The weekend's coming and that means it's time to explain Reverse Osmosis to those who still don't quite get it. Of course, this just draws on the excellent How Stuff Works article on the topic:
On the left is a beaker filled with water, and a tube has been half-submerged in the water. As you would expect, the water level in the tube is the same as the water level in the beaker.
In the middle figure, the end of the tube has been sealed with a "semipermeable membrane" and the tube has been half-filled with a salty solution and submerged.
Initially, the level of the salt solution and the water are equal, but over time, something unexpected happens -- the water in the tube actually rises. The rise is attributed to "osmotic pressure."
A semipermeable membrane is a membrane that will pass some atoms or molecules but not others. Saran wrap is a membrane, but it is impermeable to almost everything we commonly throw at it. The best common example of a semipermeable membrane would be the lining of your intestines, or a cell wall.
Gore-tex is another common semipermeable membrane. Gore-tex fabric contains an extremely thin plastic film into which billions of small pores have been cut. The pores are big enough to let water vapor through, but small enough to prevent liquid water from passing.
In the figure above, the membrane allows passage of water molecules but not salt molecules. One way to understand osmotic pressure would be to think of the water molecules on both sides of the membrane. They are in constant Brownian motion.
On the salty side, some of the pores get plugged with salt atoms, but on the pure-water side that does not happen. Therefore, more water passes from the pure-water side to the salty side, as there are more pores on the pure-water side for the water molecules to pass through. The water on the salty side rises until one of two things occurs:
* The salt concentration becomes the same on both sides of the membrane (which isn't going to happen in this case since there is pure water on one side and salty water on the other).
* The water pressure rises as the height of the column of salty water rises, until it is equal to the osmotic pressure. At that point, osmosis will stop.
Osmosis, by the way, is why drinking salty water (like ocean water) will kill you. When you put salty water in your stomach, osmotic pressure begins drawing water out of your body to try to dilute the salt in your stomach.
Eventually, you dehydrate and die. Isn't that nice?
In reverse osmosis, the idea is to use the membrane to act like an extremely fine filter to create drinkable water from salty (or otherwise contaminated) water. The salty water is put on one side of the membrane and pressure is applied to stop, and then reverse, the osmotic process. It generally takes a lot of pressure and is fairly slow, but it works.
The Madalene [whose link leads to a photo of Madame Lash and therefore undercuts his position] points to this, from Bloomberg:
Iran and Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding to build a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Syria, the Regional Press Network reported in a story published on the Web site of Lebanon’s The Daily Star.
Venezuela would hold a 33 percent stake in the project, Iran would have 26 percent, Syria 26 percent and Malaysia 15 percent, the report said, citing Mohammed Ali Talebi, an official at Iran’s Petropars Ltd. The plant would have the capacity to process 140,000 barrels of oil a day.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela said when construction would start, according to the report.
It seems to me that the forces in the known world are aligning themselves, whether or not this refinery ever gets built. On one side are the communist leaders of China and North Korea, along with the Saudi princes, Gaddafi, the Iran nutter, Malaysia [which also has a dicey record] and so on - the pariahs of the sane world.
On the other are Obama, Brown and Sarkozy, Mandelson, the Bilderbergers et al. Russia is playing its own game but the top is aligned with the club.
Nothing whatever to do with us, the ordinary people. I'm no socialist and yet there is this niggling point that the battle is between two sectors of this ruling club who decide when it's time to stir up a war. The economic crisis is one thing, people out of work, people on benefits, loss of homes, pressure on available homes for rental and so on.
That's bad but much worse is the inevitable result of these things - war. This is the mentality which has come down through the past few centuries, the same dialectic, the same militaristic motif - finding the issue on which to wax rhetorical so that the MIC can be set into full swing.
They want war. That's all there is to it. I keep coming back to John Buchan MP who was kicked upstairs or put out to pasture, whichever term you care to employ, for speaking truths and even putting them in books. In The 39 Steps, he has his little agent say:
The first thing I learned was that it was no question of preventing a war. That was coming, as sure as Christmas: had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February 1912. Karolides was going to be the occasion.
He was booked all right, and was to hand in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and four days from that May morning. I gathered from Scudder's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of Epirote guards that would skin their own grandmothers was all billy-o.
The second thing was that this war was going to come as a mighty surprise to Britain. Karolides' death would set the Balkans by the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum.
That book was published in 1915 and was therefore written earlier, by a British MP who later wnet on to become Governor-General of Canada, as Lord Tweedsmuir. The work is fiction and yet the man had a closer knowledge than most of the goings on at the time.
These days, the doings are better concealed but around the turn of the century, in Buchan's day, things were far easier to glean. The Jeckyll Island meeting was observed, Colonel House's and Warburg's machinations seen for what they were and it wasn't such a big deal understanding how these things work.
Today, with the power of the net and with Google at hand, you'd think we would all be au fait but it seems we're still light years away from understanding, simply because we're accepting the pap we're fed by the MSM, we wish to have it that way in fact and it's an uphill battle getting people to join the dots.
Those who do join the dots see something we can't deal with - too organized, too interlocked. How did I get here from a Venezuelan/Iranian oil deal? Chavez, Mugabe and Hitler have shown how one man with a rampant ego and a desire to straddle the world like a Colossus can cause such enormous damage because everyone kowtows and similar megalomaniacs in the world recognize him and can play him at his own game.
It only takes one man, one forceful and yet insane person to achieve this mayhem. Have you ever wondered why this happens - this constant churning out of and pushing up of this type of person into positions of genuine power in their land and therefore on the world stage? He couldn't do it on his own. Clearly he is piggybacked by others seeing his potential for them.
The essential thing that anyone representing the interests of the majority of people desiring a comfortable life, free from the ravages of war and pestilence, must try to do is to find a way to break this stranglehold on world events. As for your humble correspondent, I don't particularly care to be swept along by the tide of events these nutters set in motion.
Web bots predict collapse
Good article in the Telegraph today. Of course the sceptics are right here - there are cogent reasons for these results. You don't need web bots to do simple research and equally, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
... this Sunday, September 27th and your humble blogger has every intention of having it posted by mid-afternoon. I shall be relieving Mr. Eugenides who is on holiday.
So, get your nominations in to:
britblog@gmail.com
... tout suite.
I say "every intention of having it posted" but the question is - where? This blog passes into history on Tuesday, September 29th and the new blog:
http://nourishingobscurity.com
... will carry on from where this one leaves off. The solution is clear - the Britblog Roundup will be posted both here and at the new site.
1. July 2008 - last month, the news broke that Gordon Brown was making phonecalls to unsuspecting members of the British public. Now, the News of The World has reported that The Queen had been thinking about setting up premium rate phone lines to allow the British public to call and get a message from the Royals - for what purpose?
2. September, 2008 - a "lady' burst on to the scene, calling Paris Hilton "a piece of sh-- who looks like a tramp". Then she impersonated a presidential hopeful. Who is she?
3. October, 2008 - there was a real stink when a prank resulted in one man having to depart but the other golden boy only got 12 weeks. A lady called Lesley also had to resign over the affair. Who was the prat who got 12 weeks?
4. November, 2008 - one which has died away of late but at the time, this sort of thing was said - it is better for Saudi Arabia and the company to pay out a few million in ransom and save the 995 million left over. What was the issue?
Les avocats de Dominique de Villepin ont jugé mercredi soir «scandaleux» les propos du président de la République au sujet des prévenus du procès Clearstream, propos qui selon eux violent les règles relatives à la présomption d'innocence.
A case of paranoia, slander and vengeance involving:
a) Dominique de Villepin, an ex-prime minister who dazzled the world on 14 February 2003 with a historic speech at the UN against the war in Iraq, a Gaullist with a taste for history and poetry and a penchant for Bonaparte;
b) Nicolas Sarkozy, former Chirac minister, today president of France, whose permanent agitation has transfixed his compatriots, and amused, irritated and awed the world in equal measure since his election on 5 May 2007;
Le Monde concludes: “The involvement of the head of state unmistakably emerges from the testimony. Contrary to official statements it is very probable that Jacques Chirac issued ‘instructions’ in this affair... Irrespective of what the prime minister has said so far, the almost obsessive search for elements which could compromise the UMP president is unmistakably clear.”
The French love a good scandal but not of this sort, at this time and indications are that most French, for either reasons of boredom or reasons of fear for what it might do to UMP, vis-a-vis the next election, ushering in the truly loopy and perpetually infighting French Left, do not think it should have gone this far.
If UMP have plans to remain in power, they'd best get Sarkozy to close this thing off out of court. But that's not in the nature of Them, is it?
Let me wax religious for one moment. What the Clearstream affair revolves around is someone's knowledge that something was false and his willingness [however true or not is it of Villepin in this case] to remain silent on it and to allow things to come out which would damage the other.
That is no different to the exhortation, in Christianity that "blasphemy against the spirit can't be forgiven". Translated into Secular, it means exactly as stated - knowing something to be based on a false premise, namely the way the Pharisees and Saducees were going about things, they chose instead to bring down the accuser and rival with false testimony.
The EASA airworthiness directive concerns carriers that fly Airbus A330/A340 jetliners equipped with Goodrich pitot probes stamped with the part number 0851HL.
"Several reports have recently been received of loose pneumatic quick-disconnect unions" on the probes in question, the agency said, adding that the problem might lie at the "equipment manufacturing level."
The fault could result in an air leak that could in turn provide false airspeed indications, the statement said.
Ah yes - good luck with your Airbus flight if you have once scheduled.
US President Barack Obama has said the world must tackle stark challenges, and the US cannot face them alone. In his first speech to the UN General Assembly, he said global problems included nuclear proliferation, war, climate change and economic crisis.
There's something of the murky way to power [JFK's daddy bought him Illinois, according to some, Obama concealed his Kenyan birth], something of the rhetoric which is based on nothing but catch phrases used by politicians since the Year Dot and now the critical question - is he starting to believe in the rhetoric the national "Tammany" Machine has written for him?
If he does see himself as the messiah, as Kennedy began to, doing this Great Work of Ages which was starting to be something quite different to that envisaged by the Machine, is he heading for a fall? He's playing with an impacable set of forces in the Washington lobby, in Israel and in the pathetic excuse for political life which Hamas and Saudi et al are pursuing with such quiet vigour.
When President Barack Obama spiked plans for a missile shield in Europe, the international community was taken aback. Yet, Washington is leaving nothing to chance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke of a "defense umbrella" in the Persian Gulf if Iran refuses to agree to nuclear inspections. Most likely, this "umbrella" will be a quick-striking military force overseen from US bases in Afghanistan.
Contrast that with his speech to the UN:
All nations bore responsibility for addressing these problems, he said. Mr Obama said "no world order which elevates one nation above others" could succeed in tackling the world's problems. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he said.
Really pushing this one, isn't he? And that talk of world order. Fashionable to seize on any talk of new world order as OTT and yet they keep mouthing about it, all globalists like Obama. And the Washington Club with members like Maurice Strong and Gore keep mouthing about shamballa and climate change as a religious phenomenon.
If you still feel that Obama supports the U.S.A. as a separate entity, then, with respect, you haven't been reading the material brought to this site by various students of the international situation or anywhere else on the web where think-tanks like American Thinker write:
Meanwhile our own president is proclaiming the end of Pax Americana, the most successful peace-keeping policy in human history. He publicly denies the plain and obvious lessons of history. The fascist regime in Tehran would not even exist were it not for the abject failures of another president in exactly the same mold, the blighted Jimmy Carter.
Carter had this "let's all love each other and just peanut farm" mindset, he had the leftist notion that if we all pull together [no comments], we can achieve miracles, which is true but not if we all pull together in the direction they mean. Brown mouthed this off in his own U.S. speech. It takes no account of realities - bloodythirsty guttersnipes, Churchill called them.
The left then says well that's the type of confontationalist rhetoric which got us into the mess.
No it isn't - what got us into the mess is:
1. the Machine which has determined American foreign policy for the past century, with its stranglehold on the three arms of government in the U.S. and international in complexion and the ripple effect on British polic;
2. using the natural patriotism of the American people, distorted and fuelled by the bought media, to support something quite un-American in nature but masquerading under the American flag, to the point that anyone who questions it, as many of the General Staff in the U.S. and in the UK have, is a dirty traitor and not supporting "our boys" over there and for tacitly supporting terrorism.
Look, the bottom line is that these globalists, by the very definition of their stance [how many quotes do you need from your hmble correspondent], are playing the same game, only with a newer generation which can't remember the last time on account of not having been born.
The end result is war.
Where does the natural need, which many heartily agree with, to defend the cause of freedom and free enterprise in the world, cross over into furthering the agenda of the globalists? Look at the pic of Hezbollah above and see if we're not playing the same crazed militarization of the peoples of the world, organized into rank and final and directed to destroying one another.
If this post seems to give out mixed messages - first defend the nation, then don't go to war, that's because the truth is in the middle. Yes we need to be strong but no we don't need to march off on a global financiers' war game which will make a killing of us and a killing for them.
... and the date it goes active is September 29th. If you change your link to this site [that's if you ever did link and plan to continue, I mean], then the new link will also bring you here until the changeover date and then will automatically switch to the new site.
For those interested, I'm on Wordpress.org and am [almost] self-hosting. The themes have been the main problem - I must have been through about 1500 of them and the two left at the end [which I can't decide between] are:
1. a three column not unlike this site's [but I've made the sidebar's much wider so that the whole is now a three column magazine, featuring certain posts];
2. a true magazine/news layout which has layout problems with the blockquotes and images, the latter having been solved.
Both are quite configurable [a major factor for me] and now it's down to the cosmetics and widgets. I'll get both themes ready and decide which one later. I've even been thinking of running one of them for two days and then the other and seeing what you think of each.
The body managing the government's stakes in bailed-out banks has fired headhunters charged with finding its new boss after they recruited a disgraced top banker from RBS.
Eh? Anyone care to explain that one to me? How does it rate against a politician getting down to specifics?
But sometimes the reality is that defining moments of history come suddenly and without warning. And the task of leadership then is to define them, shape them and move forward into the new world they demand.
Or political foot shooting?
“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
This is not really the post to return with but there are a number of things weighing on my mind. Some might think it is getting hassled by phone [I don't answer it] or the Blogger thing or the way someone close backstabbed me recently - nope, it's none of those. Nor is it the economic situation or the way my particular situation could go pearshaped pretty soon.
No, it's mainly someone I realize I still haven't got over, getting married and while officially I'm happy, inside it seems that part of my life is now over and that's not a pleasant thing. That's the main downer but there is one other too and that's nervousness.
Whoever said football's just a game obviously never supported Geelong Football Club, the team of whom it was said:
Some people are destined never to find happiness in life. For such people, G-d provided the Geelong Football Club.
If ever there was a bunch of frustrating, impossible yet brilliant players who, on their day, can't be beaten, then this is them.
It's a mark of the Australian football scene that the grand final rated the greatest was that of Collingwood in 1937, not to mention Richmond in 1967 and Hawthorn in 1989. All of these involved Geelong as the other team - they seem to have a way of lifting a game into a spectacle, even if they don't win.
Last year they were odds on favourite ... and lost.
Now they're back again this coming Saturday and this time their opponents are the perennial whipping boys, St Kilda, only this season they've taken all before them, including Geelong. So, not only is this a lip-licking festa of two very attacking teams with great defences, the two who have dominated all season but there are no losers.
If St Kilda win [and almost the whole football world will be behind them], then it will be like the England World Cup victory. Hell, I don't even mind if they win. Well, actually I do. If Geelong win, having thrown it away last year, then a few of us will be very happy. This Saturday though, for three frustrating hours, the heart-attacking playing style of my team will be trying to keep out the current champs.
Why do I have to support teams like this or Wimbledon in England? Masochism?
The state of play is this, ladies and gentlemen - it's been a learning curve and widgets are doing strange things, pics are not appearing where they should and so on at the new site. The url of the new site is:
http://nourishingobscurity.com
However, for the present, until September 29th, things have been so configured that the dotcom url, as well as the usual blogspot url, will both lead you straight back here.
On the 29th, the dotcom automatically switches itself over to the new site - you needn't do anything. If you change the url in the next week, it just means that you needn't change it again. Don't know if that was as clear as mud.
This site will still be active, in the sense that comments on previous posts will still be answered and the site will be maintained but the new site will be for all new posts. More closer to the time.
The Korean film, The Host, suffers from the wooden English dubbing and very Asian style of acting in places but it has some excellent parts - the monster himself and how the little girl who is taken by it and kept in a narrow pit under a bridge and how she manages to outwit it. It's all about how authority reacts in an emergency by denial and by turning on its own people.
This part in the clip is not the very best - later scenes of despair are quite moving, how the grandfather re3acts to the loss and so on. Definitely a cut above the average, this one. You can read up on it here.
Why has no one ever told her that it's not what you reveal but what you conceal which makes you more alluring. However, that's not even the issue here:
Beyonce Knowles says she will perform in Malaysia in October, two years after canceling a show in this Muslim-majority country after protesters threatened to disrupt the concert because of her sexy image and clothing. The R&B superstar's upcoming show is already drawing the ire of conservatives in this country, where female performers are required to cover up from the shoulders to knees with no cleavage showing.
"We are not against entertainment as long as it is within the framework of our culture and our religion," Sabki said. "We are against Western sexy performances. We don't think our people need that."
There are different issues here, all being mish-mashed into one. The issue if decency is one thing and the issue of killing off fun is another. The story of Inul in Indonesia is a case in point. Vilified by the Imams for lascivious conduct, nevertheless follow that clip and see the attire she's wearing. She does not let it all hang out, as the western woman does.
It doesn't have to be a Muslim society either. When we were in Cypress, my gf had to change into something which revealed less before going into a Makarios church. She was up in arms about that but I pointed out that that was their rules, they were well within their rights to ask that and so it should be. I went into a mosque without footwear and I went into a synagogue wearing kippar on the head.
So what?
That she should wish to bowl in, promoting her slatternliness in a culture which does not appreciate it is beyond that sort of person.
And another thing - if we are to fight back against the imposition of Muslim life on us by means of spreading our own culture to Muslim nations, then let it be our higher culture that gets exported, not something which reveals our cultural ignorance.
Let it be something which edifies them and let's them see something higher to aspire for.
Senior officials of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, are facing claims that they pocketed millions of dollars by dishing out loans that were impossible to repay.
Impossible to repay? What's the judge say about this?
Credit Suisse has now been accused of loaning the money in an unorthodox and lucrative deal for the bank that federal bankruptcy judge Ralph B. Kirscher described in May this year as a case of “naked greed” that “shocks the conscience of this court.”
This was a bunch of low-level employees, or even middling staff, right? Uh, wrong:
Brady Dougan, the Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse First Boston, and Hans-Ulrich Doerig, Chairman of the Board of Directors, received the subpoenas along with past and current Executive Board officials and Credit Suisse’s Board.
“Bank officials have testified that Credit Suisse created a Cayman Islands ‘branch’ in 2005 to sell these loans. “In reality, there was no phone and no staff in the bank’s phony branch. “They used the Caymans to circumvent US banking laws and to issue inflated loans that Credit Suisse executives called a ‘gravy train’ in internal memos.“
What's it all about? Yes, of course it's about a naughty bank which did what comes naturally to them and adds fuel to the fire of opinion quite willing to accept restructuring of the financial system of the world [and why does everything always have to be global?] in the image of Them.
Why all the media attention? The MSM is controlled, it's not even an issue, so why no D notices on this? Why are Credit Suisse left unprotected? To hit back at the Swiss releasing personal details on clients? It would be nice to know what's going on here.
John Scalzi attempts to explain, again, why established writers are seldom interested in reading the work of those hoping to break through the publishing barrier:
Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers who spend their time bitching about how published/established writers are mean because they won’t read your work/introduce you to their agent/give your manuscript to their editor/get you a job on their television show/whatever other thing it is you want them to do for you: A few things you should know....
It's ironic that Scalzi has to point this out so often, considering that he does more for beginning writers with his Big Idea posts than any writer not named The Original Cyberpunk.
My reasons for not reading unpublished fiction are a little different, however.
First, I simply don't have the time. I don't even read much good published fiction these days; I prefer to spend my reading time on history and economics. For example, yesterday afternoon I was reading Bernanke's The Great Depression, about which more will be said anon, and finished with Demosthenes's Orations as the nightcap.
I'm not saying I don't plow through my share of mind candy, having just read Conn Iggledon's four Emperor books last week, but unless a novel is particularly good or original, I find that I'm less interested than I used to be.
Second, after two spells on the Nebula novel jury, a year participating in the Critters Workshop, and six months working as the de facto gatekeeper for a fantasy publisher, I never, ever, want to read any new writer's unpublished fiction ever again. Still less do I feel like arguing with a writer over why my opinion of his writing, which he sought out in the first place, is wrong.
If you think much of the fiction that is published today is pretty awful, you're correct. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the stuff that is being rejected. I don't care if you think your first scribblings are brilliant or not, the probabilities dictate otherwise and I'm quite willing to swap the chance to be the first to recognize an unpublished masterpiece for the privilege of not having to read three dozen attempted crimes against the reading public.
There are some talented writers out there who are just beginning their literary careers. I occasionally read them over at the Friday Challenge and wouldn't mind publishing two or three of them someday if I ever find myself in a position to do so. If you want advice and constructive criticism, I strongly recommend participating in the activities there.
However, since I don't use an agent and at least half the publishers in the States and UK would rather chew off their fingers than sign a publishing contract with my name on it, you'd probably be much better off not doing things my way anyhow.
Now, I have certainly had the benefit of help from established writers such as Bruce Bethke, Joel Rosenberg, Lois Bujold, and Pat Wrede. But keep this in mind. At the time the OC was kind enough to look over my work and tell me to throw away my second novel attempt - which a few of you may be interested to know was set in the world of Summa Elvetica, albeit a version sans religion - I was already a nationally syndicated columnist.
The lesson is: if you have the talent or the ambition, or preferably, both, and you are willing to be persistent, you'll eventually find a way.
My comments
I find Scalzi a prat and have made a mental note never to read him - those comments of his were nasty. However, he does have a point, as Vox mentioned. The grim reality of the writing scene is that:
1. The majority of it is dire and yet the new hopeful only wants someone to read him/her, just wants someone to give him a break.
2. Every writer a bit further up the ladder is wanting him/herself read instead and is not, no matter how altruistic in nature, vitally concerned with a newbie of unproven and maybe unskilled writing talent - there are how many million of them out there.
Thus we have a, "Will you just look at this piece I've written?" which gets, in reply, "Well OK, if you just look at my piece on intergalactic travel first. Now, funnily enough, I thought of the theme in the bathtub some years ago and some people have been kind enough to suggest ..."
The first budding writer left five minutes ago.
3. Quite frankly, in the writing game, no one is going to give you a break.
4. Some put their scribblings on their blogs, as I do and a few others on my blogrolls do - one blogger's whole site is given over to his writing.
Vox's idea of writers' workshops and sites where you can run the gamut of criticism is a good one but it flies in the face of the artistic temperament of the would-be writer - his is a masterpiece, misunderstood by the critics, consummate and whole as it stands. It's humble pie to go through a process of "wasting" time on other budding writers when all you want is to have yourself published.
The writer who does initially get published knows how hard the road is and goes through a lot of s--- before getting to anywhere near "known" and during that time, he is honing his technique, learning the ropes and finding out which genres will be read and which won't. He sends pieces to magazines and news services, hawks himself to agents or else finds one and builds on that and so on.
There's a blog here which let's you cut through the c--p with contacting Blogger/Google but they don't make it easy. As the guy says:
Having some issue and want to contact Blogger Support directly? Wait a minute pal, it’s not that easy. Many important reporting forms are hidden somewhere inside a maze called Blogger Help. If you lucky, you might find some, after going here and there, turn left and right, back and forth, up and down, etc.
To those people kind enough to suggest they'd contact Blogger on my behalf, about this lockdown, I really don't know what to suggest. The link above might work. Either way, Blogger are less than impressive in the way they deal with clients.
Meanwhile
Still in the experimental stages, the new blog is being constructed but as it is more than a blog this time, it is taking a fair bit of work. It is a different url and even that is being changed from day to day, things added, things subtracted, new themes found, new databases.
The transfer of Blogger files continues - there are many - and all that remains is to thank you for your help and offers of help, turning bewilderment into a clear idea where this thing is headed. This will be the last of these lockdown posts until it's actually resolved now.
Update Tuesday, 0912, our time
Right, they've lifted the lockdown without a word of apology and turned what were reasonably kindly feelings towards Blogger into a resentment of the way they organize themselves and pursue these policies. They need to look long and hard at their bots and what can be done to someone's site and piece of mind.
Do they seriously want sustainable blogs on their hosting service, do they want people who use the blog to write or do they want the Myspace Kid? If Blogger aspires to anything higher, and they seem to be doing so with their innovations, compared to three years ago, then the whole systemic mentality has to change.
Breathless, The Seventh Seal, Casablanca, Die Hard, Battleship Potemkin and so on and so on - how can any of these be left off a list of influential films? To choose the four most influential is a near impossibility but mine are below.
Which ones have been left out? Remember - not best film - most influential on English speaking audiences.
Busy building the new site - you know how long that takes - and so I can't get round much until tomorrow morning. I'll be over to you as soon as I can. There are scheduled posts coming this evening.
This morning's post
From the fact that this post is up, it appears that I can post, with verification, verification being something I detest at the best of times so let's not dwell on that.
More to the point is how this situation could have happened in the first place.
There seems to be a mechanism where anyone at all can come in to anyone's site - I could come to yours, if you're on Blogger - and simply click Flag in the navbar. Your blog then is immediately locked down by Blogger and you can't post. Worse than that, I can click Delete this Blog on YOUR blog at any time - Blogger let you do that.
Guilty until proven innocent.
Pardon me but isn't there a principle in U.S. and British law that a person is innocent until proven guilty? I know the West-Midlands springs to mind immediately to a Brit, in terms of justice but even in our democracy-lite days of this era the principle still technically applies.
And whatever happened to previous form on a blog? Whatever has been built up over the years?
If this is, in fact, the Blogger/Google policy, then it stinks.
Go to Wordpress you say and I'm very much inclined to but I've been looking at the Wordpress terms and conditions and even if I purchase the top upgrade, I still can't do something as simple as alter my site's appearance. I can write new CSS style sheets, at a cost to me, renewable yearly and my old changes are lost if I don't renew.
The only way to achieve a comparable level of site control to what I currently enjoy, vis-a-vis editing, is to be a VIP blogger and for that you must be invited and have 500 000 hits a month. I don't like this. For most people, editing of blog appearance is not an issue but for me it is.
For example, I want 994px width to my theme. OK, currently, I just go to my template and type it in, making the other necessary changes along the way. Simple. But on Wordpress, that's not possible - one can only choose between custom themes someone else is offering and can make only cosmetic changes to it, playing at being an editor.
Even if you were to recommend a good-self hosting and server set-up, that's money, whereas Blogger lets you do that for free. Apart from Blogger's recent insistence on trying to organize Compose with this stupid "p", which I then have to go through and change back or else compose entirely in html, the only criticism is this bloody lockdown nonsense they seem to pursue, on the whim of someone who doesn't like you.
In my situation, the nature of my subject matter means there are plenty of people who don't so I could be in for a more or less continuous lockdown, each time with a 20 day waiting period for someone to come along and unlock it.
Who was it who said that if it hadn't been a James Bond film, it would have been acclaimed? On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with soundtracks like this, was very strong as an action romance, it didn't enter the realms of the improbable [not a lot anyway] and it had all the required elements of a top film.
I'll go out on a limb and rate these my five contenders for best Bond films of all time:
1. Casino Royale [2006]
Craig was fantastic the way he exploded onto the screen and later rolled the Aston Martin a record number of times, his leading lady was excellent with real interaction the like which hadn't been seen since OHMSS, Mads Mikkelson and the terrorist were quite creepy and frightening respectively and just as important as a leading lady, in my book, is the quality of the offsider - in this case Giancarlo Giannini, a great choice for the role.
M - Dame Judy, who's done to that role what David Suchet and Joan Hickson did to theirs, is the only conceivable choice.
The locations were superb and that train journey "I'm the money" exotic. From the free-running at the start to the sad ending, this was a film and a half. And don't forget the muscle bound Bond in the blue trunks, rising from the water.
2. OHMSS [1969]
Barry's lush score, the plot, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas and a very strong supporting cast, including the great Ilse Steppart, made for a superb piece of escapism. These were real actors in there. The offsider [as far as Bond has offsiders] was Gabriele Ferzetti - an Italian smoothy, just as in Casino Royale. Don't forget Moneypenny either.
On the down side was George Lazenby, of course, for his woodenness but I contend that he was excellent in the fight scenes and I couldn't see Sean Connery doing romance as well as Lazenby. Remember Entrapment - great film but Sean's writers wisely kept off the romance. The scene in the car with father and daughter in OHMSS was as good as acting gets. "Love? That might come too."
This film had exotic written all over it, from the atmosphere at the glass door of the UE office to the bobsled chase, not to mention suspense in Gumbolt's office. Great film.
3. Goldeneye [1995]
Great return for Bond, bungee-jumping down that dam wall and Sean Bean lifts anything he's in - he was a mean muvver of a baddy [one reviewer said "At last we have a villain who is more than just a megalomaniac."] He always disquietens me, Sean Bean and as for Famke Janssen and Dame Judy, they were right out of the top drawer. Joe Don Baker was much better here, Robby Coltrane was Robby Coltrane and clearly enjoying the part, not to mention Izabella Scorupco's feisty Natalya and don't forget Q.
Very strong and like the previous two, in the hands of a very good director on a mission from the franchise. Downside? Not a lot really and that might be it's main strength, Goldeneye - it's evenness. It's a real Bond vehicle.
4. For Your Eyes Only [1981]
Moore is not my favourite Bond but he sure is smooth. I should think a lady would be more satisfied with a night out with the assiduous Moore than with Wham Bam Sean, however dangerous he looks. Put Carole Bouquet in there with her brooding manner and add Topol, a great rogue if ever there was one and there are the makings of a great film.
The graveyard scene showed Moore back to his best - he can act - and the clifftop finale was very strong, as was the nice touch of the sleigh ride. Less acceptable was the killing off of a baldy meant to be Blofeld and the egregious Bibi plus the Margaret Thatcher at the end was barely OK. That was the Bondishness that the series doesn't really need and where was the Aston Martin, even though the 2CV was fun?
The professional marksman was more frightening than any of the main baddies and it's a pity that couldn't have been developed. However, all in all, it was an excellent film.
5. I'm going to cheat here and say I can't make up my mind between:
a. From Russia with Love - Grant, Tatiana Romanova, the wonderful Kerim Bey and the train motif, often a winner. But more than this - it was a film where all the elements came together, against the odds, of a great director. Don't forget Sean at his menacing best either.
b. Die Another Day - for Halle Berry and Rick Yuen.
c. Goldfinger - because it's great.
d. You Only Live Twice - exotic locales and score but a boring space-plot and tedious destruction of the techno-cavern again.
e. TWINE - for Sophie and Denise.
f. For me, the two best villains ever - Richard Kiel [Jaws] and Goetz Otto [Stamper]
"Villains" is a good theme for another post but for me, Otto and Die Hard's Alan Rickman [Hans] and Alexander Godunov [Karl] take some beating for sheer terror and creepiness.
Mr. Eugenides asks whether the art of debate is what we require of our politicians today or if it is more that we require integrity and a belief in that which they're arguing.
So glad the Galloping Greek could return for another bout, his previous two pieces being on Scotland, Greece and Russia and then ... yes, believe it ... on Heaven!
I spent my student days at Glasgow University, and quite a lot of that time was spent in the Union Debating society, which was then reputed as among the very best in the world. Noted for producing formidable debating talents (leave aside their politics) such as John Smith, Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy among others, Union debaters had a history of success unparalleled by any other university; fifteen times British champions - three times more wins than any other institution, at that time - and five times World champions, a record which still stands and to which I am proud to have contributed.
More to the point, perhaps, we played the game in the right spirit, dammit. Not for us the rituals of debating geeks up and down the land, burying their heads in back issues of the Economist and memorising statistics about world trade. No, GUU men (and girls) stood up and took the fight to the opposition with rhetoric, confidence and (on a good day) razor-sharp wit; bristling with aggression, chutzpah and balls (particularly the girls), we were the first into the bar at the end of the day and the last out every night, without fail.
Generously funded by our Union – the only good kind of union – some of us were lucky enough to travel the world at taxpayers’ expense before John Prescott made it popular, and we were damned if we were going to spend our precious week in New York, Manila or Sydney getting an early night tucked up in bed when there was nightlife to be explored and local brews to be sampled. Love us or hate us, few people were unaware of the presence of the Glasgow contingent at a post-debate party; kilted, beers in hand and never shy to start a singsong, they were (and are) a fixture thankfully more permanent than the Tartan Army at international football tournaments.
Glasgow was and is peculiar in so far as internal debates are conducted on a “Parliamentary” system. A number of quasi-political clubs, such as SNP, Tories or Whigs, argue for broadly left- or right-wing points of view throughout the year, and while membership of clubs is not tied to real-world political parties, the system makes it possible for those of a certain world-view to attend debates during the year in the knowledge that they will usually be arguing for policies and positions with which they have some sympathy.
But competitive intervarsity debating is different. When you get to a competition, teams are drawn randomly on proposition or opposition, and only then is a motion for debate announced. You have 15 minutes to prepare a detailed and preferably water-tight argument for or against regime change in Burma, say, or renewal of Trident, or the legalisation of drugs. Your own political beliefs and sympathies are neither here nor there. And, unlike Question Time or the House of Commons, assertions and half-truths are punished by opponents, and by adjudicators.
Those who succeed are those who become skilled at making up cases on the fly, who are flexible enough to quickly adapt to either side of literally any subject, who can be instantly persuasive for or against any proposition at the drop of a hat, and then stand up in the next debate and, if need be, argue for precisely the opposite with apparent sincerity and conviction.
My generation of ex-debaters are now, for the most part, in their thirties, and many of the most successful, from places like Oxbridge, the Inns of Court, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Trinity College, are in politics, either as party hacks, advisers or, in many cases, as elected, or soon-to-be-elected, councillors, MSPs and MPs.( I won’t name them to spare their blushes, but they span all parties from all across the spectrum.)
I can’t claim to know all these people well, but I can predict with a fair degree of confidence that in another ten years or so there will be a liberal smattering of familiar [to me] faces on the green benches – and, by extension, in legislatures around the world.
If you’re still reading, you may by now have divined the point I’m building up to. We have a whole generation of budding politicians who have basically been groomed to construct and deliver arguments based not on their own convictions but on the vagaries of a computerised draw. We’re speaking in favour of higher spending to see the country through recession? Great, I’ve jotted down some compelling arguments from the pro side. Oh, sorry, I wrote the draw down wrong; we’re actually opposing higher spending? No problem; we can do that too. What do I personally think about this? What’s that got to do with anything?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that my time as a debater really did equip me with critical thinking skills and techniques which have stood me in good stead in my life; I’m confident in front of a crowd, still reasonably quick on my feet in an argument, and I can see both sides of every story. And the aforementioned debaters, who are now making their way into politics and may in time become senior figures in their respective parties, are for the most part people of conviction whom I would be happy to have as representatives, even when their politics differ widely from my own.
But I worry about a political system in which whole cohorts of new MPs have essentially been trained to lie as smoothly and professionally as possible, and boast about it on their CVs (as, indeed, do I). We’ve got enough liars in that place as it is.
The implications of Obama's turnaround on the European missiles is interesting in that all the strategic analysis in the world will not avail if one is not up with the shadow play. I don't purport to be up with it but little snippets pop up from time to time to indicate the real agenda.
It's all a question of layers. The smart thinkers will say:
Still, some analysts point to the possibility the US shelved planned anti-missile interceptors in Poland and a huge radar in the Czech Republic in exchange for the Kremlin abandoning its reluctance to exert pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.
The White House is good at strategic misdirection and it's possible, just possible, that the official explanation might be close to the truth:
The White House gave two official reasons for scrapping plans for the missile shield. First, it claims to not foresee an immediate or near-term threat from any Iranian inter-continental ballistic missiles. Second, the US is now convinced that Iran is "hastening" its short- and medium-range missiles that can be better intercepted by American ships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea.
Pretty clear though, isn't it, that the effect will be to put pressure on Russia's relationship with Iran, a key obstacle to the U.S. plans for isolating Iran. There's most likely been some cash sweeteners to Russia in this too. Which is why Iran should be just a little concerned.
If people want a sense of purpose, they should get it from their archbishops. They should not hope to receive it from their politicians.
[Harold Macmillan - 1968]
Unfortunately, while it still might be the case with politicians, it's now also the case with archbishops. A lady named Catherine, on a forum just now, said, "Too many unbelievers preaching."
Presumably she meant that people were in charge who are more into how they are placed with the community and not with what their prime directive is.
Same with the pollies. Can we please have someone who has a clear policy, explains it well and has no intention of deviating from its basic principles without looking over his shoulder to see how it's been received?
In this special Spam-threat Edition, Dearieme brings us forward to the swing era which wasn't actually one of my own favourites though the musicianship here is impeccable:
In trying to think what to add to that, I looked at other swing but thought to go with the John Barry number instead:
Well, all I can say is that the only surprise is that it did not happen before.
Basically, this blog has been reported as spam and I'd put money on who it was who did it. All right, I'm not going to worry about that now but for the moment, this is the state of play:
1. My blog will apparently be reviewed by a human within 20 days, if I appeal, which I have now done and during that time, I may not put up a new post;
2. Update - they have now told me it doesn't look like spam, the bots have apologized but a human will still review it and restrictions still apply. If they decide that the blog is spam, then it and with it the 5236 posts, will be lost.
3. This is a very real possibility because for their spam bots to pick up on something in the first place, then something has been put onto my site and it's possibly still going to be there when they check.
4. This check of theirs, now I've appealed, could be any time from now until 20 days hence. Therefore, N.O. might suddenly disappear during that time.
5. If you come here and the site has gone, my other Nourishing Obscurity is here and this blog will continue over there until I set up my own domain. So, to reiterate, if this blog disappears, then the Wordpress version of this site will be where you'd go if you wished to read my posts.
6. My own domain has been in the pipeline for some time - there is a host and I'd be using Wordpress - it would also be called Nourishing Obscurity and the url would contain that name in some form. The reason I haven't done this until now is that Blogger/Google has been pretty good and the blog's been going nicely.
7. Therefore, it depends on the actions of Blogger/Google in the next three weeks.
8. Meanwhile, the pesky business of transporting my old posts to Wordpress will go ahead.
As I wrote at the start, it surprises me that it's not happened before now. Stay tuned, people.
Update
9. The transfers have begun. I plan to blog as normal at either of the two sites.
Meanwhile, the Americans are also at it with a celebrity auction.
The idea is that you bid for something like a dinner with Sarah Palin and the money goes to the soldiers.
And what do the soldiers say? Well, this one, avatar Blackhawk, writes:
Just back from second tour in Afghanistan. It is good to hear high profile politicians supporting the troops. Governor Palin has always been a big support of our military. She flew to Kosovo to meet with the Alaskan troops there and I know they loved that. It makes us feel better about putting our lives on the line when people like Governor Palin put themselves forward for us.
That got me thinking, a bit off topic here but if you could have a dinner [and dancing?] with anyone you liked, say for a donation to the troops, who would you choose to have that dinner with?
Sorry - on a roll and can't help it. I've never seen a guy so scared his woman was going to soar above him. Trouble was, she did:
This was with the Crystals original singer Barbara Alston:
I don't know. I never thought I'd get nostalgic but there's a passion and power to this simple, harmonic music which is just not around now. This was from before my time so I can't say I grew up with it but it definitely has something I can't define and missed at the time.
Was it that they weren't into themselves as great celebrities and that they just loved singing for the sound of it?
It's possible you won't be able to see this youtube on your site because even at it's smallest width, it might be too wide. If so, click here to view it.
Karl Denninger [Market Ticker] is a very angry man right now and with good reason. Unfortunately, as we only like calm, happy people, this video will cause some to click out and yet he asks some pointed questions to which no answers have been adequately given. I'm going to try to address some of those questions here. Yes, it's Americacentric but the issues he raises go beyond borders.
He draws attention to the Acorn outrage, written here in a news commentary:
James O'Keefe, a filmmaker, and Hannah Giles, an aspiring investigative reporter with the National Journalism Center, posed as a pimp and prostitute while using a hidden camera to get the goods in ACORN's Washington, D.C., and Baltimore offices.
The intrepid duo entered those offices seeking advice on getting a loan for a brothel featuring 13-year-old girls smuggled into this country from Latin America. They got that and much more, including suggestions on how to conceal the true nature of the enterprise on tax returns. Without voicing any moral qualms about the enterprise, some of the ACORN employees even provided helpful hints on keeping the poor girls quiet about their plight as sex slaves.
In one tape, they are advised which border to use to minimize the risk of getting caught – the plan was to sell the children on to wealthy paedophiles.
The group is no stranger to controversy:
Dozens of states have charged ACORN employees with voter registration fraud, numerous corporations have paid exorbitant sums of hush money to get the group to call off its demonstrators crying racism, and media organizations have exposed serious questions about how the radical group has spent the hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars it has received over the years.
“ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain,” Terry claimed. “Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama’s political gain.”
Michelle Malkin says:
What we have here, essentially, is Obama using a non-profit group called Citizens Services Inc. as a front to funnel payments to ACORN for campaign advance work. Obama officials say it’s no big deal. Nothing to see here. Move along. But where there’s left-wing laundering smoke, there’s fire. CSI has been the subject of a little-noticed complaint to the FEC by a Democrat who smelled something rotten going on between CSI, ACORN, and a left-wing 527, Communities Voting Together.
Prior to law school, Barack Obama worked as an organizer for their affiliates in New York and Chicago. He always has been an ACORN person -- meeting and working with them to advance their causes. Through his membership on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago and his friendship with Teresa Heinz Kerry, Obama has helped ensure that they remain funded well.
So there is lying going on in the public sphere. Back to Karl Denninger who insists:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a Democrat issue. This is not a Republican issue. This corruption has gotten so far into the American system of politics, government, quasi-government organizations, community organizations and everything else up and down the line – banks, businesses – you name it, it’s going on.
That this organization felt perfectly safe having that conversation with two undercover filmmakers in multiple cities across the United States … where are the cops and where is the outrage of the American people?
This is not just about a couple of kids going into an office and saying, “I want to import some 13 year old girls so that some creepy paedophile can pay $300 to screw them.
This is about the culture of corruption.
This is [also] about a government apparatus that refused to investigate mortgage appraisals and fraud. The independent appraisers tried to get this stopped ten years ago. There was a petition with thousands and thousands of signatures – it was ignored. There were multiple racketeering investigations allegedly going on prior to the election, regarding irregularities in campaign finance and voter registration.
Where did those particular investigations go?
They disappeared. Why? A prominent New York newspaper spiked a story about this just weeks before the election. Why? We have members of Congress who think it’s perfectly OK to get sweetheart mortgage deals that no one else can get and their programme is actually called Friends of Angelo. Hello, special influence, stated right on its face.
Why?
Where is the FBI? We have 50 state prosecutors, 50 attorneys-general across this great land called America. We have 330 million people in this country.
Is there no outrage left?
An attempt to answer
These questions would not have been asked even four years ago in either Britain or America.
The whole idea of an organized culture of tacit acceptance of evil such as the ACORN paedophile story and the moral relativism which allowed that, the British expenses scandal, the bailouts, the tawdry, money-grubbing trough-wallowing of CEOs and other high-fliers … it goes on and on and on … this idea from pundits such as Denninger or your present humble correspondent would never have been accepted some time back.
We’d have been called crazy, alarmist, deluded, suffering from flights of fancy. Now it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that Washington high-fliers have children and other victims of different ages flown in for sex parties, even though the smart thinkers have known about it for decades.
People might have accepted the Washington antics because people are always willing to believe the worst of Washington, even down to kidnapped boys and girls sold off at Omaha Airport, the rejects put down in bizarre ceremonies but no one would have thought that community organizations connected to a President who still refuses to clear up the issue of where he even comes from, who has been shown to have lied about the SPPNA and who is constantly lying or avoiding questions on his ties with ACORN – that the corruption has, in Denninger’s words “gotten so far into the American system of politics, government, quasi-government organizations, community organizations and everything else up and down the line – banks, businesses – you name it” to the point where no one even raises eyebrows any more.
And it’s not that no one was warned it was going on. Here are some excerpts from articles spelling out the situation:
On the old money which spots opportunities free from competition
The saga of the Wendels is of a business that has evolved over three centuries from making cannons for Louis XIV to a modern investment fund. It has taken a strategic stake in Saint-Gobain, one of France’s most venerable public companies.
More remarkable is the way De Agostini, a fairly small, century-old Italian family-owned publishing company, has, in a decade, turned itself into one of Europe’s most successful private equity groups.
Lest anyone be confused, this is quite the opposite situation from when former NYT pseudo-reporter/White House shill, Judy Miller, was subpoenaed and went to jail for failing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak case. In her case she was refusing to name White House officials who were involved in government wrongdoing in which she had a role.
On intrusions and espionage within the community
Robert S. Mueller III said:
Think of the fusion center as a hub, with spokes that range from federal agencies, software companies, and ISPs, to merchants and members of the financial sector.
Industry experts from companies such as Cisco, Bank of America, and Target sit side-by-side with the FBI, postal inspectors, the Federal Trade Commission, and many others, sharing information and ideas. Together, we have created a neutral space where cyber experts and competitors, who might not otherwise collaborate, can talk about cyber threats and security breaches.
The idea, dubbed "libertarian paternalism", reverses the traditional government approach that requires individuals to opt in to healthy schemes. Instead, they would have to opt out to make the unhealthy choice, by buying a smoking permit, choosing not to participate in the exercise hour or adding salt at the table.
Also - you can look up these organizations yourself:
"League of Industrial Democracy"
Purpose: To disrupt and disturb normal labor relations between workers and employees by brain-washing labor unions to make impossible demands with special attention to steel, automobile and housing industries.
"Committee for a Democratic Majority"
Purpose: To provide a connecting link between the educated socialist class and minority groups with the intent of setting up a solid block of voters who can be counted on to vote for left-wing candidates at election time. It was really a Fabianist operation from start to finish.
"Institute for Social Relations"
Purpose: Change the way America thinks.
"The Citizens League"
Purpose: To bring 'common cause' legal suits against various government agencies, especially in the defense industries.
"Anti-Defamation League Fact Finding Division"
Purpose: A joint FBI-British intelligence operation designed to single out right-wing groups and their leaders and put them out of business before they grow too large and too influential.” - (pp. 53-54)
It goes on and on. The "Global 2000 Report" recommending drastic reduction of the world’s population was accepted and approved for action by former President James Earl Carter, and Edwin Muskie, then Secretary of States, for and on behalf of the US Government.
Follow the report back to who asked Cyrus Vance to write it in the first place, then you’re close to Them.
The fish rots from the head
Karl Denninger mentions the last 20 years but the fact of the matter is, it’s only been relatively visible for that time, as the people involved no longer see the necessity of keeping shtum.
A glance at the early years of the people who now control the finances of America shows it's been going on for a very long while:
Like J.P. Morgan, who had begun his commercial career by selling the U.S. Army some defective guns, the famous fall carbine affair, John D. Rockefeller also was a war profiteer during the Civil War ; he sold unstamped Harkness liquor to Federal troops at a high profit, gaining the initial capital to embark on his drive for monopoly.
His interest in the oil business was a natural one; his father, William Rockefeller had become an oil entrepreneur after salt wells at Tarentum, near Pittsburgh, were discovered in 1842 to be flowing with oil. The owners of the wells, Samuel L. Kier, began to bottle the oil and sell it for medicinal purposes.
One of his earliest wholesalers was William Rockefeller. The ``medicine'' was originally labeled ``Kier's Magic Oil''. Rockefeller printed his own labels, using ``Rock Oil'' or ``Seneca Oil,'' Seneca being the name of a well known Indian tribe. Rockefeller achieved his greatest notoriety and his greatest profits by advertising himself as ``William Rockefeller, the Celebrated Cancer Specialist''.
William Rockefeller not only concluded several bigamous marriages, but he seems to have had uncontrolled passions. On June 28, 1849, he was indicted for raping a hired girl in Cayuga, New York; he later was found to be residing in Oswego, New York and was forced once again to decamp for parts unknown. He had no difficulty in financing his woman-chasing interests from the sale of his miraculous cancer cure and from another product, his ``Wonder Working Liniment,'' later to be known as Nujol, hawked from the Senate Office Building in Washington for years by Senator Royal S. Copeland, a physician whom Rockefeller had appointed as head of the New York State Department of Health and who later financed his campaign for the Senate. Copeland was known for his vehement support of two institutions – Standard Oil and the AMA.
They were just two men’s stories in the whole saga of American political history and we haven’t even started on the British yet.
Endemic corruption made all the worse by the flow of moral relativism pouring down from these sources and blighting the very fabric of society. Just as the whole White House was turned fetid by the particular crookedness of Nixon, which kept him under the control of the MIC until he started to get ideas of actually making a mark in the world, it crosses all party lines.
Gates of Vienna is running a video of Belgian police, speaking anonymously and it's par for the course these days. Naturally they want more powers to deal with miscreants and there is a loss of morale in the force as they feel the mayor has abandoned them but two things in particular stand out - firstly, the rise of no-go areas where youths are no longer concerned by any form of authority, on the grounds that there are no longer any consequences of note and secondly, the "go softly" orders coming down from above, particularly during Ramadan.
The jails are full, the courts won't convict and when they do, they show "admirable compassion" and let the little miscreant off with a warning - the result is as predictable as night following day. There's an underclass comprising sizeable chunks of the young population of the country in the streets with no purpose, no prospects, bored and spoiling for a fight over any issue.
Many, many times on this blog I’ve said that there are three political forces – Left, Right and Them. That needs to be revised. There are three political forces - Big State, Small State and Them. "Them's" agents are that mayor who gives go-easy orders, the ACORN reps who gave that advice, those who prosecute rubbish bin offenders with maximum prejudice whilst turning a blind eye to actual crime and it goes on and on and on.
And in the people at the top of the heap, there's also a sort of madness and quasi-religious fervour to their doings. This is not just some cold-hearted, besuited man with narrowed eyes issuing orders - there's some sort of belief in the destruction they feel they have to wreak, in order to "sweep away the whole corrupt mess of capitalist society and start over again" [actually quoting the unoriginal Guy Burgess there], a brand new start with new values and new leaders.
The madness comes from baseless assumptions taken as read and woven into the fabric of their doings and their motivations for doing that. An example:
In "The Illustrious Lineage of the Royal House Of Britain" (First Published in 1902 by The Covenant Publishing Co., Ltd., London, England), the authors easily trace Prince Charles' lineage back to David and beyond.
The College of Heralds (London) has also traced Prince Charles to be the 145th direct descendant of King David. This claim was also made, in May of 2000, in a documentary on Israeli television. Charles also claims descent from Islam's prophet Mohammed.
At his coronation (investiture as Prince of Wales) in 1969, he sat on a chair with a large red dragon emblazoned on it. During the ceremony, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II said:
"This dragon gives you your power, your throne and your own authority."
His response to her was:
"I am now your Liege-man, and worthy of your earthly worship."
In 1992 just before the full unification in 1993) Charles applied to the EU (European Union) to be made King of Europe. He was turned down by the European parliament.
It's not just at the elite level where the craziness is institutionalized. Take the ethics of the psychological and psychiatric community, for example and its interrelationships. Psychologist Colin Ross, in a lecture given at the 9th Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation, April 18, 1996, Orange County, California, mentions, [just as an example to the reader of the interconnection of people within a given community]:
A person who did and published a lot of hallucinogen research was Daniel Friedman, connected with Loretta Bender, Paul Hawk and Ewen Cameron, who had their obituaries in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
So these were revered people, who were being honoured posthumously by the flagship Journal of the American Psychiatric Association. This same Loretta Bender describes giving 150 mcg per day to children ages 7-11 years for days, weeks, months and in some cases, even years in a row.
This would not get through an Ethics Committee.
Paul Hawk, at a CIA sponsored symposium on LSD, asked, “Anybody ever hear of a disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder?”
Hawk and Pollett, in 1949 published in the Psychiatric Quarterly an article about Pseudo Neurotic Forms of Schizophrenia - these people are on the borderline between neurosis and schizophrenia. He did hallucinogen research in New York for the military, with one unfortunate side effect - he killed Harold Blauer, a tennis pro, in 1953, with an injection of mescaline and the family was eventually compensated for that.
Ewen Cameron, the founder of the World Psychiatric Association, funded through MKULTRA and Human Ecology Foundation by the Canadian military and the CIA, did LSD and other hallucinogen research and was successfully sued - he had already died and the CIA settled out of court with eight of his patients.
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation was set up to counter the allegations by child victims of organized paedophilia, such as Franklin, the only case leading to admissions in court - Paul McHugh was Chairman of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. He said that 100% of cases of DID are iatrogenic and that all DID Units should shut down, and he was on the Advisory Board of the FMSF.
When he was in the military he did research connected to Walter Reed Hospital, major site for military intelligence work, connected with mind control. A prior Chairman of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, named James Whitehorn, was on the Advisory Board of the Human Ecology Foundation.
So, now there’s a connect with the greens and you have your own opinion of the greens and the whole shamballah new order hug-a-tree rip-off of the populations of the west – others have written far more on that than I. People connected with the movers and shakers in America and Europe are coming out with this stuff:
The Shamballa force is in reality Life itself; and Life is a loving synthesis in action. We also used the Six Laws and Principles of the New Age to lead us towards creating a vision of how these principles might create patterns for the New Civilization humanity will be constructing over the next 2500 years.
Those were just snippets about internationally connected communities in various fileds, just as my own field of education is interrelated and we keep in touch with one another on any new research. If the members weren’t connected then, as professionals, they’d have been derelict in their duty – it’s imperative that professional associations stay abreast of developments.
However, underneath the veneer, as those snippets above revealed, there is some nasty work going on, with a great deal of fear and favour. The very tone is corrupt. The very notion that it is quite OK to administer doses to children way over the accepted limits and that no one is going to care and it doesn't matter if they do – that is at the root of the ACORN scam and Hitler’s medical experimentation.
The very notion that Lindy English could do as she did at Abu Ghraib most certainly came form a sense that she was either not going to be caught or else it was tacitly approved, whether or not it was. In other words, she felt comfortable with doing things beyond the pale, in a view which she obviously allowed to seep into her that it was OK to act towards others inhumanely if the others have been shown to be the enemy by those above you.
For example, the Jews in Nazi Germany, those sub-human's [according to the Nazis] who required immediate eradication [according to the Nazis] and the rewards would be how you've served your fatherland [according to the Nazis].
The motif of The Word coming down from above runs through all of this and The Word is meekly or even grudgingly [in the case of those Belgian police] accepted and followed.
This moves beyond corruption now – it approaches evil, in the sense that the consequences of such a lack of moral integrity, compounded by a system which allows of no stopping of this process, permeates the fabric of organizations in an unhealthy way, especially government organizations – the NHS is a prime example - leading to work-to-rule, a mood of resignation and an expectation that everything revolves around bucketloads of fresh cash to be squandered and plenty more where that came from.
Child abuse – why was it that it was not until 1993 that a study by the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect confirmed that children are even today threatened in day care settings and yet this was made famous in 1984 with the McMartin case. Even if you vehemently assert that the crimes never happened, why did authorities not put into place far-reaching legislation in each state to prevent any possibility of day-care centres being abused?
Nothing was done, whereas over here, the opposite was done - draconian legislation turning the ordinary male into a potential paedophile and requiring multiple CRB clearances for a male to even walk in the street is currently in the news.
And how could all this be possible if there are upright men and women in charge of government, people of integrity, dedicated to rooting out corruption from the fabric of the society?
The simple answer is that there are sufficient numbers up there of people with neither integrity nor commonsense, along with a sort of fervour for what they're doing, to rot the surrounding tissue and so, like atrophying Rome, the whole fabric slowly loosens and falls away.
With no leadership, seemingly no clue and only the pig trough which those we’ve entrusted as our representatives wallow in – the result is widespread disillusionment across the community and a determination to take care of our own welfare and protection and to hell with following the rules any more.
The financial corruption constantly before our eyes and which Karl Denninger documents was neatly summed up by Rothschild Brothers of London all those years ago:
The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or so dependent on its favours that there will be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages will bear its burden without complaint.
There, in a nutshell, are the ethics which drive our society and as a consequence, place pressure on our very ability to make ends meet. Can any of this be sheeted home to individuals?
With someone like Mandelson or Veronique Morales - yes. It's even possible to trace back to groups like the Lincoln Group the antecedents of the demise of American and consequently western education; it's possible to do this in a fragmented way but it's far harder to pin down the interlocked system which Wilson referred to.
Thus we always see the symptom but never the root cause:
"Under the heading: An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away it asks: 'What about sex twice a week? Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes' physical activity three times a week.'"
No one involved in the writing of that stopped and thought, "Hey, what are kids doing having sex anyway? However did society move from a position where kids did kid's things and adults did adult things three decades ago to a position where it is de rigeur for a child to now have sex, under peer pressure and under pressure of popular culture.
No one stopped and thought how kids have been induced into something which is natural for adults but unnatural for children. If it was natural, then it would have been the norm throughout the centuries for children to be prostituted but it was not the norm - not until now."
Would such a leaflet have even been contemplated three decades ago and what would have happened to the author of it? He or she would have been drummed out of the job.
Today, there is this bizarre situation where people, even fellow bloggers, will defend the writing of that leaflet on the ground that "kids have sex and it's better to recognize realities". But that blogger doesn't stop to think whether this acceptance of "realities" simply adds to the climate where kids have no choice; they don't stop and think about a moral compass which really believes it's good and wholesome for kids to be doing drugs and sex in the first place.
The problem is that the very blogger who's suggesting that has herself [or himself] come through the same process and the moral compass is so divorced from right and wrong now to the extent that they'd even hotly argue that there is no right or wrong in this.
With that point of view, then there's not even any basis for discussion and one wonders if the people in Sheffield who objected to that leaflet are "sadly out of touch with reality" or else are they actually people who still have some vestige of decency left in them and know in their hearts that sex with children is not a good thing - in fact, quite the opposite.
To say that these sort of things have been going on since Victorian times is to miss the point that now it is the system whereas earlier it was a minority behaviour. A significant test of when a society is on the way out is when it cannibalizes its own children in this way and turns a blind eye towards it, with people defending the practice. This was a major theme in the biblical warning not to harm one hair of a kid's head and it wasn't only physical harm being referred to.
Can you imagine anyone trying to protect children from moral harm these days? North Northwester said:
I see the BBC pushing the line that single parenthood is no problem, that marriage is no protection, and it's all going to happen anyway. What else would they publish? They truly are the enemy within.
I wish I could find the quote of one of the commenters on one of my post threads when he reminded us that it's quite possible to have good people actually inadvertently abetting the cause of evil and of course, the corollary is also true - look at the extreme Christian right - what do they do for the cause of Christianity?
This post is not saying that the person who supports that Sheffield leaflet is bad, only that by having that attitude, as a result of the relativistic upbringing which led the person to assume that that was quite OK, this is inadvertently compounding the problem.
Why is there no outcry, Mr. Denninger?
I have two answers, one mine and the other not.
First, from a woman speaking about these people in 2000, on CentrExNews.com:
You can show them photos of underground tunnels near Los Alamos, and they will say, "Isn't that interesting. Must be some government project."
They can be shown the scars on a survivor's body, from cigarette burns in childhood, and old lash marks that have healed on their back, and the question would be "are you sure it wasn't self inflicted?"
The evidence is there, but in my opinion, the average person does NOT want to know, and even when confronted with it, will look the other way. I believe that the media that downplays [this] abuse is feeding into a deep need in the average person to NOT know the reality.
My explanation
1. The majority have no idea;
2. Almost all are under the hammer these days, the middle-class is being economically dismantled to make way for the return of the moneyed rulers and the serf class of old and our attention is therefore focused on survival and shoring up our position so that everyone is too terrified to rock the boat;
3. People are shellshocked, weary of all the bad news and just wanting a respite from it all to the point with that they might nod along with exposure of corruption and craziness in the public sphere but there's no energy left to actually do anything anymore and they desperately, desperately hope it will all go away and the greenshoots of recovery will appear, which they artificially will for some time before the final collapse;
4. With the rejection of the Judaeo-Christian ethic – which has been no accident – there is no moral fibre anywhere, except in those of a small c socially conservative bent and the law of the jungle prevails behind the veneer of civility.
Possible solutions
1. Schweizer’s dictum which I sometimes carry in my sidebar, says:
"Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it -- a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals."
This requires sufficient men and women of like mind, not unlike the American Founding Fathers, seized by a desire to set in place something worthwhile, which both regulates and regularizes, as well as granting and defending the human need to be free to pursue his own goals.
In other words, we’re talking about a new set of intellectual and moral giants who do pop up in history in nnumbers from time to time.
2. Humanistic optimism and belief in cycles
The reason I don’t believe in this is not because humans can’t reach the stars but that we’re not playing on a level playing field. For every nine who just want to live a comfortable life of work, rest and play and the propagation of a family, there is the malcontented one who has a knack of cornering the markets, dominating the media and in tribute to his work ethic, working himself into a position of power, the maintenance of, which becomes the sole reason for his subsequent industry.
He buggers everything up every time.
It’s the Ford Prefect dictum – they care, we don’t, they win. Chekhov wrote too on man’s capacity to improve his state and his surroundings:
"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."
The vision and principles of the Enlightenment fooled everyone. It appealed to intellectuals that Man could run his own life, not unlike a child who throws off offers of help from his parents and says, “I can do it myself.”
He never can. Not only are we not wired with sufficient peripheral vision - our capacitors let us do certain things but not all. The search for mechanical intelligence is just such a hoping against hope, not unlike the fabian utopia.
3. State and international socialism and personal slavery
This is where we currently are. Twelve years in Britain has illustrated the principle that when you destroy incentive and curb freedom, the room to move, you cause a society to stagnate and cease to produce. It has never worked, in terms of the betterment of man but it has worked very well, were there a dark entity which desired a more or less permanent state of instability and misery.
4. A Judaeo-Christian model. While it has the advantage of curbing even the non-believer to the extent that people do roughly follow certain rules and adhere to certain standards, there is a side to it to which most do not wish to subscribe – the necessity for personal regulation, the deferring of personal gratification and an acceptance, no matter how tacitly, of a higher power with the ability to cook your goose.
With society having only just [in terms of history] thrown off the onerous shackles of aspiring to a blameless life, few are going to relinquish the new-found freedom and subject themselves to that once again. It would take a dire situation and a series of cataclysms to get people to embrace the Sermon on the Mount once more and yet, if you think it through, to do so would solve most of the ills in a short space of time.
It’s a good social mechanism. All the most advanced societies, in terms of evolving, have Judaeo-Christian roots or have at one time been in proximity to one of these.
The other side knows that too and so is hellbent on presenting Christianity in its most patriarchal, ludicrous and obnoxious form, especially in America, to the point where there are calls for its banning, a position, incidentally which it historically thrives in.
Thus Christians in the west are not yet thrown to the lions – that will come later.
5. Anarchy and the rise of the robber baron
Doesn’t need any explanation from me. We’re in N3 and heading towards N5. Good luck for 2010.
