Cinq ans après le remake magistralement réussi d'une voiture qui, durant les quarante ans précédents, n'avait guère changé, BMW mesure la chance qu'il a d'avoir touché aussi juste.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
[automobile] la mini change déjà sans pourtant marquer de rupture avec le précédent modèle
Cinq ans après le remake magistralement réussi d'une voiture qui, durant les quarante ans précédents, n'avait guère changé, BMW mesure la chance qu'il a d'avoir touché aussi juste.
[love and all that] marry for looks: the power of self-delusion
Following the disintegration of Shane Warne's marriage, infidelity was back on the public discussion list.
No, not all men are cheats – just the washboard stomach and chiselled jaw brigade [check Sam’s current blog for an example].
University of Western Australia researcher Dr Gillian Rhodes found that the more handsome the man, the more ... read more here.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
[far-east] chinese weapons are perpetuating conflict
[far-east] china sits back and stirs the pot
Interesting that Stephen Pollard should run an article on China at exactly the same time as I'd prepared this:
Chinese writing often describes the future in terms of the Warring States era in Chinese history; the age in which the classics of Chinese statecraft were produced. According to interviews with the current Chinese military, these stories are embedded in Chinese culture, just as the West has its own history and its own literature. The military calls the future multipolar world "amazingly similar" to the Warring States era and declares that China's future security environment resembles the era in several ways.
Colonel Liu Chungzi of the National Defense University Strategy Department states that "in the 1990s, the world entered a multipolar era very similar to the time of Sun Zi." General Gao Rui, former Vice President of the Academy of Military Science (AMS), writes that the era is "extremely distant from modern times, but still shines with the glory of truth" and "the splendid military legacy created through the bloody struggles of ... read more here.
[la europe] de violents incendies aussi touchent l'espagne et le portugal
L'auteur présumé d'un feu de forêt meurtrier à Cerdedo, en Galice (nord-ouest de l'Espagne), a été arrêté. L'identité de ce jeune homme de 24 ans n'a pas été révélée. L'incendie, qui n'est toujours pas maîtrisé, a causé ... read more here.
[health and spirit] 14 foods you really should consider
However, regarding diet, if you get most of the following foods running through your system, and wean yourself off the junk, the results will speak for themselves. Include these in your diet and you’ll not regret it ... read more here.
Monday, August 07, 2006
[middle-east] sad israel
I have no other country even if my land is aflame
Just a word in Hebrew pierces my veins and my soul
- With a painful body, with a hungry heart,
Here is my home.
I will not stay silent because my country changed her face
I will not give up reminding her
And sing in her ears until she will open her eyes
[love and all that] how to spot a psycho
These are some of the key warning signs of psychotic tendencies. The idea is to think about someone in your experience [only choose yourself if you can be brutally honest with yourself].
Score 2 for each sign which is absolutely true about him/her and score 1 for some indication of it.
Any score over 15 is danger and any over 25 – get away, quickly!
1 Does he/she have problems sustaining stable relationships?
2 Does he/she frequently manipulate others to achieve selfish goals?
3 Is he/she cavalier about the truth to your face?
4 Would you regard him/her as irresponsible?
5 Has he/she no apparent sense of remorse, shame or guilt?
6 Is his/her charm superficial, and capable of being switched on and off?
7 Is he/she easily bored and demanding constant stimulation?
8 Are his/her displays of human emotion unconvincing?
9 Does he/she enjoy acting on reckless impulse?
10 Is he/she quick to blame others for mistakes?
11 As a teenager, did he/she resent authority or steal?
12 Does he/she have no qualms about sponging off others?
13 Is he/she quick to lose his/her temper?
14 Is he/she sexually promiscuous?
15 Does he/she have a belligerent manner?
16 Is he/she unrealistic about long-term aims?
17 Does he/she lack the ability to empathise?
18 Does he/she have an air of self-importance, regardless of his/her true standing in society?
Stands to reason, really, don't you think?
[opinion] israel and hezbollah
Hezbollah funding is limitless. Because Iranian funding is limitless. See my and countless other articles on oil. But oil is only part of the story. Every money-making excrescence is involved in underwriting Iran. Every pimp riding the streets of LA and NY is indirectly contributing. The thing is, you don’t need me to direct you to investigating Hezbollah funding. You can do it for yourself.
The logic is oh so clear. Israel accepts a ceasefire? Hezbollah creeps back in and all is as it was, minus a few hundred Lebanese and Israelis. Anyway, Beirut’s forever rebuilding. Just look at the story of Kim Philby to see the strategic importance of Beirut.
There is a saying by Nicolo Machiavelli [1513]:
Men should either be treated generously or destroyed because they take revenge for [the] slightest injuries – for heavy ones, they cannot.
I can’t believe that Israel did not know the full extent of the backup and supply lines to the suppliers of the suppliers of the suppliers of Hezbollah. I can’t believe that they don’t know that they must now either back off or else go the whole hog.
I can’t believe they were blind to the simple principle that a containment exercise on Hezbollah was never going to provide any more than good intelligence on the methods and training of that group, for a certain collateral loss.
I can’t believe that they don’t know the UN game plan, essentially as it’s a globalized game plan.
You don’t accept my thesis? Fine – then investigate it all yourself, but don’t leave any stone unturned, just because you don’t like its colour or fear what you’re going to find underneath. As Dr. Phil said:
The most we’re ever going to get is that which we ask for.
An even greater miracle was that Irit's son-in-law came home for a short break this lunchtime from his emergency military service close to the Lebanese border where 12 reserve soldiers were killed today by a Katyusha rocket. Eli was with those same soldiers this morning and even took a picture on his camera-phone of one of those killed. This is the story I referred to in my previous report. It's very scary to know people involved and the bigger picture is hardly any more comforting.
David speaks of the bigger picture but I would hesitatingly posit that even he isn’t fully aware how big. In all recent posts, whether in the mainstream media or in the blogs I’ve so far seen, no one, no one blames the true culprit in this Middle-East business. Why don’t they?
John Buchan MP, in the first chapter of his classic The Thirty-Nine Steps [1915], has this conversation between himself [Richard Hannay] and a Jew-hating free-lance agent:
He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.
When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.
'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English.
But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes.
But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattle-snake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tsar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.'
I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.
This last remark of Buchan’s was right then and it’s still right today. The problem is – no one will follow a lead through to its logical conclusion. There are enough people out there who know this thing’s connected with oil, who know it’s connected with Iran and the Arab world. What they then do is stop right there.
Whatever for? Because the names thrown up are cogent, plausible villains. The number two or three man will always take the heat, while number one is never, ever seen. For the Jews – it’s the Arab world and vice-versa, with the US thrown in for good measure. For the US – it’s the terrorists. No one wants to look any further. Don’t blame just Bush – he doesn’t count on this. Dick Cheney’s closer to the source than Bush and Kerry ever were.
For goodness sake, they even follow a manifesto:
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
“Oh, the globalists you mean?”
“No – the people behind the sustainable developers.”
“Behind, behind” – what’s this talk of behind? Sounds to me like conspiracy theory. Sounds to me like kook-speak.”
“Theory – an unproven supposition. And what constitutes proof? If you can’t accept ‘circumstantial’ in any shape or form, then who’s the kook? Might as well throw in your lot with the enlightenment philosophers. Circumstantial is good enough for the justice system, if there’s enough of it and if it’s august enough.”
This next quote – yes, I know it’s been debunked and bunked back again, discussed ad nauseam, used by the kook-press to support their insupportable ideas and so on. I know Churchill himself reneged and this quote is part of a greater whole with a slightly different angle to what the actual words purport to say … and yet he still said them:
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." 1920
You can think and say what you like. I consider the man was in the know and I’ve yet to see a definitive debunking of Churchill’s 'being in the know'. At this point of his upwards career, he was not unlike Andrew Jackson.
I’m not even going to start on Louis McFadden.
So what’s this to do with Israel and Hezbollah? Everything. It was behind Beslan; it was behind Kosovo; it was behind Sudan. I’m soon going to reprint an article on Algeria. No one’s denying the culpability of the Hezbollah special forces but when you read that Iran and Syria are behind them, why don’t you just ask the question, ‘Who’s behind them?’
It’s a simple enough question. Then, when you’ve done your homework, as I have, and we find the mysterious Messrs and Mesdames X, with their names and affiliated organizations, why don’t you then look inside the UN. It’s easily accessible – cast your eye down the list of affiliated organizations. Now the thing – don’t stop there. Who’s behind them?
I showed all this to a good friend from the military and yes – my background is military - he smiled wryly. I asked why he didn’t accept what he saw. He asked, in answer, ‘How come the world doesn’t know about it then? How come it’s not in the press.’
I don’t know. Ask Katie Graham that question. And while we’re on it – why were the Dragonskins not allowed to be worn in Iraq? Now some people will get the idea.
So who exactly am I then? I’m just a very ordinary person who happened to enjoy a few years in the heady atmosphere, as a B2, and came into contact with some very interesting people along the way and some very interesting ideas on rest and recuperation. My early exposure to internalized Christianity, as distinct from pontificating and warring Christianity, prevented me going any further down that path and it was seen that there was something ‘essentially wrong with this guy’. My name’s not Colson but it might as well be.
I just do my homework, like a good student; and that’s all there is to it.
[love and all that] samantha revisited
Remember this girl from my piece here? Well she’s at it again – check her out and put your comment on the topic of the lies we tell each other.
Yep, I know that there are enough love and romance columns in the US and UK to sink a battleship but I say this one is different and as it’s a universal theme, well …