[birthday survey] thank you so far

I'd like to thank all those who've taken the survey so far [top left sidebar or popup] and the responses, especially the written ones at the end, have been invaluable. However, it's thrown up the eternal problem again:

Long or short posts

What to do, what to do? All right, one can run very witty little comments on something someone wrote [usually not quoted but linked to save space] and providing the links don't exceed three, it works. Tim Worstall and UK Daily Pundit use this method very successfully but it's more suited to a political blogger commenting on current events.

What though, if the blogger wants to create his own longer piece - such as Chris Dillow? Chris uses a strict 7 or 8 paragraph restriction and point form. If it doesn't fit into the space, it doesn't go in. Then it forms part of another post. Blogosphere attention spans are notoriously short so this is a good method. Chris also uses smaller fonts.

What if you need to include a fair bit of info because you're composing a serious piece using much quotation? Is there a place for these on a blog? I suggest there is.

For example, I can't see how I could have refuted that Marxist without quoting Marx and others. This takes space and then there's your own comment. Suddenly you're up to 29 paragraphs. Aaaaagh!

So some people suggested [on the survey] that the trick is to run a one paragraph summary at the start and link it to another blogpage. Yes, good idea but how many people will follow that link?

If, however they start reading and it looks like it's getting a bit long, they might stay with it because they see it's almost finished.

I don't know the answer to all this.

[prime minister] the road to power

The stand-off between PM Howard and Treasurer Costello is so uncannily reminiscent of Blair/Brown except for certain key differences and I don't mean geographically or that they're from opposing parties.

For a start:

Peter Costello and John Howard simply do not like each other. This sort of antipathy goes on in all sorts of workplaces every hour of every day. That's why most Australian voters have accepted and endorsed the Howard Government at the past two elections, when it was clear that Costello was becoming increasingly desperate for Howard to shuffle off to a retirement home somewhere on Sydney's North Shore.

There's the rub. Without a clear Devil's Deal in their case, Costello is dependent on John having intimated or "given to understand" that he'd retire and allow Costello a decent tilt at elected PMship. I wouldn't put it past Howard, an astute numbers man, to suddenly and magnanimously step down if the apparent charge of Rudd's Labor goes unchecked, Costello knows it and therein lies his deep antipathy.

As far as I can see, the populace wants not a bar of Costello the PM, although they were happy enough with him at the Treasury. Ditto Broony. Treasurers often go on to make bad PMs, e.g. Paul "ow-are-ya-me-darlin-queen-liz" Keating and now all he has left is his beloved clocks.

A check of PMs of Britain, Canada and Australia reveals nothing surprising.

True, Howard was Treasurer in an outgoing government but he didn't come directly to the PMship from there. Keating did. Hawke came directly from the ACTU, on the strength of his conciliation and arbitration work, Fraser took over in the coup d'etat in 1975, Whitlam threw out the Liberals, McMahon was Foreign Office [former Treasurer], Gorton came down from the Senate and that's as far back as it's necessary to go.

In the UK, Brown is a former Treasurer [allow me to continue the term when discussing the three countries], Blair came in on a wave, Major was the Treasurer, Thatcher came to power, Callaghan was Treasury, Home and Foreign Office, Heath came to power from Trade, Wilson also from Trade.

In Canada, Harper was critic for Finance and then came to power, Martin was Treasurer then came to power, Chretien left politics, came back and won the election, Campbell [woman] was Defence and came to the PMship then lost the election, Mulroney won by a landslide, Turner was closer to the Treasurer made PM but actually resigned then came back, Trudeau - best not to worry about him.

Interesting about Turner:

John Turner was a Prime Minister in waiting for too long. By the time John Turner had waited out the Trudeau era and was elected Leader of the Liberal Party to become Prime Minister in 1984, the country was fed up with Liberal government.

So, from all that, I do conclude that sweetheart deals and serving Treasurers acceding do not seem to be overly successful. The real statesmen tend to be swept into power in the first place by popular acclaim. After all, that Time interview with Gordo had me choking on my coffee with the canny Govan boy's sheer honesty:

Time: You're rumored to be planning a 100-day program of big policy initiatives as soon as you become Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown: That's not my aim, actually. You cannot do what people assume politics was about in the old days; you cannot just pull levers and expect things to happen. I don't see politics as one or two people just making or delivering announcements — it's also about winning public support and the public enthusiasm. You've got to win public support.

Yeah, right.

[karl marx] great man or humbug

In April I ran a post, a rant really, on humanism and humanitarianism but in the comments section, it seemed to become an argument over Communism, for example Winfred Mann's comment:

It is obvious that socialism/communism has failed to provide for the masses as promised. Capitalism has a great deal of inequality but provides a lower bottom rung, so to speak.

That was in April. Now a dear reader who claims to be Someone Who Actually Reads Things, has added a comment:

Not content with quoting what the manifesto says will be SAID by BOURGEOIS CRITICS as if it were the OPINION OF THE MANIFESTO, not content with yanking it out of the middle of a paragraph, not content with adding about as much COMPLETELY FAKE CRAP PULLED OUT OF YOUR ASS* to the one sentence, you are building a "case" against all humanists as the eternal Atheist/Masonic/Satanic/Communist enemy and attempting to create a moral panic. I bet you HATE being compared to Birchers and Nazis, dontcha. Well, guess what. It totally, totally sticks. Idiot.

Leaving aside the misspelling of "ass" [the word he requires has four letters to it], he/she concludes his/her critique with:

If Satan is the "Father of Lies" you are one of his beloved children.

If you were to follow my friend's link, it leads to a children's reading site in which he/she is clearly involved. I wonder if any parents who deal with this site are aware of the type of language my friend indulges in.

However, now this rare opportunity has presented itself, I suppose the onus is on me to address his/her concern:

My dear anonymous friend,

1] On your criticism that the remarks were taken out of context and that criticisms were falsely quoted as those of the authors themselves:

|Manifesto 478| You share a specific concept with all foundered ruling classes, whereby you transform your production- and property circumstances from historical -- in the course of production transitional -- circumstances into eternal natural laws and laws of reason. What you conceive as the traditional concept of property, as feudal property rights, you must no longer consider for the rules governing the property of citizens.

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical get riled up about this shameful intention of the communists.

What is the present family based on? On capitalism, the acquisition of private property. It exists in all of its meaning only for the bourgeoisie, but it finds its complement in the enforced lack of families of the proletarians and public prostitution.

The family of the bourgeois naturally falls by the way-side with this, its complement, and both will vanish when capitalism vanishes.

This was MML's sleight of hand. Quoting his critics in his own terms, then failing to directly answer the criticism he himself has paraphrased! Instead, speaking in utter simplication that the family is based on capitalism, failing to consider that the family existed long before usury became the norm and the guilds gave way to the bourgeoisie.

Then, feeling he's established the capitalist connection to the family, he proposes, four pages later:

|Manifesto 482| 10. Public and publicly funded education of all children. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Unification of education with material production etc.

Which looks wonderful on paper until one realizes that this means enforced state education of children [mentioned later if one reads through] and for what purpose? To overcome the influence of the capitalist, connected to the family [p 478]

This was the logic of Karl Marx in context and not paraphrased. The man was a total humbug in his scholastic methodology. Then we get onto other things:

"We must war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed." [1848]

In his poem 'The Pale Maiden" Karl writes:

Thus heaven I've forfeited,

I know it full well,

My soul, once true to God,

Is chosen for Hell.

[Karl Marx, "Des Verzweiflenden Gebet" ("Invocations of One in Despair"), p.30.]

Or from The Player:

The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain,

Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.

See the sword?

The prince of darkness

Sold it to me.

For me he beats the time and gives the signs.

Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.

Or Lenin on Marx:

"Atheism is an integral part of Marxism. Marxism is materialism. We must combat religion. This is the ABC of all materialism and consequently Marxism."

And what was the nature of this man who wished to overthrow the building blocks of a society?

Franz Mehring; "Although Karl Marx's father died a few days after his son's twentieth birthday, he seems to have observed with secret apprehension the demon in his favorite son.... Henry Marx did not think and could not have thought that the rich store of bourgeois culture which he handed on to his son Karl as a valuable heritage for life would only help to deliver the demon he feared." [Henry Marx, Mehring p.32.]

"He parted from me as an overzealous Communist. This is how I produce ravages....." [A. Melskii, Evangelist Nenavisti (The Evanelist of Hate, Life of Karl Marx) (Berlin; Za Pravdu Publishing House, 1933, in Russian) p.48]

And what of those inspired by either the Marxist ideal or the possibilities afforded by it?

"A silent, unavoidable revolution is taking place in society, a revolution that cares as little about the human lives it destroys as an earthquake cares about the houses it ravages. Classes and races that are too weak to dominate the new condition of existence will be defeated."

Milovan Djilas: "Was it not so that the demonic power and energy of Stalin consisted in this, that he made the (Communist) movement and every person in it pass to a state of confusion and stupefaction, thus creating and ensuring his reign of fear...." [Milovan Djilas, Strange Times, "Kontinent," 33, p. 25]

2] You object to the grouping of the eternal Atheist/Masonic/Satanic/Communist enemy and attempting to create a moral panic.

There is nothing in Marx's writings, when taken in context, not out of context, as you accuse me of doing shortly before doing so yourself, to lead one to come to any other conclusion than those which we already have.

This is the typical Marxist - blurring truths and applying pseudo logical syllogisms to establish that which is unsustainable. It was not Lenin or the failure of Russia to be "ready". It was the sheer lack of understanding of human nature underlying the communist's mindset which will eternally condemn it to eventual oblivion.

Churchill's quote, referring to the goal of Marxist inspired agitators, becomes more and more apt with every reading of Moses Mordecai Levy. These people are consumed by:

...the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality...

I remain, your humble and obedient, James Higham

[enough's enough] new tory leader required

It's all over the Brit blogosphere and regular readers know I'm not into party politics but this is one clear case.

David Cameron must go.

Just look at his performance so far. Run a checklist. Is there no talent in the party or anyone else of stature?

The problem is in DC's preselection by the same powers promoting Gordon and then, in a more orthodox arena, by the branch and national preselection process which cuts out talent.

He doesn't convince the electorate because he shifts position so often - top Tory leaders have always known what they were about and were able to communicate it to the people.

He can't. Nice enough chap but he's not going to win anything. Bullingdon boys, by definition, lack the gravitas. Boris Johnson could tell you all about that.

That's why the move should be made NOW. Not in two weeks or two months or prior to the election.

Now. So the Tories will have half a chance and so ALL Tories can get behind their leader with confidence.

[friday] your captions please

[who governs] and why they're not benign

Another worthy but ultimately futile discussion of our situation, this time on terrorism, at one of my favourite blogs, Beaman's World.

The essential reasons such debate is futile and the reasons why we're heading for the new feudalism include:

1] While you truly believe that you are in a representative democracy, where your voice is actually acted upon, then the real forces driving the agenda are free to continue unfettered;

2] The real forces rely on the great mass of people reading, discussing and researching within a narrow pool of actuality - newspapers, journals, magazine articles, TV and radio programmes and tomes of wisdom of the great and not so great … but no further;

3] The humanistic life outlook tacitly embraced by the vast majority of westerners encourages them to feel that they're ultimately in control of their own destiny, which is patently false, as you'll see further down.

On the other hand, the man or woman with a strangely wired brain seeks and researches more laterally, unafraid to delve into "kook territory" and comes up with a different literature - less accessible but still accessible for all that.

The reason it's still accessible is that it's usually written up or posted sensationally by the weirdos whose investigative skills far surpass their reasoning or writing ability and so it's a simple thing to pick holes, debunk and mock, using catchcries to circumvent any real revelation which might have been thrown up. [Watch this post's comments section for the first commenter to say "conspiracy theory" although usually readers just skip over this sort of post.]

So I'm not going to get dragged into that stuff. Instead, here are some statements by people who really should have known what they were talking about and I challenge anyone to call these people "kooks" or "deluded":

# President Woodrow Wilson, in 1913, published "The New Freedom":

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

# It (the Great Depression) was not accidental, it was a carefully contrived occurrence. The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all. [Congressman Louis McFadden]

# The Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933. [Milton Friedman]

# History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance. [President James Madison]

# Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russian, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament , or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All I have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. [Goering at the Nuremberg Trials]

# This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished. [Sir Denison Miller]

# Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When through the process of law the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. [1924 U.S. Banker's Association Magazine]

# When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the (many) believe almost anything you want, and you can guide them. [Gore Vidal from 'The Golden Age'.]

# If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched. George H. W. Bush told a White House reporter. [This last is my weakest reference so feel free to ignore it.]

Here are links to some of my articles.

So, in the context of the above, terrorism per se, as discussed at Beaman's World, is merely a furphy, easily provoked and funded and in this dualistic attitude lies the real identity of the force driving the oncoming misery. Look into the eyes of the Janjaweed of the Sudan for further confirmation of this force.

The only question is wresting back control but I fear that the people are so fragmented and the driving force so in control that it's a forlorn hope.