[quick science quiz] five for you

1. Highest mountain in the solar system?

2. Who named Pluto?

3. Direction finding - Pole Star in the North ... and in the South?

4. Might become the largest telescope - what does SKA mean?

5. How many have supposedly walked on the Moon?


No peeking!

Olympus Mons, Venetia Burney, Southern Cross, Square Kilometre Array, 12.

[political scale] where are you

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS,

The political group that
agrees with you most is...

.

LIBERTARIAN

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and

economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one

that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.

Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose

government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate

diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 100%.
(Please note: Scores falling on the Centrist border are counted as Centrist.)

[economic forecast 2008] various sources

First a round up of various sources

Urged on by the tip of the Anonymous whip, the Higham takes his first faltering steps into the field of economic analysis. Why not start with the future?

Might as well go in off the deep end ... would you august economists out there give this the once over?


The World Bank forecast of growth


The IMF forecast of output


China growth recession

the odds of a significant growth recession in China – at least one year of sub-6 per cent growth – during the next couple of years are 50:50. With Chinese inflation spiking, notable backpedalling on market reforms and falling export demand, 2008 could be particularly challenging.

Financial sector

On the one hand, we have a banking sector that has a demonstrated capacity to generate huge crises because of the incentives to take on under-appreciated risks. On the other hand, we lack the will and even the capacity to regulate it.

[The] financial sector that generates vast rewards for insiders and repeated crises for hundreds of millions of innocent bystanders ...

Relief measures in the U.S. include:

* The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007
* GSEs to expand their purchases of conforming mortgages effective March 1
* Proposals to aid homeowners directly at lender expense

Price of crude

[S]ky-high price of crude oil and refined product. Pushed upward by world-wide speculative Mid-East war fears and increases in demand (especially from China), increasing energy prices act as an inflationary "tax" on domestic production and consumption throughout the market economy.

Higher costs of production will lower profits; higher prices will reduce some consumption. The only good news here is that any substantial economic slowdown in 2008 will eventually moderate the price of oil and other commodity prices as well.

Oil consumption

Consumption.. World oil consumption is expected to grow by 1.4 million bbl/d in 2008, about 0.2 million bbl/d lower than last month’s assessment, due to increased risks of a global economic slowdown in 2008 (World Oil Consumption).

Commodities overall

We expect commodities to perform well over 2008 – Commodities are anticipated to benefit from turbulence in other financial markets “This asset class tends to do well in periods of rising inflation and political uncertainty – events which tend to depress other asset classes, such as equities and bonds.”

Systemic risk - Morgan Stanley

But even this uncertain and wobbly outlook is subject to downside risks. If the combination of monetary and fiscal stimulus fails to get traction, the adverse feedback loop might intensify, promoting, as Chairman Bernanke noted in testimony this week, bank failures and systemic risk.

Systemic risk - LEAP 2020

In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into a collapse of the real economy, final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles (1) and of the pursuance of the US dollar fall. The collapse of US real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down massively

...any comparison with the previous crises of our modern economy would be fallacious. It is neither a “remake” of the 1929 crisis nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises or 1987 stock market crisis. It is truly a global systemic crisis, that is to say a crisis affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organised in the last decades.

Neither Asia nor Europe (or more precisely ‘nor the Eurozone') will suffer the roughest, the most sustainable and the most negative impact of the ongoing crisis; but the United States will, as well as all the countries/economies strongly linked to the US (what our experts have decided to call “the American risk”)

The global systemic crisis is in fact the beginning of an economic « decoupling » between the US and the rest of the world, knowing that the non « decoupled » economies will be dragged down the US negative spiral.

Bloomberg disagrees on decoupling

...stock markets have already lost between 10 and 20 percent since the beginning of the year (10), and, on the other hand, the collapse of the real economy in the US by the end of Summer 2008 will drag down all stock markets. According to LEAP/E2020, international stock markets will probably drop by 50 percent in average compared to 2007 (including in the emerging countries) ...

Mervyn King at the Bank of England says:

Sending a warning to families who expect the value of their home to increase in the coming years, Mr King added: "Looking several years ahead, there’s no reason to expect house prices to be markedly above where they are now. It’s conceivable there might be falls in house prices."

Analyses by the Anonymii

Commodity prices will continue to rise in the short term until the increase in global inflation draws a response from central banks, especially in China.

(1) no reason to think that commodity prices or inflation will stabilise in the short-to-medium term. Energy and commodity prices are being driven by two factors that will ensure they are largely insulated from any slowdown in the United States:

(a) Strong demand from China which is offsetting slower commodity consumption in the United States and (prospectively) in Western Europe.

(b) Strong investment inflows as institutional and private investors re-allocate funds from large and liquid but underperforming equity and bond markets to small, illiquid but out-performing commodity assets, which is having an outsized impact on commodity prices.

(2) prices for crude & other commodities have continued to soar, and that trend looks set to be extended. Until China’s commodity appetite slows, or investors lose their enthusiasm increases fuelling inflation will continue.

(3) perceptibly faster inflation ... none of the major central banks ... ready to push back by raising interest rates to curb growth. In fact, interest rate reductions in the United States and United Kingdom appear designed to stimulate otherwise slumping demand.

(4) Higher commodity-driven inflation will make bonds less attractive ... further allocation into commodity futures, intensifying upward pressure on prices .

Thinking about the inflation end-game: H2 2008

(1) speed limit for global growth is set by the availability of adequate raw materials and transportation capacity ... bottlenecks drive inflation rates worldwide ... no "icking up" slack in the global economy.

(2) Fed, Bank of England and ECB largely powerless to control commodity-driven inflation within their own economies. ... only way to return inflation to target levels would be to engineer deep local recessions in which massive unemployment and sharp falls in the prices of non-traded items and non-energy intensive items offset the continuing upward pressure from internationally traded energy and commodity items.

Central bankers prefer to anchor expectations and hope something will turn up to solve the problem for them.

(3) short-term commodity prices and inflation will continue to accelerate

(4) Until global growth slows, especially in China, either of its own accord or because the central banks start tightening monetary conditions ... inflation will intensify.

(5) [V]arious processes suggest the end-game for global growth, inflation and commodity prices is now starting to emerge:

(a) becomes increasingly difficult for central banks to ignore the problem.

(b) challenge to the competitiveness of China’s exporters and its internal social stability ... price controls in autumn 2007 and early 2008 to hold the inflation rate down

(c) Sooner or later, measures to hike domestic energy prices and slow the pace of growth in the manufacturing and real estate sectors ... in H2 2008.

... possible housing-driven slowdown will spread to Western Europe and translate into slower growth in China

... in the US ... homebuilding has slowed but commercial construction activity has held up well. Consumer spending has slowed but is not yet falling and business investment expenditure has remained strong.

... corporate profits have started to fall ... household debt ... default rates ... consumer spending will fall later in the year.

... good reasons to think that the full impact of the crisis will not be felt until H2 2008. Moreover, the slowdown is likely to spread to the United Kingdom and Western Europe, but only slowly ... more apparent in H2.

Bottom line

... the global economy looks set to enter a period of stagflation throughout H1 2008 and extending into H2

... central banks ... set to accommodate rather than push back ... further devaluation in the USD

... upward pressure on prices.

... increases in commodity costs ... if the slowdown spreads to Western Europe and China, commodity demand and hence prices and inflation will moderate ...

... global economy has hit the limits (and gone beyond) its capacity for non-inflationary growth

Note

... above commodity analysis omits to mention the search for better returns by international investors, exiting very large bond markets and low performing equity markets, into much smaller commodity markets.

... true rate of inflation in the US, UK, etc, is anywhere between 6%, and 10%, notwithstanding the constant lies and manipulation of statistics by the respective governments

Anon 2 says

... major uk banks, hedge funds, and other financial bodies are solvency impaired, UK level major clearing banks telling bare-faced lies about their provision (or non provisions) for toxic paper

... millipede is a liar - criticizing China when he is a communist (check his background, father, check the labour peer who kept his father from conscription, etc)

... so China would invade us - their best export market?

... UK, US nationally bankrupt ... taxed to the point of insurrection, and certainly to the point of GDP growth inflection

... millipede [trying for] control of the worlds finite resources.

... currently fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan

... Saudis funding (sometimes indirectly), hezbullah, hamas, iraqi insurgents, al Qeda, thousands of wahabbi learning centres ... we have been providing advance weaponry to these same princes, and backhanding them ... Blair has squashed one inquiry, who will squash the current?

... In geologic and mining circles, Afghanistan regarded as Nirvana

... in another corner of Afghanistan, the Chinese are building roads, railways, schools, hospitals, houses, and monstrous mines

Money supply

... money supply growth in Russia is up 44%, India up 23%, Australia up 23%, Brazil up 18%, U.S. up 16% (M3), UK up 12%, etc.

... massive industrialization taking place in China and India, representing 40% of the humans on earth. While the breakneck pace may slow this year, the need for increasing amounts of commodities will continue for many years.

... supply the major issue

From The Broadsheet Rag

Not exactly economics but I had to put it in somewhere:

We already have a Eurocorps. And the EU are carrying out operations in Chad and Kosovo. So, if anyone thinks that the EU aren’t trying to create an army — Well… They’re a moron.

This week I found more worrying evidence on this subject. The great Javi Il Duce gave a speech at the European Defence Agency Conference.

Home

Meanwhile, I'm looking at ГОРБУЛИНА Ирина Вячеславовна and the Asian Pacific markets.

Prediction

U.S. to implode, decoupling then an issue, commodities high till China slows, systemic meltdown, lying incompetent toadies taken to a public place and hung, drawn and quartered.

Conclusion

Weez knackered, folks ... have a good 2008 :)

[english project] draw an anti-english poster

The England Project reports on a history worksheet given to East Anglian children:

“You are a Spanish sailor about to embark in the Spanish Armada,” said the worksheet. “Draw an anti-English poster to show all the reasons why you are invading the country.”

It also asked for a “spider diagram of at least four reasons why Spain was angry enough with England to want to invade”.

Can you imagine the reverse happening in a Spanish school? Has sanity completely deserted our education system?

[tragedy] to protect, control or cope

Control or free will - the old dilemma

When faced with an immediate tragedy closeby, it's understandable that one would feel this:

I, on the other hand, would wish for someone to explain to me why, if there is a loving god, he allows them to happen.

It's also not callous to say of the deaths in war:

... the scale becomes so great in war, plague or natural disaster that our minds cease being able to envisage it ...

One such person to whom this happened was Matt Frank, an Iraq war veteran who served in the US army as a Specialist Scout.

Don't know how close you are to the scout's role but I did a short stint on an exercise and it's not something you'd wish for in RL.

You're the vanguard, the most vulnerable of all and your reflexes need to be razor sharp.

I feel especially bad for what happened to him:

It was me or them, and if I had anything to say about it, it was going to be them. I filled with a rage that I still cannot explain.

I felt my eyes swelling as my heart beat faster and faster, my arms burning from constantly wrenching the gun from target to target, my pores spewing sweat.

I caught him [an armed insurgent] out of the corner of my eye when he was already half way across the street, I quickly swung my gun over, started to fire just before he came into aim, walking the rounds into their intended target; but just as the rounds were about to fall upon him, he made it to the other corner.

As the Iraqi had made it out of my field of fire, my gun strafed into a rickety trailer parked right at the corner. Now falling out from behind this trailer was the body of a teenage boy.

This incident, amongst all the other incidents in his tour of duty, messed Matt Frank up completely in his mind.

It seems almost wrong, in the face of this, to try to offer an explanation of why a loving god would allow this. I can only offer an analogy.

I walked to school from age 6 and it was a conscious decision on my parents' part to allow it. I was the most insistent, feeling it was shameful for a Big Boy to be nannied along to school.

One day I was walking home after school and a bicyclist shouted at me from behind on the path, knocked me over and the bicycle went over me. I remember thinking at the time that I was glad it wasn't a car on the road.

Had my parents been negligent? Could they have prevented this accident? Were they wrong to allow me this freedom? Have I grown up pretty independent and self-sufficient?

I suppose they could have driven me to school everyday and collected me afterwards, never allowing me a breath of fresh air or the freedom to run, explore and ... well, live. Yes, they could have done that, wrapped me in cotton wool and prevented absolutely anything happening to me.

I would have died and they knew it.

There's another analogy for G-d.

A kid is at the water's edge with his toy sailboat. He holds it so it doesn't tip over and walks it along beside the beach, making whooshing sailing noises, losing interest after ten minutes because that was not what it was designed to do.

So he gets up the courage to release the boat and it tears off with him following. It tips over but comes back up again, takes a wrong turn but corrects itself, then a big wave hits and suddenly the nose heads out to the deep water. Quickly he taps it back on course but is loathe to do so.

The whole point was to see how it sailed, as a mother watches her child take those first steps on his own.

Tipping boats are not dead teenagers but it seems to me we can't have it both ways. To avoid the scenario in the top photo, the only other way is Free Will - freedom to choose for ourselves and technical tweaking to our organism, mainly from our parents, to let us make it through most of the time.

It's not a concept which would be any too popular in the face of such atrocities but it seems to me the overriding issue is not so much to protect and prevent but to enable the capacity to cope.

[sovereign wealth] the little matter of democracy

Consider Sackerson's concerns here:

So in seven years' time, sovereign funds are expected to control 12% of the market. This is significant: you'll recall that and EU countries require declarations of shareholdings at various levels between 2 and 5 per cent

My hazy understanding of democracy is that it includes two crucial elements, namely, the vote, and the right to own personal property. We're losing both.

And as for property, when sovereign wealth funds go from being the tail that wags the dog, to becoming the dog, multinational businesses will be less concerned to satisfy the local shareholder, who may also be an employee. Big MD (or Big CEO) will have his arm around the shoulders of Big Brother.

Sol Palha worries about the acquisition of Western assets by sovereign wealth funds ("Slowly but surely America and Europe are going to be owned by foreigners. The irony is that Congress is trying to keep immigrants out of this country but right in front of their eyes foreigners are slowly gobbling up huge chunks of this country.").

Sackerson's solution?

Foreign governments with trade surpluses (based on artificially low currency exchange rates and stupid overspending by the West) are building up trillions in reserves and eyeing our companies and real estate. If our own leaders aren't willing to rebalance the world economy, the least they can do is get a piece of the action.

Well, his wish has been granted:

France adopts a sovereign wealth fund model. France, like many other European countries, has stated its concerns about the growing investment appetite of sovereign wealth funds from resource-rich emerging countries for European industrial and financial companies.

But Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, seems to be behaving these days as the chairman of a sovereign wealth fund.

The French government on Wednesday acquired a 2.85 per cent stake in STMicroelectronics from Italy’s Finmeccanica to maintain the balance between French and Italian shareholders in the cross-border semiconductor venture.

And the EU can make rules about controlling these funds all they like but as Tim Worstall writes:

The sovereign wealth funds belong to the States which own them. States which, we might note, are not members of the European Union and are thus not either responsible for paying Sr. Barroso's wages nor subject to his whims.

Wherefore democracy?

[the oldest game] paradigm shift urgently required

A girl to fight for - a goddess in her own quiet way

The comments in the last post just have to be answered. If your model for relationships is:

There's absolutely no way I'm going to stop living the way I do until someone REALLY DOES offer me a special something. And I want to see real proof first. That's fair, isn't it?

... then this represents the modern approach [post 60s] and is ultimately doomed. All the disappointments, broken homes, divorce and the breakdown in society we see in Britain and America can be brought back to this. It's the root of hedonistic self-centredness and is the road to hell.

Everything else is just symptomatic of the core problem.

The old paradigm was for both genders to cast their net widely and pounce on the partner they'd finally decided on [The Stone Ponies' Different Drum is about this]. I'm speaking of the majority here, not the ones publicized in film.

There was a culture, based largely on the Christian ethic, which valued women's virginity as the last citadel but in effect this created all sorts of good things, especially for the woman.

This gave her true "empowerment".

What a joke that the more the Feminists have screamed since the late 60s of legislating for men to respect women, the more they gave away their best bargaining chip for that respect. I don't blame the women - I blame Them, who progressively broke down the old societal ethic and replaced it with the hedonistic selfishness you see in the quote at the top. I don't blame the quoter either - he knows no better, having grown up in the new society of undelayed gratification.

Women got this crazy idea into their heads that if they lusted for Money and Power, just as the men did, this would give them Independence and Equality and would force men to Respect them. Ha! Do men respect them more today? The hell they do.

The old paradigm ran like this: Kids were brought up to have respect, love their neighbour and all that. There was a culture of "delayed or deferred gratification", in other words - self control.

So, Steve got it bad for Susie and did all sorts of romantic things to come onto her, as did Bob, Paul and John. She was the centre of a whole lot of boys' attentions and could pick and choose, let this one in this far, let that one in not so far and so on. In other words, there was respect and she ran the show.

Do you prefer to see it all up front or would you rather have to imagine what's underneath her elegant halter top and plan how to get inside it? [Photo courtesy Beaman's Bazaar]

The boys knew they had to play her game and her refusals trained them how to respect women. It didn't occur to them to just rape her - there was a slight fear of her inaccessibility.

Her mother used to advise her that her greatest power was in using her bargaining chip and it was tough to do because she'd fall in love and want to give it all to him straight away.

Now the mother seems not to give any advice to the daughter.

Steve and his mates want to bang so they gather the girls whom they know say yes and they overnight party. Susie has no choice but to go along with it or else be marginalized from the group and with the addition of porn at the flick of a switch she has to go further and further now, earlier and earlier.

The girl who says no these days is marginalized and not wanted - she knows the ground rules are that she must bang and she's grown up with no constraints on giving it all away. It's even becoming group in the living room. Don't ask how I know.

It's a boys' paradise and she's lost all empowerment she's deluded enough to think she might have. What a joke that women are trumpeting about equality and how the woman chained to the kitchen had no power, when the truth is the opposite - she has zero power today, zilch, nikto.

Do I wish to see women chained to the kitchen again? Hell no - I want them to regain their real empowerment as desirable and mysterious people, not the pseudo-empowerment they're bent on today. A Real Woman can have all the power she desires, just by being a real woman. She needs no legislation.

To return to the quote at the top - wanting to see the real proof first.

How on earth can there be any sort of real proof or any relationship when it's all about self-fulfilment and nothing about fulfilling the other person? What long term chance has any relationship got where both are judging the other against a check list of whether the other "satisfies" them?

And you mean, Boyz, you can't find proof unless you've banged a girl? Where have your antennae gone? Where are your receptors? This is the Viagra mentality - that satisfaction in a relationship is tied only to the bang. To hell with Friendship, Romance and Love - the Bang is god.

More fool her for giving it away like that. Poor kid if she's grown up in this culture.

Unless she becomes rich and famous, [and how many girls dream dreams of this elusive power they'll never have], she has only herself to negotiate with and now comes the joke on her. The more she's slept around and given the boys all they wanted, the less they'd consider even looking at her as a long term partner. She'll cheat throughout a marriage.

And the joke that you have to sleep with many men to know which one you want - oh really? You can't tell that by kissing and cuddling then keeping him hanging on? Tiberius Gracchus just ran a post on a girl who kept a king hanging on for seven years.

No one ever said she was beautiful. She just played the game, the love arts, to their maximum. She made herself exotic, desirable.

Where the hell has romance gone? Why are the words 'gentleman' and 'lady' mocked today?

Ditto our Susie, who plays it cool and rations out her charms - she ends up with the biggest prize because it isn't her Paris Hilton star quality they respect but Her herself. She has Self-Respect and demands that anyone who is going to sample her wares is going to have to give.

And not money but they have to give themselves. The poorest peasant girl can be rich beyond rubies. No riches in the world can buy this. The lady in this article said beautifully what I'm trying to.

In other words, she makes herself into a Real Prize. Other girls with less self-respect can play the town tart but she's the Princess on the Pedestal, the one all the boys would have if only they could, if only she would.

That's why hundreds and hundreds of kissed girls in my life have translated into just six women I've eventually had [so far]. It's the Groucho Marx approach - please accept my resignation, I don't want to enter any vagina which will openly accept me.

Or, to put it even more crudely as they did in Puberty Blues, "Hey, I don't want to go slops," to follow the well worn path to her shaved garden, to get stuck in peak hour traffic.

And the number of women measuring their true value by the number of men they've laid - is this low or is this low? A woman speaking of her lovers [plural] - ugggh!. Does she feel that numbers confer some sort of kudos on her or does it seep into her brain that perhaps it turns good men off?

The thrill is in the chase. The bang at the end should be just the confirmation - does the tail wag the dog? Still, it has to be done well - lousy coffee after a top meal is a let down - but the whole package is the pleasure. To mix metaphors - do you eat the icing from the cake first or the cake first and then the icing?

I mean - for crying out loud - today you only have to take her to a cafe, do a bit of dancing and she's in the sack or on the living room floor. Who needs it? And who was into her last night when she wasn't answering the phone?

The way she dresses too. If she shows her open cleavage - big deal. I've seen it all before. But if she hides her breasts then I can only dream what they'd be like to kiss and I plan to find out. If she lets it all hang out with her open top and hipsters - yawn. But if she goes all coy, then bells ring - I want in and I want in now!

Where's the old challenge gone where you had to plan out a military campaign on her to break her down step by step? Where's her resistance these days? Where's the chivalry gone? Why doesn't she expect the doors to be opened for her anymore, the cloak to be laid in the puddle so she can step across it?

My white armour is in the cupboard rusting and my trusty steed is nibbling grass in the backyard. They haven't been needed for years.

The paradigm needs to shift right back again so that a culture exists where men don't know every square centimetre of a girl's anatomy from internet porn but would really like to unravel her mysteries. There has to be some sort of Mystery again which forces men to act out of respect and [temporarily] unrequited lust. The more modestly a girl dresses, the more elegantly, the more I want her so badly.

For goodness sake, girls - don't you want the men to fight over you anymore? Are you so far into your own sexual hunger that you've lost all self-respect?

For your eyes only - if you treat me right. Who's the Prize here - Roger Moore or Carole Bouquet?

And guys - wouldn't you prefer a girl with you who was hard-won and every man and woman around knows you have an absolute prize looking into your eyes who gives it only to you? The Carole Bouquet principle: For Your Eyes Only.

Am I off the planet in valuing these things?

[russian election] just came home from voting

BBC:

Civil servants have been ordered by their managers to vote, and there are reports that police and teachers are under similar pressure, our correspondent says.

This much is true. Why not? Aren't all westerners urged to turn out and vote by the powers that be?

There has been very little scrutiny of voting by Western election observers ...

I'd say none - the west simply does not want to know the truth.

There are already reports of irregularities.

OK - the best way to check this is to go there and see for myself. There are two polling stations near me - one I should really go to, according to my chit and the other - my old school where I stand a better chance of being recognized.

I decide to take a chance on my old school which raises the question - should I go along as a foreign observer or as a Russian?

I decide to go as a Russian, gather the documents, dress in my regulation black and head out into the slushy +1 degree with wet snow lightly falling.

As I approach the school, there are no how-to-vote cards, no one at all except for one lone militsia sitting on a chair at the top of the school steps and looking bored as I go in. Once inside I know my way about and immediately run into my old colleagues, which I think reassures the two militz over by the wall.

Slight difficulty when the militz on the door asks which number in my street I live at ... Oh no, you have the wrong school ... Er - how stupid of me ...

So I go to the other side of the foyer and on the wall, alongside the rogue's gallery of teaching staff [I notice my photo is no longer there] is a metre by metre poster of the four candidates and their blurbs.

Can't help feeling Zhuganov and Zhirinovsky are looking a bit old these days.

So to the voting room, long and thin before me.

To the left is a honey in uniform and I will her, with my eyes, to detain me and interrogate me for a couple of hours but she just looks bored. So I think I'll stir it up a bit by talking to her, pulling out my Electoral Commission "invitation to vote" and show it to her.

Took a bit of doing to get her to smile but now she laughs that I've come to the wrong school. Only she looks a bit puzzled by my accent but my docs are at the ready.

The Vice-Director of the school now comes through, recognizes me and starts chatting about her daughter and the new grandchild - the militz honey sits down again, still puzzled.

I'm urged to have a cup of tea and to come back and teach at the school next semester and now I'm given the guided tour of the polling station.

Up front I ask where the ballot boxes are, worried that they're beside the registration trestle tables down the right wall [the booths are over by the left wall].

At those trestle tables are a member of the commission and various civilians. I tell my host straight away that I'm observing as the west should have done and that I plan to write it up and post it.

The Vice-Director, in answer to my question, points to two large white upright boxes in the centre of the end wall, well away from either booths or registration tables. Locals who've voted stand about chatting then go home.

I go home and write this to you.

It may well be that there are bombs in the south and irregularities - how can I say? They're always stirring things up against Russia down there. But irregularities here in our neck of the woods?

This is absolute rubbish. Why, oh why, couldn't the west send in observers to see what really is going down?

Answer - they don't want to be forced to see that an election is taking place today and to have to admit that Medvedev is legit.

[meet your new leaders] a psychological profile

Sean has been digging and the blurb he found says:

I am the MP for Gateshead East and Washington West. I am PPS (Parliamentary Private Secretary) to Bob Ainsworth, Armed Forces Minister:

Sharon [Hodgson] is a Common Purpose graduate and was delighted to be able to go back and contribute something to the course. She was invited to speak to the latest graduates and It was great to see so many people benefiting from the work Common Purpose does. As an international leadership programme they can really help build peoples’ confidence and develop their skills careers.

A CP grad is PPS to the Army? I'm feeling faint. Wonko puts it nicely:

The problem with Common Purpose is that the attendees are not allowed to talk about what happens on their courses and no minutes are taken at Common Purpose training courses or meetings. Attendees may have been encouraged or induced to promote Common Purpose but there will be no records to confirm this and the attendees have agreed to keep what happens a secret.

This certainly doesn’t encourage open government, transparency or accountability. How does the Ministry of Justice know that what the attendees have been taught and agreed to do in their secret meetings is in the best interests of the department or the electorate, especially when the course teaches attendees to lead beyond their authority?

The mentality of a CP graduate is what interests me and looking at Ms Hodgson, one really wonders. Possibly a nice PC lady in herself with the good of humanity and her family at heart but representing a very suspect organization nonetheless. Wolfie, who's dealt with such people even more than I have feels, in effect, that they they are limited people in themselves, high on ambition but lacking ability and prone to error.

I think events in the public private interface in Britain have borne that out. The excellent Wat Tyler puts it this way at his blog:

They spend 43% of our income, yet fail to deliver decent services. They promise prosperity, yet tax and regulate our economy into stasis. They talk up social justice, yet consign millions to welfare dependency. Enough is enough. We the peasants demand our high-spending, high-living, conflicted politicos mend their ways.

This is the sort of fine detail he gets into, should you wish to look into it. Others like DK and Mr. E do it in a more general way.

I worked for two years for the civil service in what is now HM Revenue & Customs and was that ever an eye opener. One thing for sure - they look after their own in there and I feel like a traitor ratting on them now, as I was protected more than once from "predators" from the private sphere.

There was an incident when an abrasive newbie shipping agent felt I was going slow on his company's application for exports and the truth was - I was going slow. I didn't like him or his pushy manner. You need to understand here that no boat sails without the paperwork stamped, every hour is further expense and I had that stamp in my hand.

I was duty bound to stamp it if everything was in order but there was no law about how and when I did that. The young buck saw it, said something about meeting me on the street, I offered my cheek across the counter for him to hit, he lost his nut and took a swing, sprawling across the counter.

Oh dear, I thought - I'm in trouble. My inspector hauled me in and wanted every detail, then told me to get back to the counter, adding, in parting, "Tell me if you have any more trouble." I noticed that next day the head of the company brought whisky and went to visit our inspector. He then came to me and apologized for the street-fighter and the young ASBO was never seen again.

This blog ran a profile of the mentality of the CP graduate without attaching the label CP and if you can wade through it, it's about the susceptibility of a particular type of person that departmental talent spotters latch onto.

The key mental components are PCishness, up-front work ethic but prone to the shortcut, limited real ideas of any paradigm shifting substance, susceptibility to acceptance of trite presented paradigms couched in PC friendly language, ambition and clubbability - a person strongly affected by inclusion in "the club" and viewing enemies of "the club" as her enemies too.

This last comes through strongly in Julia Middleton's infamous "jerk" remark. They really do believe they're the elite who are going to take over at local regional government level in "the emergency" they're training so hard for.

Of all the words written, of all the blogposts across the UK and NA spheres on the matter, the one which remains with me is the Scottish Arts Council. At the time "the leading figures in the Scottish Arts had been led in a "debate" which was not a debate":

After an obviously unwanted debate (chaired by Mrs. Jack McConnell, Labour Party) in which the audience clearly did not accept what they were told, the final words from Seona Reid (then Director of the SAC) conveyed the impression that some form of transaction had taken place, that "SAC was working to ensure the arts were incorporated into the range of Government policies - but arts organisations and artists needed to play their part in making this a reality".

In other words, funding had been reduced, a crisis created, in came the CP and put a deal to salvage "the arts" but it involved artists knuckling down to certain new rules of the game.

This stinks.

Do you actually wish to be led in your local area by someone like Sharon Hodgson? Would you entrust your life, the bread on your table and even your children to her maternal care? Or are you just a "jerk" who'd like to be left in peace to run his/her own life, thank you very much if it's all the same to you?

In praise of my countrymen and women

They have a wonderful way of resisting that which is not liked, which I was on the receiving end of in the Blogpower thing in January. They simply shut out the troublemaker, ignore, go about their own business until the thing just dies away or becomes unworkable.

While one half of me was up in arms at the time, the other half was affectionately smiling at my blogfriends. I fervently trust that when all this rubbish, from ID cards on, is foisted on us, the same process of resistance will take place.

Common purpose links

* This is one of the best, from Ian Parker and opens onto many others.

* This is my most widely read though I think later ones go into more detail.

* Some others are here, here and here.






Other excellent sources

1. John Trenchard said, on 14 October 2007:

I'm doing my bit to spread the word about Common Purpose over at my blog
here
here
and
here
(video of the Brian Garrish presentation)

there're a LOT of returns if you search for it on TheyWorkForYou. Questions are being asked in the Commons - and its cross departmental, including the MOD.
They Work For You search

Why is Julia Middleton such a leadership guru when she's never lead anything in her life , beyond running Common Purpose.

Here's a video of her
Note the mad , staring , psychotic EYES... very very weird. If somebody like that started speaking to me I'd run a mile. Instead , the government is going in the opposite direction , putting thousands of public service workers on Common Purpose "leadership" courses.

2. Some nice reading from Englisc Fyrd on it and related issues.

3. The inimitable Ian Parker can't be missed.

Libertarian Party

If you prefer to make your stance more politically, there is a party called the UK Libertarian Party:

Click on pic

[penitentiaries] big business in the states

First, the other news in the U.S.:

"While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine." The total of 2.3 million adults held in prison - or one in every 99.1 adults - puts the US far head of other countries.

China, with its far greater population, has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia has 890,000.

China executes increasing numbers of its naughties and not-so-naughties, using the new death buses. The question is, of course, why the U.S. seems to want to incarcerate a sizeable proportion of its citizens in penitentiaries.

One brief aside might help explain - the Executive Order 12656 of 1988 “Continuity of Government” (COG), which, if you read it, provides measures for the legally elected government to remain alive and in power should there be any disaster "natural or man-made". Part of this deals with incarceration of those not acting in the interests of "the nation".

In a similar vein was Rex-84 Alpha Explan whose source I can't find but it's partly supported by Wiki:

The Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan), indicates that FEMA in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies conducted a civil readiness exercise during April 5-13, 1984, in coordination and simultaneously with a Joint Chiefs exercise, Night Train 84 (including Continental U.S. Forces or CONUS) based on multi-emergency scenarios operating both abroad and at home.

Rex-84 Bravo, FEMA and DOD led the other federal agencies and departments, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Veterans Administration through a gaming exercise to test military assistance in civil defense.

So there appears to be a need not only to expand correction facilities across the nation but to provide instantly transportable facilities to meet any citizen insurrection which might arise for some reason. A logical constructor of such transportation might be Gunderson, who have experienced a great upsurge in their business in the last decade or so.

Gunderson watchers have alleged the construction of boxcars with "shackles" and even a guillotine at one end of the car but Gunderson has countered by offering $1000 for anyone who can provide a photo of such a car. There are photos circulating, such as this one:




... but detractors say these are simply vehicle shifters. The point is that it's not going to be proven one way or the other until they are rapidly adapted to their new purpose ... or not.

All this still doesn't seem sufficient reason for the explosion in penitentiary building but this gives an insight. It refers to a Prison-Industrial Complex which is expanding prison facilities as rapidly as humanly possible:

It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population.

One name which always comes up in this connection is Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary and some dire things have been alleged about them, presented as "facts". One such is Camp Six:

The 200-bed compound, known as Camp Six, is expected to cost $24 million and will be the base's second permanent prison structure. The first, a 100-cell, super-max style facility known as Camp Five, opened in April.

Together, the two structures represent the future of Guantanamo Bay, which is being retooled to house those prisoners found to pose a continuing threat to the United States.

"If your threat level is high and your intelligence value is high, you're probably going to live here for awhile," says Army Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti, deputy commanding general of the joint task force in charge of detentions at Guantanamo Bay.

Some of you will recall Kellogg, Brown and Root in connection with the four Blackwater operatives killed in Iraq:

U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen held up a copy of Blackwater's contract, which said Blackwater was ultimately working for the Army's main contractor in Iraq, Kellogg Brown & Root, with two companies in between.

The Army and Kellogg Brown & Root denied in a letter that Blackwater had done any work for them.

Clearly money is a prime motivator here, which detractors call "profiteering":

To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors.

Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, "It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits." Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate".

Roughly half of the industry is controlled by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, which runs 46 penal institutions in 11 states. It took ten years for the company to reach 10,000 beds; it is now growing by that same number every year.

CCA's chief competitor is Wackenhut, which was founded in 1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official.

Just to reiterate part of that: "time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs" - there is a scenario where the prison industry is big business, where it's necessary to rapidly increase prison populations to meet costs, there appear to be a large number of convertable, deployable boxcars, an expected civil threat in the near future and the ever present current threat of terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, here is something to occupy the kiddies whilst mummy and daddy are being processed:

It's a good thing that state mentoring is expanding at the same time, to fill the gap left by unsatisfactory parents. Wickedly inaccurate conclusions? Fear-mongering? You can draw your own conclusions, as is your wont.