[east meets west] most agree it worked

I've been a bit slow reporting on this, sorry.

The excitement on the weekend was because we were hosting a forum and annual meeting for an EU body for the first time but that was only part of the story.

The real story was that it was conducted on European, not Russian lines and this was duly noted, right down to the keynote address in English. Doesn't sound too exciting until you think it through.

You'd agree almost all international fora and other summits in the economic field are conducted in the local language, with simultaneous interpretation. We felt we were far enough advanced in our trade ministry to dispense with that and there were key reasons for this, some classified.

The Minister not only gave the keynote address but also conducted workshops and answered questions both in English and using EU protocols. Even more commendably, there was no back up whatsoever - he stood or fell by his own efforts [and so did I as one of the many instigators].

This was nothing short of a triumph and we're more than chuffed, I can tell you. It has to be fair to say that our region staked its claim as a serious player and this was noted with nodding heads by Europe and warily by Moscow.

Our relations with Moscow are always delicate but this must have been a boost for all parties and in stark contrast to the Samara meeting of a few days earlier which, to be fair, had a different agenda - and I'd put Ms Merkel in her place too if it were me.

It just convinces me more and more that open trade is the only sure-fire political way to stable relations between disparate parties and that religion has no place in politics. Now if only Hamas, Fatah, Syria and Israel could do this as well and leave off the gung-ho militancy.

It also convinces me that if there is a man of genuine talent at the helm who is not gung-ho, who doesn't stand on ultimata, who is easy-going and always seeking the common ground, not only does the region enjoy peace and prosperity but it filters down to all levels and things work better.

Well, all right. You're never going to satisfy everyone and that's in the nature of compromise but with a good leader there always remains hope. You always feel he can pull you through, find a way, stand firm when necessary and meet future demands.

And he'll embrace religious values anyway if he's halfway reasonable as a person. But that's just a bonus.

[blog on hold] june 28th to 29th

For seven years, my apartment has been virtually untouched - not painted, not repaired and the taps slowly disintegrating. It can't go on and a windfall offer was made yesterday and these repairs are scheduled for:

June 18th to June 29th.

I don't know if I can do any blogging during that time period because I suspect the computer and sundry bits will be packed away. This site and other sites associated with it will effectively remain up and I'll try to do a mega-posting just before the hiatus. I'll leave comments on as well. If you could spare the time to mosey on over and look through some of the archived material in that time period, I'd consider it an honour and that it wouldn't be so much of a "dead" blog.

[misanthropic curmudgeonry 2] personal testimony

I'd add to the post below on curmudgeonry from personal experience:

I love company on the net - visitors who come in and comment, new friends, the sense of community and all round niceness of my blogfriends. Genuinely I do. I'd love to have a drink with each and every one of you but thee's a little problem.

If you'd actually approach me to come out for a drink, I might find an excuse to run and hide - nourishing obscurity. Then again, I might not.

I'd go for a drink with one person, as I relate best one-on-one. With 2 to 4 people, they can entertainingly relate to each other and leave me to get on with my beer. With 5 to 20 I'd sneak away and only come back in a crowd of 100.

As my work relating to the young ladies is 12 to 15 to one, I deal with that by relating individually to each one in turn. Group is not my thing.

Now a confession. Sometimes I call off appointments if there are no blank spaces in the diary, not because I'm lazy or because there's anything wrong. It's just that at that moment the tolerance level of other humans is somewhat impaired - to have to go through the small talk and being on my best behaviour takes it out of me - nothing personal, you understand. I don't want to see dogs or cats either.

I don't care about money. Of course none of us let opportunities slip by if we can help it but I don't go out of my way to find the cursed stuff.

My greatest bliss is to be sailing a boat with one other person. With a lady for the ambience and the champagne or with a mate to see how fast we can get this thing going.

I almost instinctively take the unpopular point of view and attack the unattackable - the higher the better. That's quite soothing to the fevered soul.

And you?

[cleese rubbished] justice done

Sheep have long memories:

Palmerston North, which was rubbished by British comedian John Cleese as the "suicide capital of New Zealand", has rubbished him back, naming a city council compost dump in his honour, a newspaper reported today. "Mt Cleese" reads the sign posted on the rubbish tip at suburban Awapuni, which is being turned into a compost dump, the North Island city's Evening Standard reported.

Cleese dubbed it one of the world's most boring cities when he toured New Zealand in November 2005. At the time, comedian John Clarke suggested the local dump be renamed the "John Cleese Memorial Tip - All manner of crap happily recycled".

Contractor Roy Harding, who erected the sign, told the paper: "It's just to get back at him. Most people seem to be quite happy about it".

Justice must not just be done - it must be seen to be done.

[florida 2000] did bush win

[The vote came down to Florida.]

Early in the evening, television newsrooms mistakenly declared that Gore had won in Florida.

Hours later, the news services corrected this mistake, only to follow with another erroneous announcement that Bush had taken Florida and won the presidency.

At one point, Gore called Bush to concede the election and to congratulate him on his win, only to call back minutes later to take back his concession.

The vote in Florida was a statistical tie. The margin was less than one half of one percent, triggering an automatic machine recount. When the votes were tallied, Governor Bush led by only 300 votes out of nearly 6 million.

After the absentee votes were counted, his lead widened to 930 votes. This was only .02 of one percent of the votes cast, and the machines used to count the votes in many counties were unable to account for as much as 3.9 percent of the vote in some places.

The uproar was furious and the spectacle mounted daily. Hundreds of media crews descended on Florida, and the country was overtaken by twenty-four-hour news coverage and banner headlines. The close election exposed many weaknesses in election law and procedures.

In Florida, the candidates could petition for hand counts in close elections, and the Democrats did so in four heavily Democratic counties. For a statewide election this was a serious flaw, because vote totals could be corrected in some counties but not in others, thereby affecting the outcome in the entire state.

The Florida legislature had established no standards for reading disputed votes cast by widely different methods, and the burden fell on a three-person election canvassing board in each county.

The Republicans insisted that a hand count was unfair and that the machine count should stand. They immediately petitioned the Eleventh Circuit Court in Atlanta to stop the manual recount permitted by Florida law.

The Democrats demanded their rights under Florida law to request a hand count in such a close election, saying the machines were not able to read tens of thousands of votes. On November 14, the deadline for submitting revised counts, a Republican official certified the Bush victory, pending the count of the absentee ballots.

Candidate Bush was leading by 300 votes. Due to legal challenges and the large number of votes involved, three counties were unable to complete their work by the deadline. The Republican secretary of state declared her intention not to include revised totals in the final count.

Midnight on Friday, November 17, was the deadline for tabulating absentee ballots. A lower court had ruled that the secretary of state was within her power to ignore revised vote totals. The absentee votes gave Bush a lead of 930 votes.

In an extraordinary move, the Florida Supreme Court intervened and forbade the election officials to certify the final vote until the court ruled. The court called for the submission of legal briefs regarding the hand counts and agreed to hear the case the following Monday.

Late in the evening of November 21, the court announced its unanimous decision. They set a new deadline of November 26 for final election certification and ordered that hand counts be included in the final tally.

This would likely give the election to Gore.

Tensions mounted and rhetoric escalated. The country was beset with dueling court cases and dueling press conferences from the two campaigns. More than forty legal actions were filed in Florida courts.

On November 22, vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney checked into a Washington hospital with a minor heart attack. One county, Miami-Dade, decided to abandon its efforts to hand-count the vote saying they could not finish by the deadline.

By November 24, the Republicans had appealed the Florida Supreme Court decision to the United States Supreme Court, which astounded the nation and the experts by agreeing to hear the case, thought by many to be solely a matter of Florida law. The case was to be heard Friday, December 1.

On Sunday evening, November 26, the Republican officials in Florida certified a final vote tally, which gave Bush a diminished lead of 527 votes. Hundreds of legal votes identified by the counties were not included for procedural reasons.

Once again, the Democrats appealed to the Florida courts to demand that legally cast votes be included in the final number and to demand that Miami-Dade finish its manual counts.

On December 4, the U.S. Supreme Court chastised the Florida Supreme Court, invalidating their ruling on the inclusion of manual recounts.

On the same day, the Florida circuit court ruled resoundingly against the Democrats' appeal to continue the manual recounts. This decision was also immediately appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.

The country widely assumed that the Florida Supreme Court would uphold the lower court and end the election.

In the late afternoon of Friday, December 8, the Florida court once again astounded the nation. By a divided ruling of 5 to 4, the court issued a stunning repudiation and reversal of the lower court.

They ordered a statewide hand recount of every ballot where no vote for president had been tabulated by the counting machines.

This project involved approximately 45,000 votes statewide. In addition, the court ordered the inclusion of previously identified votes for Gore, which had not yet been included in the tally.

The Bush lead was reduced to a whisker-thin 157 votes.

The unexpected decision turned the political world upside down. Feverish plans got under way throughout the state to identify and examine thousands of votes. The statewide effort was to be coordinated by the courts and finished in three days.

The Bush lawyers frantically rushed one more time to the Eleventh Circuit Court in Atlanta and the U.S. Supreme Court. In less than twenty-four hours, by Saturday afternoon, the Supreme Court, by a closely divided vote of 5 to 4, abruptly stopped the process under way to review the votes.

On Monday, December 11, the Supreme Court heard the case. Its ruling came on Tuesday 12 at 10:00 PM, only two hours before the deadline for Florida to name uncontested electors. The court gave no explanation for its extraordinary late-night ruling or for the unusual fact that the ruling went unsigned.

By the vote of 7 to 2, the court ruled it would be unfair to count the ballots under Florida law unless all the counties used the same standard plus the results had to come by midnight, two hours away.

In this case, the court effectively ruled that it was more important to reach the December 12 deadline and to keep the dispute out of Congress than to examine the votes to see which candidate won.

The decision did save the country from a damaging battle in Congress to settle the tie, but it left a sour aftermath for many disgruntled voters.

On December 13, thirty-six days after the election, Vice President Gore finally spoke to the nation and offered his concession to President-Elect Bush.

Final vote

George Bush 50,456,141

Al Gore 50,996,039

[misanthropic curmudgeonry] test yourself

The doyen of British curmudgeonry, Victor Meldrew

While misanthropes express a general dislike for humanity on the whole, they can have normal relationships with specific individuals. Curmudgeons are hard to distinguish from misanthropes.

Test your curmudgeonliness level below. Score 4 for "that's me all right", 2 for "in some respects" and 0 for "nope, that ain't me":

Curmudgeons:

1 don't hate mankind [or women], just mankind's absurdities;

2 hide their vulnerability and niceness beneath a crust of misanthropy;

3 attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment;

4 not being equipped with a serviceable denial mechanism, have astute perception and sly wit;

5 are mockers and debunkers;

6 can't compromise their standards;

7 can't manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness;

8 have an almost allergic reaction to injustice;

9 are sensitive to life's countless insults;

10 are classic outsiders;

11 instinctively distrust conventional wisdom and challenge authority;

12 are proudly and aggressively out of touch with pop culture or technology;

13 harbour no illusions;

14 think clearly;

15 howl against clichés, prizing originality;

16 use their brains without sentiment;

17 have a very low boiling point;

18 can't stand how consistently people refuse to face facts about issues;

19 try to have a sense of hope but are surrounded by people who are trying to take the wind out of their sails;

20 detest political correctness — the denying or softening of obvious truths in the interest of good will and harmony;

21 as they get older, sometimes actually mellow;

22 expect the worst, but keep on playing;

24 often live alone;

25 often do well one-on-one, if the other has intelligence.

[Jon Winokur, from whose unnecessarily wordy text I lifted this material, is the author of various books on curmudgeonry, including the bestselling Portable Curmudgeon (Penguin) and the recently published Traveling Curmudgeon (Sasquatch Books). He lives in California. Alone.]

To this, I would add that one would be almost frightened to come near a curmudgeon for fear of offending him.

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth - if you were concerned enough to care about such a thing, he'd love your company, he really would. Deep down he's a kindly soul and he'd make you as comfortable as possible and pour hospitality upon you as best he could.

His own inability to be effusive like others feels like a straightjacket to him. He'd really, really like, if only he could. But he can't. As I always say:

"I would if I could but I can't, so I won't."

The doyen of American curmudgeonry [right], H.L.Mencken

[chippie for pm] praguetory sees the light

It's been a lonely time, single-handedly managing the Chippie for PM campaign , although, to be fair Iain got it off the ground.

Now Praguetory has come to the party or else I've come to his [not sure which]. Either way, it's "acorns are go"!

Go Chippy! Can you imagine Britain without her as the chief exec?

[an englishman's home] not a castle

Collecting Mr. Buttle after an understandable administrative error.

First there was this; then this; and now this.

[frustration part 1] the common man

I'm a common man. Whether or not Guthrum the Old considers himself as such, and I think he does, he was moved to post this:

I want my political leaders to be statesmen/women, to have substance, gravitas and a commitment to Liberty, Democracy and an end to ingrained privilege. Not to rely on the smoke and mirrors of stunt and spin, for the sake of power itself.

Men and women with vision are thin on the ground at present.

A new alignment is needed. It has taken since 1934 for the SNP to catch the mood of Scotland, I cannot afford seventy three years for a change in the rot that is Westminster.

A Bill of Rights Now, A written Constitution Now and an English Parliament Now.

One can feel the frustration behind this outburst of a moderate man exasperated and yet, even in this will be disagreement amongst us about the SNP, the Bill of Rights and so on.

The essential and dismaying problem is that this quite legitimate cry for substance and gravitas does not take into account realpolitik. Blair, Brown and Cameron are in the driving seat and none impress. There's good reason.

For a long time, Britain's leaders have been groomed by interests within Europe and not just in Britain:

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton spoke at a Bilderberg conference a year before his election victory, as did British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Former prime ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau also made Bilderberg appearances.

The current chairman, Belgian politician and businessman Etienne Davignon, says the steering committee that organizes the annual get-togethers is excellent at spotting talent.

Is it any wonder Blair is so Europhile, given those who groomed these Scots to run Britain:

"Brown is not passionate about Europe, but because of it, he will be able to get further in Brussels than someone so outwardly messianic about it like Blair," said Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform

Like people in key positions in education where if you're not a PC leftist you don't get in, Canada's, the U.S.'s and Britain's education has gone down the gurgler and with it, society:

...the catastrophe that has been visited upon children by moral relativism at home, and multiculturalism in the schools. Two books published just recently, were written by former '60s radicals, pushed right by the terrible plight of kids, and (spare me the invective from the union hate mail tree) by the sheer backwards idiocy that informs the teachers' unions. The Epidemic: the Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children did not hail from some right-wing think-tank; it is written by Robert Shaw, a psychiatrist who practices in Berkeley, Calif...

And so on - good article, by the way. And in the same way, if you're not of a certain ilk re Europe, you don't get the top job either. Cameron is Euro-sceptic. Oh really?

His change of position, confirmed by a spokesman for William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, has infuriated Tory Right-wingers who voted for Mr Cameron to lead the party because of his strong Eurosceptic campaign.

The truth is that no leader who looks likely to get near the reins of power is going to cross certain elements in Europe, whatever froth and bubble they are currently uttering. Only the weak and malleable get in. They're rubber men [and women].

It has always been so, this malaise, before the strong man cometh. Buchanan and the era of the weak, compromising president pre-Lincoln, The Weimar Republic, Chirac and the malaise of France and currently Britain - it's no accident. It's the game plan of very nasty people in the corridors of power.

The people clamour, like Guthrum the Old, for a return to "decency". There is no decency here. Cameron has no answer - he is more of the same. So who's being groomed in the wings? The post neoclassical endogenous growth theoretical Ed Balls? David Milliband? Some sort of Obama Barak? I'd love to see the Bilderbergers' last guest list.

But why? For what to do this to society?" 1984 gives part of the answer and Ephesians 6:12 gives the rest.

[sønderjylland-holstein question] fuzzy borders might be one solution

Bet you've been gnashing your teeth over this issue today:

Lord Palmerston once said that only three men in Europe had ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question and of these, the Prince Consort was dead, a Danish statesman was in an asylum and he himself had forgotten it.

I don't see the problem:

Though Sønderjylland had a German component in the population and though Holstein had a Danish component, still - apart from economic reasons and there were several, why couldn't the former go to Denmark and the latter to Germany?

I have three solutions, the first mentioned here:

1 Fuzzy borders

This requires common sense from governments. Where there is a clear historical mix of ethnicities and where local customs and even local dialects have sprung up, why can't that area be left "fuzzy"?

Why the need to rigidly define a border, except to make a map look beautiful?

In South Ossetia and Alsace-Lorraine, it would seem logical but unfortunately, another logic, in the form of national self-interest and national pre-eminence, holds sway.

Alsace-Moselle today is at peace but what is not mentioned is that the French forcibly suppressed the local dialect and enforced French when they took Alsace-Lorraine into France proper in 1918/19. Few speak the local dialect now. This is a powerful factor and hardly worth Germany fighting over.

So you could say that the use of force and strong-arm tactics works in some situations. Except that there'll always be unrest if the minority thnks it's getting a raw deal.

Strategic disputes like Hans Island are another matter and are, quite frankly, abstruse. Less abstruse and just plain silly is the Eritrea/Ethiopia dispute.

A look at the map [lower right] shows Ethiopia to have no sea access whatsoever. If Eritrea were to concede even a small corridor, tensions would greatly ease. Liveability is at stake here, not ethnicity or useable acreage. So:

2 Common sense. If Ethiopia could compensate Eritrea [whether or not it felt it needed to] and if Eritrea could grant it a reasonable seaport or two, where's the long term harm? Of course, as Bag points out, there must be an acceptable trade-off.

3 Apartheid. Readers probably can't believe I'm suggesting this. Why is there peace in Australia, despite the secessionist mood of WA? There is one main ethnicity. Why is there peace in Russia - and there is peace, by the way? One ethnicity and language.

What about the republic I live in? See N2 above - common sense.

But if parties refuse to use common sense and a sense of compromise, then apartheid is the only possibility, overseen by international bodies. Key example - the Middle-East.

I'd like to know what Charles, of Free Jersey might have to say about all this.