[december 21st] auspicious day

Today is December 21st, one of the two shortest days of the year. It was significant, in 1971, for another reason.

Richard Nixon's major priority, in late 1971, was that nothing occur to derail his re-election. He had come to Washington deeply suspicious of a Democrat dominated town of liberal tendencies and thus a siege mentality began to define the White House [according to Colson later].

Two very interesting themes came out which did not feature in the received wisdom about Watergate, but in the light of the release of classified documents, explain a lot. They're of interest today in the way they show the workings of the presidency and the oval office.

The Moorer-Radford spy ring

Nixon's secretive manner, the way he scrutinized things before acting on information [or not], the way he bi-passed his official utilities from the Secretary of State to the Joint Chiefs, even down to sending in warships on his own say so, can be taken two ways.

It meant that the military industrial complex Eisenhower had mentioned would now have little say in policy on major issues, except through their man Kissinger, a complex character in himself [click for a clearer view]:



On the other hand, almost like throwing a dog a bone, what these official organs did receive was a "backchannel", a way to indirectly access the President through Kissinger, whom many feared, even Nixon. Why such a man was kept on when he clearly made all and sundry uncomfortable is another story. For his part, Kissinger revealed, in Nixon, a man who shied away from disciplining subordinates or enemies but rather "getting something on them", to bring them into line:



These very "extraordinary procedures" convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they were being circumvented:




So the JCSs set up a spy ring within the White House and in particular, within Kissinger's baby, the NSC, which had not been used since the Kennedy days but was a clear ploy to bring national policy firmly inside the purview of the White House itself.

The method was to use a naval yeoman, Radford, who acted as PA to Kissinger and Haig on foreign trips, to actually rifle through their briefcases and copy sensitive material of use to his military superiors. He was shocked when some of that material appeared in Jack Anderson's news column, high grade material at that and then more appeared over and over.

Nixon was incensed about Anderson in particular but when he heard about the spy ring itself, he reacted seemingly strangely. This is part of the transcript from the tape of the meeting on December 21st, 1971:

EHRLICHMAN: Well Bob, it doesn't happen that way of course. [INAUDIBLE] He says, "He stated that this practice began with Admiral Robinson, who instructed him to 'keep his eyes open.' The subject construed this to mean that he should furnish Admiral Robinson whatever information might be an advantage to support the liaison's office and the Admiral."

NIXON: Now, wait a minute. Now, wait a minute. [PAUSE] I'm suggesting that it was Moorer who must take responsibility for this Anderson's column. It's possible, right?

Later they discuss whom they can trust:

NIXON: I mean, uh, and particularly Henry. Henry is, uh, is not a good security risk.

MITCHELL: He's not a good security risk the way he runs that office.

NIXON: [INAUDIBLE] he stole . . . so indiscreetly. The main thing is that, the main thing is that, it's to me that reason that [POUNDING OF DESK WITH EACH WORD] He—had—to—know—that he was getting stuff from Kissinger's and Haig's briefcase. That—is—wrong! Understand? I'm just saying that's wrong. Do you agree?

MITCHELL: No question about it, that the whole concept of having this yeoman get into this affair and start to get this stuff into the Joint Chiefs of Staff is just like coming in and robbing your desk.

NIXON: Yes it is.

HALDEMAN: The thing that disgusts me about this is, if they'll do that—

NIXON: Yeah.

HALDEMAN: - What else are they doing?

EHRLICHMAN: You know, military drivers, military gals, military everything around here.

NIXON: Yup, yup, yup, yup.

HALDEMAN: Christ. We've all used this office. [INAUDIBLE]

One of the key chiefs, Welander, was brought in for questioning and he made a confession:



Rather than hit the key JCSs, Nixon decided to tread carefully and in particular, he didn't want Haig touched. There's been much speculation on Nixon's reaction, especially that his prime motivation was to keep the backchannel open:



Of even more interest was Haig's and Kissinger's relationship, given that Kissinger was the public hawk and Haig the dove:




The Watergate key

The general consensus accepted at the Senate hearings was that the burglars had gone in to wire tap and dig up the dirt on the Democrats for political advantage.

Another story which emerged but was never pursued, for some reason, stemmed from the point where the burglars were lined up along a wall with their hands on that wall and then the bugging equipment was found. The investigative officer noticed that one of them at the far end of the line, Martinez, kept moving his hand to his chest so many times that when the officer reached into his coat, he found this:



Much was made of the contents of the book but the key, surprisingly, did not feature al that much in subsequent testimony. In fact, the focus became how much Nixon knew and when but not on the burglary itself, which had enough holes in it to drive a bus through. It was too incompetent to be true.

The obvious question was:

"Why would a Watergate burglar have a key to a DNC secretary, Maxine Wells's desk in his possession and what items of possible interest to a Watergate burglar were maintained in Wells's locked desk drawer?"

Into this came a character called Bailley:

According to Silent Coup Bailley was eventually arrested and indicted for violations of the Mann Act (transporting under-age females across state lines for immoral purposes), extortion, blackmail, pandering, and procuring. As a result, Bailley's address books were seized. Silent Coup also notes that Maureen Biner's name appeared in Bailley's address books.

Maureen Biner was John Dean's wife:

The implication of Colodny and Gettlin's narrative is that the June 17, 1972, the Watergate break-in was ordered by Dean so that he could determine whether the Democrats had information linking Maureen Biner to the Bailley/Rikan call-girl ring and whether they planned to use such information to embarrass him.

Why would no one wish to pursue that line, apart form G Gordon Liddy? The allegation was that that key opened a desk at the DNC HQ and that inside that desk were the photos and contact details of girls, many underaged.

It's long been maintained by both pundits and leaks from the establishment that the higher echelons of Washington operate not unlike Salon Kitty was supposed to have, way beyond mere call girls and involving some very sick stuff. Now, if the DNC ran a show like that for visiting VIPs, would the GOP have been any different?

The effect on 1971 America would have been devastating, had that come out.

[resort quiz] five hours from london

There are many things to do at this resort

1. Hire a Playa de las Americas car and go exploring:

2. Visit Loro Parque, refuge for wildlife in danger;

3. Leave the heat of the coast and drive, drive, drive up above the clouds, like an aeroplane;

4. Visit one of the nearby islands;

5. Practise the language on the locals.

No free clues this time.

[reclaim democracy] before it's too late

Enough has been written about the enormous war going on behind the scenes. The latest skirmish is banning beach parties in Goa. It's quite clear that a massive and sustained assault is on, worldwide, to suppress people's freedom to speak, associate, to generally enjoy life.

Disillusioning us is a key ploy in all this and to repaint everything from festivities to history is straight out of the Goldstein handbook. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are being pushed around and dictated to. Aiding this has been, over two generations:

1. Driving wedges between people and their traditional support structures:

a. In the west, the Judaeo-Christian ethic, Calvinistic hard work, the notion of hope, faith and charity, tolerance of good and intolerance of evil, the concept of loyalty given and returned, even by an institution, leading to a sense of identity and self-worth and the concept of decency.

A generation ago, people were by no means saints but there was at least a basic notion of what was acceptable and not acceptable, morally and ethically;

b. The family, with its traditional constraints and loyalties, duty towards the extended family, the idea of remaining a virgin until marriage, the leadership and teaching role of parents towards the children, the early instilling of values so that later in life, the child is equipped to face the world;

c. The state as a support structure for the less fortunate and a facilitator and supporter of free enterprise, with a goal of near full employment and an affordable home for each family. The idea of a sane unit cost to income ratio, so that a house cost five years’ gross wage. The notion of the state as our elected representatives who do our will;

d. Private property that one could work towards all one’s life, build up, enjoy in old age and then will to one’s family. The concept of inheritance from generation to generation;

e. A willingness to at least tolerate the other sex to the point where one compromised and showed respect, mostly, where one remained with one’s partner and worked out the problems, for the sake of the investment in family and in one’s children. Absence of misogyny and misandry for the most part;

The concept of chivalry, not to the point of knights on horseback and whiter than white damsels but in little things like giving up one’s seat, opening the door for the other and above all … listening to the other and trying to find common ground;

f. A sense of pleasure and joy in everyday pursuits, rather than a fear of losing everything, mass unemployment, mindless serfdom and disillusionment.

2. Gradually placing people in key positions in education, medicine, law, politics and the arts who would promote the restructuring of society, over two generations, to one such as we have today, where people are disenfranchised, dispossessed, disillusioned and anxious, less able to adequately cope, withdrawing back into the self and becoming infantilized and accepting of the nanny state.

And the blackest joke was that these people truly believed, were led to believe that they were promoting noble values and a fairer society.

3. Rewriting history so that the traditionally revered personages are now questioned, reviled in some cases and at the least, marginalized … and all for a political agenda. Re-educating the population to accept the new status quo.

4. Slowly tightening the noose and criminalizing the common man by the introduction of a plethora of new legislation and codicils to the point where it is almost impossible not to transgress. Removing the right to think for oneself and to self-determination, on the grounds that it is illegal. Creating a “checkpoint and militarized” atmosphere, accustoming people to the sight of armed officers herding them into this place or that.

5. Provoking a Franz Ferdinand incident at intervals to increase the command and control, the reduction of people to serfdom and creating the preconditions for war, the state of affairs desired by the state.

Fighting back

Through a combination of self-interest, the survival instinct and sheer weariness, people are just not going to combine to prevent the above process. Most of us are extremely slow to get off our butts and do anything vaguely political. We're just not interested.

Most of the above has already taken place anyway and a good test of this is how far people would disagree with the ideas in Point 1 above.

Two generations ago, they would have been the norm, the way people thought and felt. It would ahve been unnecessary to even mention them.

There are ways to fight back without ending up on a table with electrodes:

1. Silent disobedience, Gandhi like and putting a spoke in the wheel of state in little ways. If enough people do this, then the state becomes unworkable;

2. Creation of groups and solidarity, e.g. Lech Wałęsa in Poland;

3. Revolution – a last resort when all else has failed [just don't be a ringleader].

A small start is:

Roots - reclaim Europe

I'll add others as they come to hand. The thing is, if we don't act now, it really will be too late to prevent this process. Already they have removed the mechanism for change, for example, in Britain, where the only legal right of the people is to throw out Brown and put in a Blair clone. Here too.

That ain't democracy in my book.

[the host] synthesis of fragmented parts

Straight after watching The Host [2006] just now, South Korea's entry in the monster movie stakes, a film which which premiered at Cannes and was praised by North Korea, it was hard to evaluate. Some woeful acting, a 1950s production values monster, badder than bad baddies ... and yet ... and yet ...

Now, some hours further along, I'd like to post on it. First off, I realize I was wrong about the monster. This sums it up better:

Said monster is an interesting looking creature. About the size of a small bus and tadpole shaped, it has two massive frog-like legs, a long, whip-like prehensile tail and a half-dozen other little tails jutting off it’s hulking body. It’s impressively designed and even more impressively rendered on computer.

So, to the film itself and this is one of the better statements I've been able to find:

The opening attack is sensationally well directed, and if the rest of the film never quickens the pulse in the same accelerated fashion, it does give the story both its principal excuse (the monster grabs the granddaughter) and something just as satisfying if unexpected: a portrait of parents, children and the ties that bind, sometimes to the point of near-strangulation.

“The Host” may be born out of sociopolitical tensions, scares about SARS and the avian flu, or Mr. Bong’s imagination, but it’s also a snapshot of a modern South Korea bordering on social anarchy, one in which a fatalistically obedient old-timer and his three preternaturally immature adult children face down a rampaging beast along with clueless doctors, Keystone Kops, faithless friends and even hordes of paparazzi.

That it's a mish-mash of themes is a bit harsh - better to use the word pot-pourri and you know, it really does have some endearing elements to it. It's hard to know what to make of the lead character, Korea-famous actor Song Kang-ho but he turns out to be a hero indeed, in his clumsy, yet resilient way.

Perhaps the show stealer is the grandaughter, child actress Ko Ah-seong, who is eaten and then regurgitated into a sewer by the monster who uses it as a larder for later use. She displays a fragile maturity and at the same time lacks that brashness of today's kid actors, which makes her believable.

There are some great images in the film. The point where Song Kang-ho escapes from the hospital where he was being lobotomized, only to actually step outside a trailer into a red cross area and with U.S. troops about to spray Agent Yellow was both surreal and chilling, reminiscent of the Manchurian Candidate. The rain sequence also stuck in the memory.

To draw the threads together and sum the film up in a few words, this is as good as any:

What separates The Host from the traditional monster movie is not only the thrilling, high-quality special effects, but the absolutely hilarious interactions of the Park family; Imagine a Korean version of The Royal Tenenbaums trapped by the love child of Godzilla and Alien, you have an initial idea of the delights to be found in The Host.

If you haven't seen it already and you get a chance, it is worth it.

[priorities] thinking straight

[special relationships] will oceania turn out to be the bloc of choice

You've obviously read this:

The government has sold its last remaining shares in the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire to an American company. The move means Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its Trident nuclear warheads.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said:

"The whole argument used for Britain having a separate weapons establishment is that this is required by the non-proliferation treaty, as technology sharing is not allowed."

Is this such a horrendous move? After all, the UK does not act in the foreign theatres in an independent fashion. More often than not, it is through NATO and the special alliances. On the nuclear issue:

The Amsterdam Treaty states in Article J.7 that "The policy of the Union in accordance with this article shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defense policy of certain Member States and shall respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realized in NATO, under the North Atlantic Treaty and be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework."

There is, in fact, a deep rivalry between the EU and NATO:

The lack of cooperation is evident in Brussels, where NATO and the EU have separate headquarters eight kilometers apart. On the military level, the two organizations have competing rapid reaction forces. They compete on foreign aid missions, sometimes racing each other to the destination. They maintain separate military planning headquarters. Taxpayers foot the double bill.

The countries at the center of this competition, analysts say, are Britain, which wants to preserve and strengthen NATO, and France, which wants the EU to grow into a more robust defense institution, independent of NATO.

The construction of NATO:

Originally consisting of 12 countries, the organisation expanded to include Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955. However, then, as now, the alliance was militarily dominated by the United States.

In April, 2008:

President Bush advanced his plans Thursday to build a controversial missile defense shield in Eastern Europe by winning the unanimous backing of NATO allies and sealing a deal with the Czech Republic to build a radar facility for the system on its soil.

This set the cat among the pigeons - there is a souring of relations which manifested itself in the Poettering snub of President Klaus in the European Parliament and in the Declan Ganley matter. Europe is divided between the power bases of the EU itself, NATO and the U.S.A., a major player in its own right within European member states.

Digressing for the moment, it's old news that the EU parliament wants to silence dissenting voices but I also read, in the last few days, a proposal to prevent the UK from legally opting out of the European Union, should they wish to. I can't find corroboration anywhere for that one but it seems that 19 Labour MEPs plan to vote for that.

If that were so, it is yet more evidence that the socialistic EU is more than a little paranoid about Britain's further shift towards the U.S. - the warheads stake which opened this post is testimony to Britain's comfort in seeing U.S. strategic interests as not greatly different from our own.

Britain's ties to Europe are geographical and through the royal bloodlines but its ties to America are more "family like". Family members do fight but ultimately, when faced with a common foe, do close ranks. The U.S./British relationship has had its moments:

The United States put heavy pressure on the United Kingdom to dissolve its Empire, and this dissolution took place (due to post-war economic exhaustion, British public opinion and other factors, rather than U.S. pressure) in the 1947-1960 period.

... but it has ultimately stood firm. This special relationship has come under scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic:

The U.K. International Development Secretary has recently proposed a change in the current relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. He accentuated on the need for "new alliances, based on common values". He was verbal against "unilateralism" and called for an "international" and a "multilateralist" approach to global problems.

... and:

In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, [Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested] America "ignored" Britain [on Iraq], and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the U.S. He asserted that the "special relationship", a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.

"It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we've noticed." The result of the Iraq war would be that any future British premier would be much less cosy with Washington than Mr Blair had been, and the Prime Minister's much vaunted view that Britain was "a transatlantic bridge" was now redundant.

Mr Myers said Donald Rumsfeld's comment before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that America could go it alone without Britain had been a clarifying moment.

It remains to be seen how non-President-elect Obama redefines the relationship but such comments as the above are era specific and the overall history has been one of strong economic and undoubted cultural ties between the two, when all is said and done.

It was probably no accident that in Orwell's 1984, the blocs were:

The novel does not render the world's full history to 1984. Winston's recollections, and what he reads in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after World War II, the United Kingdom fell to civil war, becoming part of Oceania. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union encompassed mainland Europe, forming the nation of Eurasia.

The third super-state, Eastasia, comprises the east Asian countries around China and Japan. Mentioned also is an atomic war, fought mainly in Europe, western Russia, and North America. It is unclear what occurred first: the civil war wherein the Party assumed power, the United States' annexation of the British Empire, or the war during which Colchester was bombed.

The hostility to the U.S. in Britain is as nothing to the hostility to the EU [read the comments as well]. There is life after the EU and Britain should look to re-integrating with its two strategic partners, the U.S. and the Commonwealth. Look at the trade figures alone and it's not as if we wouldn't trade, bilaterally with EU member states - it would go back to an EEC model in that respect.

Don't forget the Chinese in all of this:

[T]he news that CIC is putting $5 billion into Morgan Stanley gave a new perspective to Chinese involvement in the West’s largest financial institutions. The sheer scale of the Morgan Stanley deal was striking. And over the past few months, investment from the Far East has become almost commonplace. In contrast to the protectionist fervour that forced a Dubai company to sell several American ports that it acquired through the takeover of Britain’s P&O, there has been barely a murmur of opposition to this trend.

There is a definite unilateralist voice in America - this article decrying the financial ownership of the country by foreigners:

As www.economyincrisis.com notes, US Government statistics indicate the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry:

* Sound recording industries - 97% * Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79% * Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75% * Metal ore mining - 65%

... and so on and don't forget the SPPNA, which is due to kick off in 2009.

All that having been written though, I'd still say that blood is thicker than water and the most natural allies for Britain are still the U.S. and the Commonwealth. Within the UK, the problem would be the Scots and Welsh, for whom EU supported devolution would suddenly lose one of its main funding sources - British contributions to the EU.

The Scots and Welsh would then have a clear choice - remain with an ailing EU or rejoin the UK. With 83% of the UK English, they'd be in a bit of a quandary.

[hearts and minds] the battle does not recognize christmas

Jona Lewie sang: "Wish I could be home for Christmas." That's hardly likely for thousands of allied troops in Aghanistan, Iraq and other trouble spots.

In short, there is no real plan to come home, except at presidential level:

On the contrary, in the dying weeks of the Bush administration, the US is robustly pushing for an increased military presence in the Russian (and Chinese) backyard in Central Asia on the ground that the exigencies of a stepped-up war effort in Afghanistan necessitate precisely such an expanded US military presence.

The military industrial complex is pushing for a continued presence:

United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

One key aspect is the insistence on including the Wahhabis in the Pakistan issue:

Again, the Bush administration's insistence on bringing Saudi Arabia into the Afghan problem on the specious plea that a Wahhabi partner will be useful for taming the Taliban doesn't carry conviction with Iran.

In fact, what it does is bring two powers who ordinarily would not be natural allies, except on geographical grounds, to find mutual interest in military and aid pacts. For all Russia's weakness compared to USSR days and for all Iran's saddling itself with a nutter for a leader and a nation sapping theocracy of the worst kind, the U.S. itself is none too strong economically these days either.

Then you can bring in China and India. The U.S. is powerful but look at that combined opposition and it is opposition to what looks, to them, as the territorial ambitions of one superpower, under the guise of "anti-terrorism".

Looking at it from the American point of view, there is prima facie evidence that the Muslims are conducting a covert assault for the hearts and minds of Europe and failing that, at least in body count. They are also looking to expand their influence worldwide in accordance with their perceived destiny. In the non-Muslim world - trouble and chaos, in their world, peace and harmony.

While long-term demographic trends favor stability, European societies will have to live for some years with the large cohort of young people born before the recent decline in fertility, the youth bulge that will not shrink until after 2020.

The intervening years could well provide a bumpy ride. If the poor and deprived come to link their condition to their religious identity—if the young, poor, and Muslim overtly confront the old, well-off, and Christian—then Europe would face a turbulent future.

Having said this, modern European society does not seem hospitable to institutional or dogmatic religion of any kind.

The trouble for the west is that, with the leadership having abandoned the pretext of a Christian society manning the ramparts against the infidel, all there is now is some sort of wishy-washy humanistic, pc, government enforced love-each-other nothingness to counter the assault, along with a drug-addled, disillusioned, dumbed down new generation who would ordinarily have been counted on to fight for God, Queen and country but who now openly question each one of those.

This is a lose-lose scenario out there. Just as the American hawks conceded that Vietnam could not be won, so they apparently concede that Afghanistan and Iraq can't be won either. Therefore there are two choices - stay there and battle on or pull out completely.

The global political minds are at odds over which will turn out to be the more efficacious. Leaving morality aside, the choice is to either hit with maximum prejudice and do the job properly, with huge concentration on psy-ops and decent supply lines or else forget it, get out and leave the diplomats and trade delegates to get on with it.

[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

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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.

[nightcap] let's gather these together

First, from William Gruff:

From where does denim come? This is not the same as blue jeans material. Where did that come from originally?

From Dave Cole:

1. What are the two double landlocked countries in the world, i.e. countries where the countries surrounding them are also landlocked?

2. Which are the northernmost, easternmost, westernmost and southernmost states of the USA?

From Dearieme:

What did Fitzroy [sea zone near the British Isles] used to be called?

From me:

Who are the two on the bike?

[higham exposed] this blog and others discussed

A couple of years ago, my mate in Russia asked me two things, after looking through my blog:

1.

"Yes, very nice but where does the money come in?"

"Er ... it doesn't," I told him.

"Well, what's the point of wasting all that time?"

2.

"The annoying thing about your blog is that it only rarely has what I'm interested in."

I replied with the Tom Paine line: "James' posts are so frequent, his interests so varied and his contacts so extensive that his blog is rather like the Scottish weather. If you don't like it now, just wait a few minutes."

"Well, that's your problem, you see. Someone like that foul-mouthed friend of yours gets regular readers because he publishes the same type of thing all the time. You post on all different things and so your audience is fragmented and no one would know the other person."

"Yes but he's one of the top bloggers. He's established and he writes well on the type of thing people are thinking. I often post an outrageous point of view no one could agree with. Plus my targets are often sacred cows."

"Yes but take me, for example. I would only come to a blog which had something on ceramics or fitness. When was your last post on those?"

"Point taken but I still want to post on anything interesting."

"Interesting to you."

"Well maybe but I hope the majority would interest someone."

"Can't see how you're going to build up a readership that way. And how are you going to make money?"

I think he had a point. With the advent of RSS and with me posting so frequently, the only way to actually follow this blog here is to scan the headings in RSS and come in when you see something of interest. As for core readership, it's very small, particularly when ex-friends part company with you.

My friend here said much the same things today as the Russian did two years ago plus how the posts are too long. We were talking about how the uniques in the last two days were about double what I had four weeks ago, so something has obviously happened. At the same time, the number of comments has drastically decreased.

This puzzled him so he speculated how many uniques were image searches. Well, I could answer that. In every hundred visitors during the day, about 35 are image searches, about 45 are searches for an old post and a bit under 20 are other bloggers. Yet people who have been following the blog in their rounds are popping in from RSS land more and more.

Therefore, the conversion rate from visitors to comments is about 0.04% on revealed visitors. This puzzled him a lot and he asked why so few comment on my site. I don't have a clue. Maybe people don't want to get into an argument with me; maybe the material's just not interesting.

Another thing I pointed out is that many old blog friends will visit fellow bloggers and their Mybloglog avatar is in view. Then, when they come here, they turn off the avatar and comment as Anonymous. One is of particular interest- she comes in as Anon but then leaves her name. I'll have to ask her why some day.

We started to look at other blogs.

Well, with Iain Dale's, a lot of that is that it's the blog to go to, along with Guido and DK. Americans like Vox Day get enormous hits and comments as well but he gets some of that from WND. Jon Swift and Gates of Vienna are two others which spring to mind.

They all have their finger on the pulse and they do what they do consistently well. In Theo's case, I don't think it's all tit and bum - the people who go there like a rollicking sort of irreverent blog with a lot of common sense. We were talking about Tim Worstall but he's a bit different. To him, his blog is a business venture and the story has done the rounds how he built a house in Portugal on the proceeds, although I suspect a lot of that came from the articles he had in journals as well.

Then we get into the medium bloggers whom I've now slowly joined and what's happening to me now most likely happened to them - the offers started to trickle in, mainly from America.

The Anonymii seemed apoplectic, before ceremoniously breaking my sword in two and stomping off, that there is no debate on this blog. True - I think it's difficult with the "picture blog" lovers and the "start the revolution now" types both converging and not taking to the others' points of view. I had to laugh that almost no one seems to have looked at the Russian dancers youtube. I have, I can tell you.

Finally, to the newer bloggers, you probably don't need advice but for what it's worth - visit and link. They're the key rules, otherwise we end up muttering in the corner to ourselves.

[mystery character] this time from the screen

Here is the man's CV Resume:

1. He wasn't naturally bald, just shaved;

2. Worked with director Robert Aldrich;

3. In one film, on a bobsled run, had his head caught in a forked tree branch but survived;

4. His horse won the Norfolk Stakes and Del Mar Futurity;

5. He was a world class poker player.

Clue for no points: He liked lollypops.

[goldrush] so claims indonesia ... again

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Indonesia is in the same boat as all the other nations in the oncoming depression and so they have re-activated an old chestnut for foreign investors - that there's gold in them there hills - specifically, in Lembata:

When weighing the bullish claims against the independent geological evidence being made about Lembata's gold mining potential, there is reasonable cause to suspect that Indonesia's well-connected and colorful mining magnate, Jusuf Merukh, is bidding to attract foreign investment based on tenuous claims.

Critics and officials say his recent assertions that there are major gold deposits in the area are akin to those made during the 1997 Bre-X scandal, where a gold mine in Kalimantan in which Merukh had a stake was touted as potentially the world's largest, but after luring foreign investment from US mining giant Freeport McMoran, which was coaxed into taking an 85% stake in the venture, it came up dry.

The investment climate in Indonesia and the peculiar nature of duplicate local government departments at all levels has fuelled confrontation, along with environmental and religious considerations:

Indonesia is top heavy with a burdensome bureaucracy: each district replicates all national departments. Many are starved of operational funds, so a large mine offers hope of much-needed income. However, that impulse is checked by national regulations related to environmental protection and community consultation, which must be enacted before any mining activity goes ahead.

More than that, in a place like Indonesia, community unrest can cause a thorn in the side for any new venture, even if the national determination, at government level, is for a project to go ahead:

That did not stop the Sumbawa mine from closing down when simmering community unrest over environmental destruction, unmet compensation demands and social issues eventually erupted, with local people burning down areas of the mining camp.

Even officials get in on the act:

Sembiring, the recently retired head of the Department of Minerals in Bandung, said: "There are no proven minerals in Lembata. But there are rumors of bribery. Mr Merukh has a bad reputation in mining circles, so I do not care what he says. The mine will not go ahead. I give you a guarantee. There will be no mine."

"The people have the last say and if they do agree, then there will be no mine. There is no contract of work [COW]. It would have to be issued by the national government to the investor. I know a COW has not been issued, nor will it be. Merukh is not being honest if he says it is going ahead."

Holy cow, can you imagine that happening in Britain?

[climate of suspicion] versus sensible precautions

It's a topic this blog has avoided like the plague up to this point but L'Ombre has raised the issue of free speech and what constitutes child porn.

He lists two ongoing cases and builds his case, quoting:

The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.

I think we have to accept a number of things these days in the west:

1. The law is a blunt instrument;
2. Your computer is hacked and everything on it is viewable;
3. There are people who would love to see you put away;
4. There is zero percentage, not only in having questionable material on board but in having any material of a female nature;
5. Feminism has a lot to answer for in bashing the male;
6. One must make no reference whatsoever to the allure of the female.

This blog decided long ago to say bollocks to the last point for a single reason - it's sheer hypocrisy to maintain that line. For a male to say that an alluring woman is not alluring tells me he has something to hide and it just further fuels the paranoia which has seen families looking askance at the father, where fathers feel they can't go near their children without inviting suspicion and where kids grow up in a paranoid atmosphere.

I don't know about you but it looks pretty clear to me, from the manner, the pre-occupations, the degree of secretiveness, when there might be a problem. Like alcoholism, there are clearly degrees. If a kid climbs up on Dad's lap, that seems to me a far cry from a kid climbing up onto Dad's lap with Dad having a conduit to real kiddy porn on his computer, even "artistic stuff". If it comes to it, even having a vast supply of ordinary porn would be a concern of mine.

Anyone who says he or she has never viewed the standard pap freely available on the net looks to be a liar, in my eyes. Hell, you can't google anything these days without something appearing on the first page. But I think you'd agree there is that and then there is the fixation with and the storage of enormous numbers of images and the two are quite different.

It would be naive to deny there is a problem out there of silent domestic abuse which can go on for decades. Ironically, it is my closeness to many females and what they've told me over the years which convinces me that the thing is quite widespread, to the point where, if she is halfway attractive, there might have been at least something questionable happen to her in her early years.

Trouble is, in the current climate, where any contact of any kind equals abuse, the female is encouraged to interpret something, which might have had innocent antecedents, into a case of domestic abuse.

I can give examples from my own childhood. When I was about 11 or 12, I apparently went into some phase where I became attractive to the adult male and there were encounters with a number of family friends and neighbours. Thankfully I seemed to lose that attractiveness in late teenage.

There was one incident where we did a Boy Scout thing and to answer the unasked question - yes there was boy-on-boy buggery on those scout camps. Anyway, we went round to neighbours and did a job for some money. One neighbour constructed a situation where I sat beside him and he showed me how to mend some shed tool or whatever. Now I know exactly when he crossed the line. It wasn't when his hand rested on my thigh. It was when it came close to my groin.

I never let him get any further but I sure as hell never went back there again and that made me one of the lucky ones. If my father had known, half the neighbours would probably be dead by now.

Seems to me though that this is straying from the point - the point being the domestic stuff. I think the current paranoia is sick and reflects the sick western society today, for which the feminists must shoulder their share of the blame [which they never would, of course]. The average father would no more touch his child than cut off his own goolies but in not being able to have contact with his child in a normal way, the child starts getting paranoid at the withholding of love and that is a major danger in this day and age.

Yes, the genuine cases need addressing and the system should not be stacked against the child but at the same time, we have to be more than suspicious about the hysteria as well and the automatic assumption that the male is guilty, especially when that is fuelled by a man-hating female. Minette Marin wrote on this in her piece on misandry:

My daughter's attitude was just a watered-down classroom version of the hard-line feminist view that all men are rapists. Of course it is not difficult to understand misandry. But it would be a tragic mistake to be as unjust to men as they have traditionally been to us.

Yet that is what women seem constantly tempted to do.

In the debate on date-rape there seems, on the part of the most vociferous women, to be a wilful indifference towards men. They seem interested only in female sexuality and perspectives, and to discuss these things in a way that is clearly quite incomprehensible to most men.

Last year Cosmopolitan reported that hundreds of women wrote in to say that until they read the magazine's article on date-rape, they had not realised they had been raped.

Obviously this is the extreme position and there are definitely clear cut rapes and I don't wish to buy into this. What I do want to buy into is the paranoia and hysteria which now governs relations between the sexes.

Yesterday, I was at my hairdresser [don't laugh or I'll call you a Hairist] and I made the comment to the girl doing my scone that many women seem to feel the cold more than men and she shot back: "That's a bit sexist, isn't it?"

I asked why, she thought about it and then said; "Maybe we do feel the cold more."

[england] would you prefer to be spanish

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You might like to check out a humorous ditty over at Pox Anglorum, originally from Hookie:

"Always remember - if it hadn't been for the English, you'd all be Spanish."

[qantas and ba] why talks failed

In a time of airline mergers, the latest has fallen through.

The two majors were Qantas and BA and the reason for that order here is on overall market share. The Qantas objections included:

1. government stipulation that it must be 50% Australian owned;
2. worries about the large number of unsecured pension fund liabilities of BA;
3. concern over the proposed BA merger with Iberia.

BA did not state its objections but they were centred on Qantas seeking greater than 50% equity in the joint venture. Just a word on the BA plan to close the pension fund hole. They offered the unions to maintain a fund of sorts but:

In return, employees will offer one-off sacrifices worth a further £400m along with changes to future benefits, including the capping of future pensionable pay rises at the rate of inflation.

Willie Walsh's fixation on the government coming to the party on the the Heathrow third runway and parallel government dictation to the company, even on which engines it should have in its planes, has made BA's task all the harder:

As an autonomous, publicly owned company, BA is under no obligation to consider national interest when buying new aircraft. But the aviation sector is heavily regulated and BA''s future growth depends on government support for new infrastructure such as additional runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick.

The Australian government has a history of support for its main carrier and is hardly likely to step back and see it go down but clearly, BA do not consider that Nu-Labour is likely to support them in the same way, whilst they are still solvent. Instead, there appears to be a climate of demand and counter-demand and a feeling BA must have that the government is just waiting for, willing them to default.

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds.

To be fair to Nu-Labour, an airline has to pay its way these days, just as pubs have to and everything else in Britain has to. However, at the same time, the government bails out fallen concerns like the banks, nationalizes them and borrows hugely to fund this.

It almost seems as if the government's policy is to say: "You're on your own, chum," until a firm defaults, then Gordo decides if it will be nationalized or not. The alternative, of course, would have been to have sat down with the British flagship companies and thrashed out a working proposal, with clearly defined government parameters to it.

On a simplistic level, there is the truism that whatever this government goes near or touches, automatically goes pear-shaped somewhere down the line. Less simplistically is the grand design, the EU demands on Gordo and the pan-European socialist vision for the next few years.