[pub closures] sad but can we afford to drink now

BBC:

UK pubs closed at a rate of 52 per week in the first half of the year - a third more than the same period in 2008 - the British Beer & Pub Association said ... The association's chief executive, David Long, said that the economic pressures of the recession had been added to by the smoking ban, tax rises on alcohol and "regulatory burdens".

I can't afford to drink. One night out with a friend some time back cost the best part of £20 each including food - fine for a one off when meeting a long lost chum but on a two or three times a week basis, it's right out of the question. In the supermarket, a halway decent wine is £13.

I'd love to support my local pub, the source of community cohesion the Browneans wish to demolish - most might feel this way also if it's not a dive and serves good food. I simply can't afford to now. I can't even afford a train.
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[india] obama's cooling leaves door open - addendum

Thanks, Anon:

Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, Wen Jiabao, the country’s premier, said in comments published on Tuesday.

“We should hasten the implementation of our ‘going out’ strategy and combine the utilisation of foreign exchange reserves with the ‘going out’ of our enterprises,” he told Chinese diplomats late on Monday.

[file sharing] not piracy, not theft but what people want

Lord T has an interesting post up on Amazon deleting Orwell's 1984 from e-readers. The quoted article said:

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

Lord T commented:

The publishers etc. all insist on having absolute control and will insist that it is built into any platform their media is on. The Music and Film guys have exactly the same issue and it just goes on. You see I’m happy to buy a film, some music or a book but I get a bit miffed if it is cancelled or deleted even if I do get a refund from the publishers. Bearing in mind some people have bought DRM protected music and lost it all when the store closed down so getting a refund is a big step forward.

They need to accept that the world has moved on and people are looking at different things. I don’t want to buy a CD and not be able to play it in my car or on my computer because some rich music executive thinks I’m going to copy and sell it. Hell, I can get a free copy myself that will play anywhere if I want to. Thank you Mr Hacker.

In Russia, Microsoft, for example and other large firms, moved in a few years back and must have paid big bikkies because the next thing, stores were being raided all over the place and pirated copies became like hen's teeth after that. They'll come back again though or go underground in that hacker's paradise and everyone finds lateral solutions to the problems posed by the moguls.

The simple fact is that people like file sharing and don't want to fork out 99p for a download or whatever. That's what people want to do and that's what, despite the attempts made by big business to stop them, they are going to find a way to do. I made the point at Lord T's site [forgive the breach in quoting myself again]:

You’ve touched on a sore point here. I detest the way moguls prevent things. Look, if I like a film or album sufficiently, I’ll buy the DVD or CD because it has extra information and it’s nice to indulge in it.

But if I just want one song, I sure as hell am not going to buy a restricted DRM. It’s a bit like the ridiculous anti-pirate warnings at the beginning of films. I don’t want to sit through that guff and I resent the big brother approach which wastes a few valuable minutes of my life.

Market forces are at work here and people simply will not play the mogul "total control" game - we are not their pawns but people who want a bit of pleasure from life.

And as for draconian lawsuits by billionaire firms and the RIIA against individuals - that is so disproportionate, e.g. in 2008, RIAA suing nineteen-year-old Ciara Sauro for allegedly sharing ten songs online.

As of late 2008 they have announced they will stop their lawsuits and instead are attempting to work with ISPs who will use a three strike warning system for file sharing, and upon the third strike will cut off internet service all together.

This is little better. They should have no recourse in law against anyone who bought the original copy, provided it was not done as a rival commercial venture, nor should anyone benefitting from that be incommoded. If I want to share the album I bought with any number of friends, that is my business.

I don't illegally file share because I'm not enough into music and films and I don't have those sorts of friends - youtube covers my needs. But now I'm seriously thinking that complete civil disobedience over this might just break the stranglehold these moguls have.


All these badges and posters saying that stopping piracy supports the artist is tosh. It actually interests the file sharer in that artist's music and in my case, if I see a discounted copy at ASDA or wherever, I'll buy it. This article reports that:

The royalty rate paid to the artist for CDs and singles is a negotiated rate (called "record rate" or "regular rate"), usually 6-15 percent of the gross receipts. Some superstars will negotiate even higher percentages and often with a guaranteed minimum cash payment.

If the artist[s] were to receive a fair percentage - at least over 50% - of the sale on any one CD or DVD or whatever the new technology is, then fair enough. Knowing that the money was going to the artist, I'd be willing to play ball with the moguls.

But it's not, they're not and so I'm not.
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[male brain] an interesting organ

It might be true after all:

He may be incapable of seeing your shared past the way you do. Brain images have started to show that men and women use their brains in vastly different ways. For example, women use the left part of the amygdala — the part of the brain that creates emotional reactions to events — to put memories in order by emotional strength, meaning that something emotionally important to them (like a great first date a couple of months ago) will be ordered in front of what they ate for breakfast yesterday.

Men, however, use the right part of the amygdala to put memories in order. Traditionally, the right hemisphere of the brain is associated with the central action of an event, while the left hemisphere is associated with finer details. Translation: You’ll both remember your first date, but he might not remember the color of your sweater or the light rain that was falling that night. It doesn’t mean he was checked out; it just means he’s a guy.

The research might be tosh, it might be right.

If women are supposed to be so emotional, then why are they so calculating in love? Why is it more important that he does love her than in the emotional aspects of the experience, nice though they are? How is it that a woman cries for a week and then moves on to the next partner but the man phones her three months later and says, "I want you to know you ruined my life but we can still get back together if you like."

The love in a cottage question is an interesting one. Would it be more likely to be the man or the woman who'd be happy to live on no money in a cottage in the middle of the countryside, just the two of them forever? Similarly, who writes most of the flowery love poetry, full of protestations of eternal love and how that person would die for the other?

Which gender sees the relationship as a state? Having won the prize, that person can now sit back and relax. Which gender sees the relationship as a growing thing, onwards and upwards? Which gender is supposed to be able to multitask?

[silly season] for blogs, not the msm

Man in a Shed proposes that next week we start our blog Silly Season and post on "weird, odd, funny and even scary stuff".

[all or nothing] either fund them or get them out

The Senate Votes Down Funds for F-22s

The legislation rejects authorizing $1.75 billion to support seven additional F-22 jets.

If you're not going to support your troops, then get them out.

[tuesday quiz] five more to annoy you

1. In the New Testament, Zacharias was the father of which major figure?

2. Which 1971 novel written by William Peter Blatty was turned into a classic horror film?

3. Ruritania is an imaginary country which was invented as a setting for two novels. Now the name is used to describe any state where the intrigues of a reactionary court dominate politics. Name either of the two books in which it first appeared.

4. What is Sherlock Holmes' seven percent solution in "The Sign of Four"?

5. What were the "golden apples" of Greek mythology?

Answers
John the Baptist, The Exorcist, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel: Rupert of Hentzau (1898), by Anthony Hope (1863-1933), Cocaine, Apricots

[navigation] so difficult to decide

[global governance] gore comes out with his new idea

These people have appointed themselves your leaders - did you vote for them?

Oh dear, here it is; it's happening at last. Martin reports:

Al Gore has called for 'global governance'.

Just read the language in that report, if you would, the Gore-speak. He, of course, approaches it from the global warming angle. Global warming = totalitarian world state. Somewhere in the grotesque furniture in his brain, he is sitting comfortably and dreaming this stuff up or rather parroting a very old line.

Note these:

1829 - British illuminist and early feminist Frances "Fanny" Wright gives a series of lectures in the United States. She announces that various subversives and revolutionaries are to be united in a movement that will be called "Communism." She explains that the movement is to be made more acceptable to the public by professing to support "equal opportunity" and "equal rights."

Feb. 5, 1891 - Rhodes joins his group from Oxford with a similar group from Cambridge headed by ardent social reformer William Stead. Rhodes and Stead are members of the inner "Circle of Initiates" of the secret society which they found. There is also an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers." This moved on to the Round Table Groups.

1909-1913 - Lord Alfred Milner organizes the "Association of Helpers" into various Round Table Groups in the British dependencies and the United States.

This is a possible source on Milner but from the rhetoric, I'm not sure who the authors are. However, each assertion can be checked out in itself.

1912 - Colonel Edward M. House, a close advisor of President Woodrow Wilson, publishes Phillip Dru: Administrator, in which he promotes "socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx."

1916, Woodrow Wilson:

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

This quote, at least most of it, can be found on page 185 of "The New Freedom" Woodrow Wilson (1913, Doubleday, Page & Co). In the preface, Wilson describes this book as "the result of the literary skill of Mr William Bayard Hale, who has put together here in their right sequences the more suggestive of my campaign speeches.......I have left the sentences in the form in which they were stenographically reported". You can find the quote without the first few sentences in chapter 8. Also chapter 9 has more. You can find a free e-copy on www.gutenberg.org/etext/14811.

May 30, 1919 - Prominent British and American personalities establish the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England and the Institute of International Affairs in the U.S. at a meeting arranged by Col. House; attended by various Fabian socialists, including noted economist John Maynard Keynes [idealist, labelled by free market economists as socialist].

1921 - Col. House reorganizes the American branch of the Institute of International Affairs into the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

December 15, 1922 - The CFR endorses World Government in its magazine "Foreign Affairs." Author Philip Kerr states:

"Obviously there is going to be no peace or prosperity for mankind as long as the earth remains divided into 50 or 60 independent states, until some kind of international system is created. The real problem today is that of world government."

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

1940 - "The New World Order" is published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and contains a select list of references on regional and world federation, together with some special plans for world order after the war.

June 28, 1945 - President Truman endorses world government in a speech:

"It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in a republic of the United States."

October 24, 1945 - The United Nations Charter becomes effective.

Feb. 7, 1950 - International financier and CFR member James Warburg tells a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee: "We shall have world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent."

April 12, 1952 - CFR member John Foster Dulles [who later became Secretary of State, in speaking before the American Bar Association in Louisville, Kentucky, says:

"Treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties can take powers away from Congress and give them to the President. They can take powers from the States and give them to the Federal Government or to some international body, and they can cut across the rights given to the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights."

The significance of this focus on treaties is especially relevant to China and Russia, the former using treaties as a prime political tool to re-order the world. Treaties have not altered the United States as yet as far as sovereignty goes but when it comes time to change the American Constitution, it will be through a crisis, a melting pot and the necessity to honour existing treaties. That's how World War I got under way.

1953 - Rowan Gaither, President of the Ford Foundation, tells a Congressional commission investigating tax-exempt foundations:

"We at the executive level here were active in either the OSS [forerunner of the CIA], the State Department, or the European Economic Administration. During those times, and without exception, we operated under directives issued by the White House. We are continuing to be guided by just such directives, the substance of which were to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the United States as to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union."

This White House brought in the Patriot Act.

To continue:

Nov. 25, 1959 - Council on Foreign Relations Study Number 7 calls for a

"...new international order which must be responsive to world aspirations for peace, for social and economic change...an international order...including states labeling themselves as 'socialist' [communist]."

Now note that one - these are the people who have the ear of the White House, e.g. March 23rd, 2005.

To continue:

1959 - "The Mid-Century Challenge to U.S. Foreign Policy" is published, sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund. It explains that the U.S.:

"cannot escape, and indeed should welcome...the task which history has imposed upon us. This is the task of helping to shape a new world order in all its dimensions - spiritual, economic, political, social."

1961 - The U.S. State Department issues Document 7277, entitled "Freedom From War: The U.S. Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World." It details a three-stage plan to disarm all nations and arm the U.N. with the final stage in which "no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force."

1962 - "The Future of Federalism" by Nelson Rockefeller claims that current events compellingly demand a "new world order." He says there is:

"A fever of nationalism...but the nation-state is becoming less and less competent to perform its international political tasks...These are some of the reasons pressing us to lead vigorously toward the true building of a new world order...Sooner perhaps than we may realize...there will evolve the bases for a federal structure of the free world."

1968 - Joy Elmer Morgan, former editor of the "NEA Journal," publishes "The American Citizen's Handbook" in which he says:

"The coming of the United Nations and the urgent necessity that it evolve into a more comprehensive form of world government places upon the citizens of the United States an increased obligation to make the most of their citizenship which now widens into active world citizenship."

July 26, 1968 - Nelson Rockefeller pledges that as President, he would work toward international creation of a new world order.

May 18, 1972 - In speaking of the coming world government, Roy M. Ash, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, declares that:

"...within two decades the institutional framework for a world economic community will be in place...and aspects of individual sovereignty will be given over to a supernational authority."

1973 - The Club of Rome issues a report entitled "Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System," dividing the world into ten kingdoms.

April 1974 - Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Trilateral and CFR member Richard Gardner's article "The Hard Road to World Order" is published in the CFR's "Foreign Affairs," where he states that:

"...the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."

1975 - In Congress, 32 Senators and 92 Representatives sign "A Declaration of Interdependence," which states that:

"we must join with others to bring forth a new world order...Narrow notions of national sovereignty must not be permitted to curtail that obligation."

Congresswoman Marjorie Holt refuses to sign the Declaration saying:

"It calls for the surrender of our national sovereignty to international organizations. It declares that our economy should be regulated by international authorities. It proposes that we enter a 'new world order' that would redistribute the wealth created by the American people."

1975 - Retired Navy Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy and former CFR member, writes in a critique that the goal of the CFR is the:

"...submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all powerful one-world government..."

I'm placing the next quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn here because there is no date to it but much of his work was around this time. He is reported to have said:

...there also exists another alliance — at first glance a strange one, a surprising one—but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well — grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. The very famous Armand Hammer, who is flourishing here today, laid the basis for this when he made the first exploratory trip into Russia, still in Lenin's time, in the very first years of the Revolution.

1977 - "The Third Try at World Order" is published. Author Harlan Cleveland of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies calls for:

"...changing Americans' attitudes and institutions" for "complete disarmament (except for international soldiers)" and "for individual entitlement to food, health and education."

1977 - Carter signs UN charter removing US. sovereignty under UN military command.

1979 - Barry Goldwater, retiring Republican Senator from Arizona, publishes his autobiography "With No Apologies." He writes:

"In my view the Trilateral Commission represents a skilful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community."

Sept. 1980 - At a "Prelude to Victory" party given by Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, Mr. Reagan is photographed with the place of honor, immediately to Reagan's right, given to David Rockefeller, the leader of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.

1981 - Congressman Larry McDonald calls for comprehensive congressional investigation of the CFR and Trilateral Commission. Congress is urged to investigate these organizations.

1983 - Larry McDonald is killed along with 268 other passengers on Korean Air Lines (KAL) flight 007, shot down over Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Japan.

1987 - "The Secret Constitution and the Need for Constitutional Change" is sponsored in part by the Rockefeller Foundation. In it, author Arthur S. Miller says:

"...a pervasive system of thought control exists in the United States...the citizenry is indoctrinated by employment of the mass media and the system of public education...people are told what to think about...a new vision is required to plan and manage the future, a global vision that will transcend national boundaries and eliminate the poison of nationalistic solutions...a new Constitution is necessary."

How many more quotes are needed?

Before the detractors begin

Please don't trot out 'conspiracy theorist', 'truther', 'right-wingnut' or whatever. You think the above is a theory? That these people didn't say or write those things at that time? Please tell me which of the above were never actually said and quote your sources as to why you think they were not said, as I've done, in saying that they were said.

"Well, it sounds implausible," I'm afraid, just won't wash. I need hard data as to which of the above was not said or written.

As to you yourself, the person saying I'm a right wingnut - what are your own antecents [or are you hiding behind the Anonymous tag]? I'm happy to tell you who I am and what my politics are.

Here ya go.

Question

So, Gore has trotted out his "global governance" again. He is not a man noted for his inventiveness or imagination. He is in with these people and look at their kooky background. Please, please, dear reader - take the time, devote some time to reading just that post if you haven't the time to read any others on this blog.

Gore trots out what he's been spoonfed and is not only a good globalist but he's also a fruitcake, as set out in that post. My question is this:

If I, James Higham, support the Constitution of the United States in its present form, the sovereignty of that nation and the right of its people to self-determination, if I support the right of our own country here to exist without falling under the EU yolk, if I support the right to free enterprise, the right to order my life as I wish within the rule of law, if I support our Christian roots, then what does that make me - a patriot or a subversive traitor?

Now please apply that question to the so-called "leadership" of the so-called "free world", as evidenced in the quotes above. What does that make them - patriots or traitors? What are Gore, Rockefeller, Mandelson and Brown/Blair?

I'll tell you what they are - they're traitors to their nation, if those nations are the United States of America or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As for the question of England, it's even worse.

I'd also like to call them "vermin" but that would hardly be scholastic, would it?
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[india] obama's cooling leaves door open for russia

Is Obama off his brain? What's the meaning of this?

Indian strategists are schooled in the eight-year cherished belief that the future of the US-India partnership lay in the two countries striding "shoulder-to-shoulder" in terms of a shared "vision".

From the Indian end, the "vision" meant that the US recognized India's primacy as the number one military power in the Indian Ocean region and built it up as an Asian counterweight to China. The "vision" had a dream run during the Bush era. India has held something like 50 military exercises with the US during the past five-year period.

But Obama's priorities lie elsewhere. The America he inherited has different priorities. The world, too, has changed following the global downturn. Clinton is on a formidable diplomatic mission as the harbinger of startling tidings to Delhi. Rhetoric has been completely lacking in her repertoire.

Who's dictating foreign policy now? It used to be the CFR/TLC/MIC but this seems a very strange move for them. Is Obama forming his own policy now? Obama, there is the little matter of the balance of power and two countries called China and Russia. Is this a sweetheart deal for Vladimir so he and China won't form a pact?

News is - they have:

Both sides insisted that the visit by China's President Hu Jintao to Russia on June 16-18 was aimed at further deepening the bilateral strategic partnership and developing energy cooperation.

Perhaps the White House was aware of this:

Russian and Chinese state-run energy companies struggle to agree to a compromise on energy prices.

Is that what's behind the cooling towards India? Or is it the CIA's sweetheart relationship with the ISI which has made it politic for Clinton to appear less than enthusiastic? Is Obama happy to allow Russia to step into the breach and be Delhi's friend again?
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