[sitemeter] were you attacked last night?

Update on the update: On the same day I reported the problem, a real human being at Sitemeter replied and gave a full explanation for what had happened and their intention to remedy the hit on my stats from somewhere. They then promptly did that. Would that every large organization could act like this. Most impressive.

Update: E-mail seems to be down too. Notifications from blogs are arriving but not direct mail. Maybe you could test mail me to see.

If you're getting "permanent failure" messages, use:

nourishingobscurityatgmaildotcom .

Readers - great dislocation today.

Firstly, they're putting in cable and due to arrive any minute. Then there were last night's problems. Went to bed early [heavy day today] and have just seen an e-mail now saying the person tried to contact me many times.

Went to Sitemeter and my stats were not completely removed but from Saturday to Monday, reduced to zero, zero and twenty a day uniques respectively. Now I know they were bumper on Saturday and Sunday because I saw them, didn't see Monday's final total but knew it was not bad at 21:00, London time.

Between then and now, something happened. Either everyone's stats were attacked or just mine. I'd assume everyone's but if they were just mine, well, it might be related to the Mac changeover but I can't see it - Sitemeter is not dependent on that.

There is another expanation and it's understandable, given the things which have appeared on my site lately. Wonder they didn't stymie me completely, really.

Unfortunately, RL calls now so will sort all this out later.

[mary celeste] modern version with a twist

Unfortunately, the link for this story came from my e-mail provider and was lost in a power shutdown today. Still, it bears a resemblance to the Mary Celeste tale in some aspects and is of some interest.

October 14, 2007 [by Todd Lewin, maildotcom]:

Kirby Logan Archer, by the age of 35, had been described as a loner, a romantic, a sensitive son, a vindictive husband, a loving father, a gay man. He went AWOL four years ago from the military police, receiving an "other-than-honorable" discharge.

By the time a court had issued a warrant for his arrest for theft from his work, Archer had fled the state. His current wife described him in glowing terms, his former wife the opposite. He was at this time also the subject of a child molestation investigation and still is.

For nearly eight months, Archer lay low then surfaced in the Miami area, spending time with a 19-year-old Cuban immigrant with a weight lifter's torso and a close-cropped, dark beard: Guillermo Zarabozo, sociable, respectful, well-behaved, living with his mother, sister, stepfather and pet dog in a second-floor walkup.

But if Zarabozo got along so well with his neighbors, why did he install a video surveillance camera in the hall outside of his family's apartment? Archer and Zarabozo both spoke fluent Spanish and had lived in Cuba; both were fastidious, very attentive to their physiques, and well-trained in the use of handguns.

On a breezy Saturday, the last day of summer, both boarded the Joe Cool, a 47' sports cruiser, telling the first mate, Sammy Kairy,they wanted a ride to Bimini to meet up with a couple of lovely young ladies. It would be a one-way trip.

It was still the slow season for chartering. The vessel's owner, Jeff Branam, helped carry their luggage aboard next day for the trip, telling them the trip would set them back $4,000.

With little more than a nod, Archer pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket, peeled off 40 $100 notes, and held them out. Why didn't they just take a plane? Branam asked. A one-way ticket would cost $150, tops.

Haven't got my passport, Archer told him. Girlfriend packed it in her luggage and went on ahead. She's going to meet us at the dock. Branam took the money.

About 4:30 p.m. Saturday, under sunny skies, the Joe Cool sailed into the light chop of Biscayne Bay, on its first-ever charter to the Bahamas with the two passengers, the captain and his wife and the crew.

The Joe Cool was expected to return the following noon to prepare for a Monday charter. By 4 p.m. that Sunday, with no word from his nephew, Jeff Branam contacted the Coast Guard. Within two hours, the sport fisher was spotted, drifting 160 miles south of Bimini, on the Cay Sal Banks -- just a short sail from Cuba.

Coast Guard officers boarded the vessel, finding it "in disarray." Investigators discovered six marijuana cigarettes, a cellular telephone, luggage, cameras, a laptop computer, Zarabozo's Florida ID card, a small key, four spent shell casings -- and blood in the stern and cabin. The boat's navigational equipment and electronics had been left untouched, along with some expensive fishing gear. But they found no life raft, no guns, no bullets or slugs.

And no bodies.

The boat's Global Positioning System indicated the Joe Cool had started off heading due east toward Bimini. Then, halfway to its destination, it had veered 190 degrees south. Why the drastic change in course, which pointed straight toward Cuba?

Two cutters, a C-130 plane, a P-3 Orion patrol plane and helicopters swept the Gulf Stream, searching more than 10,000 square miles. On foot, searchers checked out dozens of small, uninhabited cays.

Still they found no crew.

They did, however, spot a life raft, drifting northward with the Gulf Stream current. In it were Archer and Zarabozo, with a supply of water, their luggage, a blow gun, darts, several knives, and 22 $100 bills.

During the trip back, Zarabozo told investigators that pirates had hijacked the Joe Cool. They shot the captain dead and then killed his wife the same way "because she was hysterical." The hijackers then ordered the remaining crew to throw the bodies overboard, shooting them, too, when they refused, he said.

When the pirates told him to dump the bodies, Zarabozo said he complied and, at gunpoint, cleaned the boat. Then, he claimed, the invaders commandeered the vessel and sailed it south until it ran out of fuel. Ultimately, a third boat picked up the hijackers, who spared the two of them.

Except:

--No radio transmissions or maydays had come from the boat. There was a "distress" button on the VHF radio, which, when pressed, would send the Coast Guard the sport fisher's position.

--Four spent shell casings had stamps matching ammunition purchased by Zarabozo in February.

--There were no scratches or marks on the Joe Cool's hull, typically left by a boarding vessel.

--Though Archer and Zarabozo say they were going to rendezvous with girlfriends on Bimini, no women have come forward.

--Although the survivors told investigators the killings occurred on the boat's exterior deck, human blood and three of the four shell casings were found inside, in the main cabin.

--Cuba, just beyond where the men were picked up, has no extradition treaty with the U.S.; that fact led Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Tsai to say in court that Archer and Zarabozo were attempting "a one-way trip out of the country."

Still, without a murder weapon, a confession, bodies, bullets -- or any witnesses beyond the accused -- proving that Archer and Zarabozo plotted and committed first-degree murder won't be easy, veteran defense lawyers say.

This is not the Joe Cool but I imagine the fishing boat, at those prices and with those passengers, would have looked much different to the one below.

[exclusivity] pride, ambition and humility

Pride is a fascinating word - it encompasses the mother who sees her child walk for the first time and at the other end of the spectrum, Hitler, as he did a jig when learning of the latest allied casualties and the annexing of a new outpost of the Reich.

We're proud of Blogpower, the way it's grown and of being mentioned in the Iain Dale Blogging Guide. Pride prevents a couple reconciling [don't sleep in the subway, darling] and keeps Montague and Capulet in an endless loop of wastage, of energy, humanity and lives.

Pride has crossed the line, IMHO, when it tends to exclusivity. I was public school educated [meaning private, to the non-Brits] and that's a training ground for unstated but assumed place in society; there've been other landmarks along the way as well.

I seem to get on best with both clubbable people and with tradesmen. I do worst with ambitious middle management, people clawing their way to the top, something which never interests me until the opportunity goes begging and then I shift up a gear.

The biggest problems with exclusivity are that it gives people airs and the chance to look down their noses at others whilst assuring inverse snobs that all well-educated people are guillotinable; it enslaves the exclusivity lovers to patronage and fitting in with the plans of those who bestow the largesse and it also slowly inures the hopeful to the sufferings of others, as they themselves start apportioning the largesse [give them cake to eat].

Exclusivity taps into a deep-seated need to be recognized - hence web awards and stats checking. Have to smile when some of those who tell us not to worry about stats have the whole game scientifically down pat and anxiously concern themselves with multiple statistical measurement of their own blogs whilst assuming an air of: "Stats? I can take them or leave them".

Exclusivity taps into the need to look down one's nose a little or a lot. Bill Bryson wrote of some stupid people he met who's delight was to be able to look down their noses at others they themselves discovered who were "even more stupid than they were".

My friend and I over here enjoy a niche market but the tendency to be overly proud of our position is the final step before the fall, IMHO. Once the nose goes into the air, the clients melt away and patrons think: "Ah ha, a bit above himself now, isn't he?"

It's hard to keep focussed, to accept one's no better or worse but has had some things fall into place at the right time and it is good when things fall into place.

Yet another problem with exclusivity is that it marginalizes others - Guido is an example of someone who was marginalized by certain elements in the parliamentary establishment way back when and then hit back so that he had to be taken into account as one of the top bloggers in the country. His readership is no accident.

I defend to the death the right of clubs to exist, to make their own rules and not to be forced by government to admit certain sections of society who are in fashion at the time.

But there are clubs and clubs. I once had to evict a couple from a house I'd rented out to them - it was messy and the two of them were not far from animals in their behaviour.

They'd trashed the house, warped the main shelving unit [with inch thick shelves] and left uncollected rubbish from weeks before plus empty bottles. I noticed two letters addressed to them along with the inevitable bills - both letters were from "The Young Sophisticates Club" - I tell you no lie here and am not bending it in the slightest.

I wrote back to the club about these two members.

At the other end of the spectrum is the allure of the Club of Movers and Shakers, on whose stroke of the pen the misery of many hundreds of thousands depends.

The majority I knew were not of this ilk but there was a sizeable section who were, who'd cut their eye-teeth on exclusivity and the boat club had to finally crack down on their behaviour, which lacked of any respect whatever - was there ever a stink over that and the secretary had to resign.

I don't know - there has to be some middle ground somewhere and I can't seem to find it.

[venezia] the romance or the pong

Reuters reports:

In Piazza San Marco, seven women have been deployed by the lagoon city to improve decorum and cleanliness in the square Napoleon called "the drawing room of Europe".

Since June, tourists cannot eat their own food or walk around bare-chested. Signs warning of fines have been plastered on bins as well as canal water bus stops, and the stewards - dressed in special T-shirts - give out leaflets telling tourists where they can have their picnics.

In early August, more than 100 tourists were given 25 euro fines, according to news agency ANSA. One of the stewards, Giovanna, said:

"People usually say they didn't know. We advise them that there is a picnic area where they can go, we do not want them to get angry - usually the reaction is positive but there are times when we've had to make calls [for back-up]."

But in a city where a simple breakfast of coffee and a croissant can cost over 5 euros - more than double the rate in Milan - many day-trippers bring their own food or opt for take-away refreshments.

"There were people … who mistook the Grand Canal for a beach," the council's Augusto Salvadori, in charge of tourism and the city's image, said."Venice is a city of art and a city that belongs to the world, guests are welcome - but Venice has to be respected."

Mario Martini, who sells grain to feed pigeons, which pose their own problem in Saint Mark's Square, thinks the stewards are good for the city's image but one tourist grumbled: "They don't want it to be scruffy but maybe they could just provide more bins."

Let me see - 20 million tourists, at 5 euros a snack, not counting the fines - hmmm, yes, I'd want to "clean up the city's image" too.

And it's not as if Venezia has a history of freedom la dolce vita either - the Ponte dei Sospiri is testimony to a tradition of prisonhood and torture, if not the actuality.

Actually, I believe all these legends about kissing under bridges, kissing the Blarney Stone and so on. I've done the latter but only visited the former - so clearly time for a poem:

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I sniffed from out the wave her smells rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their pungent wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice held her nose in state Thron'd on her hundred isles!II

Remember, it's not the smell you go for - it's the romance ...

[new mac] second post

The advantages sneak up on you but first the nuisances:

Some really annoying aspects are that there is no inbuilt Word programme - you have to buy it separately, which I find mean-spirited when you've paid this sort of money for a notebook, no Fine Reader type scanning facility and no ACD See style graphics editor - all of which I desperately need both in RL and in blogging.

This seems, to me, to be an incredible oversight on the part of Apple.

To make way for a really quite excellent stereo sound system, the keyboard is the contracted kind from the lesser machines and this involves quite severely pushing hands together in order to type anything.

Clearly Apple don't envisage you doing anything except spreadsheets, music and photos.

Some of us with increasing eyesight problems find the tiny script size difficult to read and though it is possible to go through a three step menu procedure of making it a little larger, there's no real facility for large script which can be viewed by default - Mac is obviously for younger people with good eyesight.

Touchpads are slow, I'm just about up to speed on the one finger, two finger and bar system and yet it is slower than mouse - annoyingly so.

Safari is not a good web facility compared to Firefox but Firefox only partially works and Blogger works even less well. For example, it's not possible to "justify" text using the Mac and as my blog layout depends on this, it's a pain.

So is there anything good?

Well, it does what it does well. Snappy navigation, crisp screen resolution, ultra-fast manoeuvering - all of these are good, along with the Magsafe power cord which is classy. The Airport remote internet is superb and apart from the keyboard, the ergonomics are top notch.

I have a pair of excellent external speakers, very old now but still producing - JS Digital Series - and when they click into the Mac, the whole effect is of a very professional, sharp and enormously powerful setup.

But the strength is in the 2007 Mac OS X 10.4.8 system [now superseded] and it's clear that everything, absolutely everything, has been thought out to the last molecule. Things close down when they should, reboot, light up, the internet comes on, as if by magic, exactly when needed - it's difficult to put into words.

Last night I thought I'd go to bed with the i-tunes playing. The spreadsheet was useful and clear and the Mac was recording my usage and presenting things to be heard in priority order according to previous patterns which, as it was first time, was mightily impressive.

With the inbuilt speakers and equalizer configured, the screen went to high resolution screen saver and it was a delight. The Navbar is exactly the right size and contains exactly what you need and no more but if you want, it's all quickly accessible.

It judges my ability level and adjusts for it.

Mac is for real users and the advantages open up as you go along and discover things, IMHO but you become a real user so quickly it's amazing. So yes, some very annoying aspects but the overall feeling is that you're getting your money's worth in no uncertain fashion.

More updates down the track.

[hegemony] just one of four current battles

An earlier 1952 map of the division of the world, one of a number of scenarios presented to government. Most know that governments don't think for themselves - they accept advice from qangos such as this one.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, there's a global cold war in its early stages and it has been on the drawing boards for quite some time, depending for its implementation and for the supposed defence of the various players, on alliances:

October 28, 1939 John Foster Dulles [later U.S. Secretary of State] proposed that America lead the transition to a new order of less independent, semi-sovereign states bound together by a league or federal union.

July 1948 - Sir Harold Butler, in the CFR's "Foreign Affairs," asks: "How far can the life of nations, which for centuries have thought of themselves as distinct and unique, be merged with the life of other nations? How far are they prepared to sacrifice a part of their sovereignty without which there can be no effective economic or political union?"

Actually, it's a smokescreen for the real agenda of the hidden power referred to by Woodrow Wilson and their agenda is supposedly the destruction of the intelligentsia and the affluent middle class, in favour of a form of serfdom for 85% of the population [see Friedman's thesis] and unelected rule by "elements in the major centres".

1966 - Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown, authors "Tragedy and Hope" in which he states: "There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the Communists act.

In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records.

I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."

The players in the smokescreen conflicts visible to the world [Cold War, World Wars 1 & 2, Vietnam etc.] currently comprise U.S.A/Canada/Mexico on one team, the EU on another and Russia/China on another.

Japan must decide where it is in all this, as must Britain. The Islamic world is a fourth player and the small nations can align themselves as they wish.

Britain therefore is critical to the issue because it can unbalance the hegemony by leaning towards one camp or the other and the name of the game is hegemony here.

Thus the utter shock to the U.S. by the recent EU move to circumvent the U.S. plan to control the net and at the same time to place it under government control, which in turn means "under the control of the elements who control the unaccountable EU":

"It's a very shocking and profound change of the EU's position," said David Gross, the State Department official in charge of America's international communications policy. "The EU's proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet."

Of course, to a Joe Blogger, it might be a surprise to discover that anyone is actually trying to control the net and putting programmes in place to do so. How far behind the times is Joe?

A little snippet from our own nation here is that since Microsoft's invasion last year [first time in any meaningful way], police have been carrying out raids on all computer hardware and software sellers, taking their harddrives and prosecuting anyone with non-registered software.

The significance is not in the cooperative effort to eliminate computer piracy but that there is such co-operation at all at the corporate level, given the new nationalist stance at governmental level.

Michael Pillsbury, of the National Defense University Press, wrote of China's own macro-strategies:

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), wrote 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 our ancient ancestors and today has a radiance even more resplendent."

The director of research at the General Staff Department of the People's Liberation Army published six volumes of studies on ancient statecraft in 1996 that contained specific advice on how to comprehend the current and future security environment.

An essential aspect of this assessment is to determine the rank order of the power held by the various warring states. Although today's Chinese concept of Comprehensive National Power (CNP) was invented in the early 1980s, it originally stemmed from traditional military philosophy.

States which rise too fast suffer attack, dismemberment, and even complete extinction. Chinese strategic policy has always been to form a coalition that stands for several decades against the predatory hegemon of the time.

The solution is in alliances and an examination of Russia's recent natural reserves alliances with China makes interesting reading.

Deng Xiaoping wrote: China must "hide brightness and nourish obscurity," or as Beijing interprets it: "to bide our time and build up our capabilities" and to "yield on small issues with the long term in mind."

Liu Jinghua, of CASS, has warned that by 2020, the policy of "concealing abilities and biding time" will not be sufficient and "once the flood begins, we must have a Great Wall which cannot collapse."

One part of this Great Wall must be a partnership with Russia, to defeat Western containment, attempted by restricting access to capital markets and technology, promoting Western values and using military power " as the core" against China.

So, to draw all this together, there are four separate battles going on:

1. The surface parliamentary and presidential battle which is largely irrelevant in terms of who is the puppet at the top and not of great interest to me personally;

2. The "more real" battle to shore up the continental power bases in the war for hegemony which is very much part of the Nietszchian style of perpetual conflict and the Chinese "warring states and glorious blood" scenario which is Euphemi-speak for thousands of dead young people in mud and rain, dislocated families, rape, atrocities, cruelty but still, a contrived battle;

3. The limits of the underlying temporal agenda which is to create a global state of feudalism to enable the Enlightened Masters to carry out their own Ancient and Sacred bestial ends of subjugating the lower echelons of humanity, i.e. the lower 85%;

4. The final agenda which you can read in Ephesians 6:12 [and it's largely irrelevant whether we accept this or not as there's not much any of us can do against this sort of power].

On the off chance that you do see the scenario along these lines, the obvious question is what can be done. On a macro-level, zilch, zero - it's all factored in.

On a micro-level, some things and this blog has been urging people to do certain things to cut off the power supply to the juggernaut, e.g. eliminating credit and debt and rediscovering spiritual roots which empower the individual but it would only work on a mass basis.

A perfect example is the monks who resisted and are now incarcerated, naked and being tortured in Burma. They provided the spark but self-interest, self-preservation and lack of leadership of a good kind prevented the nation taking up the cudgels and using them.

As for the rest of the world, it made noises about sanctions and the rest of us held a non-blogging day.

Burma