The Tao of Blog

Our father, Who art.......Revisited......

2011-08-13T16:20:00.000+01:00

The Elite's Prayer

Our father,

Who art in the Lords,

Though even his partners knows not his true estate.

Thy troughing done, you'll read about it in the Sun,

...in the Telegraph much as it is in Guido Fawkes Blog.

Give us this day our Parliamentary Expenses & forgive us for being true evildoers,

As we silenced those who have evidence against us.

Lead us not into the Court of Human Rights nor into the International Criminal Court, though we own them both,

But deliver us unto our Peerages.

For thine is the Ermine, the Titles and Tax Avoidance, for forever and ever...

All is ours!!!

This has to get my comment of the week award….

2011-08-12T10:08:00.000+01:00

This has to get my comment of the week award….

Taken from Craig Murray’s website..

Mark Golding

A cursory look at the ‘mode deportment’ of current PUBLIC FACES of BRITAIN which I have named ‘privileged commandeering’ rather than ‘spontaneous looting’ – with thanks to Mary.

“There’s Michael Gove, whose wet-lipped rage was palpable on Newsnight last night. This is the Michael Gove who confused one of his houses with another of his houses in order to avail himself of £7,000 of the taxpayers’ money to which he was not entitled (or £13,000, depending on which house you think was which).

Or Hazel Blears, who was interviewed in full bristling peahen mode for almost all of last night. She once forgot which house she lived in, and benefited to the tune of £18,000. At the time she said it would take her reputation years to recover. Unfortunately not.

But, of course, this is different. This is just understandable confusion over the rules of how many houses you are meant to have as an MP. This doesn’t show the naked greed of people stealing plasma tellies.

Unless you’re Gerald Kaufman, who broke parliamentary rules to get £8,000 worth of 40-inch, flat screen, Bang and Olufsen TV out of the taxpayer.

Or Ed Vaizey, who got £2,000 in antique furniture ‘delivered to the wrong address’. Which is fortunate, because had that been the address they were intended for, that would have been fraud.

Or Jeremy Hunt, who broke the rules to the tune of almost £20,000 on one property and £2,000 on another. But it’s all right, because he agreed to pay half of the money back. Not the full amount, it would be absurd to expect him to pay back the entire sum that he took and to which he was not entitled. No, we’ll settle for half. And, as in any other field, what might have been considered embezzlement of £22,000 is overlooked. We know, after all, that David Cameron likes to give people second chances.

Fortunately, we have the Met Police to look after us. We’ll ignore the fact that two of its senior officers have had to resign in the last six weeks amid suspicions of widespread corruption within the force.

We’ll ignore Andy Hayman, who went for champagne dinners with those he was meant to be investigating, and then joined the company on leaving the Met.

I say this in mitigation m’Lord – I admit to have been influenced by my superiors.

So when our leaders ask for suitable role models for our young people to look up to and emulate….the best they can offer are these, as setting an example on how to do it within the rules.

Didn't take long to go from 'Hug a Hoodie' to 'Hunt a Hoodie' did it?

So the Great Purging of the Poor and Sick begins...

2011-04-04T09:05:00.000+01:00

So the Great Purging of the Poor and Sick begins...

Recently I heard that one of my childhood friends has lost his wife to suicide. Both had been hardworking contributors to society, working through all the recent recessions, struggling hard to keep their home together. She had been his rock, his motivation when life got tough.

This recession however proved too great a burden for them to bear.

She had been made redundant and was attending one of these new 'work for your benefit schemes' or as I look upon it 'indentured slavery schemes' and was finding it hard to cope with the amount of money coming in to the amount going out.

The final straw was when her partner, my friend, lost his job; she then took an overdose of beta-blockers, a large amount of alcohol and went to bed.

They switched off her life support later the next day.

My friend has lost his rock, the person who made his life complete.

I wonder if he will get one of these letters this week to assess if he is fit enough to go back to his none-existent job.

So there you have it, an everyday tale of the expendable paying the price of bailing out corrupt banks that are 'too big to fail' unlike my friend and his late wife, who are too small to matter.

Meet the New Boss..Same as the Old Boss

2011-03-28T20:09:00.000+01:00

Meet the New Boss..

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Thesesa May

Same as the Old Boss......

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Harriet Harma

BBC News - Home Secretary Theresa May condemns protest 'thugs':

'I'm Harriet Harman - you know where you can get hold of me.'

POLICE were called to Torquay Magistrates Court after a defendant evoked an ancient law dating back to 1666 after being charged with non-payment of fines.

2011-03-22T13:22:00.000+00:00

POLICE were called to Torquay Magistrates Court after a defendant evoked an ancient law dating back to 1666 after being charged with non-payment of fines.: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

This Freeman of the Land stuff is starting to take off more and more..

Excellent!

Catching up on World News and Twitter and Facebook

2011-02-13T22:58:00.001+00:00

Catching up on all the events on Russia Today, Twitter and Facebook!
Russia Today is a great news station with a very interesting report on Julian Assange and Sweden's close relationship with the USA and followed by a documentary on Pablo Escobar.

Do keep up BBC!......

Retro-Mobile Computing

2010-11-05T13:11:00.002+00:00

Well after a break of several months from blogging, I have finally started to write again, this being because I have finally replaced my Psion PDA, with a replacement bought from EBay.

Image via Wikipedia

For those of you unfamiliar with these long discontinued little handheld PC is which once put the wind up the likes of Microsoft, they may seem a little dated. No Wi-Fi, no USB, difficult to connect to the Internet and very slow when you do, what could it possibly do that could be useful.
Yes, by today's tech standards the Psion 5MX is very underpowered, no colour screen and connectivity limited to either serial cable or infrared. There is no hard drive and just a 16 megabyte built in memory.
However, what it loses when being compared to modern UMPC formats it gains in other areas.
Physically is small enough to fit in a large pocket or handbag, and has one of the best keyboards and word processing applications on any portable computer. So writing articles such as this can be achieved almost anywhere.
The next is a fantastic battery life, up to 60 hours of portable computing on a set of AA batteries. This works out as month of usage for me, without using the mains power adapter, which if you do, extends the battery life for months. By using such a common battery size, looking around for a suit able charging point is not a problem, just buy your batteries, open the compartment, take out your old batteries, put in the new ones and away you go. The data is safe as there is another battery, which protects your memory.
Another way of making sure that you data are safe is by the use of Compact flash cards. The MX can only use Type 1 and only under a Gigabyte but this is more than adequate as Psion files tend to be small.
Using CF also helps overcome some of the difficulties with connectivity.
I take out the CF Card from the Psion, plug it into my card reader, and back up my files to the PC.
I can also either access my files via a Psion emulator, which gives me a functional Psion running on my PC, or I can use the Psion conversion software to change the Psion files into Microsoft compatible formats to use on the PC. This I usually do once I am at the completion stage and no longer need to carry the document around with me.
The other major feature for me is the Agenda function, which is one of the best diary applications on a computer I have used.
You are able to write notes on the screen via the pen mouse, type, embed and schedule projects complete with word processing documents, spreadsheets for future work, which is great if you are working to a deadline.
Therefore, while awaiting my PC to defragment my hard drives I have been able to type up this short post.
Neat!

Being a part of this 'caring class' is a form of self-flattery. ....

2010-11-04T10:31:00.000+00:00

Whilst Reading James Delingpole's blog article "Only the Tea Party can save us now" in the Telegraph I was struck by this contributor's comment.

This is one of the best observations of the "Left" mind set and of the workings of the human mind. How we still defend the choices we make, be it our life partner who abuses us, the career path we took or the political ideology we aligned to, believing that it reflected our core values of equal chances for all, and the humanitarian impulses that we operate on can be used and misused.

Tayles

(Spot on, James)

Britain is now in thrall to an idea that many of us thought would be remain buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall. Instead, since the end of the Cold War, it has gone from strength to strength and now represents political orthodoxy in this country.

In essence, this idea is that it is the duty of the government to provide for its people and remove any source of dissatisfaction from their lives. The central cause of this dissatisfaction is identified as the inequality between individuals, be it in wealth, happiness, respect or self-esteem. This inequality is believed to result from allowing people to decide things for themselves, which leads them to make unwise decisions or give in to greed and prejudice. By allowing a powerful government to act as saviour and redeemer of the people, we can create a better world.

That’s the theory anyway, and on the surface it sounds perfectly benevolent. It entails sympathy for the disadvantaged, and selflessness at being willing to give up what you have for their benefit. It's what lies at the heart of the Left's popularity. Most people want to be 'good' and the ethos of the Left most conspicuously champions the virtues of compassion and altruism.

However, I don't believe for a minute that all socialists are big-hearted dreamers. I think there are less glorious motives at work, which hide behind socialism's public image of love and generosity. I believe that the flip-side of concern for the have-nots is a hatred of the haves. I believe that the Left’s love of the little guy is often a convenient consequence of their resentment of those who are at an advantage to themselves.

You don’t have to be particularly weak to bear a grudge against the strong. A scion of privilege may feel as oppressed and frustrated as a pauper does. Both may consider it his right to have more wealth, power and respect than he currently possesses. Both may dream about usurping those above him. Others have more modest ambitions. They may not want to smash the system; they may only want to feel superior to the people around them. Whatever their precise intentions, the Left provides the answer.

Most people on the Left are united in a hatred of ‘the establishment’ and the people who control it. They imagine that its values and institutions are arbitrary things that exist only to hold them down. I suspect this is a hangover from adolescence, when they dreamed of a life free from responsibility, consequence and criticism, but where their every whim is satisfied. It’s why they oppose anything that whiffs of establishment values: the free market, moral codes, the traditional family and so on. Not only do these things place a burden of responsibility on individuals and threaten their egos, they are favoured by the people they resent. They imagine that the socialist state will make everything right: it will pick them as winners, it will punish their enemies, it will shield them from responsibility and it will suppress the competing interests of others.

This is by means the only appeal of the Left. A large all-powerful state requires the existence of an intellectual class, which will design the blueprint for our perfect society and guide the bureaucracies that bring it about. This anointed elite will serve as our surrogate-decision makers, using their wisdom and enlightenment to create a better world. Many on the Left fancy themselves as part of this elite – if not in person then by proxy through their support of its existence and its values.

Being a part of this 'caring class' is a form of self-flattery. It says they are compassionate people in a heartless world, wise people in an ignorant world, and enlightened people in a prejudiced world. It demands that people like them have a greater say in the running of things. It places them at a moral and social advantage to the recipients of their largess (after all, the hand that gives is always above the hand that receives), and undermines the legitimacy of those who currently enjoy the power and respect denied to them.

This is at the heart of the middle-class liberal’s support for the Left. They believe what they do because it makes them someone special. It tells the world that they are more wise, compassionate and sophisticated than the people around them. It makes them feel part of a heroic elite that exists on a higher plane to everyone else. For those seeking a job in government or the public sector, the reason for supporting the big state is more obvious. They want as much power as they can get and believing that individuals are incapable to running their own lives is essential to that ambition. For those further down the social ladder, the attraction is more obvious still. The Left first persuades them they are helpless victims of other people’s actions, then promises to free them from responsibility, bestow gifts and favours on them, and to bring low the people responsible for their plight. What’s not to like?

Whatever the reasoning behind the continued support of the Left, one thing that you cannot escape is the path that it historically takes. It doesn’t matter how generous-spirited it is to say that all people are equal and deserve an equal outcome in life - they’re not, and to pretend otherwise will lead to a conflict that can only be resolved by force. This force takes the form of rigid controls over what people can and can’t do; their ambitions, their achievements, their rewards, the movements, their opinions, even their thoughts.

What happened in Eastern Europe wasn’t evidence of a revolution betrayed; it was the obvious consequence of socialist ideas. The inefficiency, corruption, authoritarianism and inhumanity of those regimes came as a direct result of the same socialist policies that now receive such enthusiastic support from politicians, the chattering classes and anyone stupid or selfish enough to think that they will create a better world. The fact that the Soviet countries imposed them more ruthlessly than our own political leaders doesn’t take away from the fact that we are headed in the same direction.

Very well written comment....

What to do when your readers are not on message?

2010-08-28T06:02:00.002+01:00

NatureNews ran this article regarding the cold snap which descended upon South America during July.
"Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history."

(Apart from 1955, when it was colder!!)

"The blame lies, at least indirectly, with a mass of Antarctic air that settled over the Southern Cone of South America for most of July. The prolonged cold snap has also been linked to the deaths of at least 550 penguins along the coasts of Brazil and thousands of cattle in Paraguay and Brazil, as well as hundreds of people in the region."
Like the 'Oh! and some people died' bit tag on.. glad we've got our priorities sort there.
But for me, the best comment was this definitive guide to the Climate Change jargon.
Climate Change Dictionary

      PEER REVIEW:
The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

      SETTLED SCIENCE:
Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

      DENIER:
Anyone who suspects the truth.

      CLIMATE CHANGE:
What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce 'panic for profit.'

      NOBEL PEACE PRIZE:
Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to "Peace" in any meaningful way.

      DATA, EVIDENCE:
Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see "DENIER," above.

      CLIMATE SCIENTIST:
A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for "DATA" by "DENIERS." Also skilled at affecting an aura of "Smartest Person in the Room" to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

      JUNK SCIENCE:
The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.

2010-08-27 08:37:43 PM
Posted by: Jack Black
Taken from NatureNews Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish

Says it all really! RT Iraqi Government @pablothehat Reading - Blair must be arrested - JohnPilger

2010-08-10T07:03:00.001+01:00

Says it all really!

@iraqigovernment

1897

Iraq

1 hr

Publish

RT @pablothehat Reading - #Blair must be arrested - #JohnPilger http://is.gd/e9YlK #iraqwar #labour #afghanwar #LibCon twitterfeed

Twitter eh? Just a bit of a lark really...(sarcasm)

John Pilger's Article

UK court blocks extradition of Bosnian former leader | Reuters

2010-07-28T13:55:00.000+01:00

UK court blocks extradition of Bosnian former leader | Reuters:

(Reuters) - A British court refused on Tuesday to extradite former Bosnian wartime leader Ejup Ganic, wanted in Serbia on war crimes charges, saying his trial would be politically motivated.

One could possibly compare the courts opinion to the case of Gary McKinnon.

Being extradited to the US for a crime committed in this country, which we are led to believe, has adequate jurisprudence to try him in a UK court, being offered up on a one-sided extradition treaty.

Would that constitute a politically motivated trial?

BBC News - Today - Torture allegations 'can't be allowed to fester'

2010-07-20T08:45:00.000+01:00

BBC News - Today - Torture allegations 'can't be allowed to fester':

Listening to Lord Goldsmith's interview on Saturdays R4Today regarding the torture allegations levelled at the Labour government I must admit I was gob smacked when Radio interviewer John Humphrys wheeled out the old Ticking Bomb Scenario as a justification on using information gained via torture.

This Scenario is just plain bullshit.

Information gained under torture is notoriously unreliable and needs to be verified as accurate before being acted upon.

If you suspect that there is a bomb planted somewhere, how do you check the veracity of the 'confession' within such a short time frame?

The 'terrorist' (the majority of those held in these places were and are not, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time) has several courses of action.

He can know nothing and will just be tortured anyway.

If he does know any information it may not be relevant to the current situation, or he can reveal partial or misleading information and/or he can hold out until the deadline is either too close for effective counter-measures to be implemented or passed.

If you are dealing with people whose mindset is that they are willing top blow themselves up to accomplish their aims, why would they crack under pressure?

The use of torture is also a perfect recruiting tool for those who believe that the 'West’ is Evil and that they are doing the Will of God, and that any measures are justifiable in the pursuit of that aim because that claim. (Curiously all of these justifications are strangely mirrored by some of the more radical belief systems promulgated by certain groups in the West),

This too is bullshit.

See also Craig Murray
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Blair to attend torture inquiry?

2010-07-16T11:11:00.001+01:00

Blair silent on plans to attend torture inquiry | Law | The Guardian:

"Take the weapon Luke and strike me down!"

The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness

2010-07-09T12:12:00.003+01:00

The Origins of Political Correctness :: Accuracy In Academia

Came across this article dating back to 2000 and it for makes interesting reading.

The Origins of Political Correctness

Bill Lind, February 5, 2000

An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind
Variations of this speech have been delivered to various AIA conferences including the 2000 Consevative University at American University
Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.
We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been the case. And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they would be afraid of what words they used. But we now have this situation in this country. We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is spreading throughout the whole society. Were does it come from? What is it?
We call it “Political Correctness.” The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it’s deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.
If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.
First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.
Indeed, all ideologies are totalitarian because the essence of an ideology (I would note that conservatism correctly understood is not an ideology) is to take some philosophy and say on the basis of this philosophy certain things must be true – such as the whole of the history of our culture is the history of the oppression of women. Since reality contradicts that, reality must be forbidden. It must become forbidden to acknowledge the reality of our history. People must be forced to live a lie, and since people are naturally reluctant to live a lie, they naturally use their ears and eyes to look out and say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t true. I can see it isn’t true,” the power of the state must be put behind the demand to live a lie. That is why ideology invariably creates a totalitarian state.
Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.
Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be “victims,” and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.
Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn’t as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies don’t get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.
And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it’s Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, it’s deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that “all history is about which groups have power over which other groups.” So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we’re familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.
But the parallels are not accidents. The parallels did not come from nothing. The fact of the matter is that Political Correctness has a history, a history that is much longer than many people are aware of outside a small group of academics who have studied this. And the history goes back, as I said, to World War I, as do so many of the pathologies that are today bringing our society, and indeed our culture, down.
Marxist theory said that when the general European war came (as it did come in Europe in 1914), the working class throughout Europe would rise up and overthrow their governments – the bourgeois governments – because the workers had more in common with each other across the national boundaries than they had in common with the bourgeoisie and the ruling class in their own country. Well, 1914 came and it didn’t happen. Throughout Europe, workers rallied to their flag and happily marched off to fight each other. The Kaiser shook hands with the leaders of the Marxist Social Democratic Party in Germany and said there are no parties now, there are only Germans. And this happened in every country in Europe. So something was wrong.
Marxists knew by definition it couldn’t be the theory. In 1917, they finally got a Marxist coup in Russia and it looked like the theory was working, but it stalled again. It didn’t spread and when attempts were made to spread immediately after the war, with the Spartacist uprising in Berlin, with the Bela Kun government in Hungary, with the Munich Soviet, the workers didn’t support them.
So the Marxists’ had a problem. And two Marxist theorists went to work on it: Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary. Gramsci said the workers will never see their true class interests, as defined by Marxism, until they are freed from Western culture, and particularly from the Christian religion – that they are blinded by culture and religion to their true class interests. Lukacs, who was considered the most brilliant Marxist theorist since Marx himself, said in 1919, “Who will save us from Western Civilization?” He also theorized that the great obstacle to the creation of a Marxist paradise was the culture: Western civilization itself.
Lukacs gets a chance to put his ideas into practice, because when the home grown Bolshevik Bela Kun government is established in Hungary in 1919, he becomes deputy commissar for culture, and the first thing he did was introduce sex education into the Hungarian schools. This ensured that the workers would not support the Bela Kun government, because the Hungarian people looked at this aghast, workers as well as everyone else. But he had already made the connection that today many of us are still surprised by, that we would consider the “latest thing.”
In 1923 in Germany, a think-tank is established that takes on the role of translating Marxism from economic into cultural terms, that creates Political Correctness as we know it today, and essentially it has created the basis for it by the end of the 1930s. This comes about because the very wealthy young son of a millionaire German trader by the name of Felix Weil has become a Marxist and has lots of money to spend. He is disturbed by the divisions among the Marxists, so he sponsors something called the First Marxist Work Week, where he brings Lukacs and many of the key German thinkers together for a week, working on the differences of Marxism.
And he says, “What we need is a think-tank.” Washington is full of think tanks and we think of them as very modern. In fact they go back quite a ways. He endows an institute, associated with Frankfurt University, established in 1923, that was originally supposed to be known as the Institute for Marxism. But the people behind it decided at the beginning that it was not to their advantage to be openly identified as Marxist. The last thing Political Correctness wants is for people to figure out it’s a form of Marxism. So instead they decide to name it the Institute for Social Research.
Weil is very clear about his goals. In 1971, he wrote to Martin Jay the author of a principle book on the Frankfurt School, as the Institute for Social Research soon becomes known informally, and he said, “I wanted the institute to become known, perhaps famous, due to its contributions to Marxism.” Well, he was successful. The first director of the Institute, Carl Grunberg, an Austrian economist, concluded his opening address, according to Martin Jay, “by clearly stating his personal allegiance to Marxism as a scientific methodology.” Marxism, he said, would be the ruling principle at the Institute, and that never changed.
The initial work at the Institute was rather conventional, but in 1930 it acquired a new director named Max Horkheimer, and Horkheimer’s views were very different. He was very much a Marxist renegade. The people who create and form the Frankfurt School are renegade Marxists. They’re still very much Marxist in their thinking, but they’re effectively run out of the party. Moscow looks at what they are doing and says, “Hey, this isn’t us, and we’re not going to bless this.”
Horkheimer’s initial heresy is that he is very interested in Freud, and the key to making the translation of Marxism from economic into cultural terms is essentially that he combined it with Freudism. Again, Martin Jay writes, “If it can be said that in the early years of its history, the Institute concerned itself primarily with an analysis of bourgeois society’s socio-economic sub-structure,” – and I point out that Jay is very sympathetic to the Frankfurt School, I’m not reading from a critic here – “in the years after 1930 its primary interests lay in its cultural superstructure. Indeed the traditional Marxist formula regarding the relationship between the two was brought into question by Critical Theory.”
The stuff we’ve been hearing about this morning – the radical feminism, the women’s studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments – all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you’re tempted to ask, “What is the theory?” The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can’t be done, that we can’t imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we’re living under repression – the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression – we can’t even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s.
Other key members who join up around this time are Theodore Adorno, and, most importantly, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Fromm and Marcuse introduce an element which is central to Political Correctness, and that’s the sexual element. And particularly Marcuse, who in his own writings calls for a society of “polymorphous perversity,” that is his definition of the future of the world that they want to create. Marcuse in particular by the 1930s is writing some very extreme stuff on the need for sexual liberation, but this runs through the whole Institute. So do most of the themes we see in Political Correctness, again in the early 30s. In Fromm’s view, masculinity and femininity were not reflections of ‘essential’ sexual differences, as the Romantics had thought. They were derived instead from differences in life functions, which were in part socially determined.” Sex is a construct; sexual differences are a construct.
Another example is the emphasis we now see on environmentalism. “Materialism as far back as Hobbes had led to a manipulative dominating attitude toward nature.” That was Horkhemier writing in 1933 in Materialismus und Moral. “The theme of man’s domination of nature,” according to Jay, ” was to become a central concern of the Frankfurt School in subsequent years.” “Horkheimer’s antagonism to the fetishization of labor, (here’s were they’re obviously departing from Marxist orthodoxy) expressed another dimension of his materialism, the demand for human, sensual happiness.” In one of his most trenchant essays, Egoism and the Movement for Emancipation, written in 1936, Horkeimer “discussed the hostility to personal gratification inherent in bourgeois culture.” And he specifically referred to the Marquis de Sade, favorably, for his “protest…against asceticism in the name of a higher morality.”
How does all of this stuff flood in here? How does it flood into our universities, and indeed into our lives today? The members of the Frankfurt School are Marxist, they are also, to a man, Jewish. In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany, and not surprisingly they shut down the Institute for Social Research. And its members fled. They fled to New York City, and the Institute was reestablished there in 1933 with help from Columbia University. And the members of the Institute, gradually through the 1930s, though many of them remained writing in German, shift their focus from Critical Theory about German society, destructive criticism about every aspect of that society, to Critical Theory directed toward American society. There is another very important transition when the war comes. Some of them go to work for the government, including Herbert Marcuse, who became a key figure in the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA), and some, including Horkheimer and Adorno, move to Hollywood.
These origins of Political Correctness would probably not mean too much to us today except for two subsequent events. The first was the student rebellion in the mid-1960s, which was driven largely by resistance to the draft and the Vietnam War. But the student rebels needed theory of some sort. They couldn’t just get out there and say, “Hell no we won’t go,” they had to have some theoretical explanation behind it. Very few of them were interested in wading through Das Kapital. Classical, economic Marxism is not light, and most of the radicals of the 60s were not deep. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for our country today, and not just in the university, Herbert Marcuse remained in America when the Frankfurt School relocated back to Frankfurt after the war. And whereas Mr. Adorno in Germany is appalled by the student rebellion when it breaks out there – when the student rebels come into Adorno’s classroom, he calls the police and has them arrested – Herbert Marcuse, who remained here, saw the 60s student rebellion as the great chance. He saw the opportunity to take the work of the Frankfurt School and make it the theory of the New Left in the United States.
One of Marcuse’s books was the key book. It virtually became the bible of the SDS and the student rebels of the 60s. That book was Eros and Civilization. Marcuse argues that under a capitalistic order (he downplays the Marxism very strongly here, it is subtitled, A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, but the framework is Marxist), repression is the essence of that order and that gives us the person Freud describes – the person with all the hang-ups, the neuroses, because his sexual instincts are repressed. We can envision a future, if we can only destroy this existing oppressive order, in which we liberate eros, we liberate libido, in which we have a world of “polymorphous perversity,” in which you can “do you own thing.” And by the way, in that world there will no longer be work, only play. What a wonderful message for the radicals of the mid-60s! They’re students, they’re baby-boomers, and they’ve grown up never having to worry about anything except eventually having to get a job. And here is a guy writing in a way they can easily follow. He doesn’t require them to read a lot of heavy Marxism and tells them everything they want to hear which is essentially, “Do your own thing,” “If it feels good do it,” and “You never have to go to work.” By the way, Marcuse is also the man who creates the phrase, “Make love, not war.” Coming back to the situation people face on campus, Marcuse defines “liberating tolerance” as intolerance for anything coming from the Right and tolerance for anything coming from the Left. Marcuse joined the Frankfurt School, in 1932 (if I remember right). So, all of this goes back to the 1930s.
In conclusion, America today is in the throes of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state. In “hate crimes” we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further. Affirmative action is part of it. The terror against anyone who dissents from Political Correctness on campus is part of it. It’s exactly what we have seen happen in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in China, and now it’s coming here. And we don’t recognize it because we call it Political Correctness and laugh it off. My message today is that it’s not funny, it’s here, it’s growing and it will eventually destroy, as it seeks to destroy, everything that we have ever defined as our freedom and our culture.

It is certainly a more detailed exposition on the topic than the one in a previous posting on this blog, though I don't think it is as funny.

MPs handed more than £1m in expenses in just eight weeks after whining they were being treated like 'benefits claimants' | Mail Online

2010-07-03T06:23:00.000+01:00

MPs handed more than £1m in expenses in just eight weeks after whining they were being treated like 'benefits claimants' | Mail Online

Grasping MPs have pocketed more than £1million in the last eight weeks as the expenses watchdog tries to silence their complaints about the new system. MPs are in revolt over the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which they claim is treating them like 'benefits claimants'.
Yesterday IPSA revealed that it is receiving more than 900 calls and emails from MPs and their staff every week, the vast majority of which are understood to be complaints and demands for cash.

Those nasty, o'rrible, workshy pelbs swarming round the benefits office demanding their free cash.

No mention of all that money spent on vilifying those benefits claimants who are the real casualties of successive governments financial mismanagement, compared to the paltry amount spent on vilifying those guilty of Tax Evasion, but then, one demonises those you despise and wish to scap-goat, but merely criticise your peers.

'The poor are always with us' last said around 2000 years ago, which goes to show that the reasons for poverty remain.

Too much money, power and resources in the hands of too few.

Your 'aving a Laugh!

2010-06-03T10:50:00.002+01:00

Your 'aving a Laugh!

Lembit Opik's first stand-up gig : Features 2010 : Chortle : The UK Comedy Guide

Meeting Eye to Eye with EyeOS?

2010-04-15T18:21:00.004+01:00

Recently I started testing on-line operating systems to see what merits using cloud computing can have on my productivity.
One of these systems is Eye-OS, which comes in two flavours, 1.9 Stable (Classic), which this article is based on, and 2.x Beta, which appears to be geared towards social networking.

Eye-OS is a very simple, intuitive interface with clear icons and a similar feel to most popular OS desktops. There is a nice look about Eye-OS, muted colours so not to distract the eye and a kind of corporate feel to the integration of the other applications, and it work under both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux running under Firefox.

Once you log on to Eye-OS the system 'boots' and presents you with a few icons on the desktop, an address book, Calender RSS Feeder and a Trash Can.

The desktop background can be changed via the system icon on the menu bar, and also do things such as alter your profile etc.

The Home icon takes you to your File Manager where you can..access your uploaded or created files!

Uploading files is a very straight forward affair, a simple file manager interface allows you to files, documents, music files and images to the on-line storage. This is fairly intuitive to use but it can take a long time if you store your files in separate folders as the up-loader closes the file selector when you choose a file.

Sounds great and it is..but occasionally the file selection process doesn't go well and the OS just keeps bleeping at you.

The Applications icon takes you, predictable to the applications.

Clicking on the Word Processor Icon activates the Eye-OS word-processor, which initially looks very sleek and professional, but once you start to use it, it's limitations soon become apparent.

The lack of a spell checker, the inability to link to images stored in Eye-OS are first to show themselves, then there is the problem of it locking up and not being able to access the document makes it almost impossible to use, to such an extent that when I was writing this under Linux, I had to abandon using the Eye-OS and use OpenOffice just to work on the document, which is kinda self-defeating regarding being able to use this OS on any machine.

If fact so much trouble was writing this that I haven't saved the screen shot of the WP!

Streaming play back of your music files is accomplished via a somewhat primitive music player which only plays a track at a time, so, if you are doing another activity such as typing a document such as this, you have to stop. Go the the music player,...activate the next track...then come back to the document..not very productive. The sound quality is good for on-line streaming, subject to the usual stutters and lag problems.

Setting up the email seems to be a complex affair in Eye-OS, with many complicated setting needed to communicate to your email accounts. This could easily dissuade the new user or those stuck for time from setting it up. Indeed, it looks like one of the last tasks I will be performing to get the most out of Eye-OS.

Browsing is taken care of by Navigator, again a very minimalistic look and feel to it. There are limited functions to this application but it appears swift for just checking an web address but would be cumbersome for a serious surfer.

Overall, I cannot really recommend this on-line OS for some of the difficulties I have encountered and far from helping me to become more productive, the WP difficulties were actually getting in the way of this goal.

Mr Ned says...........

2010-04-06T14:17:00.000+01:00

This post is actually a copy of a comment placed on Guido Fawkes regarding the attitude of eco-warriors post Climategate...

Greenpeace : “We Know Where You Live”

It was also inspired by listening to the totally biased BBC programme 'Call You and Yours.'

This is the comment..LOL spot on!

Mr Ned says:
April 5, 2010 at 12:31 pm
“Its the South Pole you want to be focusing on.”

Agreed, the ice in the Antarctic reached a record high ice extent last September, though I do not recall the media paying any attention to that.

They only go down there in our Spring, when the Antarctic ice melt is at it’s height. Then they recycle those pictures of the Wilkin’s ice sheet breaking off (AGAIN) then go on about how it is warming down there faster than the rest of the planet, but forgetting to honestly inform the public that the ONLY way to show any warming is to strictly control the grid of where they are measuring temperature, to homogenise it in one way that includes dodgy data from thermometers that were 50 feet up on masts, that have now been buried in lots of insulating snow (where the batteries heat up the area around the thermometer), that include areas of strong volcanic activity and where the measurements only start on one specific date and end on another specific that will show a slight net warming. ANY other way of measuring shows that the Antarctic has been cooling for 50 years and the massive ice extent is proof of this.

If one looks at the ice recovery in the Arctic, one can see NATURAL variablity that disproves the wild and crazy alarmism of the past few years. The ice is recovering, the polar bears are breeding like mad and the earth is NOT doomed to burn up.

IN fact there is more ice on the earth today (including the arctic and the Antarctic and all the glaciers combined) than there has been for many years.

That is the raw, observable evidence from the real subject in study. The actual, real earth.

Fuck computerised climate models with their bullshit algorithms and bullshit incomplete input data full of bullshit assumptions.

The real thing is not warming anywhere near as fast as the alarmists are desperate for it to. You would think that they would be relieved and happy that their cataclysmic predictions are not happening, but no, they are just ever more shrill and desperate.

Where there IS massive environmental damage, that can be put down to man’s activities, then that is usually down to local factors such as cutting down forests, (removing moisture which rose, turned to snow and fell on Mount Kilimanjaro, now the ice is receding through natural process in response to less snow and wind erosion and evaporation NOT melting as the temperature there has NOT changed)

Or putting in reinforced coasts to protect fish farms which move the coastal waters further round to cause more damage and flooding (Bangladesh where the sea level has NOT risen by more than half an inch)

Yes there are real environmental issues, but when they are examined, what is revealed is that local factors are blamed and it is NOT the industrialised Western nations’ use of carbon fuels that is the cause, but the use of industrial practices in the region of damage that is to blame.

AGW is BULLSHIT! It is a hypothesis that is NOT supported by the observable evidence and yet people still believe in climate science. In science, IF the hypothesis is not supported by the evidence, OR to put it another way, if the observable evidence contradicts the hypothesis, then the hypothesis fails and must be revised to explain the evidence.

In Climate science, when the observable evidence contradicts the hypothesis, the evidence is ignored, or manipulated or hidden or lost, to be replaced by evidence that has been “homogenised” (tampered with). That is NOT science. That is fraud.

"Penguin for Lunch again lads."

Anger Management?

2010-04-02T18:51:00.004+01:00

I find that this helps...

So who gets the back of your hand? Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Nick Clegg?

LOL!

OS v OS A Battle of Nerdish Proportions

2010-03-29T15:22:00.002+01:00

My almost Borgish drive for cleaning up and sorting out my computing needs have further branched out towards the long over-due task of tidying my Netvibes Start Page. The usual routine of booting the host, running the guest virtual machine, starting Firefox and watching Netvibes load my Start Page and automatically go to my news feeds and that was OK, in a way, I was able to read the overnight news while having a cup of coffee.

But still, there was something a bit annoying about it too, which I discovered to be, I wasn't getting anything done! My calender was on one tab, my TO LIST on another and I was spending more time flipping from one tab to another that actually producing anything or being on top of anything. What I needed was access to a basic set of tools which I could access from any computer which would present the same information, files, articles, email communications, web design, whatever!

So, mulling over this while food shopping I picked up a copy of Webuser (Issue 235) which had an article on Online Operating Systems and Glide Browser OS had been given the Silver Review award and seemed just what I required.

"But what's the point of having another desktop running in a browser when you are using one on the computer already?"
The first question which enters your thoughts and, at first consideration, a valid one. Surely if you are working at your computer you have email, image editing software, a word processor and communications software, why would you want to run one in a web browser?
But what if you are not at your computer? What if you are visiting friends for the weekend, have an article or an email which need to be sent, or need to touch up your website or check or make a calender appointment and your a PC and they are a mac? Or if you use a variety of OS configurations such as Linux Ubuntu on different machines in different locations? Or you want to do those activities from your mobile?
The beauty of the 'cloud computing' OS is, as long as you can get to the Internet, your computer is available along with all your files, your WP documents, your contacts, your images and media files, stored in the generous 30 gig storage in your free account. However, one serious drawback is if either you are unable to get online or the remote storage service is down, so it would be prudent if you didn't commit vital information without keeping a copy yourself. If you don't mind not losing it, or not getting access for a while, it is a great way of getting extra hard drive space at no cost.

"But doesn't the likes of Google offer these type of services already and Google are bring out Chromium OS?"
Yes and yes, but neither Google's current offerings, iGoogle, Google Docs and GMail, powerful and as effective as they are, match the slick, unified interface which Glide offers, and Chromium OS is currently under trials, well, not currently, as I am writing this..you get the idea. Must say, at the moment, I have not been as impressed by COS as I have been with GBOS.

The GBOS desktop interface is clean and intuitive to use with large immovable icons which does take the feel of being able to personalize your work area away, though you do have some limited ability to customise the background. When one of the icons are activated, a pop up window opens with the application running inside.

There are several utilities available for GBOS.

The first is an add-on for most major browsers which gives you access to many of the applications and feature of the desktop, your email, your calender, your WP, your image editor and file uploads.

The other is a desktop application which synchronizes between your PC and the file storage in the cloud and this may involve downloading some updates from Microsoft but there are links on the Glide website which make this procedure painless. A few hours after installing these updates, I received a further security update for one of those packages from Microsoft.

There are also two very comprehensive, pdf manuals for getting the best out of GBOS also available to download.

I did have had some initial problems with this, the pop-up window opened but failed to show the application, this was not a problem directly caused by GBOS as I have had this with other applications and appear to have located the problem to the Firefox extension Torbutton, and was forced to disable it.

The word processor

is rather colourful and responsive, It is able to export to a variety of standard file formats, PDF,Word,
Word 2007 and RTF

to several destinations and import links and media, thought the spell checker is somewhat confusing, marking any errors in yellow and presenting a dialogue box with a selections of options which is unfamiliar in it's sparsity and sometime disappears, and you have to start the spell check from the beginning. However, if you access your document via the toolbar rather that through the desktop, it opens in a tab, giving you access to a toolbar spell checker such as Google.

GBOS has given me a few niggles which can be somewhat frustrating.If you navigate away from the home page you have to log on again before it will reappear, annoying if you like to work flitting between open tabs.

The major difficulty that I have encountered has been with the down-loadable desktop synchronisation which just locks up and refuses to do anything, a major frustration. The inability to easily upload file to the OS will hamper productivity just what I don't want! I have already commented upon this problem on GBOS's Engage, a forum/communication room and await some feedback.

My first impressions are that Glide Browser OS will be a productive tool, and will integrate into how I write articles and blog posts, help organise my work-flow and keep me aware of when, where, who and most importantly, the Why of it all.

Fat, bloated executive seeks larger base machine. Contact......

2010-03-27T18:23:00.000+00:00

My PC recently developed the characteristics of the company car of a fat bloated executive, who didn't get the promotion they thought they deserved and didn't get the larger, more powerful company car required to drive the Windows executive's once sprightly athletic body, sadly now saddled with the weight of so many files, and jaded by one too many update, struggling with a five year old machine.

As the current financial situation bested my wallet the idea of a new one has had to give way to the reality that the car's insurance is due shortly, and faced with a pc whose operational parameters I have been trying to exceed, which is slowing down to a crawl under Windows XP, I spent the past week on servicing my pc and installing Ubuntu 9.10, running as a virtual PC under Sun Virtualbox, and the transformation has been extraordinary.

Ubuntu fires up in a quarter of the time, Firefox boots in seconds instead of minutes and resource demands on the the host PC have dramatically reduced.

I sorted out my home page and my Twitter and chat/IM applications and within a very short time, it was the old environment I was use to, but without added lag.

Even this blog post was compiled under Ubuntu and Open Office...

If this continues I might even move Ubuntu onto my host machine and forget Windows 7 and keep this machine a bit longer.....

A bit of TV.....

Read of the old blog...

Old Holborn Says......

2010-03-14T09:19:00.002+00:00

Who needs Lame Stream Media fed humour when you can find such cutting edged wit as this...
Old Holborn says:
March 13, 2010 at 10:28 pm
I don’t disagree
An elected 2nd Chamber (with the caveat that if you have served in one house, you cannot serve in another), a written constitution endorsed by a referendum (available in Urdu, for course), the abolition of the whip and fixed term Parliaments would do me just fine.
Oh, and the removal of Sovereign Law on Royal Palaces. A Policeman told me to take my hat off in Parliament as normal doesn’t apply there and only the queen can wear a hat. No. Really. I then pointed out to him that if normal laws don’t apply in royal palaces, he is just a prat in a costume. Just like me
He was not amused.
Reply
    *
      48
      No Credibility no Integrity !! says:
      March 13, 2010 at 10:34 pm
      Superb OH.
      Reply
          o
            67
            Old Holborn says:
            March 13, 2010 at 10:44 pm
            He was carrying a Heckler & Koch MP5.
            Reply
                +
                  Engineer says:
                  March 13, 2010 at 10:53 pm
                  So long as you don’t actually belt him one, he doesn’t really have a reasonable excuse to use it.
                +
                  Brazilian electrician in Heaven says:
                  March 13, 2010 at 11:01 pm
                  that’s what I thought

Ah! The British! So Funny!
Taken from Guido Fawkes site by the way!

Technorati Tags: Guido Fawkes,Old Holborn,humour,politics,libertarian,blogger,blog

So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show. (Nod to Floyd)

2010-03-08T12:51:00.000+00:00

(Nod to Floyd)

So ya
Thought ya
Might like to go to the show.
To feel the warm thrill of confusion
That socialist glow.

I’ve got some bad news for you sunshine,
Brown isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotel
And they sent Lucifer Mandelius and The Blair Babes along as a surrogate band
We’re gonna find out where you electorate really stand.

Are there any Libertarians in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There’s one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me,
Get him up against the wall!
That one looks English!
And that one’s Geoff Hoon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There’s Dave smoking a joint,
And another with spots!
If Harriet had her way,
She’d have all of you shot!

Mother do you think should I drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they’ll like this song?
Mother do you think they’ll try to break Ed Balls?
Mother should I build the wall?
Mother should I run and hide under the president?
Mother should I trust my mates in the government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Mother am I really so trying?

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.
Mother’s gonna make all the people’s nightmares come true.
Mother’s gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother’s gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She wont let you drive, but she might let you listen to Sting.
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooooh baby ooooh baby oooooh baby,
Of course mama’ll help to build the wall.

Mother do you think Tony’s good enough — to me?
Mother do you think Tony’s dangerous — to me?
Mother will he tear your little boy apart?
Mother will he break my heart?

Hush now baby, baby don’t you cry.
Mama’s gonna check out all your affiliations for you.
Mama wont let anyone sane get through.
Mama’s gonna wait up until you get in.
Mama will always find out where you’ve been.
Mama’s gonna keep baby healthy and clean.
Ooooh baby oooh baby oooh baby,
You’ll always be baby to me.

Mother, did the deficit need to be so high?

Falkland Islands oil row: British rig set to drill despite Argentinian opposition | Mail Online

2010-02-22T13:55:00.000+00:00

And you thought The Falklands War it was all about securing Britain's Sovereignty in the South Atlantic, about rescuing British subjects?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1252870/Falkland-Islands-oil-row-British-rig-set-drill-despite-Argentinian-opposition.html

Netvibes or Google? Netvibes or Google? Netvibes or Google?

2010-02-18T14:24:00.002+00:00

I came across this article Netvibes vs Google Reader

via the Netvibes Facebook Group and was struck by the way we humans like to identify and give loyalty towards names, words or brands.
Here's my implementation of Google's excellent tools, services and utilities.

My iGoogle Page....

My Google alerts....and.....

and overview of my entire Google Profile page in Netvibes, with Google Reader being displayed..

Hardly comprehensive I know, but it is all there, on tap, running under Netvibes..