[sunday calm] except for the weather

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It's a bit like this photo over our way today. It's howling in off the Irish Sea and the rain is lashing the windows. I went out for a boat trip a few minutes ago and this is the shot I took from the deck. Don't you just love wild conditions? Here are some more shots:

Above - the state of the sea at this moment

Above, a passing ship making heavy weather of it

Finally, me taking a well earned break on the way back to shore.

[sockpuppet] cedric surpasses himself

When I woke up this morning, I saw 92 comments on the rock post, which you can wade through by clicking on the above link or you can see the abridged version which gives you the general idea here. [And yes, I do have the isp addresses, despite it showing up in Sitemeter as "not known".]

I thought something was strange for a blogger who's never had more than 40 comments.

Reading down, the first thing which struck me was that it was quite funny at the beginning. Then it went on and on and on. Suddenly it turned nasty and I've left enough comments up for you to get the general idea.

If you read the unabridged version [click on the first link], you'll see it starts at 22:07 and ends at 02:14. That means that this man sat at his computer and left comments on my post for around four hours, commenting every few minutes, sometimes once a minute. I'm trying to imagine sitting at a computer for four hours commenting on someone else's blog.

Nah - can't imagine a sane mind doing that.

It's always possible I am wrong in this but the ladies seemed to be sure about it. In the interests of fairness though, it might have been the Fantasy Fight Club who did it, on his behalf. He is close to them apparently. This is a link to another site he set up in 2007. [Disclaimer: please don't click on the link unless you are absolutely sure you want to.]

I've deeply apologized, on his behalf, to the ladies he was saying those things about but perhaps now someone might take my warnings more seriously.

UPDATE 12:47: If you go to this archived post, scroll down to comments and look at the comment by Ms Smack. Now go to the original post here; you'll see it has been deleted this morning. Why would Ms Smack wish to go in and delete her own comment on a 2007 post on a Sunday morning in November 2008? Read the comment she deleted in the archived version again. Why would she be looking at a post of mine on a Sunday morning anyway when most people are just waking up? Check the time of my post below.

My brain hurts from all the thinking. :)

UPDATE 21:20: I understand that a certain gentleman is now claiming he was at the pub from 10:04 p.m. for one and a half hours but then realized it was between 10:04 and midnight. No doubt there are close friends to corroborate that exact time he arrived and swear on their grandmothers that it was so. Yeah, right. He just shouldn't let his isp address be used by others then, in his absence and continue the comments in exactly the same way when he returned. And then there is the little matter of his sockpuppet site.

[silent saturday] more in the rock series

Captions please!

[clear as mud] necessary note

If I was enigmatic in the wee hours of this morning, Saturday, I'm even more so now. Pleased to say we have made progress, in fact even since the emails went to a few people this evening. It's a bit unfair to those not in the know to pass messages this way but this will be the last on the matter. It's only so people can sleep tight and not worry too much now.  By the way, every time something happens, another drinks offer comes along.  It's going to be a cheerful company when we meet up.

[spaceships] two more

The Lexx

Scimitar

[rise of a monster] how he gets away with it

The Guardian called it “rumours” but there is plenty of evidence that Prescott Bush and others benefited directly from supporting the Nazi machine and this is supported in a recent lawsuit:

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

Bush defenders don’t defend Prescott Bush very strongly but do take the line firmly that George Bush is not guilty for the former’s actions. The Anti-Defamation League in the US said that Prescott Bush was “neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser”. No doubt, but that was not the issue. The issue was if he had profited from his Nazi ties.

Factor 1: The refutation does not address the issue but answers it obliquely.

Then we come to the whistleblower, the lone voice and it is uncanny how such a person often doesn’t seem to do it very well. In the case of the Bush issue, it was a manic depressive named Buchanan who took up the baton but:

… when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him … Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami … the charges were dropped last month.

Later Buchanan said:

… he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story.

This in no way exonerated Prescott Bush but it did get him temporarily off the hook until someone more rational takes the baton again sometime down the track.

Factor 2: The person who whistle blows has some flaw of his own which the guilty can latch on to, to avoid addressing the facts. When the whistle blower does his nut, the average reader takes that as justification that the evidence must be tainted.



Hitler’s rise

One writer put it thus:

Hitler preached faith, family, and patriotism. His speeches were laced with references to God. He personally claimed Christ to be his Savior. Even his adopted Nazi symbol was created around the Christian cross. As far as the German people were concerned, Adolph Hitler was loyal to historic, conservative Christian values. Why should they have thought otherwise?

On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the Reichstag … met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing [the] "Ermächtigungsgesetz" … or … the … "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich." Opponents of the "Enabling Act" rightly warned that, if adopted, the Act would make Hitler a de facto dictator. They worried that the Act would dismantle constitutional liberties.

Why would no one have heeded that? For a start, Goering explained:

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

... and so, in the same way, Attorney-General Ashcroft said, in the U.S.A. years later:

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

Factor 3: Align yourself to be what the people perceive as “one of them”. This was later the Kim Philby tactic and why he got away with it for so long. He presented himself as an all round good guy and people wanted to swallow it.

Factor 4: Portray opponents as unpatriotic, vindictive and off their brains, given to wild words, in contrast to your reasonable, “man of the people” rhetoric and your apparent intellect, [Wikipedia is a wonderful current day resource before a post, for example], until you do acquire some knowledge and can pass yourself off as an intellectual:

"Hitler read an endless number of books," explained Dr. Schacht. "He acquired a very considerable amount of knowledge and made masterful use of it in discussions and speeches.”

And yet, what were people to make of the rough house tactics, the brawling in the streets, the beer hall antics and so on? The answer is that people’s eyes and minds are so focused on the charisma, the charm, the promises of renewed prestige that they forget the disquietening stuff which is going on parallel to it or else forgave it. They’ve hardly read Mein Kampf, studied the man’s psychological background or looked at his violent past or sexual dysfunction.

Factor 5: Show due deference to national icons, those the people still respect although they might feel he has “lost the plot” compared to the bright young up-and-comer:

[The March 21st meeting] was attended by President Hindenburg, foreign diplomats, the Staff and all the old guard going back to the days of the Kaiser. Dressed in their handsome uniforms sprinkled with medals, they watched a most reverent Adolf Hitler give a speech paying respect to Hindenburg and celebrating the union of old Prussian military traditions and the new Nazi Reich.

… supported here:

With deference and apparent humility, and attired in formal dress for the occasion, Hitler bowed his head before the old man.

Factor 6: Distract the people’s attention and feed them what they most want to hear from you:

"It is a fact," French historian Bénoist-Méchin later observed, "that the unification of the states and the Reich answered one of the most profound aspirations of the German people.

Factor 7: With flattery and good humour, assiduously court the people most important to you, who can help you overcome the incumbent:

But it was above all Germany's army -- the Reichswehr -- that was the object of Hitler's most ardent courtship. In 1933, he desperately needed the army's support.

… and:

"A strange mixture of tactician and visionary," Joachim Fest would later write, sizing up this extraordinary stage manager.

Factor 8: Pre-empt your opponent’s barbs by “admitting” your dark side, complete with your own spin and garner sympathy for being so “honest” with the people.

Factor 9: Quietly bring in decree after decree restricting civil liberties and preventing outward criticism of you:

The second decree … allowed for the arrest of anyone suspected of maliciously criticizing the government and the Nazi party. A third decree signed only by Hitler and Papen allowed for the establishment of special courts to try political offenders … without a jury and usually with no counsel for the defense.

Factor 10: Exclaim, with full drama and outstretched palms, your hurt innocence and exasperation that “the people” should have to continue listening to the troublesome “slurs” of your main foe, something like:

"You are no longer needed! - The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!"

Factor 11: Immediately strive for legitimacy by putting things to the vote but only where you already know the result beforehand:

The vote was taken - 441 for and only 84 [the Social Democrats], against.

Factor 12: Ride a wave of emotional sympathy to force your intellectual opponents to flee the country:

A flood of the finest minds, including over two thousand writers, scientists, and people in the arts poured out of Germany and enriched other lands, mostly the United States.

Factor 13: Now turn your attention to the ones who have been blindly assisting, aiding and abetting you so far:

By dint of flattery and persuasion, within a month von Papen let himself be gently shoved out the door.

Factor 14: Seize your opponent’s political agenda and muddy the waters:

Hitler, never missing an opportunity, grasped this one with both hands. He did more than grant this reasonable demand: he proclaimed the First of May a national holiday … the union leaders [made] a 180-degree turn within weeks.

Factor 15: Now unleash your oratory power or your ability to write:

Hitler, as a speaker, was a prodigy, the greatest orator of his century. He possessed, above all, what the ordinary speaker lacks: a mysterious ability to project power.

Factor 16: Transform yourself from violent, troublemaking, sexual impotent to statesman whom all respect:

In a remarkable tribute, historian Joachim Fest felt obliged to acknowledge unequivocally: “Hitler had moved rapidly from the status of a demagogue to that of a respected statesman. The craving to join the ranks of the victors was spreading like an epidemic, and the shrunken minority of those who resisted the urge were being visibly pushed into isolation.”

Factor 17: Always provide enough good things, by an exponential factor, to overwhelm the dark side of what you are doing:

Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes, “The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation ...”

Factor 18: Once entrenched, your real purpose all along, whether a Jim Jones or an Adolph Hitler, which one present day writer describes as his “life work”, can proceed unhindered by those who previously called him out on it:

Now, for the first time as dictator, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the driving force which had propelled him into politics in the first place, his hatred of the Jews.

Factor 19: Involve and implicate the people in your own guilt:

Eugene Kogon, a former Buchenwald prisoner, later Professor of Political Science at the University of Munich commented: “... And yet, there wasn't even one German who did not know of the camps' existence or who believed they were sanatoriums. There were very few Germans who did not have a relative or an acquaintance in camp, or who did not know, at least, that such an one or another had been sent to a camp.

You can’t disown him for a number of reasons:

1. You’re now guilty yourself, either actively or passively;
2. To oppose would mean you would not only get what was being dished out but your family would be reviled by the others;
3. You had much to gain at a troubled time in history.

… and:

It is true that the majority of Germans supported Hitler and accepted or tolerated his insanity and enjoyed his successes.

Monsters have agendas which they initially keep quiet; they identify opponents and remove them, then alternately offer much and act to suppress dissent. Finally, they implicate others in their own crimes.

The majority don't realize they have a monster on their hands until it is too late.

[sarko] result great news for him

[when we trust] when it is misplaced

Earlier in the night, late evening, I had two quite large shocks.

One is a real life situation with a friend and I don't quite know how to deal with it or help but I have a few ideas I'll try in the next few days.

The second is that I discovered something in the wee hours of this morning which really knocked the stuffing out of me personally. In the past few months, I've discovered how good true friends can be and it is they who have really kept me going both in RL and in this battle in the blogosphere against an ongoing rank injustice.

Only today, one of them told me that time was only going to allow more and more of the real truth to be discovered and people will cease burying their heads in the sand and see things as they truly are. The longer it goes on, the more it will be seen that I spoke the truth. For the moment though - no.

This is a time for decisions in a polarized situation thrust upon us. As Aneurin Bevan once said: "We all know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road - they get run down." The precedents are many. Chamberlain is a perfect example of the desire to appease, to smooth things over but when the slavering jaws of a Wolf are contemplating your demise, there is little room for manoeuvre, as Churchill well understood.

The hardest lesson I've learnt in these past months is that many who purport to be friends are not. This has been a bitter lesson - for so long I've heard people warning me that such and such a person pretends to be a friend but is not and I've ummed and ahhed and let it go on. Then, when the chips were down, they showed their true colours.

It's got to the point now where one doesn't trust anymore. And yet, a gut instinct tells me that this person is OK, this person does not speak with forked tongue and that this other person, for all the fine words, is a worry. Can't put a finger on it but something doesn't quite add up. A couple of explanations for strange reactions don't quite cut it. So we give the benefit of the doubt.

Then the truth comes out by accident; there is a combination of circumstances and suddenly we realize that the nightmare just goes on. Fine, fine. let it be so. If this is a test of character, then let it be so.

Goodnight, readers.

[thought for the day] friday evening

In life, in love, in outer space:

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your Eyes Turned Skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

[which spaceship] the coolest in the cosmos

Some prefer the ship human made, sleek, gunmetal grey and ready to kick butt, such as the Excalibur above ...

Some prefer their ships more free form, which you can only really get if designed by aliens, such as with the Firebird above ...

 

Some prefer a ship on a more grandiose scale, such as the Star Destroyer above ...

... and some prefer their ship in variable geometric form, such as the Borg Cube above.

Which do you think is the coolest ship in the cosmos?  If you answer, could you give us a link, using the ahref html way?