[google reader] fabulous stuff [2]

Colin Campbell said:

A Reader such as Google Reader is an even bigger time waster than just surfing blogs. It means that you can get all the blogs you read in one place by subscribing. In reality it means that you start to feel guilty about all those articles that are just sitting waiting to be read, especially as jmb mentioned, you subscribe to James's blog.

Sir James Beiggelschwarz replied :

It does create guilt and it's almost like a funfair thing that the minute you've killed off one comment, another pops up from some bstd and you have to hit it on the head - some bstd like Higham and you can never kill him off - his posts are annoyingly always popping up and spoiling the nice clean sheet. A clean sheet and you can go out and do some other business.

The solution I think is to adopt a select to read policy from the available posts. My system sustains three open windows at one time and Google reader allows this from the one blogger. That's fine for me and whilst they're loading, all his others are marked as read. This way we can get through the blogroll more fairly than before.

[russia] the next president

Not to be sneezed at:

The odds on who will be Russia's next President have come out the internet, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, Vladimir Putin is still one of the favorites, despite a constitutional prohibition against a third term.

Ireland-based betting exchange Intrade has Putin contracts currently running third, listing at 15 out of a possible value of 100. The current leader is First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov at 41, with fellow First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medved trading at 17.

And so on.

The local money here is on Ivanov.

[agenda] transfer of power continues

This post is dedicated to Chris Dillow, Two Wolves, Fabian Tassano, The Lighthouse and CityUnslicker, worthy bloggers all.

In our concentration on the "here and now facts":

European central banks are standing ready this week to take further steps to ease the credit squeeze following the US Federal Reserve’s unexpected move on Friday to stem the turmoil in money and credit markets.

Financial markets rallied after the Fed made direct loans available to banks on favourable terms and hinted at an interest rate cut. If the move calms US nerves this week, European central bankers are likely to follow to ensure a similar effect is achieved across the Atlantic.

... the real story, the realpolitik of what's going down is lost in a fog of misdirected attention.

Economists, constrained by economic theory, focusing on macro, micro and monetarist economic strategy, interpret politics through numbers. What they say is good as far as it goes.

The politically minded non-economists concentrate on local issues for local readerships - for example Welfare or the Presidential race or on non-financial global issues, for example Terrorism. What they say is good as far as it goes.

Many are concentrating on social issues, such as the missing Madeleine.

A few are getting down to the macro issues but each has his or her own particular angle. What they say is good as far as it goes.

All of it is part of the jigsaw puzzle which is the way things are headed. However, the only issue which is concerned directly with credit squeezes, collapses, recessions, terrorism, tightening of societal restrictions and inevitable war is the Finance.

You can shout Islam and not be wrong but it is not the underlying cause of the next war. Islam is the means, the pretext.

Three years ago I knew a credit squeeze was on the cards and that there were clear economic reasons to remain in Iraq and stir the pot. I told my friend ad nauseam about it and showed him the documents which pointed to it. One of the reasons I began this blog was to highlight what was coming. I am no kook but a person who studies documents. So are you but I'm studying different documents to you. That's all.

The reason people don't see that the central banks have an agenda is simple - they don't. Not in themselves. But the financiers behind them sure as hell do:

"When the President signs this act the invisible government by the monetary power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized … The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill." [Charles Lindburgh Senior, 1913]

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men." [Woodrow Wilson, 1916]

"Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is - the Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." [Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1931]

Franklin Roosevelt wrote, in a letter to Colonel House: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson."

Roosevelt created fiat money by calling in gold and there is now no major western currency backed by gold reserves. It's a fiction. This is OK as long as the government retains the power to mint and issue coin and as long as the system of credit is regulated.

On April 27, 1936, hearings were held by the House Committee on Banking and Currency. The preamble of the bill - HR 9216 of the Seventy-fourth Congress, stated, "The committee had under consideration the bill (HR 92163 to restore to Congress its constitutional power to issue money and regulate the value thereof ...

Restore. As in "recover", to "get back".

Congress may issue currency but the financiers tell them when and how. Even statutory reserve deposits do not tell the whole story. The Fed is not merely a regulator of the local economy, as many people think. Their own regulations mean that:

...it is possible for them to borrow additional funds from their Federal Reserve Bank and possible for the Federal Reserve authorities on their own initiative to supply additional funds through open market purchases of securities...

Since 1991, they have been actively engaging in international markets via settlement changes and at the same time actively tweaking the U.S. economy to their own agenda. This man at Alcoa has it half right:

I think this credit squeeze is half fabricated and half fed induced. The fed worked themselves into a corner by not regulating loans, then attempting to hide real inflation, and also weakening the dollar.

It created a formula for disaster where the only option is to now lower rates, triggering an unhealthy level of inflation. at this point allowing the systems to work themselves out will cause a large reduction in consumer and investor confidence possibly leading to recession.

They didn't "work themselves into a corner". This is the central area of dispute between CityUnslicker and me over 1929 - he claims Fed incompetence and I say it was intended incompetence.

Take a look once again at the FT quote above - it has now created direct loans, creating direct indebtedness above and beyond the scope of the government to regulate against. What has been put in place is now a massive direct indebtedness to the sharks, effectively bipassing the government itself.

There are no laws preventing the calling in of these loans in any of the western democracies. People are indebted to individual banks and credit providers, who in turn, are now indebted to the central banks. Therefore the central banks have a perfectly legal right to call the tune.

We are in 1927 once again and please recall the two decades following that.

It's an old, old story with minor tweaks to make the plot more interesting. When Nicholas Biddle, the head of Bank of the United States "tightened up credit, recalled loans and generally slowed down the American economy" [David C. Whitney, The American Presidents, Guild America, New York, 1975, p75], the population was angry with the government. Andrew Jackson told the people:

"Go to Nicholas Biddle."

Until the general public understands who is really in the driving seat and which international interests the drivers are themselves serving, the pantomime called democratic process which fuels the vast majority of political and economic weblogs remains a mere sideshow, one which distracts our attention from what is really going down.

This is the road to recession, the crash and the next war and there's not a damned thing any of us can do as long as people are looking every which way but at the main culprits.

[statism] and the people suffer again

Nicolas Sarkozy went on holiday, with his home owners mortgage relief package in place and ready to sign "when he returns to the Elysée next week."

“This tax break, I have promised it . . . and it will apply to all loans,” he had said.

But the French Constitutional Council, which rules on the validity of laws passed by parliament, said existing homeowners should not benefit from the measure, arguing that the tax break was meant to target people who have yet to get on the property ladder.

Firstly, a non-elected body decides that the bulk of the French populace will not get some relief, just when the world economy is twitchy and it would have been of most benefit in riding through the rough patch and when the elected President with a clear mandate promised it.

Secondly, how is this law invalid? In which way is mortgage relief unconstitutional?

Thirdly, short-termism like this, which points to 0.3 per cent GDP growth in the second quarter and employment figures showing virtual zero growth, ignores the principle of trading your way out of trouble.

Sarkozy was elected on a clear platform as stated above. Either he is the ultimate cynic, knowing full well the Council would strike this down and transferring the onus to them, hoping for an outcry and the consequent restriction of the Council's further powers, leading to more autocratic rule or else it is a genuine slap in the face for the French people.

Which brings us back to first principles again. The French people want something - a strong economy and a high standard of living, along with the other major economies. They don't have it. They elected Sarkozy to get it but an unelected body stuck its oar in and stopped it.

The dead hand of either Statism, Socialism or whatever your political proclivities name it.

[google reader] fabulous stuff

So pleased - converted all my sidebars to Reader today and went through 150 blogs in 3 hours, commenting on about 100 and not one or two worders either unless I planned it that way.

That has infinitely sped up the process but now I have to get Matt Wardman, Shades and the Thunderdragon to get me to the next stage. Possibly this OPEC country thing - is it OPML?

[names] sweet smelling roses

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet [Will the Bard, 1594]

The Pedant-General in Ordinary, to give Cleanthes his full title, is a fine, upstanding, curmudgeonly chap by his lights [except from his insane ideas on intelligent design which all right thinking people know to be true] and he rightly points out, initially quoting a fellow blogger:

“Do we want a Prime Minister named Kevin?”

Quite. I recall in the dim and distant past a threat to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. Cabinet Ministers Tebbit and Fowler were both touted as challengers, apparently seriously. My instant reaction, correctly for once, was to dismiss the entire story as nonsense.

Britain in the 1980s was simply not ready for a Prime Minister called “Norman”…

Could a man named Balls [as in got me by the] ever become PM? Could Howard Brush Dean ever be President? How about a local candidate named Slartibartfast?

Recently, officials at the Cornwall Record Office in England (motto: “We’re called Cornwall, we know about strange names”) searched through birth, death, and marriage records dating as far back as the 16th century and found Abraham Thunderwolff, Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane, Philadelphia Bunnyface, and Offspring Gurney.

But why need names be weird? What about names designed to elevate you to high office? Here are five male English names and I've done that to eliminate choice based on gender or nationality. Which of these would you be more inclined to place your trust in, as leader?

1. Franklin James

2. John Smith

3. Uriah Beckett

4. Tersel Badcock

5. Steve Casey

Sometimes the association of the name is offputting. Which of these would you immediately reject?

1. Manson Hume

2. Blair Gordon

3. Adolph Barlow

4. Obama Fleming

5. Napoleon Jamison

Lastly, what would you name your new baby?

Raquelle? Roy? Roxy? Rock? How about Charlotte?

Slartibartfast

[compulsion] tool of the new tolerance

Ruthie Malhotra

Years ago, in the Academic Days, I had to attend a teachers' conference, I think in Newark, can't remember. The highlight was going to be a young girl who'd been making big waves over student's rights and she'd become some sort of cause celebre in her own lunchtime.

Typical male, when I first saw her diminutive figure on the other side of the auditorium in her smart jacket, I thought, "Hmmm. Nice." Then the assessment was progressively revised downwards as she clearly had an adoring entourage who were hanging on every utterance and I couldn't help but think:

"Hey, hang on a minute - she's 17 if she's a day. Bright- yes, able to communicate - reputedly, physically attractive - undoubtedly but she's still a kid. A kid with an idea but still a kid. Oh well, let's listen to her."

Well, it was appalling. She strode to the stage like royalty, waited till someone adjusted the mike downwards and then launched into such an incoherent torrent of invective against all teachers, all heads, all parents - in fact any with the temerity to harbour a difference of opinion with her but the worst of it was that she was virtually inarticulate with rage.

Two years ago, over here, I was privately teaching a very similar young lady. As I zeroed in on her weakness - numbers and kept asking her questions, she first went red, then exploded, flinging her pen across the room and sitting rigidly, staring straight ahead. She'd come to me with a reputation as a star.

What was the connection? Apart from lack of self control, it was a sort of trouble making penchant. I think it hardly mattered what the cause was - if there was a cause, she was the one at hand to act without respect no matter how august the personage. If it was someone in authority, this was red rag to a bull.

So to America. The clarion call from the Front Page announced:

When Ruth Malhotra told her college professor she planned to miss a class to attend a conservative political conference, the professor wasn't happy. You're just going to fail my class," she said the instructor told her.

What Ms Malhotra skipped over was the provocative tone in her voice as she "told", not "asked" the professor for leave. Actually she did highlight, for the world, an appalling state of affairs in colleges of higher learning - just ask Norman Geras about the infestation of socialists and political correctness in universities today - it's pretty dire, as Sisu brought to our attention.

The conservatives in congress got to hear about it and:

They have proposed a measure that would encourage colleges to present dissenting sources and viewpoints in the classroom and to promote intellectual pluralism in selecting outside speakers and financing student activities.

Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House subcommittee in charge of the reauthorization bill, said the proposals are designed to send a message to liberal academic officials: "You're using the school in many cases to brainwash and not to educate."

No arguments there. On campus, there's no choice - it's enforced by the thought police. You don't accept the indecency - you fail your course, as Ms Malhotra did. You refuse to admit that gays can be "married" and they incarcerate you. You dare speak of old values and you're labelled a nazi [they do love invoking that word, don't they?]

College administrators counter that the legislation marks an unprecedented and unjustified attempt by Congress to control college curricula.

Natch.

Now admittedly, Ruthie was a little madam, a little provocateur with an acid tongue and the ability to send her targets apoplectic and further to this, she was actually lapping up the notoriety and when I went to her site, she offered her e-mail and told us to "contact me - go on - you know you want to."

Her pronouncements on the gay pretence at marriage and on abortion were designed to get the lefties up in arms - just read the web denunciations of Nazi Fascist Ruthie.

These same people who write these generally misspelt and ungrammatical denunciations are the very ones preaching the religion of tolerance and respect of course. Calm measured language and argument versus hysteria, they argue. Such as this threat to our Ruthie:

This Valentine’s Day, you cannot attack gay marriage. It is about love and you are about hate.

This Valentine’s Day, you cannot condemn a woman’s choice. It is about love and you are about hate.

This Valentine’ Day, you cannot protest the Vagina Monologues. It is about love and you are about hate.

No, this Valentine’s Day, you will be Raped. Sex is about love and through it you will experience hate. I cannot wait.

Nice people, the tolerant left.

Now, on the Vagina Monologues, a play that has been trotted around 650 campuses for the kids to enforcedly view, Debra Rae has this to say:

Since then, the Monologues have become all the rage on campuses around the world with dozens of professors, administrators, and students participating as cast. In order to promote this Obie-winning play, women's studies representatives parade around college campuses in six-foot-tall costumes of women's private parts.

The central issue which Ruthie raised was the compulsion. When admins and staff exhort kids to attend such things, then something is deeply sicko. Young people will always be less offended by things the older generation finds reprehensible so the issue isn't shock. It's the compulsion the so-called tolerant free-thinkers love to utilize to impose their way without the slightest awareness of what they're actually doing.

Except of course for the deep cynicism of those who know full well and are laughing up their sleeves. Welcome to the decade where, on a clear day, you can see the decency bar lowered.

The appropriately named Faust, who has Harvard in thrall

[pub philosopher] fair bit of this going on lately

Spare a thought for Steve today, if you will.

[homelessness] there but for the grace …

Whenever I briefly glimpse this topic, I shudder. At the keyboard of my computer now, surely I'm lightyears from it.

But am I?

Father David Holdcroft, refuge organizer, describes the common elements connecting the homeless, as he sees them:

Few had married. Mothers, in the case of the men, sometimes figured strongly in their lives, but fathers were almost universally absent, emotionally distant or violent. Always there were deep feelings of rejection associated with family.

Along with rejection there was always a sense of displacement, a sense that life was not where it should have been, that the normal growth and development of life had been radically interrupted by something or someone. Such interruptions are surely relatively common but, in the case of the homeless, there had been no recovery, no resumption of a "normal" life.

"Normal growth and development of life had been radically interrupted." "A sense of displacement." I've read the stats on mental illness, cost of housing, governmental displacement of populations such as the one coming up in the next five years and so on.

Seems to me that intellect plays a huge part - reasoning power. For example, here in the fSU, everyday can be your last and that's them telling me that. Me - I still have vestiges of that implicit western faith that things can never go suddenly awry in one's station.

It's not so. I can be on the street within a month but, I say to my friend: "We're in demand, you and I; we'd always find a place."

He looks quizzically and murmurs: "Pok'a," meaning "for now".

And he's right. Gradual loss of memory, slight eccentricities starting to appear, a few wrong moves, angry reactions and our word-of-mouth clientele melts away with our reputation. Reputation is everything in this country, my friend says.

If you don't have the extended family, then you need a network of well-placed connections. Not necessarily highly placed but well-placed, according to needs. Every single person here survives only on those connections. Family is dependent. It doesn't save the man and this is still a patriarchal society.

Truth is, I'm dislocated. There are no roots here and my roots in Britain and Australia have withered and died away. There are still a few former friends over there. So here I currently am, enjoying a tenuous status out of proportion to my true state but I only need to annoy one highly placed official and I'm blackballed.

That's the end of food on the table and no family to throw you any crumbs. Suddenly, regulations which once passed you by now crowd in on you and life doesn't bear thnking about. You can't survive on the street here without both intellect and language, the latter equally important .

The beggars you see at the crossroads are mafia run - the cash goes to the man in black and the beggar gets some soup to drink. You do not want to be in that situation, any more than in a London dole queue with a landlord beating on the door every Friday for the exorbitant rent.

The only solution is to trust the promise of the Lord that you'll be looked after but it also helps to think laterally. Instead of descending to the street - fly to Canada or Australia, all documentation in order and the last of the money at the ready. Then you can use your wherewithal, your ability to start up again.

As long as you have that ability of course. Age first kills the resolve, then the health and finally the reasoning power. Then you're gone. Interesting article I read, which challenges:

Define Homeless: 'An inadequate experience of connectedness with family and or community.' This fact is now recognized by Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

When I see the poor unfortunates on the street denied even basic hygiene, Father Holdcroft's view comes home that there can be intellect there, a sort of self-worth, even past achievements but that there is always some sort of dislocation, a missing link.

There, but for the Grace of G-d, go I.

Of course I have another cunning plan ...

[Crossposted at Tiberius Gracchus' site]

[sir james beiggelschwarz] forgotten 45th anniversary

Yvette Carte-Blanche negotiates the price with Beiggels

Squadron-Leader Sir James Beiggelschwarz of Straf-Jerry was born in May, 1899, in Lucknow, India. He joined the Rifle Regiment at 17 but realizing it was a pratty thing to do, instead joined the Royal Flying Corps.

Flying the Sopwith Camel, he distinguished himself as a right nutter, including tap dancing stunts on his right wing in top hat and accordingly was awarded the DSO and MC which prolonged the period before his demise as the latter gong may not be awarded posthumously.

Speaking fluent French and German, he fell in love with the femme fatale Marie Janis, later infiltrating the former SU to rescue her, speaking fluent Russian and Ukrainian, discovering she had expired in the year 1962, it transpiring that she had written a scathing series of stories about his alleged affairs with his cousin Algy and Ginger Rogers - these allegations being substantially untrue.

Beiggles in prattier days

Affaires were the stuff of life to Beiggels, working his way through a string of fictional lovers, the majority female, including the eccentric French Resistance deserter Yvette Carte-Blanche, who caused severe bruising to his cheeks owing to her idiosyncratic lovemaking positions.

Thereafter accused of a "plummy", autocratic manner of speaking, he never had the heart to set the record straight and "did a Coleridge", running off to join the maqui-de-sards but took the wrong turn and instead found himself highly placed, within two months, in the milice, revelling in the sobriquet Haut Milicard, to the bemusement of his fellow nazis.

Largely through the efforts of Jean Moulin, who went on to coordinate the CNR, he was spirited out of France but not before an affaire with the grocer's daughter Margarita Hilde de Chaumiste who spoke fluent English and later anglicized her name around the time of the Guerre des Malvinas.

As she walked away from him following a flare up over yet another rendezvous with Algy and Ginger, she was reputed to have snapped, over her shoulder: "The lady's not for turning," a strangely pointless utterance and one which had been rehearsed for some weeks.

His rejoinder: "If it's good enough for Kim and Guy, it's good enough for me," simply confused the plot and brought this short Wiki bio to an abrupt end.

Resistance leader Margarita Hilde de Chaumiste in later years

Isn't the Blogosphere wonderful? There's a follow up here by Jocko which really must be perused...