[just when you thought it was safe] it comes from nowhere

Just how dependent we are on other people is illustrated, in full measure, by these two bald statements about the round the world solo race:

His Ecover 3 yacht had edged ahead of Frenchman Jean-Pierre Dick when winds of 55 knots caused his mast to break. "It basically went from being a near gale to a hurricane and the mast didn't like it," said Golding, 48.

In a separate incident today:

Elies is unable to move freely after [breaking his leg] when a large wave slammed his boat in the Southern Ocean. Elies, who is also complaining of chest pains and is confined to his bunk, is in radio contact with Guillemot and his condition is described as stable.

Race organisers asked ... two competitors to divert to offer Elies psychological support. They will receive time credits for making the diversion. 33-year-old Smantha Davies ... said: "It's only when you see that for real that you realise how, how much of a Russian roulette it is out here."

This race is billed as a "solo" race but look at the support - radio contact, GPS, fellow sailors able to sail over to help, coastguard and anxious friends and family awaiting word. Plus the necessary money.

One thing I learned in Russia was that there is no survival without a support network because the government sure as hell is not going to do anything. So you create your own with assistance and in return, you must give back, otherwise that support fades away. There is no other way over there.

No man is an island, as much as he [or she] would like to be independent. At any moment, usually when things are going swimmingly, it can all suddenly change.

[which song] sing along if you wish

This song was:

1.  first performed for Countess Sophie Weissenwolff in the Austrian town Steyregg;

2. written with a different subject in mind originally;

3. not written to be sung in Latin;

4. used in Fantasia;

5. also used in Hitman.

Clue for no points:

MP3 

[non-statement] suppose it's necessary

More than one person is applying the pressure for me to make a statement.  

I feel an outrageous allegation has been made about a fellow blogger's father and I hope that that matter is addressed.  As for this blog, there will be no statement of any kind on that or other related matters pre-New Year.  Last December I was sucked into a fight on December 23rd and I'm not repeating that mistake this year.

There will be no comments on this post and no discussion entered into by me either here or on other blogs pre-New Year.

Let's have a Merry Christmas and let's hope that charity seeps into certain hearts over the break.  This blog's official  Christmas wishes will come mid-week.

Cheers.

[mark felt dies] an era passes

Most people know the facts of the Watergate Scandal but here's  a refresher to mark the occasion of Deep Throat's passing today:

Nixon

He became president n 1968, for four years.

Ellsberg

This whistleblower leaked papers to the NYT, in 1971,  about America's real reasons for being in Vietnam and the paper duly published them until the White House got an injunction to prevent any more being published.  Ellsberg then sent copies to other papers, making it clear that Nixon would have to get an injunction against each and every one of them to stop him.  He went into hiding.

The Plumbers

The White House set up this covert group to plug leaks, under the auspices of John Ehrlichman.  One of the junior honchos, G. Gordon Liddy, wanted to burgle Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office for dirt on him.  Ehrlichman approved, it went ahead, they found nothing, Ellsberg surrendered and went for trial in 1973; during the trial,the break-in and other naughtiness were exposed.

CREEP

Actually called CRP by the GOP, the campaign to re-elect the president was mainly to raise funds but also indulged in dirty tricks on the Democrats, effectively harassing their campaign.  

Watergate

The plumbers decided to hit the DCH, in mid 1972, to see if they could dig up any dirt by planting bugs and the next errors were made - the team included people connected to CRP, they had bugging equipment, they were caught but there was one other factor.

The Dahlberg cheque

Wealthy supporters of the GOP were in the habit of contributing to campaign funds, often by cheque made out to CRP.  Liddy got the idea that if he paid the burglars directly using benefactors' cheques, then if something went wrong, it couldn't be sheeted home to CRP.  So he thought.  One shuch cheque, from Kenneth Dahlberg, was found in the pocket of one of the burglars.

Silence

The astounding thing is that, like Obama's non-citizenship, no one seemed interested and Nixon was returned in a landslide.  However, the FBI had the goods and had been digging deep.  For complicated reasons, they and the White House had an uneasy truce but when a Nixon appointee took over the agency, passing over the N2, Mark Felt, this also turned out to be an error.

Woodstein

Bob Woodward had a source and it was Felt.  When the Watergate burglary occurred, the two talked and it was Felt who put him onto the connection with CRP.  Felt had his own internal issues and probably thought the Woodstein way was the better chance to stymie Nixon.  Nixon was worried about him as he had all the dirt he needed, should he have chosen to use it.

Deep Throat

Woodward and Bernstein began their investigation and were met with the cold shoulder at every turn.  Felt was meeting Woodward at 2 a.m. in a garage and trying to set him on the right path without actually revealing specific information.  The film claims Felt told Woodward: "Follow the money,"  a good piece of advice, as this is largely what unravelled CRP in the end.  Deep Throat was a joke name based on a porno film of the time.

Senate hearings

As it became apparent that the White House was involved, at least to some extent, the question became: "How much did the President know and when did he know it?"  The war of attrition began, with the White House not cooperating in the least. 

The tapes

It came out that Nixon had recorded, on audio tape, all Oval Office conversations and now the investigation demanded those tapes.  Nixon refused.  He tried sending edited transcripts, he tried everything, including the Saturday Night Massacre when he interfered with the judiciary.

The Smoking Gun Tape

Even after all this [and I can't help thinking that it will occur this way with Obama too] many people resolutely stuck by the President's innocence, even when he announced to reporters that he "was not a crook".  What did for him amid the rumblings for an impeachment, was one particular tape which showed that he'd known about Watergate all along and had approved a course of action which covered it up.

Resignation and pardon

Nixon resigned, Ford took over and immediately pardoned Nixon of all crimes.  That did for Gerry Ford.

Felt outs himself

In 2005, Mark Felt came out and admitted he was Deep Throat.  On December 18th, 2008, he died, aged 95.

Vale, Mark Felt.

[up yours] get knotted, reid

.

This from Martin Kelly today:

Melanie Reid, forever to be remembered as the journalist who published an article praising the Taliban on the morning of 9/11, has a commentary in 'The Times' calling for the introduction of compulsory voluntary service.

Although she is probably unaware of it, what Reid is calling for is not a greater ethic of service but the introduction of 'robot'; the unpaid labour which the German nobles imposed upon the people as a reaction to the economic devastation caused by the Thirty Years War. This is a strain of thought which is very dangerous to the continued liberty of the British people; she might not think so, but what she is calling for is serfdom.

Melanie Reid is a member of the elite, and all elitists share two defining characteristics - they want to stay elitists regardless of the consequences to other people, and boy, do they like being served.

I have no problem in working for and even serving someone I can respect but these incompetent bozos of limited intellect who set themselves up as an elite and give themselves airs - they can get knotted. More than that - their names are on these bullets.

[ceasefire ceases] ho hum, here we go

There's a grave risk of sounding like a worn vinyl record.

Maybe the most definitive post at this place although not necessarily the best, was this one and it really does seem, putting everything in the pot and seeing what emerges, that the notion that in any organization there are the "career people" and then there are the "bad 'uns" and that the "bad 'uns" get the plum roles and rise to the top because it is their goal - that seems to be the way this world runs.

I've seen nothing in the EU, Britain, the U.S.A., the Masons, the Church, the CIA anywhere, to definitively negate that. Thus, when looking at the whole Israel/Palestine thing, applying the same criteria, it stands to reason that there are seemingly calm but actually quite evil nutters at the very top in Israel who make things even more intransigent than they are and there are total fruitcakes running the Palestinian cause.

Thus the Palestinian idea of a ceasefire is to keep firing rockets into Israel whilst Israel must not step one foot into Palestine, Thus the hard nuts on the Israeli side, by their very intransigence, however justified in their eyes, play right into the hands of the Palestinian extremists who always seem to rise to the top and are the most vocal and violent.

Why are the vocal extremists in charge?

It's the Ford Prefect syndrome. In Douglas Adams' book, Ford tells Arthur: "They care, we don't. They win."

Just as with the long suffering citizen and in blogs, the anger bubbles underneath but never explodes. When has the common man ever spoken with one voice for more than one day before the lurking, organized extremists step in and hijack the agenda?

Our number one priority, before all else, is to wrest control out of the hands of the bad 'uns and into the hands of the average citizen - you. I'd rather have a dozen wrong decisions by you than even one carefully calculated one by a member of that lot up there.

Sounds revolutionary socialist.

Not at all - it's more a demand to just leave us alone and let us get on with our own lives - that's all. Keep your bloody EU, let us earn a crust and have a skeleton crew up top to run the ship. In Britain, in Palestine, everywhere in the world.

We desperately need to find a mechanism to achieve this and then go for it.