[iran kidnappings] maybe the best way

Iran's detention of 15 Royal Navy personnel is "unjustified and wrong", Prime Minister Tony Blair has said. At first sight it looks lily-livered of Blair but in the end, it might be the best way with such a madman as the Iranian leader.

What's always amazed me, especially in such photos as the one above, is how easy it must be for the enemy either to blow such craft out of the water or to kidnap the personnel. If you're going to show the flag to that extent, surely a bit more backup might be in order.

[jeckyll island] one tuesday evening in november

Though the political sensitivities of the populace in the States differ in some ways from Europe, nevertheless, the values, interests, attitudes and behaviour of the participants in the 1910 doings in the U.S. were and still are equally applicable to Britain and Europe. The mindset is the same. To begin with Jefferson:

To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. [Thomas Jefferson February 15, 1791, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by H. E. Bergh, Vol. III, p. 145 ff.)

The following borrows heavily from Eustace Mullins, Mullins On The Federal Reserve, Kasper and Horton, New York, 1952, commissioned by Ezra Pound in 1948:

On the night of November 22, 1910, a group of newspaper reporters watched a delegation of the nation’s leading financiers leave Hoboken, New Jersey, in a sealed railway car, with blinds drawn, for an undisclosed destination.

They were led by Senator Nelson Aldrich, head of the National Monetary Commission, created by President Theodore Roosevelt after the tragic Panic of 1907 had resulted in a public outcry that the nation’s monetary system be stabilized. Aldrich had led the members of the Commission on a two-year tour of Europe but had not yet made a report on the results of this trip.

With him were his private secretary, Shelton; A. Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Special Assistant of the National Monetary Commission; Frank Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, Henry P. Davison, senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company, and generally regarded as Morgan’s personal emissary; and Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan-dominated First National Bank of New York.

Photo right: Nelson Aldrich

Joining the group just before the train left the station were Benjamin Strong, also known as a lieutenant of J.P. Morgan; and Paul Warburg, a recent immigrant from Germany who had joined the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, New York, as a partner earning five hundred thousand dollars a year.

Story continues here.

[blogfocus saturday] some stalwarts, some new

A rose between two thorns or are they also roses?

1 Is this piece by Andrew Alison, arch-conservative, amazing or is it amazing? And who can gainsay Andrew on this?

I have never been a fan of John Prescott, but I must give credit, where credit is due. He used a PowerPoint presentation to tell us of his visit to our partner school in Sierra Leone and gave a good and witty speech. The pupils told us of their experiences visiting different countries; did an international rap song, as well as a Chinese dance. They were great, and Mr Prescott really praised them. So good on him for that.

2 If Nu-Labour think they've got away with something there, Bel puts paid to that with this piece on Broony:

Gordon Brown’s misery deepens. On Wednesday, he was prancing around with a sharp knife, pretending to be a taxcutter. The ploy backfired, and he ended up slitting his own throat instead. Almost everybody saw through his illusory tax cut, and by his own actions, he has now freed the timid Conservative Party to start talking about tax cuts. Today brings even worse news for him. A Yougov poll for the Daily Telegraph conducted after the Budget gives the Conservatives an eight-point lead.

3 Let it never be said that this blog doesn't run the views of the opposition, in this case, the NSS, brought to us bythe accommodating Matt Murrell:

For me, the only type of secularism worth supporting is that which is synonymous with freedom of religion - the idea that the government has no right to interfere with the freedom of religious organisations, except where those organisations interfere with the freedom of the individual. The NSS has done a lot of good in this direction, campaigning against compulsory worship in schools and against the EU declaring itself a Christian organisation.

Nine more bloggers here.

[saturday quiz] know your ants

Two famous ants. Now to the quiz:

1 Among the Native American religions the Hopi mythology claims that the first animal was:
a] the ant
b] the woolly mammoth
c] Genghis Khan

2 The Japanese word ari is represented by an ideograph formed of the character for insect combined with the character signifying moral rectitude. It refers to:
a] the grasshopper
b] the ant
c] the greater spotted purwill

3 Muslims in general avoid killing a particular creature, due to it being mentioned in religious texts. Which creature?
a] Christians
b] the ant
c] the ant's nearest cousin

4 Boric acid and borax are excellent for killing off which creature?
a] Genghis Khan
b] Christians
c] the ant

5 Pavement, Pharaoh, Argentine and Carpenter are all names for which creature?
a] the pig
b] the lesser crested purwill
c] the ant

6 The Santander people like to toast alive and eat which unfortunate denizen of nature?
a] Genghis Khan
b] the greater steppe yak
c] the ant

7 Charles Thomas Bingham noted that in parts of India, and throughout Burma and Siam, a paste of a green creature (Oecophylla smaragdina) is served as a condiment with curry. Which creature?
a] the sikh
b] the hindu
c] the ant

8 If you unscramble the "nat" and the "tan", you get which two words?
a] the ant
b] the horse latitudes
c] Genghis Khan

9 Which animal lives in a hot climate?
a] the polar bear
b] the yeti
c] the ant

10 Sol the King said, in Proverbs 6:6: "Go to ___ thou sluggard." [Fill in the gap]
a] the yeti
b] the ant
c] Genghis Khan

11 It has been estimated that brain of ___ may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer. [Fill in the gap]
a] Tony Blair
b] the ant
c] George Bush

12 The introduction of a writing system based on the Uighur script was NOT due to one of these? Which one?
a] Temüjin
b] Genghis Khan
c] the ant

Answers to questions 1 to 12:

the ant

Further reading and confirmation of some of these answers here and here and here and here. Bonus question for those kind enough to indulge me thus far:

Which Mongol leader of the early 1200s will be forever associated with the ant?
a] Tony Blair
b] the red crested purwill
c] Genghis Khan

[I know the answer but I'm not going to tell you.]

[bullying] confessions of a cad

Ian Ogilvy, the School Bully

The trouble with bullying is defining it. Some cases are as clear as day. Workplace bullying is well known, school bullying is rife, I've seen girls bullying girls something awful and head teachers can bully staff. Army bullying has been seen by most undertaking officer training, particularly for subaltern rank. Sometimes it's less clearcut and comes down to perceptions.

I once had someone try it on with me while I was working for HM Customs. This 'gentleman', who had just been promoted above me, decided to reorganize my work station which I had 'just so'. It had taken a year of negotiation with my supervising officer and the Inspector to get the standing orders rewritten and so I wasn't going to put up with that.

When I explained to the 'worthy gentleman' his error of judgement and the consequences of ever coming within two metres of my desk again, he went beserk and 'belittled me' with every swearword he could dream up, stood over me physically, [I'm not a tall man], then officially complained about my 'uncooperativeness'.

I compiled a dossier on him over the next fortnight - when he turned up to work, when he actually began work, which girls he was using HM's time chatting up and so on. It reached the Inspector's desk at the end of the month and naturally got no further but it did get 'my friend' off my back. Trouble was, I didn't let up and arranged 'little accidents' for him and when I'd get to work, I'd go over to 'supervise' his own station for him, making little comments on the state of his desk and so on. I was hauled over the coals for that.

So who was the bully?

I posit that there is blogosphere bullying too. Some big bloggers will only give the time of day to sites who link to them and then refuse to link back. Some august circles of blogfriends consistently won't quote you but will then run a post by one of them on that topic and immediately link. Some consider that the Blogpower issue and the Great Blogwars some weeks later were getting close to bullying.


While the bullying question is vexed, I've always liked Eleanor Roosevelt's comment and try to remember it as some sort of mantra:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.


Girls are not always sugar and spice.

[cool blogschemes] things stumbled into

I'm in eight schemes:

1] Blogpower - the most human one of all. Join us and other members will come round to your place, visit and comment. This is a real community, medium-tech, where everyone knows everyone else. It has no political view, no common thread except that sense of helping one another.

2] MyBlogLog - I really like this one and would love to see Blogpowerers in it too because many of our regular reads are there. Some may see it as rivalling Blogpower or at least preventing members from joining Blogpower. I can't comment on that but it's nice to see those faces appear and know that a human being is reading your site.

3] BlogLinker.com - I got into this through an American site and the idea is that if you link, this person automatically links back to you.

4] Right Links Banner Exchange - The brainchild of Euroserf, this links right wing and Eurosceptic bloggers to each other and was the first scheme I was in. Very useful for finding people of a similar political bent.

5] Eurosceptic Bloggers - Another of Euroserf's ideas, the name says it all. I need to spend a lot more time here but their latest is always e-mailed to me.

6] RSS - I don't understand it at all but I'm told that somehow I got into it. I suspect either Tom Paine or Thunderdragon put me in and thanks for that. I don't know what it's meant to do but it seems cool enough if the Dragon is in it.

7] Blogrolling.com - Not so much a scheme as a wonderful way of organizing one's blogroll, once you've entered all your links in a really easy to understand manner, you can change them round, add info, revise and do anything you want - it automatically appears in your sidebar.

8] Voluntary Code Free Zone - A scheme started by Disillusioned and Bored, to resist the attempt by the authorities to impose a code of practice on the blogosphere.

I've also now redone my Blogrolls, changed the format and the way I link, added 6 and deleted 1. After much soul searching, I felt the only fair way was to roll according to frequency of interaction but none of these lists are immutable. My cunning plan is to revise the lists every Sunday.