[dipnote] blog with a difference

Little message just arrived from the U.S. State Department re my post on them:

Granted, we're new at this, but just ask that you give the blog a chance. It's an open forum where you can actually discuss foreign policy issues with State Department officials and fellow bloggers. The question of the week this week is "What will life in Cuba be like after Castro?"

They’re referring, of course, to Dipnote, the new State Department blog which opened on September 25th - rivetting stuff. Perhaps they’re right and we’ve been a bit hasty. Shall we go over and join the forum?

The State Department blog is here if you're brave.

[winter approacheth] billowing clouds

We're not yet at the stage in the photo but we have definitely made a quantum shift.

The big tree downstairs outside of my window has now lost the last of its leaves and the temperature which had been a balmy 4 degrees was now a tad below zero at dawn.

Coupled with this was a sky I can only describe as "billowing" and ominous in it's dark-greyness. It threatens to snow, in other words.

I dearly hope it does because without the snow, the plummeting temperatures are bleak and suicidal and people's moods are so low - perhaps "grim" is a better word.

Come the snow and everything is fairyland and the sky even seems to brighten. Colours seem to become more vivid, the beautiful hush comes over the land, dampening car and industrial noise and it affords respite from life's problems.

A quick glance now and the temperature has rocketed up to 2 degrees. Who knows, it might make the balmy 4 yet.

And as for that looming milestone, I'm now a tantalizing 34 away from it. So near and yet so far.

[treaty] dishonesty in high places

Mr Giscard d'Estaing says the "proposed institutional reforms" of the rejected constitution can still be found in the new treaty.

The authors of the new treaty, he says, have taken the original draft constitution and "blown it apart into separate elements". They have then "re-attached them, one by one, to existing treaties".

Changes to the original constitution - such as jettisoning references to a European flag and anthem - were made to "head off any threat of referenda", Mr Giscard d'Estaing says. The EU Reform Treaty was agreed earlier this month at a summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

Four things:

1. Why did it take until now for the BBC to carry this self-evident truth?

2. Does this not now show that the EU has been acting dishonestly and contrary to the wishes of the people in two of the strongest members – France and Britain?

3. Do you realize that because of the Lisbon accords, what was Britain will be EU post-2009?

4. What can be done about it?

[political bloggers] failing to connect the dots

Political bloggers may be driving themselves to exhaustion but are they too narrowly channeled?

Just been round to various blogs and one thing is painfully obvious – political blogs are islands and political bloggers run in well worn grooves.

It’s exasperating to see bloggers persisting in pushing the same narrow focus, no matter how correct it is and flatly refusing to either research outside the style of journals they use as their primary sources or failing to take the macro-view into account.

For example, one blogger keeps asking: “Why do we need a stepping stone to an English Parliament?”

Well clearly because there isn’t going to be an English Parliament whilst Brown is there and Brown needs breathing space. How would I know this? Look at Part 3 of the micro-control article and the links and a possible answer is there. At least it's worth considering, which I don't see major bloggers doing.

And why don't we see this sort of thing - three questions for CP? Why are the big boys not covering it?

The regions are being beefed up - this is not even in dispute and CP is moving into positions of influence within local areas. The focus is on RDAs - they flew the regional assembly kite and now it’s occurring by the back door, just as the Treaty is.

Now why would the DTI have altered its website and included regionalization? Why would CP be training people hell for leather in local areas such as the South West to assume command “beyond authority” as they put it? They are doing that – follow the relevant links.

Look – here is a video of Diversity Training at Ian Parker’s site plus his comment:

Diversity training has had to be forced on companies because there are no actual benefits to be derived from it. Were this not the case organisations would already have recognised the competitive benefits and implemented their own diversity programs, without the need for government legislation.

Why are the major bloggers not picking up on these things? Where are they? Tied up in Polly Toynbee and David Milliband. Even Mr. Eugenides touches on the “what” all right and well done but does not get into the “why” or “what is going to happen as a consequence?”

"Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty … are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties," Mr Giscard d'Estaing said.

The former chairman of the European Convention - the body of over a hundred politicians that drafted the 2004 EU constitution – suggests the new more complicated layout was only to avoid putting the treaty to a referendum.

Ignoring the body of evidence out there from the more unorthodox sources, Iain Dale refers to training for something not going to happen:

This sort of training course teaches them debating skills, media skills and how to campaign. It may sound dull to those not involved in the political process, but this sort of thing is vital for young people from all parties if they are to acquire the skillset to become our politicians of the future.

There are going to be no “conservative leaders” because it goes straight from Britain to the EU Treaty regions. We must begin to look more broadly at the whole frame, such as Dizzy did:

What's important to point out here is this is not about saying you think Gordon Brown and the Labour Government are secretly trying to enslave us all in an Orwellian nightmare with the ultimate aim of destroying democracy. No, this is about asking whether the proposal passes the Stalin Test. Would someone like Stalin have found a system like this useful?

So, given that Dizzy is not talking through his hat, then what are the possible consequences of this tightening of restrictions even on people’s movement? A possible answer is via Sackerson, where Tony Allison says, about the peak oil consequences:

For example, we could see a re-birth in local farming and manufacturing, as food and industrial products become exceedingly expensive to transport.

Of course we’re going to – the population is being increasingly made to remain local. Still with Sackerson, Robert McHugh says of the squeeze on the bourgeoisie:

The Middle Class is getting annihilated from this silent event. Incomes are not keeping up. This was done because this administration “equates stock market success with economic success and has directed their efforts to drive up equities at literally any cost,” to quote one of our subscribers.

Can anyone see where this thing is going? Yep, the middle class is about to go bust and those holding gold are sitting pretty:

Charles Merrill, a relation of the Merrill Lynch founder, has become a gold squirrel.

And other big boys who are in the know?

… up to 25% of M&A deals had some dodgy looking share deals associated with them in the past few years ...

Joining the dots – that’s what is necessary here. Think tanks with data from a variety of sources coming in and bloggers combining to sift through it all and get the whole picture.

By the way, was informed today that one of my irregular sources was visited by CP today for 3 hours 59 mins 46 secs and he asked:

Now, do these people waste tax-payers money? :)

[housekeeping] useless post

Yesterday was my highest day for uniques ever, despite it being a bad day personally. At the same time, it was my lowest number of fellow bloggers visiting since last September, 2006.

Make that one out!

Also, it appears my personal milestone [not traffic by the way] is getting mighty close and might even be this week! Very excited by this - I've just had a peep now but will have to work doubly hard to get over the line.

[promiscuity] has zero to do with the logos

Bloggers, on the whole, are not a particularly religious bunch and a glance through this blog also finds no overt religion.

What it does find is a sense of right and wrong, which is what the political blogger is into – fisking is a blogging term, after all. So just as the libertarian is experienced at sniffing out political humbug, won’t you give the Christian credit for sniffing out moral humbug?

This blogger does not think the Christian has a mortgage on truth or on constructive social values – there are many who can see the right way to live but it is true that he perhaps focuses on the personally moral far more than the average citizen.

There is a key passage in the gospels and if we can forgive the quaint language of yesteryear, the general idea is clear enough:

15: Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16: Ye shall know them by their fruits.

And further down:

20: Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

This has always been the thorn in the side of Christianity – its exponents who interpret scriptural passages and put constructs on them as is their wont - and their wont is mostly to do with their own agenda.

But returning to the “fruits”, scrutinize this blog and what would you say are the fruits coming out of it? What values is it pushing? What message?

Go to Matt Murrell’s site and it is openly atheistic [and even a whole lot of fun]; go to Deeply Blasphemous and it’s a known known. But what to do when someone makes himself out a Christian but wants to combine it with promiscuity and Marxism, the politics of oppression?

Now I’m not asking anyone to come on board with my values – this is no sermon but what it does illustrate is that a man who has a large dose of personal charisma and charm, particularly with the other sex, to the point they become blind to the defects in his message, a man who admittedly visits and speaks with seeming decency and respect but who urges people to unite behind his new vision – this man is pure Jim Jones and Charlie Manson in the making.

This is beyond reason because it is a psychological thing, and tunes in with people’s own mindset far more than this post does. It is for personal and psychological reasons that this post will most likely be rejected. And the reason his is accepted is that it offers 72 virgins for the taking, all under the loving eye of the Lord.

What we have here is a prophet of moral equivalence and when he says he goes to Church and says the Mass - to a Christian this means zip if he’s not following the Word. The Logos. So, what is the Word?

On moral matters:

Matthew 5:19: Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

28: But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Now you can argue all you like with the message and language in the following but you can’t deny that this is what it actually says [look it up for yourself]:

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

Equivocal? Capable of interpreting that to mean you can screw around as long as you have a “bond” with the other [usually younger women]?

1 Corinthians 7:1-2, KJV. "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman [or, "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman," according to the NIV footnote]. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband."

So, to teach others, particularly young women, that it’s in keeping with Christianity to do such things means that such a person has surrendered the right to be called Christian. It’s a semantic point, a theological and a social.

To the majority out there reading this, it might also be a reason not to be Christian but with you, at least, there is a certain honesty to what you do. But for a person to divert the Word to his own sexual ends and use his blog to entice people to accept the social construct he’s surrounded it with is another thing.

To call himself Christian, whilst pushing this guff, is beyond the pale and a group which accepts this is also misguided. Therefore, this is not designed to make me friends or win people over – it will do the opposite and engender great sympathy for him instead.

That’s also a known known and popularity has never been my goal.

I’m no stranger to promiscuity myself but what cannot be denied is that actually condonng and preaching promiscuity, however well it fits into one’s new vision of the future, is definitively not Christianity.

[twin sisters] does europe produce them

What is it which makes a British public figure lose his marbles and fall for a couple of Eastern European twin sisters?

Identical twins Roszika and Yansci Deutsch were born October 25, 1892, in Budapest, Hungary.

In addition to making about a half dozen films made from 1913 to 1920, they toured the theatres and dance halls of Europe [as the naffly named Dolly Sisters]. Sometimes they would appear with separate partners as "rival" acts to boost ticket sales.

Their gambling "career" was nearly as successful. They won $850,000 in one season at Deauville and one evening in Cannes, Jenny won 4 million francs, which she converted to a collection of jewelry, then she went on to win another 11 million more.

Clearly a wild couple of ladies, this didn't stop old H. Gordon Selfridge from leaving home with a Dolly sister on each arm.

After his wife's tragic death in 1918, Selfridge travelled the nation doing a music hall act with the Eastern European Twin Sisters. Eventually, he lost his controlling interest in Selfridge's and blew his entire fortune on gambling, eventually dying in poverty.

Of course that was then and this is now and you'd never expect to see a British public figure up sticks today for a couple of naffly named Eastern European Twin Sisters. Or even for one of them.

[new mac] fifth post

I think I have a Tiger and it looks as if it might have been a good move:

Soon after the long-awaited $158 operating system upgrade went on sale on Friday, Apple's online technical support forum was hit with a deluge of complaints from buyers who said it crashed their computer.

Others, who had more success at installing the upgrade, have already broke free from the Mac platform, releasing a hack allowing Leopard to be installed on regular PCs sold by other manufacturers.

Those whose computers were crashed by Leopard reported that, when rebooting their Mac towards the end of the installation process, their computer locked up and they were greeted with a blue error screen. It has already been compared to the infamous "blue screen of death" error that was common with earlier versions of Microsoft Windows.

Oh dear and my problem seems to be that the cable people won’t come and put it in.

Of course, True Maccies are having none of that and would like you to know just what the Leopard can do.

[micro-control 3] pinning the bstds down

Étienne Davignon

This follows the second article in the series here. It needs to be read in conjunction with its links - at times the short quotes themselves don't give the required continuity.

By virtue of their only partial-transparency, organizations like the CFR, SPPNA, TLC and the European Round Table groups are only going to allow sanitized snippets to become available.

So when Viscount Étienne Davignon [read the article] gives an interview [read the article] to the press and says that conspiracies will always exist, that the Bilderbergers are just multinational business people chatting about the future of the world and that there is no global elite, that things are far more fragmented than that, he speaks no more than the truth, as far as it goes.

And it doesn't go far. There may be no unity to them but there is definitely a common mindset and purpose. It's just the details they get bogged down in.

Pascal Lamy discovered, with DOHA, how difficult it was to find common ground and I myself can attest to that in my proximity to the trade world. The desire to find common ground and to reconcile the localized resistance to common policy is one of the greatest tasks of global trade.

When a journalist notes, to Davignon, "all the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed." Davignon's response [is that] he and his colleagues are "excellent talent spotters."

So the anti-globalists are left clutching at straws and the thing is, there is an innocent construction which can be placed on all of it.

When Ian Parker produces a map of the sub-regions Common Purpose will administer in the South-West, post 2009, CP can say “and what?” When he says that CP is no more than an offshoot of the ODPM, they can ask “yes and what?”

What’s nefarious in this?

It’s so non-nefarious that Asha [read the article] can run a piece on Julia Middleton [view the video] which heads up the Google page under her name and is full of her achievements. She’s a leadership developer at low management level, a talent spotter, looking to place the best people in the best positions.

Young hopefuls see that this is a semi-governmental offshoot and a one way ticket to prosperity and security in the next few years so why not?

End of story so let’s all go home.

Except for pesky snippets and little errors they sometimes make, such as Blair’s outright lies when questioned over attending the Bilderberg Conference here and here, which don’t accord with Davignon’s transparency over the group’s above board status.

Or Common Purpose’s failure to explain “what common purpose?”, only to say it is “beyond authority” and when pressed as to what that means, answers that it’s to open up leadership opportunities to those not actually in positions of authority. Again, for what common purpose? They are silent.

The new DTI website now has Regulation in the title and deals with regional administration. CP lists these, concerning all their programmes:

• develop outward-facing leadership, as people who can lead beyond their authority can produce change beyond their direct circle of control
• are highly interactive and experiential, through their real-life settings
• are committed to diversity as working with new and different groups of people delivers greater insight, problem-solving and creativity
• operate under a set of international conventions that create an environment in which real challenge can thrive
• are demanding and fun.

Set of international conventions? In an English region? Change beyond their direct circle of control?

So the investigator either becomes a conspiracy theorist and joins the dots himself or else he is left with a fragmented database, no one snippet actually proving anything but tantalizing nonetheless.

Such as Ben Shepherd’s CP recruiting drive page [read the article] showing a young man in isolation and a blurb inviting young people to join. Notice it's supported by supported by Deutsche Bank and you can check out their history. H/T Cassandra

Again, not particularly nefarious although I thought it was British money supporting CP, not Euro.

And check the Julia Middleton video op. cit.: How To Lead When you haven't any authority and her explanation of recruiting procedure [read the article]:

Participants are selected by a local Common Purpose advisory group, consisting of senior leaders in the area covered by the programme.

But leadership for what? Well, clearly for local and regional CP graduates to occupy top places in government, semi-governmental and industry instrumentalities.

But for what and with what common purpose?

That question has been much on MPs’ minds too as they’ve asked many questions in parliament [read the article].

John Trenchard mentions [read the article], for example, Phil Woolas, Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government replied to one question about the PEU or riot police:

Since the formation of the Preventing Extremism Unit in October 2006, the unit has made grants of less than £100,000 to: Common Purpose - Muslim Leadership Development Project.

Pardon?

Or what of the 4.8 MB pdf on CP in Bradford, whose Page 1 Google fragment says:

THIS WILL TRANSFORM THE TOWN OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS. THE FACILITY WILL ... YORKSHIRE FORWARD EXISTS TO CREATE A POWERFUL AND POSITIVE EFFECT ON THE ...... Leeds Common Purpose. Board member. January 2002. Leeds Initiative ...

You can find a partial list of CP controlled organizations here [read the article] .

Indimedia says the organisation now has training programmes in every major town and city in Britain and since 1989 more than 60,000 people have been involved with 20,000 'leaders' completing one or more programmes. These are:

Leaders: Matrix and Focus
Emerging leaders: Navigator
Very young leaders: Your Turn
Leaders who need a local briefing: Profile
National leaders: 20:20

Matrix?

They themselves seem quite proud of it [read the article]:

We run a Common Purpose programme in every major city and town in the UK and in an increasing number of European cities. 12,000 leaders from all sectors and backgrounds have become Common Purpose 'graduates'.

As CP aren’t making their methods available or filing their curricula online, Indimedia believes it is to do with NLP:

NLP is a technique of using words to re-programme the body computer to accept another perception of reality - in this case the consensus agreed by the manipulators before their victims even register for the 'course'. Apparently the CIA refers to these pre-agreed 'opinions' as 'slides'.

Anyone who resists the programming is isolated and the group turned against them until they either conform or lose credibility to be a 'leader'.

Well there’s not a lot new in that – it was the basis of much of our military leadership training – the need to have all think as one.

Winston Leonard got down to it on 15 October 2007, at my site, when he cited Derek Twigg, [Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Veterans), Ministry of Defence) Hansard source] in answer to parliamentary questions:

Sums paid to Common Purpose UK in each of the last complete five financial years, inclusive of VAT, are as follows:

Amount (£)
2002-03 56,576.25
2003-04 66,716.50
2004-05 42,958.00
2005-06 58,456.27
2006-07 83,817.89

"These payments covered the cost of participation by MOD staff in Common Purpose UK's training and education programmes. Programmes of this nature help to develop leadership skills, to gain understanding about broader aspects of government and to share experience with and learn from participants from both the private and public sectors."

One moment please. CP are connected with MOD training? Winston Leonard adds that, with that in mind, consider these two links:

SWRDA who bought delisted MOD territory [read the article]:

The site is being redeveloped by the South West Regional Development Agency and English Partnerships, who purchased it for £10m. Some form of mixed commercial, retail and housing development is planned, but no details are yet concrete.

Norfolk Action Plan [read the article]:

6.2 It was noted that the Unit would be using the services of a Graduate Placement to help drive the Action Plan forward. Members welcomed the report and emphasised the need for a sound regeneration policy and for this to be high priority particularly in the light of recent closures e.g. Crane Fruehauf, Heinz Foods, RAF Coltishall and RAF Neatishead.

It was also highlighted that regeneration could not take place without partnership working across the county including District Councils. Furthermore it was important to remember that the county contained many areas of hidden deprivation.

As to what action plan, read the article. And as for English Partnerships, Wiki is sketchy:

English Partnerships (EP) is the national regeneration agency for England, performing a similar role on a national level to that fulfilled by Regional Development Agencies on a regional level. It is responsible for land acquisition and assembly and major development projects, alone or in joint partnership with private sector developers.

Do you know anything about them? I didn’t before this week.

It’s often difficult to see the forest for the trees. What we have so far is a lot of acitivity on leadership training programmes for vaguely stated purposes, the buying up of property and some connection with the security forces [along with similar moves to EU militias in Europe].

Meanwhile, headquartered in London, a similar organization to CP in its modus operandi is the Tavistock Institute which is now registered as a charity [read a hostile article here and a a negative overview here]:

… the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London which was funded into existence in 1946 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of the Tavistock founders, Dr. John Rawlings Rees, who also became co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health, talked of infiltrating all professions and areas of society - 'Public life, politics and industry should all ... be within our sphere of influence ... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!'

'We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life ... We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.'

In the end, it is the militaristic organizational structure, the dealings with the military itself at semi-governmental level, the vacuum sealed non-statements of their purpose, the spin-off authorities and other qangos such as English Partnerships, the presence of groups like Tavistock who are clearly more than think tanks, the rhetoric used and the degree of funding available to these organizations which do sound alarm bells.

All of this can’t be seen in isolation. Accompanying the rise of CP and the like, in Part 4 we look at the plethora of legislation which has hit us in the last twelve years or so.

Late note - have just had a visit from Common-purpose-net IP 217.150.113.250

Notes

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

[least sexy] of the celebs, that is

One of my handful of Russian readers has seen fit to enter into the debate here and here over the Самые несексуальные женщины года.

She's not the best but I can still think of others worse amongst the celebs. See lower right:

And have you seen Julia Middleton?