“That one can convince one’s opponents with printed reasons, I have not believed since the year 1764. It is not for that purpose that I have taken up my pen, but rather merely to annoy them, and to give strength and courage to those on our side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.”
G.C. Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799), courtesy of 'Deogolwulf'
Oooops, sorry! Bit of a Freudian slip-up with my title which should read "We're stuck in our own experiment" which is the woeful message from the bunch of idiots (ooops sorry!) collection of clowns (sorry again!) mixed group of 'warmers' and their acolytes from the media who, in their search for some, any, global warming, have become totally trapped in Antarctic sea-ice and will need to be rescued by helicopters. You can read the full running story over at WUWT but be advised to take a box of tissues with you because the tears of laughter will flow. As I asked the little 'Deltoids', who needs the return of Monty Python when the global warmers recreate almost daily the 'Theatre of the Absurd'? Perhaps their (unintentionally) funniest line from the despatch was this: "Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up". Oh my giddy aunt, I can't take much more of this hilarity!
Well, it's no use me posting swottish stuff tomorrow when you'll all have hangovers! And anyway, don't blame me because it's all that Malcolm Pollack's fault for pointing me in the direction of the MIT Technology Review, not, I must admit, my favourite reading over breakfast! Anyway, if my brain hurts then yours can do likewise so we'll start with Moore's Law - yeeees, quite, me neither! Like most of these swottish laws it is fairly easy to state even if the implications are not. In this case, Mr. Moore, a leading computer wizard reckoned that during the history of computing the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles roughly every two years. Here's a picture to help you grasp this less than exciting insight:
Well if that hasn't sent you back to sleep let me move quickly on to an application of Moore's diagram - and thinking - that is much more intriguing. In essence, suppose you had no knowledge of the history of computing but you knew Moore's Law then you could work backwards to find out when the first transistor was invented. Now suppose that you apply this type of regression to the evolution of life. If you can work out the rate of increase in complexity you could work backwards in time and reach the starting point of life on earth. Well, a couple of brain-boxes have done just that:
These guys argue that it’s possible to measure the complexity of life and the rate at which it has increased from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to more complex creatures such as worms, fish and finally mammals. That produces a clear exponential increase identical to that behind Moore’s Law although in this case the doubling time is 376 million years rather than two years.
Look, stop yawning, this is really exciting stuff because, you see, if you work backwards on that basis then life began 9.7 billion years ago, give or take a 2.7 billion years. But, you shout with amazement and disbelief (er, you did shout, didn't you?) the earth is only 4.5 billion years old so that means life began somewhere else! But if it did, then, as that ace swot, Enrico Fermi, pointedly asked in his famous paradox, where the hell is it? Well, of course, he didn't put it in quite those terms but it is a question demanding an answer from those who, eager to avoid an anthropological-centred universe, insist that life forms must exist throughout the cosmos. They may be right but so far we have seen absolutely no sign of it.
Well, that's enough swottery for me, I'm going back to bed because my head hurts!
The Aussie Joke Factory was dead idle last week, anyone would think it was Christmas! Anyway, I dredged this one up from the past, blew the cobwebs off it and hope that I haven't printed before:
JEWISH MISTRESS
A Jewish man and his wife are having dinner at a very fine restaurant when an absolutely stunning young woman comes over to their table, gives the husband a long open mouthed kiss and says to him, "I'll see you later".
"Who the hell was that?" says the wife.
"That was my mistress." says the husband.
"I want a divorce!" says the wife, "This is the last straw! I've had enough."
The husband says, "Alright! You'll get your divorce, but just remember this: There will be no more Winters in Barbados, no more summers in Tuscany, no more shopping trips to Paris, no more Mercedes in the garage, and no more Yacht Club, etc. etc. But the decision is yours!"
Just then a friend of the husband enters the restaurant with a gorgeous young woman on his arm.
"Who's that woman with Moishe?" says the wife.
"That's his mistress", says the husband.
"Ours is much prettier," says the wife.
Here are some New Year's Eve jokes to get you in the mood - these are courtesy of The HuffPo!
When I thought about the evils of drinking in the New Year, I gave up thinking. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
You know it's time for a New Year's resolution to lose weight when you step on a talking scale and it says, "One at a time, please!" :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
A man asks his friend for a cigarette. His friend says, "I think you made a New Year resolution to quit smoking." The man says, " I am in the process of quitting. Right now, I am in the middle of phase one." "What's phase one?" "I've quit buying."
And finally, just in case you were not sufficiently depressed:
There's a man sitting at a bar just looking at his drink. He stays like that for half an hour. Then, a big trouble-making truck driver steps next to him, takes the drink from the guy, and just drinks it all down.
The poor man starts crying. The truck driver says, "Come on man, I was just joking. Here, I'll buy you another drink. I just can't stand seeing a man crying."
"No, it's not that. This day is the worst of my life. First, I fall asleep, and I'm late to my office. My boss, in an outrage, fires me. When I leave the building to my car, I found out it was stolen. The police say they can do nothing. I get a cab to return home and when I leave it, I remember I left my wallet and credit cards there. The cab driver just drives away. I go home and when I get there, I find my wife sleeping with the gardener. I leave home and come to this bar. And when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, you show up and drink my poison."
Are there signs of panic in the newsrooms?I do sense a certain desperation at Sky News, my favourite newsroom, as they scratch about trying to find, er, well, some news, actually! I mentioned a few weeks back how deadly quiet this battered old globe of ours has become which is "A Good Thing", of course, but leaves the imagination free to worry about what might be approaching from a direction none of the so-called experts ever told us about. Ah well, fingers crossed!
The end of a beautiful friendship: I have mentioned before, 'many a time and oft', 'my mate Rupe' with whom hitherto I have enjoyed an excellent friendship mainly on account of him sending me - free of charge! - a satellite dish and a dead-clever recording-thingie. Alas, I should have known that there is no such thing as a freebie from an Aussie and when I realised that I was paying £63 a month for the pleasure of not watching almost total 24-hour crap I'm afraid our friendship ended. The only thing I shall really miss will be Fox News which I rather enjoyed - on an occasional basis - although no doubt some comms swot will tell me that you can watch it live via computer. Perhaps when the 'Memsahib' runs off with the milkman I might just dispense with TV for ever.
The 'Milipede' is crawling towards victory: That is, according to Matthew d'Ancona in today's Telegraph and he is echoing what most other commentators are forecasting for the election in 2015. If it happens and if the first thing the 'Milipede' does inside No.10 is to ring up the UNITE union boss, Ed MacCluskey, for instructions, and if Ed Balls moves into No.11 to hone his borrowing and spending 'skills' then the result is all too obvious, simply look over the Channel and see what is happening in socialist France! However, even for a reckless ( and usually wrong) forecaster like me, it is far too early to call. Even so, 10-year bond yields for both the UK and the USA have now moved over 3%!
"Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry":So go the words of the old song and between them the Telegraph and the Spectator do their best to comply. If you really are in need of more melancholia then try Bruce Anderson whose title says it all: "The West has lost control of the world and disaster awaits". He starts with the death of King Frederick III in 1888 and it's downhill from there on in! But if it's 'cheerful chappies' you're after then look no further than Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph and Fraser Nelson at The Coffee House. He provides this cheerful diagram:
There, feeling better already, aren't you? Hannan adds to the jollity by reminding us that doomsters like Prince Charles, Steven Guilbeault and Chris Rose, both of Greenpeace, all share the same characteristics - being prats and being wrong!
A New Year puzzle for you all: Here is a sonnet, rather a plodding sonnet, I'm afraid, written in 1936 by Mr. David Schulman to honour one of America's heroes and entitled:
Washington Crossing the Delaware
A hard, howling, tossing water scene. Strong tide was washing hero clean. "How cold!" Weather stings as in anger. O Silent night shows war ace danger!
The cold waters swashing on in rage. Redcoats warn slow his hint engage. When star general's action wish'd "Go!" He saw his ragged continentals row.
Ah, he stands – sailor crew went going. And so this general watches rowing. He hastens – winter again grows cold. A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.
George can't lose war with's hands in; He's astern – so go alight, crew, and win!
You see what I mean about 'plodding' but there is a secret and brilliant catch to this poem and if you can deduce what it it is there are two prizes to be won. The second prize is that you will be sent advanced copies of every forthcoming blog post on D&N, the first prize is that you will not!
They should all be made to wear burqas: Well, there's ugly, then there are footie fans and then, dread sight, there are footie players! I have just watched Arsenal play Newcastle and it looked like a mass escape from the nearest 'Ugliest Man in the World' exhibition at the local fairground. I am astonished that these young men are not satisfied at being just plain ugly but they needs must add to the sorry state of their features by smothering their bodies in hideous tattoos and hair cuts executed by sundry drunken barbers who obviously hate footie players. When I am reminded that they earn more in a week than I do in a year my facial tic re-appears, my fingers flex and small flecks of foam appear on my lips and I mutter to the 'Memsahib', "Fetch my meds - quick!"
Just in case you were feeling cheerful after your Christmas break: I thought this story from The Mail would return you quickly to the 'glums' you are used to:
A leading figure in the Ministry of Defence has claimed more than £100,000 expenses in his first year of work, it has been revealed.
Bernard Gray, who was appointed to help manage the budget, enjoyed 106 stays in London and Bristol hotels, for £23,000, despite his home being less than a 60-mile drive from both.
He was also given an official car and chauffeur, costing the department £65,531.
Official documents, seen by the Sunday People, reveal he also spent £17,929 on planes and trains, and £280 in taxis in 2011-2012. In the months since, he has spent £14,457 travelling abroad.
Mr Gray, who earns £220,00 a year as Chief of Defence Material, was taken on in 2010 to help target waste in the department.
Presumably this was what 'Dim Dave' was referring to when he told the troops in Afghanistan, many of whom now face redundancy when they return from 'the sharp end', that it was "mission accomplished!" For who, Dave, tell us that, for who?
Where do they find them? Is there a factory in Slough or 'Uddersfield or somewhere where they churn out these semi-educated prats on a production line? They are all 'wimmin', even the male ones, and they all drift effortlessly, like iron filings to a magnet, towards local government where they spend a lifetime doing (usually badly) one useless job after another until, like Dr. Margaret Atkinson (who likes to be known as 'Maggie', see, just to prove she's like us, really - which she isn't, thank God!) they reach a national job where they can wait patiently for a Knight- or Dame-hood.
In an irony which was oblivious to the bureaucracy who chose her, this particular dipstick woman has never produced or raised her own children but was appointed as the Orwellian-sounding National Children's Commissioner. And now she has given as her opinion that parents smacking children should be made unlawful. (That's unlawful as in being banged-up by the 'Plod', your kids taken into 'care', being dragged into a full-blown trial in front of a judge and ending up with a criminal record and probably never seeing your children again.) Thus, if she gets her way - and she almost certainly will eventually - the next time you see your 'likkle kiddie-winkie' playing with an electric socket, instead of giving it a quick hard slap across the legs and telling it never, ever, to do that again, you will reason with it and after explaining the physics of electricity, if you are really, really, stern, you might - dread punishment! - make it stand on the 'naughty step' for five minutes. That'll teach the littlebrat - er, won't it?!
On second thoughts, don't answer that question. There is little more eye-stabbingly tedious than hearing a list of everyone else's Christmas gifts but that, of course, will not stop me from boring you telling you of mine because I know you are really fascinated. First of all, and following some subtle hints, you know, like 'this is what I really want for Christmas', 'SoD' produced a ticket for the Paul Klee exhibition at the Tate Modern. It must be over twenty years ago since there was an exhibition of his work in London and I can barely wait.
The 'Memsahib' surpised me with a slim volume whose title alone delighted me - Old, Bold and Won't Be Told: Shakespeare's Amazing Ageing Ladies by Yvonne Oram. Increasingly I am turning to those books about Shakespeare that aproach him from an unusual and mainly historical angle. For example, there is a book I posted about recentlywhich concentrates on the actual actors in Shakespeare's company and how their physicality is reflected in the roles he created. In the course of her book Ms. Oram provides a useful guide to the deeply-embedded opinions and prejudices of the all-powerful male society of the Early Modern period. The other gift given to me with love and affection by the 'Memsahib' touched me deeply - a new cover for my ironing board! I use the possessive word 'my' because, as I may have told you before, as a result of my deeply entrenched army training I do all the ironing in our household!
You may, one day when I have mastered the art or craft of transferring photos from a digital camera (my gift to the 'Memsahib') to this machine, be able to admire another gift from her to me - a pair of 'Loungers'! Those of you who fail to keep up with the very latest trends in men's fashion may be unaware of the 'Lounger' revolution. However, earlier this year I spotted in M&S some loudly-checked, rather baggy pantaloons for chaps which are made of soft wool with pockets. These are called 'Loungers' and are meant for gentlemen to lounge around in during the evening when the doors are shut and the curtains drawn because you would not wish to be caught dead in them outside the house by your friends or neighbours! Anyway, the one's I bought were a fairly restrained criss-cross check in various shades of grey. The pair the 'Memsahib' bought are in vivid tartan. The cat took one look and hid behind the settee!
'SoD' ('Son of Duff' for the uninitiated) must have been in an introspective mood to write this. Perhaps he is a little harsh on Mr. Khordorkovsky who, after all, has served his time up 'the sharp end' of the interminable fight for liberality in Russia and who thus deserves some respite. Also, dwelling for too long on, or even worse, in, Russia tends to bring on an attack of the 'glums'! Anyway, he offered these thoughts to the blog and I am happy to publish them:
Under the spreading chestnut tree
Funny, I watched "Papillion" last night for the first time, just one of those classics that somehow slipped me by.
Then today I saw Khodorkovsky, the only real challenger Putin has had in recent years, emerge after a decade in a Russian prison, grey haired, gaunt, and with that "I'm broken, I'm not broken; I'm broken, I'm not broken; ..." oscillation in his facial expression and demeanor, flicking from one to the other, on / off like the electrodes were still attached, and I thought immediately of the white haired Steve McQueen standing on the cliff of his island prison trying to persuade his broken friend, Dustin Hoffman, to join him in a last desperate attempt to escape: yes, no; yes, no ...
And then Khodorkovsky said he wouldn't be standing against Putin, rather he would add his voice to the voices of the dissidents.
And I thought of the scene in 1984, where Winston Smith has finally departed the "Ministry of Love", room 101, and is reposing in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. And those corrupted lines from the poem:
And then we see the sneering meaning of the corrupted variant: When you sell a friend, family, or lover out to the state, and they sell you out, they die to you, and you to them. The state doesn't have to put a bullet in your brain, for all intents and purposes, the job is done already. You are free to go; you're alone, without friends, without power, and no longer a threat. You can even hang out in places where enemies of the state are reputed to hang out (like the Chestnut Tree Cafe), but the state won't bother you any more. No-one in there has any real friends, family, or lovers, so there's no powerbase you might build, so there's no threat.
Orwell consumes the original poem to fill out the picture without having to apply his own words: like the blacksmith, Smith soldiers bravely on with life; neutered, powerless, dead-alive, but grimly admirable. Whether you are the working class (or like the blacksmith, a metaphor for it), or a ministry clerk, or an oil oligarch, once you've sold out your friends, family, or lover to the state, that is your lot: A sad, mechanical, zombie class or person.
No doubt Khodorkovsky will go through the motions at the UN, even become a human rights celeb; Putin might even shake his hand sometime for a PR media opportunity.
No doubt what was once the working class of Europe will stumble out of bed day-by day for a life of daytime TV; fed, clothed and sheltered by the state, life taken care of without any need for friends, family, or lovers, or indeed any sort of social behaviour, and an appreciative photo-op "hug-a-hoody" or handshake from whichever social democrat politician is around.
I wonder who Khodorkovsky sold out? His wide powerbase, probably not the nicest bunch you'll ever meet, but the only challenge to Putin's absolute power that Russia actually had: dispersed and destroyed. I know not who they are, but I think I might know where to find them: propping up the bar in the Chestnut Tree Cafe with the Chavs.
Regular readers will know of my admiration for Charles Krauthammer, the Washington-based commentator and all-round political guru. I first came across him via Fox News where he is a regular contributor. It was not only his evident intelligence that impressed me but also the look of the man. He has what I can only describe, with apologies to just about every lady novelist there ever was, 'fiercely chiselled features'. Also, he has a way of sitting with absolute stillness as he delivers his opinions that demands of the viewer that he watch and listen. Now I have the reason for this stillness. Charles Krauthammer is paralysed.
Entirely by accident I caught part of a Fox News programme last night devoted to 'The Kraut's life story. As a very fit young man just beginning medical studies he was involved in a swimming-pool accident that left him paralysed from the neck down. It is impossible to even hazard a guess as to the mental effect of such a shattering physical blow to anyone let alone a young man on the brink of adult life. 'The Kraut' took a fairly immediate decision - he would continue his studies from first of all his hospital bed and later from his wheel-chair. He passed his medical exams with distinction and was set on a career in psychiatry which he pursued until his latent political interests took over.
He began, like most young people, as a Left-winger but one who was very anti-Soviet Union. This independent streak combined with an enquiring mind gradually moved him to the Right and it was Ronald Reagan's softly-spoken arguments in favour of small government that finally won him over. However, on social politics like abortion or evolution he remains on the liberal side of the argument. He is blessed, I think, with a wife, Robyn, who must have married him despite his affliction and they have one son. One of the items stressed by the programme is how very few people actually realise that he is paralysed. 'The Kraut' doesn't hide the fact but neither does he publicise it, he just gets on with his life using the faculties he has, the main one being, of course, his shrewd intelligence.
A tad busy off and on today, just like you, I guess, so this will follow the form of my regular 'Sunday Rumbles' in which random burps thoughts will be expressed as and when they occur to me and in between the list of 'to dos' provided by the 'Memsahib'.
Post-mortem pandering: So the 'soppies' have had their way and a Queen's pardon has been offered to a dead 'queen' who broke the law of the land 60-odd years ago. Of course, this particular 'queen', Alan Turing, was central in the effort to break the German 'Enigma' code and thus helped us to win the war and that makes him the perfect symbol for the 'soppies' to wage their never-ending campaign for us to indulge in abject self-flagellation for the perceived sins of the past. Preposterous posturing, I call it!
Well, a man may hope, may he not? Well,Andrew Haldenby does in The Telegraph. Apparently, Ed 'Milipede' has very quietly slipped out a policy paper entitled "Zero-based Review". The main thrust, I gather, is that the Labour party now believes that all public expenditure - that's 'all' as in no exceptions at all - must be justified down to the last pound. I'm not sure whether this 'revolutionary' policy (for the Labour party) was slipped out so surreptitiously because Ed didn't want the other Ed to know about it or whether he was trying not to let the real leader (perhaps 'owner' is a better word!) of the Labour party, 'Bruvver' McCluskey, find out. Of course, it won't last five minutes if they get into power but still, it's interesting that even in theory they are admitting that not all government spending is justified.
Joke of the Year: Actually, I missed the chance to put this in my 'Monday Funnies' slot yesterday probably because when you think about it it's not at all funny. Anyway, for what it's worth I give you - The Joke Of The Year: The England cricket team! Yeah, well, I did warn you it wasn't funny. Alas for them (not that I feel much pity) the whole team is now tarnished by the 'drama queen' flouncings of Graeme Swann. What a gutless, miserable specimen of so-called sporting manhood - all mouth and nowt else - as they say 'ooop north'!
Good riddance to (very) bad rubbish: As a rule of thumb you would never want your sister to marry an MP. That is unfortunate for the (very) tiny minority of MPs who do their best to live up to their parliamentary titles as 'Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen'. However, the wisdom of the rule is confirmed by the 'ex-Honourable Gentlemen - not', Denis MacShane - I was tempted to try a pathetic jest by calling him 'MacShame' but instantly realised that he doesn't possess any! He always came across in his public interviews and appearances as a smooth-talking smart-arse. I do hope he doesn't try to pull his superiority 'schtik' with 'Big Bubba' in D-wing who has a way of, er, cutting people down to size! Of course, his enforced absence means that MacShane's current lady friend, Vicky Price (Huhne), is now free and available but given her proximity to men who end up in the slammer who, in his right mind, would take her on?
Why am I not surprised? There is a report in today's Mail, although I can't find a link, claiming that there was one particular regiment which did not take part in the famous Christmas truce in 1914. Needless to say, it was the first Battalion of the Cameronians whose grumpy ranks were filled, and I trust my e-pal Jimmy is reading this, with men 'frae Glasgie'. A game of football in no-man's-land was offered by the Germans but flatly refused by the Cameronians who claimed, not unreasably, that they couldn't trust the Huns not least because they had been shooting at them for the last four months!
Fantasia: Slumped in Christmas Eve inertia - it's a sort of practice for tomorrow! - I watched Disney's Fantasia. It must be nearly 70 years ago when I first saw it and I'm not sure I remember any of it bar The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I'm also not sure what to make of it today. Frankly, I was rather bored in places and simply closed my eyes and listened. On the other hand, some of the imagery is sharp and witty, and given the 'easy-peasy' nature of cgi effects these days, I can only stand silent and doff my hat to the memory of those 'cartoonists'.
A fantastic idea! I have just woken up from 'Midsomer Murders' with a totally brilliant idea. Next year I will write the Xmas murder mystery to end all murder mysteries! Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple will find themselves alone on a desert Island. One of them will be murdered but, and this is the clincher, it will not be a mystery as to 'who dunnit?' but 'who copped it?' I know, darlings, a talent like mine is wasted on this blog!
Yes, I know they're late this morning but I made a Big Mistake, in fact, Two Big Mistakes. The first was that in a spirit of yuletide daftness generosity I suggested to the Memsahib that after my early morning swim I would go directly to Sainsburys and pick up the last of the shopping required for Christmas. "I'll be in by 8.15am," I boasted, "and it'll be nice and quiet." That was my second mistake! It was pandemonium! Fists, feet, elbows and deft use of the trolley were required in order to battle my way round - but some of those old ladies play really rough! Anyway, if you are actually working today (then change jobs!) I hope these, courtesy of my Australian Joke Factory (which never rests), will cheer you up:
A 5 year old boy and his 3 year old brother are upstairs in their bedroom. 'You know what?' says the 5 year old, 'I think it's about time we started swearing.'
The 3 year old nods his head in approval, so the 5 year old says: 'When we go downstairs for breakfast I'm gonna swear first, then you swear after me, OK?'
'Ok' the 3 year old, agrees with enthusiasm.
The mother walks into the kitchen and asks the 5 year old what he wants for breakfast.
'Oh, shit Mum, I don't know, I think Ill have some Cornflakes.'
WHACK!! He flew out of his chair, tumbled across the kitchen floor, got up, and ran upstairs crying his eyes out.
She looked at the 3 year old and asked with a stern voice, 'And what do you want for breakfast, young man?'
'I don't know,' he blubbers, 'but it won't be f*****g Cornflakes!'
Two elderly ladies, Dorothy and Edna, are chatting.
Dorothy: "That nice George Johnson asked me out for a date. I know you went out with him last week, and I wanted to talk with you about him before I give him my answer."
Edna: "Well, I'll tell you. He shows up at my apartment punctually at 7pm, dressed like such a gentleman in a fine suit, and he brings me such beautiful flowers! Then he takes me downstairs. And what's there; a limousine, uniformed chauffeur and all. Then he takes me out for dinner; a marvelous dinner, lobster, champagne, dessert, and after-dinner drinks. Then we go see a show. Let me tell you Dorothy, I enjoyed it so much I could have just died from pleasure! So then we are coming back to my apartment and he turns into an ANIMAL. Completely crazy, he tears off my expensive new dress and has his way with me three times!"
Dorothy: "Goodness gracious!... SO, are you telling me I shouldn't go?"
Edna: "NO, NO, NO... I'm just saying, wear an old dress."
Regular readers will know that my e-pal, 'DM' (a.k.a. 'Dearieme'), suffers almost terminal grumpiness if anyone mentions 'American exceptionalism' and only a dram or three will calm him down! I must admit it has a similar effect on me because, of course, every country in the world claims to be exceptional and, logically-speaking, they are all quite correct. Even so, this notion of 'American exceptionalism' has become an idée fixe in the minds of many otherwise sensible Americans and so I was delighted to read over at The American Interest an essay on the subject by an historian called Walter A. McDougall - presumably of Scottish ancestry which will please 'DM' even more!
He explains in fascinating detail the origins of this myth which, if not in the detail then in the general evolution, closely resembles all those other myths which so many different nations cling to with such fervour. Perhaps the juiciest irony - which I just know will provide 'DM' with as much warm pleasure as it does me - is the fact that the main propogandists of this idea of 'American exceptionalism' were the Roman Catholic Church and the early Communist Party of America. That almost makes me want to whinny with pleasure!
I should add, before my other regular contributor, JK, rides out of the 'Arkie' hills with his Winchester.44 by his side, that my appreciation of Mr. McDougall's forensic dissection of this myth does not diminish in the slightest my admiration and liking for all ... most ... nearly most things American. The fact that he was able to demolish such a cherished idea without let or hindrance says much about the real America as opposed to the mythical America.
Yes, well, that's enough jollity to be going on with! Actually, I am feeling rather jolly this morning because once again I have out-whizzed all those computer wizards (like 'SoD' and the combined IT department at TypePad) by finding a simple solution to my Christmas card problem. Regular readers will remember my utterly brilliant Christmas card from last year (and possibly even the year before) which, I feel, adds an entirely new dimension to the art(?) of photography - sorry, did you say something? Anyway, I know how disappointed you all would be if I failed to reproduce it this year and so off I trotted to my photo library and clicked on the picture and then attempted to paste it onto my blog. Result - zilch, nothing, a blank! So I rang my IT Manager, a.k.a. 'SoD', and he frigged about with it and got absolutely nowhere - so he's fired, er, after I get my Christmas present, of course. I then sent a complaint to the delicious Californian babes who rock 'n' roll at TypePad. Almost by return I had a long reply from Marilyn (by jove, "Marilyn"! I trembled, I tell you, trembled!) which is, I just know, sweet and generous and helpful but, alas, written entirely in 'Klingonese'. The only words I understood were "Hi, David" - such a sweetie that Marilyn!
Well, I gave up on the idea and was intending to simply provide you all with a written seasonal message but, with the sort of flash of brilliance and insight with which old Albert 'Whatnotstein' must have been familiar as he grappled with all those sums, I suddenly remembered that I had posted the photo last year so perhaps if I went back and swiped it I might be able to paste it - et voila!
So there you have it, my friends, one of the greatest photos ever taken, er, well, taken from my spare bedroom window, that is, and during one of the most severe bouts of global warming we have experienced in years! Dear old St. John's of Milborne Port - and I do mean old! The central arches which support the tower are Romanesque and may date back a thousand years. The only unfortunate thing about this photo is that it fails to show to best advantage my superb grass-cutting skills but I know that I can safely leave that to your imaginations!
Anyway, as you all (I hope) gather together with your families over the next few days, both I and the 'Memsahib' send you our Very Best Christmas Wishes
When, via the good offices of A&L Daily, I was directed to an essay at NAUTILUS by Amir D. Aczel, a terrific maths swot from America, on the subject of co-incidence I thought I might learn something new and startling. Alas, the last clause of his final sentence summed up the impasse: the occurrence of such startling coincidences in everyday life may well remain a mystery. You can say that again! Still, at least he's honest and even if his conclusion is disappointing he does offer a mathematical framework within which you can place your personal 'co-incidence incident' in order to gain some perspective. He uses the analogy of attempting to draw an ace of spades from a full deck of cards where the chances, each and every time, are 1 in 52. In real life, of course, the chances of a co-incidence occurring seem to be infinetesimal because the 'deck of cards', that is, one's life, are huge. Mr. Aczel is right, I think, to stress the importance of psychology when attempting to gauge the apparent impossibility of co-incidence. Part of us simply does not wish to know that perhaps our 'co-incidence' wasn't actually quite so co-incidental after all! I am reminded of the opening to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in which our two eponymous heroes, speaking alternately, are tossing a coin:
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
(Pause)
Bet? Heads I win?
Again...
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Whoops!
It must be indicative of something besides the redistribution of wealth.
Heads.
A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, for nothing else at least in the law of probability...
Heads.
Consider. One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within, um ... sub or supernatural forces. Discuss!
What?
Look at it this way. If six monkeys...
If six monkeys...
The law of averages, if I have got this right means ... that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air long enough ... they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their...
Who would be a 'great man' and live a life in the certain knowledge that once dead your personal history and reputation will be picked and pecked at by rival crows? Well, it will not happen to me and for that alone I must say I treasure my total obscurity. However, I am provoked to these thoughts by an increasing scholorship in the life and character of the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, as exemplified by a review of Volume III of his Letters at nybooks.com by John Banville. I have come across Isaiah Berlin before, particularly when, some 30 years ago, I took an interest in philosophy. As a philosopher it seems to me that Berlin suffered through failing to write enough full-length books, instead confining his activities mainly to teaching undergraduates and writing innumerable essays which, in the highly literate world of 'high philosophy', opens you to the accusation of dilettantism. Thus, I have read more about him than from him! Even so, I was and still am immediately attracted to his version of liberty (or freedom, if you prefer) and his insight that these concepts might appear to be the same but actually mask great differences. In particular, I cherish (obviously) the very British concept of 'freedom' as being freedom from interference. That this concept is crumbling under the onslaught of 'positive freedom' which seeks to define exactly what your freedom is - and is not! - must have distressed the old man in his later years - he died in 1997. Who bears his standard today? I can only think of Roger Scruton but then I gave up my amateurish philosophy studies years ago when I realised that there was no 'killer' idea that would nail the rest. That, of course, Isaiah Berlin realised long ago.
The acerbic Dr. North of EU Referendum pulls on his pit boots and proceeds to give Daniel Hannan a kicking. Well, nothing new about that although it seems a pity to me that two such arch-Eurosceptics can't seem able even to agree what day of the week it is! The EU was, is and always will be, a complicated subject not least because those in charge want it so in order to discourage critics like me who do not understand the finer points from investigating too far. In so far as I can follow Dr. North's argument he doubts the practicalities of Cameron's announcement to the effect that he will force through by means of a Parliament Act a law that will come into force in 2015 and which will command whoever is in government to announce the date of the referendum before the end of 2016, and hold it before the end of 2017. Hannan, on the other hand, has taken Cameron's words at face value and delights in the fact that it will force Labour and Lib-Dems to decide whether or not they trust the people! However, Dr. North maintains that it is all smoke and mirrors because the Brussels hierarchy have already announced their intention to hold a treaty revision exercise culminating in 2018 which means they will have little or no time to discuss Cameron's efforts to re-draw the existing Anglo-European treaty.
But I wonder whether any of this will ever come to pass because, as Jeremy Warner reminds us in The Telegraph, "events, dear boy, events" may well overtake intentions. He tells us quite bluntly that Europe is in denial. As Britain and America begin to take the first steps towards economic recovery, Europe (or to be precise, the euro-zone) remains mired in stagnation. Although they would not admit it, this suits the Germans quite well because their industry and commerce continues to thrive on a globally weak euro currency. Recent efforts to install a pan-European bank agreement have been castrated by the Germans who are determined that under no circumstances do they intend to become underwriters of 'Med country' debt!
There are only two solutions to Europe's woes. Either they form a proper union with a central government and treasury, or, they break up into seperate 'northern' and 'Med' zones. Germany wants neither solution. Germany simply wants more of the same in which a dysfunctional EU keeps the euro currency cheap and thus big export profits for Mercedes-Benz and their ilk. They simply do not care if it brings down impoverished misery on Greeks, Spaniards - or even the French! I know that I (and others more expert than me) have long forecast a shambolic breakdown in the EU and it still hasn't happened. As Jeremy Warner puts it:
Europe needs monetary stimulus but thanks to a dysfunctional single currency cannot have it; it needs labour market reform, but outside Germany and its satellites, is unwilling to enact it; and it needs burden-sharing, but its nations are still too fiscally sovereign to contemplate it. European leaders naively seem to assume that recovery is just around the corner. The truth is that they have made themselves hostage to the storm even as America and Britain navigate their way out.
So, it may well be that "the storm" will make Cameron's brave boast of holding a referendum totally redundant. I want a collapse to happen but I do not suppose for a second that it will be anything other than catastrophic for Britain. We do far too much trade with Europe not to be severely hurt by collateral damage in the event of a Euro-implosion.
Yes, sorry and all that - well, actually I'm not a bit sorry! - but I'm back rattling my collecting tin again on behalf of Mercy Ships. This charity operates a floating hospital ship mostly along the West African coast. When news spreads that the Mercy Ship is on its way, Africans carry their ailing relatives for days across country in order to be part of the enormous queue which forms on the quayside. I always say this but it is worth repeating - indeed, it is worth hollerin' from the rooftops - everybody on board the Mercy Ship, from the top surgeons down to the young lads and lasses who work in the kitchens, all of them, are unpaid volunteers! If you want to know what they do, here's one of them telling it in her own words:
A Galley Worker's View:
Biological Sciences graduate Lizzie Clegg (21) has recently returned from volunteering onboard the world’s largest hospital ship, the Africa Mercy, in Guinea. Lizzie has been onboard the Africa Mercy for over three months and has been volunteering in the ship’s galley cooking for around 400 people every day, as well as assisting the eye team in her spare time. Lizzie said, “I want to be a doctor and as the applications are so competitive it is really important to have some experience working with patients. I wanted to do something where I could actually help people. Mercy Ships provided a perfect opportunity to do that. I would work in the galley and support everyone onboard that way and then on my days off work with the patients. “I had so many amazing experiences on board. I really enjoyed going to the Hope Centre and playing with the children. The Hope Centre is a Mercy Ships funded project where they support local hospitals. This year part of the programme was to upgrade a wing of the Ignace Deen Hospital in Conakry, this means the hospital will be left with upgraded facilities when the ship leaves in the summer.
Once again this year a generous donor has offered to double any contributions made before Christmas, so please, just click on this link and it will tell you of several different ways to send a few quid - or bucks! - to the most cost effective charity of them all:
Sorry, sorry, sorry for my absence yesterday, alas (or, hoorah!) 'I lunched not wisely but too well'! Friends arrived at 11.00 for coffee, mince pies and gossip - you can't have one without the other two. At 12.00 they drove us down to the ever-excellent Hive Beach Cafe at Burton Bradstock which has featured in these columns before. The drive down is superb, right across the heart of Hardy country - not jaw-droppingly amazing, just long views of gently rolling English countryside, so easy on the eye and the heart. The journey was 98.5% glorious sunshine - the remaining 1.5% of howling gale and tropical rain arrived just before we reached our destination and needless to say the ladies agreed unanimously that it was all the fault of us chaps as they fought their way across the carpark, expensive hairdos turning to disasters in seconds and smart dresses and shoes ruined forever! Anyway, for the rest of the day we 'enjoyed' what the locals would designate as "That do be a proper sou'-wester a-comin' up the Western Approaches" or something like that. Suffice to say that such was the ferocity of the gale that during lunch I was tempted to step out onto the headland and give the patrons of the Cafe a bit of Lear: "Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/ You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout" I just know, darlings, how much they would have appreciated it but unfortunately such was the power of the wind they would not have heard a word so I stayed where I was and instead ordered another bottle of very drinkable Merlot!
I have described the Hive Beach Cafe before but to remind you, most of it is formed by a light aluminium framework with fold-down canvas 'walls' with clear plastic windows set in them. The wind outside obviously looked upon this somewhat fragile structure as a challenge but happily it did not prevail. Inside were scores of loonies customers enjoying a slap-up Christmas lunch with all the trimmings. The internal heaters were going full blast but it was still a tad chilly and I felt the need for some inner warmth and thus the Merlot flowed copiously. (Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.) Mind you, the Christmas pudding could have been served via an optic there was so much liquor in it!
And so there we sat eating and drinking - and then drinking some more - as the sun slowly sank in the west. That last phrase was a bit of 'artistic interpretation' because you couldn't see the sun through the ten/tenths cloud cover that was down to about 500' and from which poured enough water to drown all the global warming fanatics in the world. As we left, the amateur thesp in me did briefly consider reprising the late Mr. Gene Kelly's routine in "Singing in the Rain" but a glance at the Memsahib's face stopped me before I could begin - dammit, I'm sure that woman can read my mind at times!
So, a rather eccentric, seaside but highly enjoyable lunch and now I am in the Christmas spirit, or perhaps that should read, the Christmas spirit is in me!
Bloody Churchill! That man nicked - alright, alright, invented! - all the best lines including that one about Russia and mysteries wrapped up in enigmas and all that, so I can't use it for today's China where it is equally apt. China is a head-scratcher of the first order. Just when you think you might be seeing glimpses of reality or even, God bless my soul, the truth, 'evllyting go velly shifty'! [That's enough waffle - get on with it: ED.]
Now, you, like me, might have thought that when it came to pulling money out of top hats then no-one could do it better or more profusely than Uncle Sam but you would be wrong. In November, at least, the Chinese out-printed not only America but Japan as well! Mr. Durden of Zero Hedge sums it all up with his usual sardonic but chilling wit:
So how long before the developed and developing world "have" to create $1 trillion or more in money supply each month to keep the house of cards from toppling? [His emphasis]
Meanwhile, over at the WSJ, they are asking what I have been thinking for some time, that is, just how real are Chinese economic statistics? Every month, every quarter, every year, the Chinese pour forth a wok-full of statistics to tell us that all is well in the wonderland of the (Chinese) working-class Utopia. In response, I keep reminding myself of an old American saying - by the way, where would we be without American sayings, oh, and Churchill, too, of course - 'if something is too good to be true - it ain't true!'
Now, I don't want my old e-pal, JK, coming back here in ten year's time (I should live so long, my life already!) and quoting me after he has found some stats somewhere proving that China's economy and standard of living has quadrupled or even 'gazzupled' because I know it has. After all, they started at the bottom as an economic basket-case so it didn't require too much in the way of faux-capitalism to set them on the road to prosperity. So yes, the early stats are quite remarkable and even possibly accurate because there was no need for mis-information not least because you could see the prosperity all around you in places like Shanghai. But now, today, they are up there at the top of the pile but one is entitled to ask - a pile of what exactly?
Apparently, six years ago when he was a provincial party boss, even the current prime minister, Mr. Li Keqiang, expressed severe doubts concerning Chinese economic statistics. The WSJ report points to a new way of judging reality based on more 'Billy Basic' economic data which is rarely subject to, shall we call it, manipulation:
The London-based research group uses one of Mr. Li’s favorite indicators, electricity output, as a proxy for industrial activity. It adds four others – freight shipment (a broad measure of economic activity), floor space under construction (real estate); passenger travel (service sector); and cargo volume (international trade).
“They are relatively low profile (statistics), so should be subject to fewer questions about data manipulation,” Capital Economics explained.
On the basis of those figures they have produced the following chart:
Well, I'm not expert enough to analyse firm conclusions from that but it does look to me as though the Chinese government has been a little "economical with the actualité" in the last couple of years. Perhaps the City experts should use money printing as a proxy!
I ask the question because these days one could be forgiven for thinking that lying is part of a copper's basic training. In fact, it's worse than that because it looks as though the highest ranks in the police service are all 'born-again' lying liars. We have all enjoyed the recent (but ongoing) contretemps between Andrew Mitchell MP and sundry 'Plods' who, after a joint meeting, came out to issue their version of events which bore a startling resemblance to Hans Anderson's fairy tales particularly when it was revealed that the meeting had been recorded. There should have been red faces all round but they train them well at police school!
At the other end of the hierarchy, Guido reports that no less than the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, also appears to have a taste for 'porky pies' which, for the benefit of my foreign readers, is cockney rhyming-slang for 'lies'! According to Guido, this worthy:
[T]old the Home Affairs select committee recently that the Met’s crime figures had been classified “competent and reliable” by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary.
However, yesterday, Her Maj's Inspecter of Constabulary came up in front of the beak the committee and flatly contradicted him!
He’d said he’d looked at the Met’s figures and they showed “cause for concern”. So perturbed was he that he has written to the Commissioner asking him to explain.
Right, 'Ogan-'Owe, you're nicked, ya little scrote! And what's that expression about a fish rotting from the head down?
Yes, indeed, come on, Italy, you can do it, I always put my faith in you, and if you succeed then you will have achieved the miracle of proving, for the first time ever, that this blog was dead right in one forecast! I have said on several occasions that my pound sterling was on Italy to be the catalyst for the breakdown of the euro and Ambrose E-P indicates in an article in The Telegraph that the time might not be far off.
No less than the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, himself, has spelled it out by warning that:
“widespread social tension and unrest” in 2014 as the Long Slump drags on.
Those living on the margins are being drawn into “indiscriminate and violent protest, a sterile lurch towards total opposition”.
His latest speech is a veritable Jeremiad. Thousands of companies are on the “brink of collapse”. Great masses of the working people are on the dole or at risk of losing their jobs. Very high rates of youth unemployment (41pc) are leading to dangerous alienation.
“The recession is still biting hard, and there is a pervasive sense that it will be difficult to escape, to find a way back to full growth,” he said.
Of course, President Napolitano has no useful suggestions to make as to how Italy can avoid the rapidly approaching disaster. He was, according to A E-P, a convinced Marxist in his youth who supported the Soviet Union in everything it did, until it collapsed, of course, and then he switched his enthusiasm to the European Union in general, and to the euro monetary system in particular, so you can see the man is obviously as thick as a plank!
However, A E-P thinks there will soon be a concerted move by the Med states, led by France, to use their numerical and quite legal powers to over-rule Germany by insisting that the European Central Bank behave, well, like a central bank which will give Frau Merkel the heebie-jeebies!
Back in the day (and I do mean way back), Aldershot was a schizophrenic town. By day, a quiet, disciplined, dutiful, garrison-town; by night, particularly Fridays and Saturdays, think: Wild West minus the six-shooters and Wyatt Earp! Back then it was a 'Para town' and pity any poor soul posted there from another regiment. Anyway, the Airborne denizens of this unfortunate borough were for the most part, from 19.00 hours through to, oh, I dunno, say, 04.00 hours, totally legless! However, I have been surprised by an article in Spiegel describing not legless Paras - but four-legged Paras!
Brian was a tough paratrooper. He trained hard for his deployment with the British Army during . During his training, he learned how to identify minefields. Then, on the battlefield, he protected his comrades-in-arms -- though not all of them made it back. On D-Day, he parachuted under heavy anti-aircraft fire onto the Continent. He was there when the Allies liberated Normandy. A few months before the war's end, he parachuted into western Germany, from where he marched to the Baltic Sea.
Less than two years after the war, Brian was given an award to recognize his "conspicuous gallantry." But the bronze medal was not the only thing that distinguished this special soldier from the majority of his comrades: Brian, the tough paratrooper, was a dog, a young Alsatian-Collie mix.
The dogs' slim bodies proved to be advantageous because, during their test jumps, they could use the parachutes that had actually been designed to carry bicycles. In order to make it easier to get the dogs to jump out of the aircraft, they weren't given anything to drink or eat beforehand. On April 2, 1944, Bailey wrote in his notebook about the first jump with the female Alsatian Ranee. He notes that he carried with him a 2-pound piece of meat, and that the dog sat at his heels eagerly watching as the men at the front of the line jumped out of the plane.
Then it was their time to jump, which Bailey describes in this way:
"After my chute developed, I turned to face the line of flight; the dog was 30 yards away and slightly above. The chute had opened and was oscillating slightly. (Ranee) looked somewhat bewildered but showed no sign of fear. I called out and she immediately turned in my direction and wagged her tail vigorously. The dog touched down 80 feet before I landed. She was completely relaxed, making no attempt to anticipate or resist the landing, rolled over once, scrambled to her feet and stood looking round. I landed 40 feet from her and immediately ran to her, released her and gave her the feed."
Perhaps if I had 'wagged my tail' as I came down to earth in my usual fashion, like the proverbial 'sack of you-know-what' it might have stopped those instructors bellowing all those deeply personal and hurtful remarks at me! Anyway, read the article for an idiosyncratic view of war - and do check the photos because para-dogs were universal.
I'm composing this on Sunday because I'm off on Monday but I know there will be suicides all over the nation if you don't get your weekly diet of Monday Funnies to start the week! First a couple of 'Oirish' jokes left over from last week:
Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp.
"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.
" Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.
"That little shit, O'Conner," says Sean,
"He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand."
"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it."
"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself, didn't you have something in your hand?"
"That I did," said Paddy, “Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight."
In the great days of the British Empire, a new commanding officer was sent to a jungle outpost to relieve the retiring colonel. After welcoming his replacement and showing the courtesies, the retiring colonel said, "You must meet Captain Smithers, my right-hand man--God--he's really the strength of this office. His talent is simply boundless."
Smithers was summoned and introduced to the new CO who was surprised to meet a toothless, hairless, scabbed and pockmarked specimen of humanity, a particularly unattractive man less than three feet tall!
"Smithers, old man, tell your new CO about yourself."
"Well, sir, I graduated with honours from Sandhurst , joined the regiment and won the Military Cross and Bar after three expeditions behind enemy lines. I've represented Great Britain in equestrian events and won a Silver Medal in the middleweight division of the Olympics. I have researched the history of..."
Here the colonel interrupted, "Yes, yes, never mind that Smithers, the CO can find all that in your file. Tell him about the day you told the witch doctor to go fuck himself."
Well, we've had an 'Oirishman' and an Englishman j0ke so we had better finish with a Scotsman joke or my e-pal Jimmy will complain:
A bloke walks into a Glasgow library and says to the prim librarian, 'Excuse me Miss, dey ye hae ony books on suicide?'
To which she stops doing her tasks, looks at him over the top of her glasses and says,
Day off tomorrow: Just to warn you that I am on an 'away day' to morrow, back on Tuesday. Apart from seeing various old friends I will aslo be attending my theatre group's Christmas Party and without my presence, Darlings, it would be simply dire!
Kim Jong-Thug:Murderous little sod, ain't he? Mind you, you have to admire the way he has cocked a snook at the Chinese. Dear old uncle Jang was 'their man' in Pyongyang and yet inside 48 hours he was arrested publicly, dragged in front of a 'court' (do stop that sniggering!) and then shot dead with a "machine-gun" which seems a tad excessive but then perhaps North Korean marksmanship is not too great these days. Now, of course, there is only one question, how will the Chinese re-act to this 'loss of face', or perhaps, 'slap in the face' might be a better description. Worth watching, er, from round this side of the globe, anyway!
Never judge a man by who attends his funeral: Poor old Mandela, what a collection of murderers, crooks, frauds, gangsters and phonies turned up at his funeral to turn it into the non-event of the decade if not the century. Did it reach rock bottom when this man attended:
Or did this ripe, old pair of 'ghastlies' ruin the show:
Needless to say, Mark Steyn at National Review, following the delicious travesty of the non-signing signer, Mr Janjie,sums up that famous double-act, Obama & Jantjie (or should that be Jantjie & Obama - dunno! - their agents are still squabbling over it - but heh! - that's show business) better than anyone:
But how heartening, as one watches the viral video of Obama droning on while a mere foot and a half away Mr. Jantjie rubs his belly and tickles his ear, to think that the White House’s usual money-no-object security operation went to the trouble of flying in Air Force One, plus the “decoy” Air Force One, plus support aircraft, plus the 120-vehicle motorcade or whatever it’s up to by now, plus a bazillion Secret Service agents with reflector shades and telephone wire dangling from their ears, to shepherd POTUS into the secured venue and then stand him onstage next to an $85-a-day violent schizophrenic. In the movie version—In the 'Sign of Fire'—grizzled maverick Clint Eastwood will be the only guy to figure it out at the last minute and hurl himself at John Malkovich, as they roll into the orchestra pit with Malkovich furiously signing “Ow!” and “Eek!” But in real life I expect they’ll just double the motorcade to 240 vehicles and order up even more expensive reflector shades.
Your way, José: Um, that's José, as in José Mujica and again, no, me, neither until this morning when Drudge pointed me to 'The Graun' (I know, 'the horror, the horror!') Anyway, Snr. Mujica is El Presidente of Uruguay and, allowing for 'Graun'-type hyperbole and general swooning at any Leftie pol, he seems to be a pretty damn good chap! He certainly suffered for his Marxist beliefs but two years living at the bottom of a well seems to have given him time, Mandela-like, to ponder on deeper political truths than Karl's old nonsense. Good man, I wish him well and when he's finished in Uruguay perhaps he'd like to come over here!
One the psychobabblers missed:I can't imagine how many trees it took to print the utterly useless Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association but I feel their pain given that the whole exercise was more or less a total waste of effort. Not least because, as Dr. Theodore Dalrymple points out at Taki's Magazine, they have missed one huge piece of real psychobabble - Biblomania! As he puts it:
This is rather odd because the disorder has been known for at least two centuries, ever since the Reverend Thomas Dibdin published his great work in 1809, Bibliomania; or Book-Madness: containing some account of the history, symptom, and cure of this fatal illness.
The symptoms are as follows: The sufferer cannot pass a bookshop, or even an establishment that might have a few books for sale, without entering and buying a book. He spends far more on books than he ought or than his income can bear; he reads books arithmetically but accumulates them geometrically, so that there is a kind of Malthusian crisis in his house that will be solved only after his death, when his widow sells them en masse. (Practically all bibliomaniacs are men.)
Oh dear, that describes (one of) my mental illness exactly! Should I consult a psychobabbler? Probably not as the symptoms are not covered in their 'Psychobabble for Dummies' handbook.
An excellent review by Charles Nicholl of what sounds like an even more excellent book by Bart van Es (no, me, neither!) entitled Shakespeare in Company - and if 'SoD' is reading this you may look no further for a birthday gift for your dearly beloved father next year - er, I am 'dearly beloved', aren't I?! In his review Mr. Nicholl dismisses with contempt verging on irritation the title 'The Bard' with which poor old Will, a jobbing playwright with ambition and, as it happens, genius, has been saddled. Apparently the book forsakes the 'high falutin'' and concentrates on Shakespeare the 'wage slave', if you like, that is, a man with inky fingers who worked as part of a team in a busy workshop of actors, writers, businessmen, back-stage labourers, printers, clerks and so forth. Mr. van Es concentrates on setting 'our Will' in his own ambience and thus showing the literal as well as literary truth in the phrase that "all the world's a stage". Here is an example from Mr. Nicholl's review:
Not much is known about the Elizabethan actor John Sincler, a colleague of Shakespeare’s in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the King’s Men, but we do have a pretty good idea of what he looked like – very thin, bony, pasty-faced. We know this because in the quarto edition of Henry IV Part 2 (1600) his name appears in a stage direction – “Enter Sincklo and three or foure officers” – which shows that he played the part of the First Beadle. In a short scene resounding with the complaints of Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet, whom he has arrested, the beadle is variously described as a “thin thing”, a “famished correctioner”, a “starved bloodhound”, a “nut hook”, an “atomy” (emended in the Folio text to “anatomy”, i.e. a corpse ready for dissection) and “goodman bones”; he is also called “tripe-visaged” and “paper-faced”. It is generally agreed that the copy used for the quarto was Shakespeare’s own “foul papers” or working draft of the play (rather than a marked-up prompt copy), so the casting of Sincler is in Shakespeare’s mind as he writes the part, and the actor’s particular physical characteristics condition the writing of it. It can further be argued – or at least intelligently guessed – that Sincler played other skinny Shakespearean characters such as Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Abraham Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor (who as well as being slender has a “whey face”) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, though he is perhaps unlikely to have tackled the more serious part of “lean and hungry” Cassius in Julius Caesar. His last known appearance was in a King’s Men production of John Marston’s The Malcontent, performed at the Globe in 1604. In a new prologue, specially written for this production by John Webster, five members of the company appear on stage as themselves; one of them is Sincler. There are further physique-related jokes about him looking like a viola da gamba, and having “four elbows”.
This reminds me of a moment, still magical to me even now, watching a performance of Henry IV, Part I in which Prince Hal and Poins, his hanger-on, tease a particularly dimwitted waiter called Francis. The Prince engages him in conversation whilst Poins, in a distant part of the pub, keeps hollering for service to which the unfortunate Francis can only answer with a repeated cry of "Anon, anon, sir". Sitting in that superb 'time capsule', the modern-day Globe, it suddenly struck me (dummy that I am!) that, of course, there had been a real-life 'Francis' living some 400 years ago, eking out a living as a tapster in one of the ale-houses frequented by Shakespeare and his no doubt ribald company of actors who had enjoyed teasing Francis with constant calls for service. In that instant, a time-line was drawn from the 21st century straight back to the 16th century in a way that was direct and personal.
Apparently, Mr. van Es concentrates, quite properly, on the principal actor (and shareholder!) in Shakespeare's company, Richard Burbage, for whom the great roles in the later plays would have been written with him in mind. But also, close attention is paid to the two 'clowns' who would have been part of the inspiration for many of those mysterious (and frequently unfunny) 'fools' who appear in his plays. It is noticeable, even to an amateur like me, that these 'clowns' become increasingly complex as characters after the removal of Will Kemp as 'chief clown' and his replacement by Robert Armin. One senses that Kemp was, so to speak, an 'old style', almost music-hall, comedian where-as Armin had much greater depth as an actor.
Anyway, this sounds like a very rare example of a down-to-earth book on Shakespeare which concentrates on the nuts and bolts of his working life. It's a 'must -have', really - are you getting this, 'SoD'?
For the benefit of my American readers, and also you dozy, forgetful Brits, er, like me, actually, it was that rascal, the late Alan Clarke MP, who coined the phrase when he admitted at a trial that he had been "economical with the actualité" whilst answering parliamentary questions. In that he was by no means the first and certainly not the last! I was reminded of the expression by the plight of the Republican party 'over there' who are fighting like rats in a sack over the budget deal struck with the Democrats.
The main man responsible for what the 'Tea Party' activists have categorised as outright treachery is Congressman Paul Ryan. The problem highlights the deep divide between what I would call the ideologues and the pragmatists. Before my e-pal, JK, starts riffling back through my archives to find the very many times I have demanded that politicians show a basic grounding in an ideology, let me repeat my liking for, as I call it, 'authenticity'. That is, that the man or woman politician concerned has some well-worked out beliefs based on a coherent philosophy - be it of the Left or the Right. To know that is, as they say, to know where they are coming from!
However, idealism must connect and grapple with the real world even if its pristine condition is sullied. The howls of outrage aimed at Congressman Paul Ryan, a conservative, by the purists - I almost wrote 'Puritans'! - in the 'Tea Party' movement because he cut a deal with the Democrats over the budget simply serves to indicate their political naïveté. As Roger Simon emphasises at PJ Media, the first, last and forever aim of Republicans at this particular moment is not to bring the Federal government to a shut down by refusing to pass the budget but to do everything they can to win the Senate next year! It is when a party is in power that ideological purity can be argued over because at that time it is important. When in opposition you do the almost impossible, that is, grit your teeth and swallow at the same time! In other words, you pass the budget, or Obamacare, or whatever, after getting as many favours as you can but make it clear, over and over again, to the American electorate that these measures are Democrat measures, they own them and they should hang round their necks like one of those burning 'necklaces' so beloved of mobs everywhere.
American voters, like voters almost everywhere, will not vote for a visibly divided, warring party and if the Republicans do not take the Senate back next year they will be nowhere in the 2016 elections.
I have mentioned before my surprise at the number of reports from a variety of observers warning that Chinese banks are in trouble. By that, they mean, the smaller fringe banks which have a degree of latitude from central government which controls the big banks absolutely. However, what happens when the central bank gets into trouble? I hasten to say that is not happening now, nor is it likely in the short-term but it is worth pointing out that the yield demanded by the money-lenders for Chinese debt has risen to the highest in a decade and a top analyst in BoA has advised customers to take out Credit Default Swaps (CDS) which are, in effect, insurance contracts against Chinese debt.
Short-term debt issuance by trust companies has jumped to $320bn from almost zero two years ago. A new study by the China Academy of Financial Research warned that the trusts face a redemption shock after promising returns of 10pc to 15pc that may be impossible to deliver.
The pattern has echoes of what happened to Icelandic banks and Northern Rock, which relied on fickle capital markets during the credit boom. They were caught in a vice when funding suddenly dried up. The Academy said Jilin Trust, AsAc, and Taipingyang Municipal, are among the most overextended. All three have had trouble rolling over debt or covering payouts over recent days.
The Chinese, dazzled by their sudden 'wealth', are doing what Europeans and Americans have done, and are borrowing up to and over the hilt in the mystical belief that the price of everything will rise forever. Hence, for example, all those creepy, empty cities built on some other sucker's cash! Apparently, the Chinese Central Bank is attempting to cut back on the money supply and whilst A E-P thinks that they will avoid a crash he also thinks that a long period of stagnation is likely.
I have also noted reports, but alas I failed to bookmark them, that the outflow of Chinese money is reaching torrential levels. Don't stand still for too long or some Chinese chap, desperate to safeguard his savings, might buy you!
Not too much energy left this evening because I spent the afternoon up in space and frankly, my dears, I'm exhausted! Well, of course, I wasn't really in space but it damned well felt like it what with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock floating about in space suits, and the earth spinning slowly around several zillion feet below, and bits and pieces of space-capsule detritus whistling by at near the speed of light and ... and ... oh, I don't know what else but I was both knackered and terrified. Well, I'm sure I have mentioned it before but I suffer badly with fear of heights and you can't get much higher than about 400 miles above the earth. Thank God there were only about four other people in the cinema this afternoon - the film is finishing its run - so no-one heard my whimpering.
Even so, I'm telling you - nay, ordering you! - to go and see it before it comes off the circuit. It is terrific! It's in 3-d which made it even more terrifyingly real and how they shot the special effects I simply cannot imagine. But it is more than just an adventure yarn. The script is spot on and I am sure the writer must have known that Clooney was playing in it because his part was tailor-made for him and his laconic humour. Sandra Bullock has now convinced me that not only is she a good light comedienne but also a dramatic actress of considerable talent. I will tip you off to one tiny item which clinched the excellence of this film and that was the moment when Bullock cried and I thought - 'cos I'm a meany at spotting mistakes! - that's wrong because she's making the right faces and sounds but there are no tears - and then, through my 3-d specs I saw tiny little globules of tear fluid floating towards me and I remembered, of course, that there is no gravity in space so tears don't flow they just wobble away. My only real crit was that, at times, the music was too heavy-handed.
Do see it because it simply will not work the same on a TV screen!
Ooops, I forgot the name - as if you didn't know it! - GRAVITY.
... on his way to meet another grasshopper, his new best friend, but when he got there he found a locust waiting for him. "Who are you?" he asked. "I'm your new best friend," said the locust, "but I've changed!"
Oh dear, you're probably thinking to yourself, 9.30 in the morning and he's on the dry martinis already! Not at all, sober as a judge, I am, although my mind is reeling somewhat having just read an article by David Dobbs for the Aeon.co site. In it he describes the phenomenon when a grasshopper (or certain grasshoppers) suddenly turns into a locust. Like watching a conjurer's trick we tend to mutter in amazement, "How do they do that?!"
According to the microbiology swots it is all down to 'genetic expression'. Now, it is around this point in the explanation that my brain starts to ache as I grapple with these abstruse concepts. I can understand that cells form themselves in one way rather than another depending on what they 'read' in the genetic code contained in every gene but, I ask myself, do I really understand, or is the anthropomorphic language which is inseparable from this subject actually fooling me? I mean, surely, a cell doesn't 'read' in the sense in which you are reading these words. I assume that what happens is that a series of biochemical reactions take place, that is, something like, A hits B and causes C. There is no 'reading', let alone comprehension, just biochemical action and re-action.
However, according to Mr. Dobbs' explanation, these cells don't behave like I do with my old 'pulp fiction' books which I toss away when I've finished reading, apparently they keep reading and re-reading the code and for some reason they suddenly decide to 'translate' it differently and thus 'express' it differently which causes changes in the body carrying them. As far as I can make out they do this as a result of some outside stimulation such that, suddenly (or even gradually), they stop reading in, say, English and start to read in French - quelle horreure! The result is a change, sometimes quite dramatic, in the behaviour and appearance of the poor old carcass (or, me, as I like to think of it) that is carrying them around - there's gratitude for you! Anyway, all this has put the genetic swots in a tizz but the one good thing to come out of it is that Dawkins' nonsense seems to have taken a hit. My e-pal, Richard, who is a tremendous evolutionary swot, suspects that this sort of extreme metamorphosis has much to do with the arrangement of the genome (rather than any one gene, selfish or otherwise!) which is carried by what he calls, mysteriously, "95% of 'dark' matter"
At that point my brain snapped shut. I put it down to my genes!
No, no, not him! I mean the one on the right, the podgey-lookin' fella. He spent all day yesterday on the podium listening to the biggest collection of A1 crashers ever gathered in one place and with an absolutely straight face - well, actually, his face is definitely on the rounded side but you know what I mean - waving his hands and arms about like a demented tic-tac man as he pretended to be translating the proceedings for the benefit of the deaf. Now it transpires that he was a fake! Not that the deaf are complaining, mind you, because one of the few benefits to be enjoyed by people suffering with that disability is that you never have to listen to the Droner-in-Chief pontificating for America! Anyway, in retrospect I think it was an excellent gag and I have a sneaking suspicion that it would have been enjoyed by the man in whose honour the whole kerfuffle was arranged.
Even by my normal standards of obscurity that is an incomprehensible title but I promise you that it does have a meaning and an exceedingly important, and possibly crucial, meaning. As I write and you read, there is a battle raging and if its ferocity is so far confined only to "words, words, words" there is a distinct possibility that at some time in the near future it will evolve into rockets, missiles and even nuclear weapons. The 'battle' currently being waged is amongst American strategists and I will try and summarise the debate in so far as an ex-corporal understands it. However, I would urge those of you interested enough to read the full essays I link to at the end of this post.
ASB stands for AirSeaBattle and it sums up the current thinking at the Pentagon as to how they should cope with growing Chinese ambitions increasingly matched by growing military capability. The thinking is that the US needs to integrate its strategic forces, that is, missiles and electronics and all the various platforms that support them, into one combined force capable of penetrating the Chinese continent and destroying their C3 capability, that is, Command, Control, Communications. This force would not include nuclear capabilities which would be held back for use only as a second-strike possibility. The thinking is that the Chinese know they are utterly out-nucleared and in any exchange they would be obliterated and thus they would be extremely unlikey ever to use such weapons. This ASB strategy is essentially offensive, by which I do not imply that it would make the Americans the first-strike aggressors but only that if war breaks out then they would seek to take the initiative - and the fight - to the enemy. By and large, forcing your enemy to fight on your terms is thought highly desirable in operational circles!
A2/D2 stands for Anti-Access/Area Denial and, in military philosophy terms, it is a defensive strategy, in other words, the polar opposite to ABS. Proponents of this strategy suggest a mutual (if possible) agreement between the USA and the countries who, so to speak, 'border' with China across the east and south China seas; so that would include Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. The idea would be that in the event of war, access to those waters would be denied to the Chinese. The American submarine fleet, in particular, would be hugely increased in size and capability as a main enforcer of this restricted use. The mainpoint is that this strategy would deliberately avoid any penetration of Chinese land, sea or air space and thus lower enormously the risk of nuclear escalation. In fact, the one thing likely to provoke the Chinese to first use of their nuclear option would be any incoming threat, real or imagined, to to its existence.
Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice! However, I would urge you to read these links as an introduction. It's a grim subject but at least some people are trying to think ahead. Whether such thinking penetrates the Pentagon, let alone the White House remains a moot point.
I'm playing 'Baron Hardup' in this year's Christmas panto and it's my job to make all the kiddie-winkies cry and wet their beds for a week, set Mum against Dad in a series of blistering rows and cause Grandpa to pluck up courage after fifty years of marriage and finally tell Grandma what an old bag she is! To help spread this anti-Yuletide spirit I am sending you all not one but two non-Christmas cards sent forth by our less-than-glorious leaders that will, I am sure, give you indigestion before you even taste the wife's under-cooked turkey - heh-heh-heh! In no order of awfulness, here they are:
There is only one question worth asking after you have gulped down your second scotch, would you actually murder your 'postie' if he delivered these non-Christmas cards to your house? And finally, spare a thought for poor old Jesus Christ. Nailed to a cross where he must have hung in agony until he died, all for a cause which has produced these two dire examples of how not to celebrate his birth!
ADDITIONAL: For the benefit of my e-pal, BOE, who is waiting impatiently for a Christamas card from everybody's mate (unless you are Tory or French) Nigel Farage. Alas, BOE, I couldn't manage a card from 'Nige' but here's one from his new ex-best friend, Godfrey Bloom, complete with bongoes from you-know-where!
I assume that is Mrs. 'Bloomers' with him and not some East European skivvy because I'm sure he realises that you can get servants at a much cheaper rate from, er, Bongo-Bongo-Land!
Sorry, more ADDITIONAL:Oh God, oh, no, please, no more - they get worse and worse and this is the 'worserer' of the lot:
This exercise of mine today was supposed to ruin your Christmas not mine but this, the naffest of utterly naff non-Christmas cards, has entailed emergency use of a sick-bag!
Her: The people are revolting.
Him: Let them eat Christmas cake - so long as it has an EU authorisation code.
Yet another ADDITIONAL:
That old lech, ooops, I mean, distinguished patron of these equally distinguished coloumns, DM, has requested a Christmas card from former President Sarkozy on account of his allegedly gorgeous wife. Well, nothing is too much bother for the proprietor of this blog in his constant efforts to please his regular visitors. It took a bit of finding and whilst I will always bow to DM's taste in single malts I have to say that his taste in women is, er, eccentric:
He: I 'ave a leetle zing for you, ma cherie, for Chreesmas.
She: Ach, nein, you are not going to stick your French tongue down my throat again!
Um, that is his wife, isn't it? Oh, no, say it ain't so! Ah well, it's off to SpecSavers again . . .
My question is taken from an excellent essay by a gentleman called Tony Hall, English by birth but Australian by residence, on a site which calls itself 'Escape Into Life'. He poses that interesting question and then seeks to answer it in clear English rather than than the gobbledegook normally spouted by 'art experts'! Before you read further, take a look at the pictures:
Saying Grace by Norman Rockwell
Office by Night (1946) by Edward Hopper
Peasant Dance by Pieter Bruegel
Before you choose read Mr. Hall's essay. Of these three particular examples I have no difficulty in choosing the Rockwell because I have a poster version of it on my sitting-room wall. I wish it was the original because last week it sold at auction for $43 million! Mind you, a Hopper, and not a partiularly interesting one in my view, also sold for $40 million!
In general, I would have considerable difficulty choosing between Rockwell and Hopper. They both appeal to different parts of my personality. For sheer technical brilliance Rockwell wins hands down but for the element of mystery it's Hopper all the way. Here are two for you to contrast and compare:
A vintage crop today designed to have you chortling whilst the boss moans about the figures for last week!
Thursday morning I gradually woke up stiff as a plank in a hospital ICU, tubes up my nose & down my throat, wires monitoring every function & all around my head, a hell of a pain over my left ear, and a gorgeous nurse leaning over me.
It was obvious I'd been in a serious accident.
She looked deep & steadily into my eyes and I heard her say slowly, 'You may not feel anything from the waist down.'
I managed to mumble in reply, 'Can I feel your tits, then?'
And now an 'Oirish' miscellany - all the way from Australia!
An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road.
A cop pulls him over.
"So," says the cop to the driver, “Where have ya been?"
" Why, I've been to the pub of course," slurs the drunk.
" Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've had quite a few to drink this evening."
"I did all right," the drunk says with a smile.
"Did you know," says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, "that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?"
"Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk, "For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf."
Bashing the 'boomers': Amongst the wittiest of American writers, P. J. O'Rourke turns his laser-like humour on his own kind - the so-called 'baby boomer generation' in America. He knows where-of he writes because he is, well, a less-than-proud member of it! His opening paragraph gives you the flavour:
We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That's an important accomplishment, because we're the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, "Let there be self." If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this yourself.
There's poor and then there's, like, er, really, really poor: I shall forever remain grateful to Mr. O'Rourke who, in one of his books, provided me with the answer to a question I had asked constantly on various Left-wing blogs, that is, how exactly and precisely do you define 'poverty'? Lefties never stop prating about poverty but most of them seemed to think that living in a council flat on benefits and eating KFC three times a day is real poverty.O'Rourke, who has seen the grim reality in various parts of the world, gave this definition - no chickens!According to him, just about everywhere you go in the world's impoverished locations you will usually see a few chickens scratching around and you will know that whilst life is tough it is not totally lost. It's when there are no chickens to be seen that you have the stark proof of real poverty.
A right royal double-act: I am more and more impressed with our brace of royal grandsons, Wills and Harry. Like all the very best double-acts they appeal to both sides of our sentiments. Wills satisfies that part of us that understands that good sense and good behaviour are re-enforced by a good marriage and fatherhood. Harry, on the other hand, appeals to the 'wannabe' playboy in us all as he parties and shags for Britain whilst - and this is important - he does some time up the 'sharp-end' in Afghanistan and then takes part in some tough charity events, like trudging across Antarctica. Her Maj, of course, has been absolutely brilliant as Queen and if and when Charles takes over in his dotage he and his eccentricities will be looked on with fondness. By then Wills will be fully matured, and no doubt some American heiress will have pinned Harry down, so all's well with the Royal family - God bless 'em!
Bloody computers! I have remarked before on the unmitigated catastrophe that would ensue following a cyber attack. I don't think any of us have any real idea of just how much of our modern lives are utterly and totally dependent on the constant stream of 'mega-ga-zillions' of noughts and ones that go to make up 'information technology'. This week we have had two tiny reminders - 'tiny' because they are as nothing compared to a full shut down - when a bank's computer system went tits-up and then yesterday the air traffic control system followed suit. Instead of wasting money on two useless aircraft carriers the MoD would be better employed spending the money on cyber security systems. But then, when did they ever plan for the future war as opposed to the last one?!
Never trust the experts: Of course, by and large we do because we have no alternative but in a sea of uncertainty it never does any harm to cling to a buoy of scepticism. I am reminded of this by memories from two months ago when the 'footie' season opened and all, not just some but all, the experts on 'TOOOOORKSPOOOOORT' laid into M. Hulot, ooops, pardonnez-moi, I mean Arsene Wenger, the French manager of Arsenal F.C. and accused him of being a short-sighted (well, to be fair he never sees any of the fouls committed by his players but can spot an opposition penalty at 50 yards!), tight-fisted, stubborn, old fool who never spends enough on new players to refresh his team and they all predicted disaster. As of now (15.15 hrs.) his team is top of the table with four points more than his immediate rivals and with a match in hand, and after this evening he could be seven points ahead. As he might put it, "Celui qui rira le dernier ne comprend pas la blague!"
Film of the week: Not to be missed - and that's an order! On BBC1, Tuesday evening at 11.40pm, The Painted Veil. Based on the Somerset Maugham story, it is absolutely terrific - and not just the jaw-dropping scenery to be seen in the China scenes. A tale of moral weakness eventually reconciled by greater strengths. You are not to miss this film and you may have to write an essay on it Wednesday morning! Those of you living in Australia are excused!
Vermeer: Artist or Artificer? I have mentioned before my coolness towards the paintings of Vermeer which was enforced by reading that he, and some of the other 'masters', had used the camera obscura to aid their apparantly 'amazing' technique particularly in regard to perspective. Courtesy of the indispensable Arts & Letters Daily I have just read a fascinating article in Vanity Fair describing the activities of a certain Tim Jenison who can only be described as a monumental polymath. I hadn't realised that much of the, er, 'Arts' world were still adamant in their refusal to accept that Vermeer and his ilk had used anything other than their genius in executing their paintings. However, Mr. Jenison (with the aid of Penn and Teller, the famous magicians) has demonstrated exactly how Vermeer pulled off the trick. Worth reading!
I have been working on the script for my talk entitled How the Japanese Lost WWII in the First Six Months. I would have liked to add 'and it then took another three and a half years, millions of dead and two atom bombs to make them own up!' but that would make my already elongated title totally unwieldy and increase the chance of my audience falling asleep before I actually begin the talk, itself! Anyway, be happy, dear reader, that you will not have to sit through it as I drone on and on like an endless flight of 'Kates' (aka: Nakajima B5Ns). Anyway, it suddenly struck me that today, the 7th December, is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbour.
I have remarked before that the Japanese Imperial Government of the day, overseen by their 'God-Emperor', was a perfect example of group insanity - no doubt the psychobabblers have a long fancy name for the condition, after all, their Godhead is Sigmund Freud who lived in the Austrian empire in the early 20th century and saw at fairly close hand another example of the syndrome in Wilhelmine Germany. Putting it crudely but simply, the Japanese government and most of its ruling elite should have been 'sectioned' under the Mental Health Act for their own good! In early 1941, the Emperor actually asked both his army and his navy staff to give him their best forecast as to how a war with the USA would turn out. He did not tell either of them that the other was working on the same problem so he received two completely seperate analyses. They both agreed - perhaps the only thing they ever did agree on! - that unless Japan could score a massive and strategic victory within the first 12 to 18 months, Japan would lose. But still, puffed up with arrogance and hatred, they struck.
The absolute lynch-pin for the initial surprise attack on Pearl Harbour was to knock out the two American carriers which were based in Hawaii along with the rest of the US Pacific Fleet. There had been fierce debate inside Japanese naval circles as to whether or not the aircraft carrier had replaced the big battleship as the queen on the naval chessboard. Opinion remained divided but the Japanese at least recognised the potentiality of this new form of naval warfare and were determined to knock it off the board from the very beginning. The two carriers were based at Pearl Harbour, they should have been there - but in the event - they were not. The mysterious 'God of Bad Weather' outdid the 'God of Japan' and the the two carriers, delayed by storms, did not arrive back in time for that dire weekend.
Six months later at Midway, three American carriers ripped the heart out of the Japanese navy by sinking four of their giant fleet carriers which took down with them hundreds of planes and, even more important, thousands of highly-trained and battle-experienced crews. At least it settled once and for all the argument between the battleship exponents and the carrier enthusiasts. It was all over, er, bar the next three and half years, the several million dead and the two atom bombs. A monument, of sorts, to the insanity of blind ambition and arrogance.
My preceding post and the commentary that followed it has made me pause and attempt to think. Hitherto it has been all too easy for people like me who are instinctively anti-EU to simply snarl that we want out, no halfway house, just out! But of course, Europe, in whatever form it takes over the next few decades, will still be there and we must have some sort of relationship with it, or at least, with its constituent parts. The question is, what sort of arrangement should that be?
Obviously, trade and legal links need to be made, as in the normal way of business between sovereign states. That should not be too difficult given that Europe sells more to us than we do to them so they are extremely unlikely to wish to destabilise that arrangement. It is in the area of political strategy that we need to think very carefully how we approach our relations with the Europeans. Obviously, I am no expert and so I tend to the default position laid out over the past 500 years or so, that is, always try and use such weight as we possess to balance the power scales in Europe. At different times these scales have weighed heavily in favour of Spain, then France, then Germany and then Russia. Each time Britain has leaned in favour of the lesser powers, and that, I think, is what we should do with contemporary Europe which is increasingly falling under German hegemony.
If adopted, this policy must be pursued with great subtlety, if not downright deception, because we should not work on the basis that Germany is the dangerous military enemy of old. It is not! It is an extremely successful, democratic country with whom we should try and maintain cordial relations. Even so, if (as 'SoD' believes according to his commentary on the post below) France wishes to loosen its ties to an EU under increasing German control then we must aid and encourage her. The same thing goes for the Nordics and also, perhaps, to the eastern Europeans who might, in time, become nervous at German power. Certainly every effort should be made to woo the Irish.
I do not believe that we can execute a policy like this from inside the EU. The greatest allies the Germans will have in preserving the Union is the entrenched bureaucracy in Brussels who will do everything in their considerable power to thwart our efforts. If we are to act independently, then we must first become independent. This is a prospect which our current prime minster simply will not stomach - unless he is forced to! Once again, I would suggest that the only thing likely to drive him to it is a massive victory for UKIP in next year's European elections, and by massive, I mean not a single Tory MEP sent to Brussels! That, and only that, will put such fear and trembling into Tory seats that enough of their MPs will revolt unless real action is taken before their election in 2015. By "real action", I mean mainly two things. First Cameron has to defy the Brussels hierarchy on one or two (or more) significantly important matters such that it will force a showdown - and with the strong possibility that Britian will have an in/out referendum in 2017 it will be interesting to see who blinks first! Secondly, he might have to cut an electoral deal with UKIP. That, of course, will mean the Tory party accepting several UKIP policies vis-a-vis Europe which means that all chances of another Tory/LibDem coaliton will cease to exist - and a good thing, too, given that the chances are the LibDems will be decimated at the next election.
Cameron has already had very recent poll indications of how the Tories are haemorrhaging support to UKIP in key Tory marginals which is leaving the door wide open for Labour to step through at the next election. I have said it before, and I will now be even more boring by repeating it again, it is absolutely critical that as many people as possible vote UKIP at the next Euro election, and then vote Tory at the following national election - even if you have to hold your nose. If you find the thought of voting Tory deeply abhorrent, then take a photo of Ed Balls with you into the voting booth, like 'a hanging in the morning it will concentrate the mind wonderfully!'
Two long, detailed but fascinating articles in The National Interest by Milton Ezrati, a sort of super-swot at economics and international affairs. You can read them both in date order HERE and HERE. To be fair, he doesn't come up with anything that isn't more or less 'bleedin' obvious' but he does explain the underlying reasons why France has been, is now and will likely continue to be, in a very definite decline, not just in comparison to an ever-mightier Germany but also in measured comparison with its post-war history. As Mr. Ezrati emphasises, there are all sorts of ideas afloat to improve the woeful state of the French economy but all of them fall foul of either Hollande's entrenched socialism or an all-pervasive government bureaucracy that resists all change and maintains a tax and regulatory system of such complexity that it is slowly but surely strangling French industry to death.
"The times they are a-changin'!" as that great, er, political scientist, Mr. Bob Dylan once sang. Mr. Ezrati makes clear that nothing too much is visible at this moment, there are no troop movements to be seen, or the drone of flights of bombers to be heard, all of which used to presage shifts in the European strategic balance, but nevertheless, signs of impending change can be seen inside European organisations and relationships as it becomes increasingly clear that real power has shifted irrevocably from a Franco-German duality to a German singularity!
Those two articles are well worth reading. Meanwhile, poor France, quelle domage!
So happy that things are going well for you in Syria although, be honest, skipping circles round the likes of Kerrry & Obama isn't too difficult, is it? However, that is not the reason for my letter today. No, no, I just wanted to congratulate you, sweetie, on coming out and admitting your preference for, er, 'the other side of the street', as we might say. Well, of course, you haven't exactly 'come out', more like some Russian scribbler (with a death wish, I assume!) has outed you. Yes, some chap called Stanislav Belkovsky has written a book and he reckons Mrs. Vlad gave you the 'Big E' because she spotted your preferences, and all that story about you having it off with a pretty young female gymnast was just a cover story put out by 'your people' to keep the lid on things. Anyway, strictly between you and me, darling, I will not be too surprised if in the very near future Mr. Belkovsky suffers with a really bad dose of death!
Of course, all your pets here at Duff & Nonsense are not at all surprised at the news; after all, Vlad, darling, all those photos of you stripped to the waist and holding a big weapon in your hand, ooops, sorry, I mean a big rifle, well, it reduced us to jelly here, I can tell you!
Anyway, the reason for this letter is to wonder if you would like to meet my chum Tom Daly. He's gorgeous and very athletic - he falls off diving boards for Britain at the Olympics. Anyway, he, too, has just come out and obviously he prefers the older man because his 'new best friend' is twice his age. And I think I can say without undue flattery that he doesn't look half the man you are - and he's not even holding a weapon, or at least, I don't think he is.
And anyway, I'm sure your old 'chumlets' in the KGB could, er, take care of Mr. Dustin Lance Black if necessary.
I refer to our Chancellor of the Exchequor, the Right Honourable, Mr. George Osborne, or, 'Mr. Smiley' as he looked yesterday in the Commons. Well, for once he had something to smile about as he watched that thick, little thug, Ed Balls, trying to shout his way through a tsunami of boos, whistles and cat calls as he tried to reply to the Chancellor's somewhat smug Autumn statement. Of course, the thing that Mr. Osborne has not done and for which he deserves a modicum of praise is what Ed Balls would have done had he (dread thought!) been in charge, that is, keep on spending and keep on borrowing.
The news the Chancellor brought to us yesterday was good only in so far as it wasn't as bad as it has been! Gradually, very, very gradually, as gradual as painting the Forth Bridge with a toothbrush, he is reducing the amount of national borrowing but he is nowhere near actually balancing the books and so our total national debt continues to rise inexorably - today I see that the yield on 10-year bonds (the price demanded by the moneylenders) is 2.9%. In July 2012 the yield was a mere 1.4% and that means our cost of borrowing has increased by 107% in 15 months! The moneylenders, for obvious reasons, have the most merciless view of any nation's economy and the fact that they are demanding that rate from us when the French are only paying 2.44% tells you louder than words what they think of the British economy. I suspect that not the least of their worries - and therefore mine, too - and yours, if you you have half a brain - is inflation.
Jeremy Warner at The Telegraph takes a similarly hard-eyed look at the statement of affairs issued by our 'cheerful chappie' Chancellor and reckons that the signs of improvement in our economy are "built on sand". In effect, he accuses the Chancellor of fiddling around at the edges instead of carrying out a decisive restructuring of our economy. Modestly, I remember after the last election begging the government to 'do a Maggie' on the back of Labour's catastrophe and if it hurt, which it would have done, then blame it all on Labour. Instead, 'Dim (and gutless) Dave' married the 'Kleggeron' and all chance of anything radical was lost.
So the key question is whether or not 'Dave 'n' George' can keep this bullshit economy looking bright and cheerful long enough to win the next election? In that event they still may not do very much but the prospect of Ed Balls and Len McCluskey running the country is truly a nightmare. What's that you said? 'Surely it's Ed Miliband who runs the Labour party?' Do me a favour!
Unusually, a man made famous for what he did not do rather than what he did, that is, on gaining power he did not organise the slaughter, or even the persecution of South African whites. Instead he did his best to create harmony over what could have been disasterous and tragic turmoil. In this, of course, he was helped enormously by F. W. de Klerk, a man equally deserving of praise given that he started his political life on the Right-wing of the nationalist party. Mandela's achievement stands in direct contrast with the megalomaniac crook running Zimbabwe!
I promised my e-pal, Dom, a few words on our NHS - "the envy of the world" even if no-one else copies it! Like most Brits I just take it for granted because it is an institution with which I have grown up and lived with all my life. Again, like most Brits, I enjoy good health and only have need of it on an occasional basis and sometimes on the even more occasional emergency basis. I think it is fair to say that most people using the NHS find the experience positive but there is a minority, and, I think, a growing minority, who are disappointed and even outraged at their treatment. As always with giant institutions, the faults and weaknesses are slow to build up pressure but when eventually they burst the results are cataclysmic - as the recent North Staffs Hospital outrage showed. That deeply shocking affair has led to a far more jaundiced view of the NHS and its workings, not only by the public but also - and long overdue - the authorities. It is now obvious that things need to change.
First of all, I think it is entirely right and proper that in a sophisticated western society everyone who earns a wage or enjoys an income should contribute to a universal health service. I think the charge for this should be seperate from general taxation so that people can see how much they are paying for the service. Also I think everyone in receipt of an income, even those on minimum wages or state pensions, should have a small amount deducted so that they, too, can see that they are contributing. Obviously those on higher wages will pay more in line with the relevant tax rate that applies to their income. My reason for insisting on as many people as possible paying directly into the NHS fund is to restore the sense of customer/supplier which has been sadly lacking in the NHS for decades.
Second, I would, in effect, privatise the hospitals and let them operate in a true market place. Thus, if you are ill you go to your General Practitioner who, in effect, gives you a voucher for treatment of your condition. You then 'spend' that voucher at a hospital of your choice. Of course, your GP will recommend certain hospitals or clinics and they, in turn, will be keen to impress, first, your GP with their good service, and second, you, as the final customer. The GP practice, in turn, will earn according to the number of patients they attract.
What I think is essential is that the customer/supplier relationship is re-instated in medical matters. I often use the comparison of the supermarkets who supply that other essential requirement for life and health - food! There you see, for the most part, big organisations vying for your custom with good produce and good service.
There are two riders - probably a lot more but time is pressing - which need to be considered. Whilst I think a universal health service is a proper part of a modern state it need not, and should not, be more than basic. A lot of what is provided these days under the NHS is not basic - cosmetic operations, fat reduction, IVF, abortion, etc - and if people want those sorts of things they should pay for it themselves. Finally, I think that people should be encouraged to opt out of the NHS by taking private health insurance and that should be reflected in a reduction to their NHS contribution.
There, pick the hole sinthat - shouldn't be too difficult!
Later tonight and during tomorrow I am changing my telephone and broadband supplier.
My new supplier assures me that it is all very simple and absolutely nothing can go wrong. That confirmed my worst fears!
So, if you have difficulty getting through tomorrow just look upon it as an opportunity to read some sensible blogs for a change. In the meantime I shall struggle on manfully with trying to sort out routers, DSL cables, PSUs and other mysteries known only to God and 'SoD'! The final sentence in my list of instructions simply states: Plug in, switch on. If only life was that simple!
Yes, I am delighted to be able to tell you, courtesy of The Graunand Guido, that the new old leader of the Labour party is, of course . . .
. . . the £150k a year Len McCkuskey! So no change there, then! Sorry? What did you say? You thought it was Ed 'Milipede'? What a silly person you are! 'Our Len' punts several grand a year into about a third of the political offices of Labour MPs, and he and his 'bruvvers' have 50% of the vote at any Labour party conference. Flabby-lipped Ed opened his mouth and let his belly rumble when he insisted that suckers members of unions would have to opt in to any political levy paid to the Labour party. That would have endangered Len's 50% block vote over all Labour policies so it has just gone the way of the poor old snowball in hell.
If the Tories have any brains they will plaster their electoral posters with pictures of 'our Len', who is without doubt the ugliest man in British politics, and ask the voters if they want this man running the country? 'Dim Dave' and his clueless Tories would never think of it but that rottweiler Aussie they have employed to do their thinking for them is more than capable of sinking his teeth into 'our Len's' ankle and dragging him into the limelight!
No news is good news, so they say, but the problem is that you start to worry about what might happen. Of course, he added hastily, if you were one of those people enjoying a quiet drink in that Glasgow pub the other night, or were a passenger on that New York train, or even worse, if you are sitting in a refugee camp somewhere in the Middle East, then life is anything but quiet and boring. But for the rest of us, well, me, actually, the only news is that there is no news! Even the Daily Express, whose, er, imaginative headlines are usually good for a laugh is reduced to a weather story - Snow Warning: Arctic storm set to blast Britain with 90mph gales and crippling blizzards - which, in this our 'septic Isle', in December, is the last resort of the sort of A1 crasher who would force you to take your pint from the Saloon Bar to the Public.
For a start, there are no wars, either immediate or pending! Well, yes, maybe there are a few shoot-ups going on somewhere but nothing you would lose any sleep over unless, of course, you were in no-man's-land; and all the pending wars seem to have been pushed to the very bottom of the pending trays. For example, the Chinese even out stumblebummed the Pentagon and our very own MoD by declaring a protected air defence zone over part of the South China Sea and insisting that all aircraft flying through it must report in to Chinese defence HQ but as they lack the necessary to enforce it there are so many American, Japanese and South Korean planes hurtling about in that particular bit of airspace that there is more danger of collision than war! As I wrote the other day, bang goes the theory that somehow those 'olientals' are much more clever than us 'long-noses'!
The Middle East is relatively quiet, by which I mean that the body count is down to about 5,000 a day so nobody bothers to report it. Europe continues to defy gravity by floating in mid-air without any visible means of support. Stocks and shares race upwards with a whooosh like those rockets on Guy Fawkes' night and all we can do is wait patiently for the inevitable pop-bang followed by the detritus fluttering slowly back to earth. The main story yesterday on my mate Rupe's news channel was the announcement by some young lad who earns his living by falling into swimming pools - dammit, I do that every morning and no-one puts me on the news! - has announced that he is in a, er, 'partnership' with another chap. Well, I hope they'll both be very happy but I really couldn't give a back, double-somersault, flying pike and I certainly don't want to see it repeated every 10 minutes for the entire day!
I know I should be happy and cheerful at this complete absence of anything newsworthy but I'm not. I keep thinking I'm missing something, somewhere - and then I remembered - my own portentous words from an earlier post - when everything goes quiet in Tel Aviv and Netanyahu stops telling the truth out loud that Obama and Kerry are the Laurel and Hardy of today, that is the time when they should start worrying in Tehran! There - that sent a shiver up your spine, didn't it? Got you worried now, haven't I? And so you should be, all this bloody 'peace and goodwill to all men' is no good at all - apart from anything else, it's boring!
I am considering a complaint to Malcolm Pollack, the sole proprietor of the Waka Waka Waka site, for plunging me into deep depression - and on a Monday morning, too, when I am already at my lowest ebb. He reports, via Investors.com, on yet another rape on an American campus - no, no, not one of those peachy blondes they produce in a factory somewhere in California, I mean the rape of English literature studies. Read on and enter an alien world . . .
Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald shocked a New York City audience at the 2013 Wriston Lecture this month with some examples of what leftist academics have done to the American college curriculum.
"Until 2011," she noted, "students majoring in English at UCLA had been required to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton — the cornerstones of English literature.
"Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the 'Empire,' UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing."
It is beyond satire but Ms. MacDonald tries irony instead:
What had the students exchanged for the greatness of English literature? Mac Donald demonstrated by quoting "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
"Since once I sat upon a promontory," the fairy king Oberon tells his jester elf Puck, "and heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song, and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid's music."
Then she juxtaposed it with UCLA's official description of its post-colonial studies research grant:
"The theoretical, temporal and spatial intersections of post-coloniality and post-socialism will arrive at a novel approach to race, gender and sexuality in present-day geopolitics."
Next year's Modern Language Association conference, she pointed out, which brings together the country's literature faculty, will be devoted to "poverty, climate, reparations and activism in order to mobilize forchange."[My emphasis]
The lunatics haven't taken over the asylum, they are running the entire country!
After being married for thirty years, a wife asked her husband to describe her. He looked at her for a while, then said, "You're an alphabet wife .... A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K."
She asks, "What the hell does that mean?"
He said,"Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful,Elegant, Fabulous, Gorgeous, and Hot".
She smiled happily and said, "Oh, that's so lovely, but what about I, J, K?"
He said, "I'm Just Kidding!"
The swelling in his eye is going down and the doctor is fairly optimistic about saving his testicles.
Two nuns were sitting at traffic light in their car when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulls up alongside of them. "Hey, show us your tits, ye bloody penguins!" shouts one of the drunks.
Mother Superior turns to Sister Immaculata, "I don't think they know who we are - show them your cross."
Sister Immaculata rolls down her window and shouts, "Screw off ye little fookin wankers, before I come over there and rip yer balls off!"
Sister Immaculata looks back at Mother Superior and asks, "Was that cross enough?"
Once upon a time, a pilot asked a beautiful princess, "Will you marry me?"
The princess said, "No!"
And the pilot lived happily ever after and flew fighters all over the world and drove hot cars and chased skinny long-legged big-breasted flight attendants and hunted and fished and went to topless bars and dated women half his age and drank Wiehenstephaner German beer and Captain Morgan Rum and never heard bitching and never paid child support or alimony and kept his house and guns and ate cold leftovers, potato chips and beans and blew enormous farts and never got cheated on while he was at work and all his friends and family thought he was friggin' cool.
And he had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up.
Obama's not-so-secret police strike again: Some poor sap in America who is suffering with cancer lost his health insurance because of 'Obamacare'. He had the infernal nerve to go on Fox News and complain. Almost immediately there was a (metaphorical) knock on his door and the Internal Revenue Service were outside demanding to audit all his financial affairs. An insurance broker who saw the interview offered to help and - bingo! - the IRS whacked him with an audit also. Meanwhile, an Obama appointee to the higher ranks of the IRS went before a Congressional committee and replied with the immortal words "I do not recall" not once, not twice, not ten, but eighty times! For God's sake, wake up, America, they're coming for you!
Get those thermals out and ready: Lest you doubt the warnings let me provide you with the clincher. The other day I saw that the Met Office had poo-pooed what they called alarmist reports of an exceptionally cold winter. That's good enough for me, now where did I put those damn thermals last Spring?
South Suffolk did it, now it's the turn of South Cam: I reported a few days ago that the good Tories of South Suffolk had given that fat, old trougher, Tim Yeo, the big 'E' now it is the turn for the Tories of South Cambridge because, according to a story in The Mail, their MP, Andrew Lansley, has claimed £6k for overnight hotel expenses despite owning an unlet house 15 minutes walk away and his own residence being a mere 50-minute train ride away. Turf the old porker out!
Even the Euros want us out: According to the good Doctor Richard North of EU Referendum, the prints are reporting on polls taken in some of our European neighbours asking what they think about British efforts either to change EU arrangements or for the UK to leave altogether. The result can be roughly summed up as either "va te faire foutre!" or "Verpiss dich!" which translates roughly as 'fuck off!' Somehow I don't think they like us very much 'just over there'. Ah, well, why am I not surprised?
Zee Germans are revolting! No, no, I don't mean that, charming chap, your average Hun, I just mean that, at long last, they are revolting against their mad, mouth-dribbling Greenies. According to NoTricksZone, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [FAZ], a leading newspaper in Germany, is reporting the abject failure of a somewhat sinister Greenie group called the WBGU to ram its mad Green policies down the throats of government and citizens alike. According to FAZ:
The rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council [the WBGU]to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.
Excellent news, and now all we have to do is rid ourselves of the 'Kleggeron' and all his wretched il-Lib-non-Dems and we, too, can relax whilst they go on to something more serious like, I suppose, proving the earth is flat!
And one last cheering note: This from the inventive keyboard of one of America's wittiest and sharpest observers - P. J. O'Rourke. This time he offers his thoughts on the 'Baby-boomer generation' of which he holds himself an honourable member. His summation of their characterisation is deadly accurate: We are all alike in that each of us thinks we're unusual.
There might be one of my usual 'Sunday Rumbles' later on but for the moment I want to try to use a (hopefully) quiet Sunday morning to clear my mind on a subject which has been niggling away at me ever since my e-pal, JK, sent me an essay by Prof. James Kurth written for the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) on the (almost certain) decline and fall of American conservatism. So what, you might ask, and who gives a damn? Well I do because the implications are enormous.
But first let me attempt to summarise Prof. Kurth's analysis although I do urge you to read the whole thing. He begins by analysing the three main 'constituencies' which have, hitherto, been the mainstays of the conservative Republican party over the last few decades. They are in turn, business and their 'free enterprise' advocates; social conservatives who are pro-church and traditionalist in their views; and national defence, pro-military and patriotic conservatives. According to Prof. Kurth it is the business lobby which has wielded increasing power within the Republican party out-trumping social and pro-military conservatives. By and large big business tries to diminish religious traditions and similarly tries where-ever possible to break down national borders to facilitate global trade. (As an aside, we see the same thing here with our very own Confederation of British Industry forever talking up the European common market and issuing dire warnings if we ever leave and opponents are derided as 'little Englanders'!) Prof.Kurth reminds us that the exception to his 'rule' was Ronald Reagan who managed to fuse these three disparate 'constituencies together for long enough to win two elections, although I would add that the disaster that was Jimmy Carter's presidency must have been a considerable help, in much the same way that the economic disasters of the Wilson/Callaghan labour governments in Britain helped Maggie Thatcher to a series of Tory wins. In both cases these exceptional characters were replaced by what the 'cousins' call RINOs - Republicans (or Tories) In Name Only!
Both here and in America it was the underlying failures of Keynsian economics which came to a head during the great stagflation of the '70s which opened the door - and some minds - to new philosophies of economics. Milton Friedman and Friedrick Hayek represented free market economics although, as Prof.Kurth is quick to point out, there are big conceptual differences between Friedman and Hayek. The latter is, in my words, a purist free marketeer, one who believes that even interest rates and money supply should be left to the market to decide without interference from governments or central banks. However, Friedman's gospel swept the board not least, I guess, because he wrote some marvellously clear and easily understood books which were seized upon by both the American and British public who, because of the miseries of stagflation, were open to new ideas. His philosophy seemed to offer the equivalent of "with one bound our hero was free!" But of course, our politicians really do not care for the people to be free, or at least, not totally free because that diminishes their power and as we all know - do we not? - they are only in it for the power! And so, gradually, free market economics were subsumed into what I can only call 'soppy socialism' - 'soppy' because it lacks the ferocity of out-and-out communism.
Progressivism never rests and if, momentarily it was thwarted by Reagan and Thatcher it simply used other channels - in the USA it was mainly the twin arenas of the judiciary and the academy. However, their momentous 1973 victory in Roe v. Wade at least served to galvanise the religious Right of the Republican party which fought vigorously on the 'Right to Life' campaign, although in itself this campaign has proved insufficient to seriously alter GOP electoral results. They were not helped by their so-called leaders, not even the eloquent Ronald Reagan, as Prof Kurth reminds us:
Of course, traditional conservatives had long been bereft of any credible national political leader (after the death of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater had briefly been the closest approximation to one, and he was much more a social libertarian than a traditional moral conservative). By itself, religious or traditional moral conservatism was not going to produce a credible national political figure. However, the fusionist project of the conservative movement had laid the intellectual groundwork for uniting social conservatives with economic and security conservatives. And Ronald Reagan, “the Great Communicator,” certainly had the gift of being able to speak to the different arenas of traditional conservatism, in words and concepts that they not only understood, but that they loved. It was Reagan who appeared to traditional religious and social conservatives to be, at long last, their authentic political representative and effective political vehicle. And it was he who brought them into the grand alliance of conservatives that provide the electoral base for “the Reagan Revolution.”
We have observed, however, that in regard to economic policy, the Reagan era and the following years of Republican political power did not really produce traditional-conservative policies, but ones which were merely pseudo-conservative. Much the same thing can be said for the social policies of the Reagan era and later Republican rule. Reagan and some other Republican leaders were excellent in their public speeches and pronouncements with respect to traditional moral values. However, when it came to implementing these values in actual legislation and practical policies, the results—after a period lasting almost three decades—have been virtually negligible. [My emphasis.] The main benefit that traditional social conservatives have received from Republicans in the White House and in Congress have been four Supreme Court appointments—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito. And so, in a sense, the reinvention of American conservatism in the social arena actually produced another kind of pseudo-conservatism—or at best quasi-conservatism—one which was parallel and analogous to the pseudo-conservatism in the economic arena.
In my opinion this stems almost entirely from the disdain by conservative politicians for ideology. We laugh at the 'Python-eque' satire of the 'People's Front for Judea' endlessly arguing with the 'Front for the People's Judea' but like all good satire it exposes a truth, that in progressive political circles ideology matters down to the last full stop. Conservatives simply cannot be bothered! And that, of course, leaves them free to commit colossal blunders!
Moreover, while the Republicans were in power in the White House and in Congress, they facilitated a major change in the demographic composition of the U.S. population—and therefore in the social bases of the two political parties and their ideological movements. This was the great increase in immigration—including illegal immigration—from Latin America, and especially from Mexico. Of course, this increase in immigration had originated with the Immigration Act of 1965, which can be seen as one of the progressive policies of the time, and it had steadily increased in numbers during the 1970s. However, it was during the era when reinvented conservatism was in ascendency and the Republicans were in power that the Hispanic immigration and the ensuing Hispanic births in the United States reached massive proportions. For example, in the 1980s, Hispanics accounted for 5 percent of the U.S. population; by the late 2000s, they accounted for 15 percent, surpassing the black population in numbers.
Thus, without much thought, or perhaps without any at all, the Republican party, at the behest of its business and middle-class constituents who were delighted at this influx of cheap labour, jumped into the electoral equivalent of the Grand Canyon! According to Prof. Kurth, in 2012 73% of Hispanics voted in favour of Obama. The words "sucker" and "even break" occur! And as the progressive - I was going to write 'bandwagon' but in view of its sinister implications I will instead write - tank rolls inexorably forwards under the leadership of a president who despises his own country and treats the constitution as no more than an irrelevent, old piece of paper, the Republican party remains utterly divided and ineffectual.
With some reluctance, one senses, Prof. Kurth, in his effort to view the future, is forced to face the rising problem of race in modern America. The relatively simple divide between black and white has been superceded by a split between black and brown, and white. This is no longer just a social divide but a very real political division because current progressive policies are aimed solely at impoverishing whites in an effort to enrich blacks and browns. The American economy is shrinking and heading for disaster, and efforts to shift wealth in this way will only add to the coming catastrophe. Prof Kurth sums it up this way:
These speculations lead to a prospective realignment—or rather a sharpening of the current alignment—of the American party system along the following lines: The core voting groups for the progressive coalition and the Democratic Party are (1) blacks, (2) Hispanics, and (3) workers in the public sector. Conversely, the core voting groups for the conservative coalition and the Republican Party are (1) economic and fiscal conservatives; (2) Evangelical or Bible-believing Protestants; and (3) white male workers in the private sector.
He adds one rider to this analysis - women! Or to be precise, white women. At the moment they vote ovewhelmingly in favour of the Democrats, either for economic reasons if they are working-class, or for social reasons if they are middle-class. Without their vote, Prof. Kurth is dismissive of the chances for Republicans to win the presidency or the Senate.
In my poor, ill-informed opinion only one thing will provide the Republicans with an opportunity and that is a galvanising, cataclysmic shock to the whole American system brought about by an economic disaster. However, they had better start thinking about it now because important elements of the Dem0crat party have already laid down their plans in that eventuality - indeeed, their own policies are deliberately designed to bring it about because it is precisely in that confusion and chaos that they will see their opportunity to suspend the constitution and seize power.
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