Loretta Bender, Paul Hawk and Ewen Cameron.

And if you need victims, you can start with Frank Olson and Mary Ray.

Where to go next?

As a researcher, if one is to accept any of the above as having substance, then one really must follow up on the other, less orthodox, parts of the testimony. In the end, one must decide if we're dealing with imaginative loonies or people who know what they're talking about. I mean, if they've been shown to be right on one aspect, when all around have been knee-jerk reacting like one commenter on my site:

Got to laugh. This is how conspiracy theories start.

Key here is to read reader comments, put the "kneejerkers" and "sweeping generalization trotter-outers" to one side and to zero in on those who specifically comment on the grounds that they're involved in this field. Emotion must be excised here and conclusions must not be preempted.

So I neither accept or reject the following from the CentrExNews interview but simply bear it in mind:

The Rothschild family in England, and in France, have ruling seats. A descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty has a generational seat. A descendant of the ruling families of England and France have a generational seat. The Rockefeller family in the US holds a seat.

The Hanoverian / Hapsburg descendants rule in Germany over the Bruderheist. They are considered one of the strongest lines The British line is just under them, with the royal family, even though parliament rules the country openly. The U.S. is considered lower, and younger, than the European branches.

Germany, France, and the UK form a triumvirate that rules in the European ... The USSR is considered important, and has the strongest military groups. But a lot of the current U.S. leadership will be in Europe when the change occurs, and many have homes there.

The Bruderheist is the ruling council of Germany. It meets in the black forest region, which is considered the center of the earth, and ... they are some of the most vicious people I have ever known in my life, and make the Nazis (who they encouraged) look like fun people. They are still there, manipulating people, running banks, and channeling their dirty money to Brussels, Switzerland, and Cairo, Egypt.

On America: One reason that our economy continues limping along is the artificial support that the Federal Reserve had given it, manipulating interest rates, etc. But one day, this won't work (or this leverage will be withdrawn on purpose) and the next great depression will hit.

They [the old money] run the porn industry, along with other groups such as the Mafia, together with drug smuggling, gun running, and human slavery.

I think you have to approach this now with an open mind and a sense of logic. Why wouldn't the people who funded the nutter Hitler to achieve a pan-European Reich dedicated to eliminating inferior humans from the earth still be around? The motif is exactly the same and involves the same descent into human bestiality which is going on today. Why wouldn't these people still be funding it?

Why would the old money concern itself with local matters only when they can ensure their hegemony through the instruments of state? It would stand to reason. And what do these people look like in the flesh? Are they likely to be wickedly chuckling, disfigured monsters in cloaks or would they be the Armani suited, clinically clean, plush powered wheelers and dealers of Europe, Britain and the U.S.A.? Which is more likely to be the truth?

Churchill was able to see it in 1920:

"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."

Now just by living over here and observing the legacy, as well as listening to many Russians of all walks of life on the topic, nothing they say undercuts Churchill's words. And that's the thing in all the above, before we even start getting into the seriously sick, insane stuff these people are allegedly into.

I see no specific fisking, no debunking other than character assassination and off the cuff remarks like "got to laugh". I'm waiting patiently to read a serious piece which addresses how the old money cannot be held accountable for any of it.

And if the old money can't be exonerated, then one has to look at the current Millibrandish rush to war [Iran is the current starter but that might change over time]. And people must wake up and start researching these things properly instead of constantly returning to the same sources of a certain bent and ignoring other sources which run contrary to their mindset.

Now if we do finally end up with the old money, then why stop there? Any researcher worth his salt is going to look even beyond that and start asking certain questions. Such as why the fruits of covert groups must necessarily be negative. Why must Poettering's actions ultimately lead to war and the blighting of a regulated and numbered humanity? Why can't they, for example, lead to peace, human happiness and philanthropy?

All right, the old money is rich beyond imagining. So they plough those trillions into poverty relief, right? Into fresh water and food for the masses and into peace and mutual understanding, not into child prostitution, gun running and drugs. Or if they observe these things happening, they exert financial pressure to stop them and the Christian ideals reign supreme. No?

Well if not, why not? Have you ever thought why things tend one way [look at the concerns of the political blogosphere, for example here] and not the other? I think it's fairly obvious - they themselves are in thrall.

And it's an interesting phenomenon but the further down this path your investigation goes, the more seriously weird these people come across as, from the ceremonies of 1000 points of Light to Bohemian Grove's cremation of dull care - whatever slant they want to put on it, these are the supposed leaders of the world and that sort of language and burning crosses suddenly springing up around lakes is seriously weird too.

Look at Bush Snr's inauguration speech for a start. I didn't invent it - he did. I didn't start talking about splitting people's minds and taking them back to incontinence - that is on the record. I didn't start talking about the Skull and Bones drinking from Geronimo's skull - they did. I didn't introduce Mothers of Darkness - they did.

I didn't start talking about child prostitution rings with one of the exchange points Omaha Airport - they did. I didn't invent Abu Ghraib. And look at the nature of the games on the web which entrance the kids - now is that stuff normal? The sort of thing a normal, healthy kid should be into? I didn't start talking about Alexandria Temple in Philadelphia or wherever it is and Eastern Star or tearing people's hearts out if they ever speak of things [and then they laugh it off, saying it's just an ancient ritual]. And this is not the street tramps into this stuff - it's the dicers and slicers themselves.

Was it me who introduced Hiram Abif and Jubelo and brothers? And why the constant referenve to Egypt and Assyria? Why that business with the U.S. dollar note, for example? Why are full moons important? Why the 13th pillar of the Pont de l'Alma and do you know what that bridge represents? Why not Pillar 8 of a different bridge? And so on and so on. Why did Woodrow Wilson write of a power so interlocked that you'd better not speak of it above a whisper?

Why do wars really occur and how can they be known of in advance? Read Buchan.

Don't shoot the messenger - he's just following the trail.

Can't anyone see the footprint here?

I mean, sit back and look at the whole policy direction in Europe and the U.S. and the way these people conduct themselves, especially the arrogance, the untouchability. Look at Poettering. Look at any britpolit post in the last few days and ask who's the weirdo - Higham or them?

I'm starting to feel a little like Dr. Who now, at the mercy of Sutekh, who thunders that the doc is nothing but an ant. Well yes, he is an ant in himself but he didn't go into this thing alone, did he?