Saudi Jihad propaganda

Here’s an interesting bit of news. Whilst I personally hold a very jaundiced view of any Middle Eastern country, the people and the religion, I suppose many in England thought that there was some sort of sympathy within Saudi for the problems spread by their co-religionists. They provided facilities in GWI and appear to take a hard line in their actions against dissidents in their own country. Not so it seems.
Senate to probe Saudis' jihad propagandaAs the Senate prepares an investigation, the U.S. State Department is demanding Saudi Arabia account for its distribution of hate-filled, jihad propaganda through American mosques.
The developments are based on a yearlong study by a Washington human-rights group asserting the government of Saudi Arabia is disseminating propaganda through American mosques that teaches hatred of Jews and Christians and instructs Muslims that they are on a mission behind enemy lines in a land of unbelievers.
The 89-page report by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques," concludes the Saudi government propaganda examined reflects a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence."
The report says the fact it is "being mainstreamed within our borders through the efforts of a foreign government, namely Saudi Arabia, demands our urgent attention."
In response to the report and the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings Oct. 25, the New York Sun reported.
The Accountability Act, introduced in June by Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sharply criticizes the Saudi regime for its support of terrorist activity and, citing the Freedom House report, its part in spreading the radical Wahhabist ideology shared by Osama bin Laden and the 9-11 attackers.
Specter has held Judiciary Committee hearings into Saudi financing of terrorism and Riyadh's role in injecting ideology into textbooks for Palestinian Arab schoolchildren, the Sun said.
In March, 15 senators responded to the Freedom House report with a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding the Bush administration take stronger action against Riyadh.
Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, were among the signers of the letter, which called for the U.S. to define its relationship Saudi Arabia more clearly.
Schumer stated: "It is a massive contradiction that a country we call an ally could be both so regressive in their own country and so brazen in its propagation of anti-American, anti-women, anti-Semitic books, publications, and practices. American security is undermined as the Saudi government exports these hateful commodities to millions beyond its borders, planting the seeds for new generations of terrorists and totalitarian Wahhabi leaders."
Collins said the report "raises some disturbing concerns about the spread of extremist materials in American mosques and Islamic centers."
"If we are going to win the war on terrorism, these types of actions cannot be tolerated," she said. "It is important that the Saudi Arabian government join us in this fight and stop supporting the spread of ideologies that promote hatred and intolerance around the world."
The Freedom House report cited samples of more than 200 books and other publications from American mosques used to educate its members that preach a "Nazi-like hatred for Jews" and "promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law."
One highlighted document, distributed through the Saudi Arabian Embassy's Cultural Department in Washington, is a fatwa against the taking of American citizenship by Muslims and thereby "acquiescing to their infidelity and accepting all their erroneous ways."

Optimist defined?

The story is original.
Hope it works for him.

The Ladies - God bless 'em!!

I have been collecting examples of things that the women in our lives do that annoy us the most. The file is now so huge that I have to release some of them.

Can’t buy food and wait to get home before starting to demolish it. (They open a bag of crisps in the shopping bag to facilitate walking/eating).Pretending to examine the last dress at the door because they don’t want to leave.Asking the time even ‘though they have a watch on.Racing you to the foot of the escalator then taking all day to go up ‘cos it’s too much effort to walk.Rain is made of Sulphuric Acid necessitating a taxi home.“It’s FREEZING in here!”Inability to ask a question then wait for an answer but feel the need to suggest all known alternatives then walk off before you’ve finished answering.Just HAVE to examine whatever item a male is standing in front of to make them move.Don’t look where they are going even ‘though they have zero spatial coordination.Ignore tired screaming toddler so they can examine essentials like costume jewellery at 2100hrs.All conversations with pals must be at 108 decibels so everyone else can hear.
Will go out of their way to walk into you and say “sorry” in a totally empty shop.If there are a group of them then each one asks a bit of the question, known as Shared Brain Syndrome btw.Suck the face off partner when halfway up an escalator. (Look at me I have a boyfriend).Wearing daft high heels, texting and listening to iPod then wondering why they got mugged.Stand in a queue for 5mins to buy a packet of chewing gum.Unable to tell the difference between Navy Blue and Black even ‘though they can see more colours than men.Stopping to look at stuff without telling male partner/children leading to “I’ve lost my husband/children”.Old ladies turning up at lost property looking for their walking sticks...think about it. Shouting “Mum”. Looking round when someone totally unrelated to them shouts “Mum”.Reading out signs to male partner and telling him which shop they are in.
Carrying on an argument once she/you has left the room. Starts of as something simple , which she blows out of all proportion, then drags stuff in from a minor offence from 5 years earlier. You think the argument has finished and leave the room, then they decide to carry it on, and accuse you of not listening when they are speaking to you and you’re 4 rooms away
She asks you a question, you tell her the answer, she flies off the handle. What’s that all about?She has a three week sad on with you, but you’ve no idea why or what you’ve done, and she won’t tell you. Apparently you are supposed to ‘think about it and work it out’. (So you think about it, and walk.)
Why do they have so many pairs of shoes, when they only have 2 feet?Why do they drag you around town for hours at a time just to return to the first shop and buy the original dress?Why do they always think there fashion sense is better than your own?I even knew a woman once who brought a car because and I quote ‘ The colour matches My Jacket’ even though the car cost her loads of cash to keep it running!
Asking a question to which they already know the answer. Asking a question and not listening to the answer. Not asking a question but expecting you to answer it.Talking. They do it way too much, and see it as a sign of emotional maturity, which makes them feel superior to blokes, who, because they don’t talk even half as much as women do, are see as emotionally retarded. When in fact we all know the opposite is true.Coming in from work. They park the car, slam the door, rattle their keys in the front door, slam that, put down their bag and take off their coat, with all the accompanying noises. They then come and find you, look at you for a minute, and say “Well, I’m home.” The inverse is true whenever they get home before you do, except they say “Well, you’re home.”Arguments. They are incapable of looking at something objectively, or from your point of view. Whatever you say, they are just going to spout the same few sentences at you until you give up, interspersed with insults.
Refusing to come to the table, where the food is going cold, until the dishwasher is stacked and all available horizontal surfaces wipedOverfilling the dishwasher because leaving three dirty plates and a pan out until morning is unthinkableCleaning the whole house from top to bottom ‘so that it will be clean when we come back’ - ignoring the inevitable three week accumulation of dustCruelty to rechargeable batteries in mobile phone, PDA and camera Allergy to all IT, including, would you believe, total inability to get money out of an ATM until three months agoPlanting up huge number of huge pots on terrace while vast, neglected garden borders grow to resemble Matto Grosso or Congo BasinBelieving all available tosh about vitamins, diet, homeopathy, aromatherapy and such like in preference to medicine that works and going into mega sulk when diagnosed as having high blood pressure and having to take proper medicine prescribed by proper doctor rather than pond water brewed by charlatan
Haircuts, why on earth do women pay up to and over 40 quid for a haircut when I can get mine done for a fiver from the bloke at the top of the road. I mean really even when a bloke goes into these salons/strip clubs (see earlier thread on subject) They get charged considerably less for the same treatment. “Oh but we have more hair they say”, balls, its still the same thickness and requires no more actual effort to cut it off.Handbags, Why do women insist on buying a handbag that matches her shoes when nobody actually cares because her handbag is on the table and her shoes underneath it. The handbag in question is something totally ridiculous that they cant fit anything in so the give all their stuff to the bloke who’s with them to carry. They then bugger off for half an hour to the toilet (what they do in there I have no idea) leaving blokey stood there like a spare prick guarding 2 watermelon Bacardi Breezers, 2 sparkly handbags that everyone is laughing at because neither of them match his shoes and the women’s entire money to fund their evening out. However when bloke nips in for a quick lag he gets grief for buggering off with all their stuff.Cars, women and cars. Listen to me car designers STOP DESIGNING CARS FOR WOMEN I mean cars that look “cute” there’s just no need for it is there you can always have a laugh at the guy driving down the road in a pastel blue VW convertible because you know his wife chose his car. Curves on cars do not look good cars are meant to have straight lines that show aggression towards other road users. Oh and 2nd hand cars. Buying a crappy old 1975 shed that will only run if you push it down a steep hill because you think you’ll look dead good driving it and how much would it suit my personality is complete and utter rubbish.Magazines, how much drivel and tripe do they feel the need to publish these days, who cares what the guy who got kicked out of big brother fourth is having for his tea. Men’s interest magazines actually contain an interest like cars, or power tools or building sheds. Women’s interest magazines contain nothing they’re just full of absolute garbage. You buy a pair of shoes (and matching handbag) that you see a celebrity you like wearing in one of these drivel magazines, you wear them once then you never wear them again because you see a different celeb who you don’t like wearing exactly the same pair.Presents A bloke will buy a present for a woman and pout a lot of thought into it. they will either get it right or get it wrong. It’s a 50:50 shot and we accept that and ok the consequences are not right but we know what we’re in for. When a woman buys a present for a bloke she puts about 5 minutes thought into it, buys him what she likes then expects him to like it.Phone calls. Why oh why do you women spend 45 minutes on the phone to somebody then as soon as they hang up they go too see them. What do you talk about how can a phone call last longer than. Hey, Pub, Bye. I mean what is there to say. You phone somebody up while your watching a TV programme who is watching the same programme and talk about it.E4. They watch the drivel they insist on watching every week at 10pm on channel 4 (the shite hour) then at the end of it the voice pops up “if you cant wait till next week to see what happens turn to E4 now for next weeks episode” So off the y pop to E4 and make you sit through another hour of drivel then when next week comes and the same sh1te is on they sit there and complain that they’ve already seen this episode so they grab the phone and off they go to talk to their mate about it again.

Does sleeping with a woman suffering from schizophrenia qualify as a threesome ??????

That will teach him

“The father of a pupil who tried to sue exclusive public school Marlborough College for expelling his son has had his case thrown out. A judge at Southampton County Court ruled against Russell Gray, who claimed the school was trying to get rid of his son to boost its league tables”. “[He showed] an almost total disregard for school rules and the failure to understand the effect his behaviour would have on others”
Judge Anthony Thompson QC
Nice to see that maybe, just maybe, we are seeing some sense creep into disputes regarding the right of a school to decide what happens to disruptive scholars. The pupil in this case had a extremely poor disciplinary record. This was not just in minor matters but involved incidents such as being arrested at 13 for being drunk and disorderly and had called a police officer an ‘idiot’. Statements attributed to the juvenile showed that he had a most obnoxious manner and appeared to consider himself to be above normal social rules and expectations. Part of the father’s case was that his son had a good scholastic result in his GCSE. This was revealed as 4 A levels, 3 B levels and 2 at C grade. Given that we now know that 40% marks gained an A classification, the C pass should only require a student to write his name and exam number. If he got both right, he would get a B.

Greek God anyone?

Morpheus


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

Whimpering about poverty

This is from a guy I have featured here before. Fred Reed. I have posted his stuff before and doubtless will again. He has the same views as I do but he manages to express them far better than I. He is commenting here about the drama that was raised about the effects of poverty.

Maybe You Should Try The Real Thing
September 25, 2005
Repeatedly I hear that the misbehavior in New Orleans sprang from the exigencies of poverty. I would offer a countering view. Permit me to start with the family of Violeta, mi pareja in Mexico. I know them well. Listen, and judge.
Her father was born poor 78 years ago. Poor in Mexico in the twenties meant poor--dirt-floor poor, village well with typhoid and no sewerage poor, no safety net, no medical care, and government by caciques who had unlimited power and didn’t care whether you lived or died. It was hookworm, roundworm, pinworm, tapeworm poor. It was louse poor. Obesity from eating at McDonald’s was not a concern. Just eating was a concern.
Her Dad learned to read from an aunt who had learned in a Catholic school. In Mexico then, as in the United States now, the Catholic schools were better than the public, when the latter existed. He then apprenticed himself to a primitive machine shop, the only kind available, and became a valve-maker.
Eventually he hired on with a company, saved hard over the years, and bought a house, now paid off, in which he still lives. Buying a house for a Mexican worker then required grim determination. After thirty-six years he retired with a pension adequate to support life. In all this time, he did not sack a single city.
Poor doesn’t mean ignorant. He read whatever he could find, to include newspapers daily. He knows a lot of history and geography. If you mention, say, Ceylon, he knows where it is, and the capital. Do American college graduates?
He wasn’t shiftless, you see. Poverty is a condition characterized by a lack of money. Shiftlessness involves a lack of backbone, morals, independence, self-respect, and drive. They are not the same thing. Of course, if you are shiftless, you are likely to be poor.
I note in passing that anyone who wishes can learn to read, short of the genuinely retarded. Illiteracy is a choice. So is ignorance.Along the way he married, whence Violeta. He was an imperfect dad—strict, yelled a lot, and wasn’t too tolerant, though he didn’t hit her. He taught her that there are things you have to do, things you ought to do, and things you ought not to do. She learned. A thoroughgoing Catholicism reinforced these ideas.
Adolescence came, and high school. Violeta decided that she wanted to go to the University of Guadalajara. There was the little problem of no money. Mexicans do not get preferential treatment in Mexico. To her, poverty was an obstacle to be overcome, not an excuse for failure. For five years in the Facultad de Letras y Filosofia, she worked three jobs. And graduated.
Poor, you see, is not the same as, nor does it imply, nor justify, passive, thieving, dependent, and benighted.
At this point I am going to sacrifice literary consistency to explication. When I was nineteen a buddy of mine and I hopped the freights to New York where, listening to a Copland concert in Prospect Park, I met a little Italian girl of seventeen on the grass. We began writing, and then dating. Her father having died unexpectedly, she and her mother were living essentially on Social Security in Brooklyn. They ate, but not much more.
They were not shiftless, however.
Her mother got her into a Catholic school. Eva understood perfectly which way was up. Good grades were not optional. They were going to happen. And did. Four years of high school and a 4.0 later, she blew away the Regents and got a scholarship to NYU Washington Square. She repeated the roughly 4.0 performance. After grad school at Rochester, she is a tenured professor of mathematics in the New York system. Poor Italian kid. Never burned a city.
Anyway, Violeta. While in university, she became pregnant. Contraception is an imperfect art. On moral grounds she decided not to kill it. (Actually it wasn’t a decision. There are things one doesn’t do and, in her view, that was one of them. Today The Unkilled is fourteen and prospering mightily.) Violeta was now a single mother as well as working three jobs and going to school.
She did it. It wasn’t easy, but she had no expectation that it would be. There are things one does.
On graduating she got some wretched office job, discovered that it was a snake pit (un nido de serpientes) and that she couldn’t give enough attention to her child, who turned out to be a girl named Natalia. So she said to hell with offices and moved to Ajijic, the American enclave on Lake Chapala, to teach Spanish to gringos.
It was a gutsy call. She had no safety net and very little money: North Americans living in half-million dollar houses object to paying an extra dollar an hour for a service that would cost ten times as much in the US. When I met Violeta, Natalia was twelve. They were living in, by American standards, a desperately tiny one-bedroom house, with one small bed and a mattress on the floor, and a total of $300 between them and destitution. Don’t tell her about the high price of running shoes.
Now in the US, social class, which we pretend doesn’t exist, depends chiefly on consumer goods owned, money coming in, and credentials on paper. Two BMWs and Yale beats three Volvos and the University of Maryland. Violeta, ever wrong-headed, believed that what you are worth depends on how you behave. Again, Caholicism.
She conveyed this to Natalia, who was (and is) the best student in her school, reading constantly with the fluency of an educated adult. Principled motherhood has its virtues. If the child had been a latchkey, she would doubtless now be pushing either drugs or a stroller. Today Nata is fourteen, smart as a whip, largely over the tyrannosaur stage of hideous disagreeability that briefly afflicts teenage girls, and pretty as a flower. She very much likes boys, but has none of that unhappy—what? Lack of self-respect? Desperation for love?—that makes so many US girls easy prey to libidinous striplings.
If I may digress again, long ago on the police beat I rode in DC with a black cop from a bad section of New York. How did he get out, I asked? From my column of the time, I quote: “My father told me, ‘Son, you’re going to learn your lessons, or I will whup your ass.’ He did, too. So I learned. Best thing that ever happened to me.” (Boys are a little different.)
You don’t have to be helpless, nor useless, nor immoral because you were born poor. If this were not true, the Irish, Italians, Jews, the Chinese of railroad coolie days, the Poles and the Czechs would still be in slums. They aren’t. They made it, as Violeta made it, as Eva and lots of black cops made it, without Section Eight housing, welfare, scholarships, minority preferences with no expectations attached, medical charity, or monotonous self-pity. She has a contempt for those who could, but don’t, that would peel chrome from an engine block.

Eclipse of an eclipse

Anti-climax. Today we were due to see a total eclipse. Sometime this morning. I had planned to have a look and had even armed myself with a piece of glass that had been coated in soot from a candle. The hazard of getting the flaming candle to deposit smoke without getting third-degree burns on my fingers was far greater than the damage that might be caused to my eyes by looking at the event without the filter. I saw nothing. Cloud? Looking in the wrong place? Who knows. Looking at some of the sites manned by experts that were following the event, it seemed that we were at the far North limit of any sighting. One thing I did gain was the scary detail about hazardous asteroids. Seems there are a number of these things out there that have the potential to make a really scary movie.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs are on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time. Seems that right now there are 710 known PHA out there. Seems that back in August we had a really big one pass by in what the men with pointy heads call a near miss. 6 million kilometres was their estimate. Having seen the Meteor Crater in Arizona, I do not require any movie to show me just what power these things have. The crater is a damned big hole and the rock that struck was only 45 metres. The story of the crater is quite interesting.

Flunkit Blunkett

Oh deary deary me! What is the man Blunkett up to now? The latest of his “man of 58 with woman of 29” saga has hit the world news with her releasing that, not only was his interest in her carnal rather than platonic, he wanted to bless the union with a baby. Her description as to how he made this desire known is just so so yucky that one might imagine it was scripted by Dame Edna. As if the basic story were not dodgy enough, we have the involvement of some ticky tacky go-between; one Tariq Siddiqui. He set the woman up on a blind date (sorry, that is what they call that sort of arrangement – the story does not need off-colour non-p.c. jokes) at a London night club. Our swinging David asks, “Does she look as good as she sounds?” which fires a bit of a broadside through his claim of an intended platonic friendship. Siddiqui’s role in this sounds exactly like those guys who haunt such clubs and approach young – usually blonde and busty – girls with lines like, “My sheikh would like to buy you a drink”. Pimp or procurer – either fits. He hassles the woman when she is unsure where the association should go.
My interpretation of DB’s last passage to paternity was that he was used as a sperm donor by a willing couple who did not want to go through IVF channels. Here there is no doubt that he really does want offspring. “Come out with me and I’ll give you a baby” may be a successful chat-up line to some schoolgirl mum-wannabe on a sink estate but is hardly a come-on for a well set-up woman in reasonable employment. I can sympathise with the guy – at 58 anyone of the opposite sex aged 29 must feel as if that first real love has returned – but he needs to be removed from the gene pool because he seems to be degenerating into a bottom-feeder. I cannot see him returning to any government post after the next re-shuffle or election; he has lost all credibility even for a Labour politician. Perhaps we could make him a British consul in somewhere like Thighland where he may fornicate and father away with fecund females without attracting too much attention. He could earn his corn in the visa section exporting nubile girls for his friend Siddique’s escort agency.

Old Commisars

Goodness me, it's been a busy week. But I think we showed a few people just what pensioners are made of. Retirement doesn't have to be about pipes and slippers. Together, we can make a difference. I'm not one of these OAPs who bang on about the war all the time. I might have been bombed out in the Exeter blitz but I never picked up a gun and fought. I can't claim to be a hero and I don't demand respect.
Thus speaks a correspondent in one of today’s papers. She might well be right about making a difference. The Chancellor is loosening us up for pension ‘adjustments’ by telling us that the Grey Wolves are increasing as a proportion of the total population. Problem will be that that Mandy Mandelson will push for influence from the Pink Pounders.
Are things going south for the Commissioner of the Met police? He has just been wounded by very swift publishing by the government of a letter that he wrote asking for special treatment of his (Anti) Terror Squad. Investigators were refused access by Met chief Sir Ian Blair to the underground station where innocent Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead. He kept the IPCC at bay and wanted them restrained. Now he is on about military Rules of Engagement for his armed forces. This might have made sense had he thought of this instead of waiting until the Shoot to Kill policy he so quietly introduced failed to make legislative or common sense.
If he does do the honourable thing and fall on his sword when the IPCC report the government will be able to offer him suitable employment. Will we see him next year as Chief Steward at the Labour Party conference?

Could I be a drone?

I was talking to someone the other day who keeps bees. Yes – I do live life to the extremes don’t I? I had never thought too much about bees but this chap knew so much that he was very interesting. There is an article here that explains just how things work in a hive. Everything is very well ordered, bees know what they are supposed to do and get on with doing it.
My chat came back when I was reading the debate that is currently afoot in America. This is centred on the question of whether the Bible is correct in describing the origins of life as intelligent design or, as deduced by Darwin, evolution. This requires quite deep thinking – well, deep to me anyway. The thing I have never solved about Genesis is where did God get the bits to make Adam. What gave him the idea of man, and then woman, and then all the myriad other life forms? What IS it all about Alfie? I have the same problem with Darwin. From what did we evolve; how did it get onto earth? Doubtless, had I been one of Father Flathat’s congregation, I would have been told to have faith and believe. Sorry, Father – I do not and cannot. I really would like to understand just a small corner; what makes bees have an almost perfectly organised world?
Today has been a weird sort of day for me. I feel as if I am floating along looking down on myself. The guy down there interests me but I also feel that he and I are in no way connected. He does not influence me or I him. Given that, I cannot understand my fascination with this other body. I also seem to see the minutest detail in flowers and insects and have a sense of wonderment at what is going on in these other worlds. Almost as if in the grip of a benign LSD event. It was so strong that I had to get Norma to take over driving because I was clearly away with the peatbog fairies.

82 year old terrorist arrested

In 1984, Winston Smith lives in London which is part of the country Oceania. The world is divided into three countries that include the entire globe: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Oceania, and both of the others, is a totalitarian society led by Big Brother, which censors everyone’s behaviour, even their thoughts. Winston is disgusted with his oppressed life and secretly longs to join the fabled Brotherhood, a supposed group of underground rebels intent on overthrowing the government.George Orwell 1984

Ghost tale

Malay belief in ghosts can be very widespread and strong. The main, I suppose, senior ghost was the Pontaniek. Certainly, this was the most famous, scariest and violent ghost in the Malay culture. Primarily, the Malays believe that it originates from a still born child, women who die while giving birth, women killed by the pontianak or who had their spirits captured by them. Tradition demanded that those who died in childbirth had to have specific treatment to keep them safe from this monster. These included putting glass beads in the corpses mouth so that they can't shriek, placing eggs under the corpses armpits so that they can't fly and putting needles in their palms so that they can't fly.
Another spirit with strong influence was the hantu raya which is a shape shifting ghost. Usually, this ghost doesn't use its natural ability. This is a ghost with a master and its purpose is to give its master wealth and riches. The owner is responsible for taking care of the ghost until his death. He must also make arrangements for the ghost when he dies and leaves it alone.
I suppose the ghost I most wished to meet was Hantu Tetek. It bears this name which means 'Breast Ghost'. This ghost is a female ghost and has a huge breasts. She uses her breasts to attack its victim making full use of her huge breasts to suffocate them. Some says, the Hantu Tetek's breasts are at the back instead of the front. This really sounds like some sort of male dream ghost; certainly, I have always thought that breasts at the rear would be a far more convenient and exciting location.
The one ghost that I did come into contact with was Orang Minyak There are several version of the orang minyak (literally means 'oily man'). According to history, Satan offered to help and grant worldly desires if the "orang minyak" raped 21 girls within seven days and worship Satan as a God. They covered their nude body with oil so that it would be difficult for anyone to catch them. Although recent oily men were definitely human, there were countless stories of the supernatural and black magic orang minyak.
In 1957 I was serving in the very young country of Malaysia at a Army HQ in Seremban. The local town was quite small but had a large proportion of Europeans based there. In addition to the military, there were State administrators and civil servants together with rubber estate managers. Crime was almost unknown but over a short period of time there were increasing reports of burglary. These appeared to be the work of someone very skilled at their job. Most European bungalows – all homes occupied by whites were referred to as bungalows regardless of the number of floors – had window grilles and sliding grille doors at the main entrances. The intruder seemed able to bypass these at will leaving no sign of how this had been done. Those homes that had dogs were not safe either. The animal would be fit and well the morning after an intrusion and had not made any alarm during the night.
Once in the house, the ‘ghost’ would carry out a thorough search for valuables. One slept lightly in the heat of the tropics in the absence of air-conditioning but none of the victims recalled being disturbed. Any especial hiding place – money under the mattress for example – would be robbed. Within a very short time, the intrusions and thefts were attributed to our old friend the hantu. Hantu ryah was initially the chief suspect given that he could change shape Dracula-like and waft through grilles. Alarm amongst the Malays was turning to hysteria and the Malaysian police asked for our help. Examining some of the grilles showed that the locks had been opened using some form of pick lock and re-secured using a similar method. So, we had eliminated ryah but then suspicion turned to the oily man. This was a theory more capable of acceptance by Europeans as it was known that young men would coat their naked bodies in coconut oil and enter Malay homes to rape.
Senior level liaison resulted in a joint Army-Police operation. Road traffic blocks were established on all roads leading into Seremban. Police and infantry foot patrols were mounted within the accommodation areas and covert ambush points set up to watch for suspicious activity. Army tracker dogs were brought in. After about a week we had a result.
A car containing three Malay men was stopped at a road block. When challenged, two ran off. As they ran, the Ghurkha troops on patrol shot at them killing one man and wounding the other. The third man was arrested. On medical examination, the wounded man was found to have a penetrating wound to his chest which had passed through one lung. Because of suspicion that he had the talents of a minyak whilst obviously not a hantu, he was treated and then imprisoned in a police station. The third man said he knew his companions were ‘bad men’ but refused to say what sort of badness. He of course, insisted he was just a driver and innocent as the day was long.
On the morning after his detention, the wounded man was being taken back to hospital to have his wound checked and re-dressed. En-route, he managed to escape from the police car. His escape route took him right through the middle of the main Army camp where I was on duty. The guardroom advised me that an injured Malay male had run past their barrier into the camp. They knew not why. Almost immediately, I had a telephone call from the head of the special hantu-catching squad that their man had run off. To me, too much of a coincidence that there would be two injured men running about.
The camp was on the outskirts of the developed area of Seremban. There was an area immediately outside our wire that had been cleared of jungle, then there was a belt of secondary jungle where the trees and shrubs were growing back after clearance. Beyond that was the real ulu or jungle. No roads, no tracks, no people – just many miles of undergrowth and frequent streams. I realised we needed a tracker dog. The kennels were behind our office and I headed up there at some speed.
There was only one dog handler to be found. He was asleep and, after I woke him up, he told me that he had just come off duty and was exhausted. It was a number of years since I had a brief spell as a dog handler and that was a combat dog and not a tracker. However, I rationalised that the brains of this partnership would be the dog. I took one from its kennel and got it equipped to track. Such dogs know they are working when fitted with a harness and a long lead. We knew where the man had left the camp and our track started from there. My companion found a good scent – still so fresh it was in the air as well as on the ground. We moved at a fast trot. It is important to try and let the dog work at its own pace. I’d never known this one before but it seemed I had made a good choice as it was not a racer. Working in the jungle with a dog on a long lead had its own difficulty – I had to follow exactly in the trail of the dog or the leash would wrap around a tree and bring us both to a halt.
After about a mile, we came into a small native village or kampong. My rubbish Malay and their good English met and established that a man with his arm in a sling had come into the village a short while before. Their interest was kindled when I explained that the man was thought to be a pseudo-oily man ghost. They told me he had spoken to one of the youths who had gone off on a bicycle whilst the burglar ran further into the jungle. I followed. I was encouraged by the sight of fresh blood spots some of the villagers pointed out to me. We were about five minutes behind him. As I trotted along after him, now at a faster pace, I tried to think what had passed between the man and the departed cyclist.
We seemed to have moved into a swampy area. The ground was soft and there were numerous small streams. These slowed us down as we had to cast around to make sure our quarry had gone straight across and not followed the stream to put us off the scent. I reasoned he knew we were on his track or he would have sought rest in the first village. After about an hour we had only moved some miles from the village. We then entered another kampong – this slightly larger than the one we had left earlier. After more polyglot debate with full arm and hand movements, I was convinced that my quarry was the man people had seen getting into a car which had entered the village a short while before. Then I knew why the cyclist – he had been sent off to arrange the vehicle rendezvous.
The man was not recaptured. He returned to his own village – dead in the back of a car. His wound had become infected and he died of gangrene poisoning. Seremban had no more hantu of any sort. Unfortunately, my afternoon run with a dog must have scared off the large breasted lady. Although I saw many strange looking ladies in the dance halls – forerunners of the Thai lady-boys – none had their secondary sexual characteristics where they might have had a knapsack.

The law is a donkey - discuss

There can be no doubt that a majority of us are losing any feeling of confidence in the way justice is run. There seem to be three main areas – the prevention of crimes, dealing with juvenile offenders and frustration by victims of crime. We are informed of decline in some crime rates but the publics’ perception is that it is in fact increasing and any claimed improvement comes from manipulation rather than hard facts. The types of crime now reported are felt to threaten our culture and the legal trend does not relate to their values. There are feelings of trepidation and uncertainty.
To try to counter these fears we need to examine why these feelings exist. Why, today, do we feel less secure? What is it that we can't get right today that a generation ago it seemed that we could? There is no single explanation for this. Back then, communities were smaller and more standardised than they are now. We have become pluralistic and dissimilar. The influx of immigrants and refugees has brought new perceptions. Old ideas are being increasingly reviewed and revised. Those who did not have a voice now have greater opportunity to make themselves heard. There are increasing numbers of non-government organisations and action groups who well know how to make their presence felt and create difficulties for the Establishment. Politics are no longer the exclusive to the elite. Legislation is badly drafted and hurriedly introduced and falls apart at the first real hurdle in courts. Judges retain their independence in the face of directives from Ministers. Our multi-ethnic society means that there is no longer Mr. Average Britain on the top deck of the Clapham omnibus.
Instead of an upper, middle and lower class system we now have a fragmented society. People – regardless of old class structures – see their own concerns and priorities. This renders it difficult to define, still less achieve, consensus; a state the justice system is very concerned about. Recent publicity about errors made by ‘experts’, faulty judicial decisions and ‘spin’ or ‘sexing-up’ has meant there is a public distrust of all experts and elite bodies. “This government does not represent me or my friends. Is this democracy?” Into this fertile midden comes the media. They have their own agenda. Sensationalism replaces balanced reporting. Bad news sells papers. News has to be condensed into a 15 second sound bite. Crime is reported from the standpoint of ‘end of the world as we know it’. Events that were unknown outside foreign countries or other areas of our own land are now covered in great detail but still in such as way as will attract maximum attention and outrage. The cost of legal action against any part of the media is such that only a fool will take them on.
In the middle of all this are the victims and their relatives. They are hounded by the media. “How does it feel to have had your daughter blown up on a Tube train Mrs Smith” Even if they manage to keep their suffering private, reports will still appear from reporters convinced they know what suffering really is. Think-pieces and columnists dig out the bones and strew them around like cats at refuse bags. There is, for the sufferers, no dignified involvement wherein lies possibility of therapeutic benefit. They are made to appear as onlookers within the legal system with no support for events that have changed their lives forever. They must have better access to proper and timely information. This must also be made available to the media so that we regain our trust that what we are seeing is reliable and unbiased. Official web sites should also carry this information for those who find it hard to accept media brain-washing.
The main attention though, needs to be given to crime prevention. This is where a government can make the best initiatives. The cost of crime – fiscal, environmental and to human beings – is immense. Maximum effort must be devoted to stopping crime in it’s tracks. Right from prevention starting with young persons, through to hardened criminals and up to recidivists.
The community needs to say what makes them scared and what would make them feel secure and safe. Not focus groups or seven out of nine like a dog food commercial. The community. Whatever is then decided upon has to have a multi-headed attack plan. All must play their part – it is not acceptable to act as if paying ones Police rate solves all. Teachers, role models, all the caring professions, community leaders, religious leaders, social services must all be on board. Parents must not think that schools will do their job of socialising their offspring.
This is the part where I have no glib reasoning or answers. It is the hardest part of all. I am convinced it is the answer but I cannot think how to get a unified, all-encompassing response and reaction. Care to help me out?

Our hero

The whole of our space in the great wide world is today devoted to this wonderful story.

Rolling Stone & Moss

Just when I thought that the saga the press have made about Kate Moss had concluded, I came upon a report that the Church of Scientology has offered her help with her drug problems. That she is rich and has a high public profile is not the reason behind this act of charity. Yeah – right.
I see it as yet another example of the power of the press. Kate was outed by the Daily Mirror who got into an area where things are normally too busy to tolerate anyone not directly involved in things. Obviously, it was just coincidence that a few months previously, she had won a fair sum in a libel case against that rag when they alleged she was a user of drugs. That element of schadenfreude which lives in us all was instrumental in ensuring that a media panic started it’s run. She was depicted as the poor little rich girl who had sacrificed her career because she was besotted with, and under the malign influence of, some 92nd rate entertainer who had not even had a career. Once she had stumbled on the drugs story, her supposed downfall was hastened by revelations of sex orgies.
Suppose we look at some of the background in more detail. She started out at as a young teenager. She rapidly became the first of what we now choose to call super-models. The “would not even get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” brigade. She was captured on film by the very top photographers – all of whom declared her as the thorough professional of whom it was impossible to take a poor shot. That has not changed – her working life is without complaint.
So, what is the complaint? Those people who paid her some £8 million per year to headline their products, thought she was a bad role model. Leave aside the sex claims – the majority of her young admirers would have given their eye teeth to do 3 in a bed with Jude Law – and think back about drug use. She was the model who use came under some criticism when it was suggested that she was being used to depict ‘drug-chic’. Her whole image at that time was of a seemingly anorexic woman wasted on drugs. Yet, this same person was the one signed up to headline campaigns by those who now shy back in fright.
And whence cometh this fear of association with drugs? Does anyone really think that she is the only attractive (but bow-legged) female who enjoys the Columbian marching powder? I have been to events where one would think that the queues for toilet cubicles were indicative of massive food poisoning or widespread diarrhoea. Even my jaundiced opinion of the young of today fails to accept that they work on the basis of “Oh. Kate does that. I’ll have to have a go” If their minds did work at that level, we would need the whole of CPS to deal with Jordan and her influence.
So, rather than allow things to be superseded by some other inconsequential ‘drama’. We have the Commissioner of the Met. Announcing a inquiry. This will drag out the media interest and yet more discussion of the pros and cons will ensure. The ‘Establishment’ will pontificate and this on it’s own will cause the youngsters to side with Moss.
I do not see her as having the degree of influence that is alleged. I certainly would not risk investing any of my money in any campaign that relies upon her have a good effect on any large number of people. If she cannot influence for good, what effect would she have as a role model for bad behaviour?
I do, however, admit that I might think about spending $9,999 to keep her in bed.

No sex please - I'm in a meeting.

WARNING. I am going to write about sex, intercourse, pregnancy and other words and thoughts that your mother might not approve of. If you do not want to know the score – look away now.
Headline in today’s Sunday Telegraph is “Women bypass sex in favour of ‘instant pregnancies’” The thrust (if I may use that word in this connection) of the article is that women are increasingly seeking IVF treatment because they do not have the time or inclination for a sex life and want to ‘diarise’ their busy lives. They are sometimes horrified at the prospect of having to have unprotected sex three times a week as seems to be necessary for natural fertilisation.
Bear in mind that we are talking about decent sums of money here. One IVF procedure can cost £2,500 and not all succeed at the first go. Given the price of turkey-basters, it seems to me that there is exploitation here. The paper bases its article on information given by the Lister Hospital and London Bridge Clinic in London. I have been a patient at both places – for surgical reasons and not as an IVF donor you understand. In my physiotherapist’s directed rambles along the corridors I would see women going into the fertilisation clinics. That they were not from the local council estate was obvious from their dress and luggage. Another conclusion I drew was that there must be a hell of a lot of reproductive illnesses as they were, in the main, desirable looking women who would have no problem attracting fertile males willing to stand the strain of thrice weekly testing.
I have doubts about other areas of this claim. Not having the time for a sex life? Where in the universe were these women living given the usual female complaint about two minutes plus ten more for a shower? The making of appointments, consulting, travel to and from surely took up more than twelve minutes times three? After all, they must be accustomed to multi-tasking. One supposes they did not get their PA or secretary to make all the arrangements so all time spent was what their business degrees called ‘prime time’.
Disinclined to sex? We are often told that the maternal drive is a strong desire in female considerations. One on one sex is necessary to conceive naturally – I’m sure that Mummy told them that much. How could they be disinclined to sublimate their distaste in the actions necessary to achieve fertilisation? The alternative of a complete stranger using a bright light and oohing and aahing at their nether regions surely cannot be acceptable to a natural procedure generally undertaken in private in the dark. Or even as a threesome with full surround sound and vision? As one who has undergone prostate examination, it is difficult to remain sanguine and unmoved by this sort of scrutiny.
If the claim regarding availability of time is to be taken at face value, how will Yummy Mummy deal with the kid? Feeding – OK, wet nurse or expression. Cleaning – Nurse Ingrid. Where is the bonding to take place? My take on it is that they really do not want children. They have followed the pattern of their class all along – pony club, prep school, university, ‘good’ job, appropriate husband or partner, charity works. Next comes a child. OK – get one; does one find them at Waitrose?
And what about Daddy? He has to shell out for the consultant. Sort his work out to attend the clinic and sit in dull rooms with pornographic magazines. He then has to face the staff with his discreet little package where they all exhibit a 'We know what you've been doing' look. And all to mechanise something he does with his secretary four or five times a week!

So much for a short break.

I’ve been giving some thought to the situation in Iraq. The overall impression one gets is that things are going badly. I do not doubt that there are some projects in some areas that are working but these must be like a few green shoots above the mud and filth in New Orleans.
One of our – the coalition’s – problems is a lack of real insight as to how the Arab mind works. There is an inertia. Self-help is not very strong. The people look to the government to do (or fail to do) things. We were wrong right from the starting assumption that we would be garlanded with roses and seen as liberators with spontaneous uprisings ahead of our advance. The evil influence of Saddam Hussein was so widespread that it was like ivy on an old house. Even if pulled away, the root stayed in place. Those who may have felt glad we had invaded were too scared to do very much about it. The nights are very dark and life comes cheap.
Our foregoing reputation as members of an advanced civilisation meant that there were high expectations as to how fast we would improve the situation of everyday people. Whilst the way that they lived was pretty basic, it was a way known to the people. To get service, bribes were necessary. Who one knew was important. Corrupt – maybe, but it worked. Our arrival destroyed status quo and offered nothing in exchange. Our inability to stop the looting was a prime example. We destroyed the fabric of the country. No police. Water supply ruined. Food distribution disrupted. Medical services broken down. No indication as to when things would get better. It would be perfectly understandable for people to think that Saddam was not so bad after all. At least one had something even if it were minimal and dependent upon one keeping one’s head down and showing servility.
We seem to have concentrated on offering democracy rather than making it evident that living conditions would improve. Sure, Messrs. Halliburton are receiving large sums for work they are doing but some of it is sabotaged by insurgents and much of the rest is unknown to the man in the street. Telling me that Basra is doing well is not much comfort when I am sitting in the dark of my badly damaged house, thirsty and surrounded by sewage in Baghdad whilst wondering if my husband is working late or has been kidnapped or worse. Democracy’s definition is alien to a nation with a feudal base. Custom is that the sheikh makes the decision and the people live with it. The degree of influence from his advisers varies from not much to nil. The advisers are really little or minor sheikhs and have their own agenda anyway. I am reminded of the comment made by a white African on the subject of one man one vote. “What does the African know about a vote? He cannot eat it, sleep with it or sell it” Democracy has many drawbacks. It encourages those who make unlikely promises to an electorate that has little real understanding as to how politics works. I consider that much of the problem reference defining Iraqi democracy is based upon this lack of understanding. They promised much and now do not have any idea as to how they may honour those promises.
What is to be done? To get it right is, in my opinion, almost impossible. It is just as if we in the UK were suddenly committed to running the country from January 2006 as a Buddhist state. Too much of a change, too little explained, too soon. We have to come to some sort of fudge. Get the level of violence down. Find leaders who can – by hook or by crook – actually lead the people. If that be one of those we define as militia – so be it. Once things are quiet we should set a date by which we will be gone. Find a way to keep the now-recognised militia on side until that date. Once we have gone, internal forces will sort things out. Our task should be to work to keep the nascent country free from outside influence. The same assistance with infrastructure could continue. Our political machinations could well include some sort of favoured status for the coalition. Don’t tell me this is unprincipled or undemocratic. It worked on very similar lines in Northern Ireland didn’t it? Sinn Fein/IRA stopped the obvious attacks on security forces and got influence that they would never have enjoyed from an unattainable military victory.
  

When a sheepdog gets bored, it can easily adapt and find something to amuse itself.
Not so for me.
My own efforts at blogging led me to collect a large number of journals that I found interesting, challenging or educational. In that insidious way that side-bars have, most of these led me to yet more writing that I found attractive. I started to try to analyze the best of these and came up with a conclusion. The skill of writing has to be bolstered by interesting subjects. Yes - creative writing allows drafting dreams and journalistic compositions follow the old adage 'write about what you know'
Whilst compared to the youth of today, my 100 word essay is War & Peace re-done, I really just string a good vocabulary along a washing line of verbs. Recounting what I know leads me down the road of 'When I was a lad...'. That brings us back to boredom.
So - a pause for reflection. Can I regain that sense of being part of a big adventure; indeed, is it now an adventure at all? I see it as something akin to climbing Everest. Those first at the summit went through a heck of a lot of pain and suffering. Now, it is almost down to little old blue rinsed ladies in tennis shoes going up in groups of 20 or 30. I would not wish to get to the top in such unchallenging conditions that have evolved.
I think I'll get in touch with Kate Moss' agents and offer myself as a surrogate lover who would get her off the drugs and lesbian sex of which she stands accused. That way I can combine being creative and what I know.

Advances in bringing-up of children

Children should be seen and not heard
Do as I say not as I do
Don’t care was made to care
No pain no gain
Spare the rod and spoil the child
Speak when you are spoken to, not before
What you don’t eat now you will get as breakfast

These are just some of the admonishments I regularly heard when I was young. Most often, emphasised or reinforced by the laying on of hands. What this practice did for me I cannot be sure. I did discover that they were all very valid if I wished to avoid pain. I soon learnt the sort of conduct that would bring about their being voiced along with their associated sting. None of them made me feel like taking a (non-existent) automatic rifle into school or mess about with the brakes on the parental car. I suppose that I had no resentment about my treatment as it seemed all other children were treated much the same. One regularly saw children being smacked about the head or on the backs of their knees exposed below short trousers. Life was hard and brutish for youngsters.

Now, of course, all of the above are totally out of order. Anyone employing these methods of child training and discipline would rightly end up in court. In the main, children grow up in a world of kindness and forbearance of their juvenile conduct.

Wonder why it is that almost anything one looks at in respect of the youth of today, we find they have many problems and cause many problems? Isn’t there a neat little saying about throwing baby out with the bath water?

Commitment

So, Renee Zellweger has started backing out of her marriage. An annulment; this generally meaning there was some sort of fraud involved. Not financial fraud - though it could be that of course. Seems she was not turning up with him where he was singing. Having heard him I can understand that. He didn't go to the Hollywood-scene events she attended. Maybe it was that. There was a lack of commitment shall we say.
I've turned these pages over to Fred Reed as a sort of guest writer. Just so long as he is happy with the mention and doesn't want money. However, some while back he wrote this on the question of commitment and I'm going to place it before you.
Ladies and gentlemen (drum roll) Mr. Fred Reed

Sex Finally Explained!

Fred Did It, His Own Self

I'm trying to figure out sex, and why people get in an uproar about it, and run around waving their arms and hollering, and everybody's mad at everybody else.

It's because men can't tell sex from tennis. We can't help it. It's a character defect built into us, like tail fins on a fifty-seven T-Bird.

Yep. That's it. I've just solved the question of the ages. Right here. Contributions welcome.

Best I can tell, ninety-eight percent of women are mad because all men want is sex. (Actually we want other things too, like big-block engines, dogs, and really bad movies with lots of gratuitous violence.) On the other hand, men are ready to become monks. It's because they can't talk to a woman for five minutes on a bus before she wants commitment. To a woman commitment seems so obviously good that she can't see why he'd rather have pellagra. Which is what men think about sex. So the two glare at each other like two possums with only one garbage can.

It's too bad. A lot of people end up being unhappy because of it.

The problem, it says here, is that to men sex is a primal drive that doesn't have much emotional content. It's just sex. It's like when you have athlete's foot, you scratch it, but you don't have an emotional bond to it. Sure, a guy can commit to a woman, as evidenced by innumerable marriages that happen despite experience and common sense. Sex can have emotional importance to him with a woman he wants to keep. But he doesn't have a hard-wired connection between sex and commitment. To him they're separate things, like jackhammers and Vienna sausages. You can have both at the same time, but you don't have to.

By contrast, for women, sex seems epoxied to a lot of emotional freight. A woman sees sex as a step toward commitment, as fifty years ago a man saw commitment as a step toward sex. When the man doesn't see the connection, she thinks he's just plain wrong-headed, and mean spirited, and a nickel-plated sumbitch.

Which brings us to tennis. (Bet you didn't see that coming.)

Men think of sex the way they think of tennis. Suppose I want to work off some energy. I call my buddy Ralph, and we meet at the courts, and have a good time for a few sets -- sweat and grunt, twist our ankles, fall down and break things, and end up in a mild coma.

When we're through, he doesn't want me to marry him. When in fact I don't, he doesn't feel exploited. In fact, he feels deeply relieved.

That's how men look at sex. A man genuinely doesn't understand why he can't say to the young lady in the next cubicle, "Hey, Jane, what say we go to my place at lunch for a roll in the hay?" ("Fred -- you've got hay at your place?") He may like Jane, think she's bright and fun, have no slight desire to exploit, use, or degrade her. They may have been friends for years. But if he made what would seem to him a perfectly reasonable suggestion, she would explode and file at least a dozen lawsuits.

Yet he knows that she isn't opposed to sex, and isn't opposed to him. If he took her to three movies, so that the whiff of commitment hung heavy in the air, like methane over a summer swamp, she'd be worried if he didn't make the suggestion. So why not . . . ?

He doesn't get it.

The woman's lack of the tennis instinct, or the man's possession of it, complicates life for everyone. It ain't her fault. It ain't his fault. It's how we are.

To aggravate things, we're timed all wrong, like streetlights in New Jersey. After a certain age, somewhere around thirty, a woman's interest in commitment rises, while a man's declines -- just as a man's sex drive declines as hers rises. (Actually, sex may be a vast practical joke. If there's a better explanation, I haven't heard it.) Guys who are single in their mid-thirties are frequently comfortable with bachelorhood or, having been raped in the divorce courts, attached to it as tenaciously as panicked barnacles. And so guys, not looking for marriage, go into relationships knowing that they are going to end miserably. Three months, and the Marriage Monster raises its fanged head. It's as predictable as morning.

Somehow having a mate seems much more crucial to women than to men. A guy with a girlfriend may figure she's peaches, better than a competition yo-yo with extra strings. He may be proud of her and proud of himself for having her. If the Red Army attacked her, he'd leap in front of her like a spring-wound damned fool and die a pointless but gaudy death. (That too is built in.) But she will still be only a part of his world, along with motorcycles, the job, great software, rock climbing, or drinking beer and talking dirty with other guys.

Maybe this is why men are happier than women with intermediate degrees of commitment. If Willie Bob starts dating Maggie Lou, and she's fun, he'll just naturally keep on doing it. Left to himself, two years later or twenty, he would still be dating her, and be perfectly happy. His attitude is that if it works, why meddle with it? He doesn't see dating as having to Go Somewhere like an evicted tenant. Depending on how much company he really wants, he may figure seeing her three times a week, and being left alone the rest of the time, is just right. He isn't exploiting her. He's just happy as things are.

She won't see it this way, or at least not for long. It's not because there's anything wrong with her, or with women, or for that matter with men. We've just got different operating systems. What she sees as God's intended result of dating, so clearly right as not to be examined, he sees as at best an unnecessary complication, at worst as giving up title to his house. He asks the, to him, reasonable questions: "Gee, Maggie, what would be better if we got married? Would sex be better? Food? What's your point?" He's genuinely puzzled. She thinks he's being exploitative, that she has been had again, another five years wasted, men, the bastards.

There's got to be a better way. I just don't know what it is. www.fredoneverything.net

Pleasures of friendship

I had a telephone call today from a friend. Nothing unusual in that I hear someone say. Well, in this case there was. My caller was someone I first met just about ten years ago and last met over six years ago. A male work colleague. I never formed the opinion that we were close friends but my work strayed into his area of responsibility and vice versa. We would attend corporate hostility things together because that is how we were invited. I suppose the only shared personal interests we had were dogs and photography.
What struck me as unusual today was that he referred to himself as an 'old friend'. Back when we saw each other regularly, I regarded him as more of a acquaintance at work than as a friend. It was just as easy to get along with him as it was to fall out or be at loggerheads. Working relationships jog along better within a friendly atmosphere and the Bosses are happier. My caller today gave the reason that he was updating an old contacts list and seeing my name prompted him to call.
After we finished speaking with the usual protestations that we would do better at maintaining contact I started thinking just who else might call proclaiming we were brothers in arms. Obviously, family - mine and Norma's - were included. Other than the kids I have no family above ground. Norma's people were many but they are whittling down as age bites. There is a young woman who worked as one of my mail clerks whom I pushed up the promotion ladder very quickly. She writes at Christmas and on my birthday. That was about the sum total of friends I had made in civilian life stretching back to 1974. Friends? Hardly. I prefer a solitary life and am well able to live life on my own without a network of supporters - so far that is.
But, curiously, I do have a number of people whom I regard as very valuable and staunch. These are guys who were in the Army with me. Our friendship started over fifty years ago. Some of them I have not seen for thirty or so years. We may not have spoken in that thirty odd years. It could be that I would not now recognise them should we meet by chance. Where I have met some more recently, we pick up as if we were together just a few days previously. Instant sunshine.
I cannot work out just what makes these Service pals so very much more attractive and durable than people I met as a civilian. It is not as if we went through any great cathartic experience together. Maybe, as other ranks, we shared a dislike of officers and their doings but even this dislike was never very strong. Certainly not enough to bind us as we did. I take part in a forum with five or six of these guys and we banter about things way way back in the same style and manner as we did when we actually saw each other more frequently.
Whatever it is, this is what I understand as friendship. I think I have satified myself why I was amazed at my caller regarding himself as a friend. He lacked the sort of friends I have and was having to do with second or third best.

Nice to know why I do this

A new "Blog Trends Survey," conducted for online giant America Online July 17 to 22, 2005 through Opinion Place by Digital Marketing Services found that most bloggers aren't hanging shingles as wanna-be cyber-journalists, political activists, or covering news. Instead, nearly half surveyed bloggers say they use the online journals as a form of therapy, writing about personal issues and events.
The survey questioned 600 people over 18 years of age who write one or more blogs on the Web. The resuls showed nearly 50 percent of bloggers write online journals as a form of self-therapy, with fully one third writing about self-help and self-esteem topics. In times of high anxiety or need, 32 percent of surveyed bloggers said they turn to family and friends, but nearly as many (31 percent) said they turn to writing in their blog or reading blogs of people experiencing similar issues. (In contrast, only five percent said they seek counseling or professional help during these times.)
In contrast, only 16 percent of bloggers say they're interested in journalism, and only 12 percent use their blogs to break or keep up with news and gossip, and a mere 8 percent write a blog with political content.
Bloggers also reported they don't feel much pressure to write a blog: only 16 percent reported they keep a blog because it's trendy, although 21 percent said they write because their families or friends do. Two thirds of surveyed bloggers said they feel they can write about anything they like, and roughly two thirds also reported that, while they care how often blogs they read are updated, they don't feel obligation to update their own blogs regularly or frequently.
Similarly, only 12 percent worry about their blogs being witty or funny, only 23 percent worry about offending anybody with their postings, and 60 percent say their blogging personality is "laid back", while 3.8 percent describe themselves as perfectionists or compulsive bloggers. However, for all bloggers' relaxed attitudes, the audience still matters a bit: 65 percent report feelings of disappointment if they receive abusive or negative comments.
This is where this came from http://news.designtechnica.com/article8336.html

Oh heck!

I think I would prefer not to know this. Of course, it comes from the Press in America so it may be something along the lines of little green men and flying saucers abducting the local village idiot.

15 September. Three lab mice carrying deadly strains of plague have turned up missing from separate cages at a bioterror research facility in Newark, sparking a hushed, intensive investigation by federal and state authorities.

Racist bigot bstard

Way way way back when I first started this blogging mania, I set out certain things about my personality. Main amongst these was my conviction that I had been an undiagnosed sufferer of Aspergers Syndrome. Undiagnosed because the Syndrome had not been formed in my childhood. My youth and late teens were marked by efforts made by others to ‘cure’ my behaviour which was seen as anti-social. I will dignify these efforts as tough love and, whilst I cannot see that they cured the Syndrome, they forced me to recognise that some things were unacceptable to other people and I had best modify my manners. One of the things I had to deal with was my attitude towards others not of my race. I saw them as different – not inferior or superior – just dissimilar. Until relatively recently, this attitude was not controversial. Now however, one is thought of as a racist or bigoted. Any debate about the difference will be diverted into inevitable argument and derision. I adopted a position that I call reverse apartheid. Instead of keeping others away from me, I kept myself away from them. Physically, mentally and socially. As I do not have any specific animus towards those of other skin pigment or race, I would like to enter into a debate on the points they make when complaining about the way they are treated or regarded.

It is this background that makes me enjoy the writing of Fred Reed. He has the ability to say things the way I would and the exposure that makes it possible for him to express his views.

Deep thoughts lurk here

If you are short of a good book to read, have a look at this report about my old mate Mazlow. He has some quite developed ideas about what makes a satisfied individual. At one time, I was a great fan of his Triangle of Needs and could use it to describe just about anyone with whom I came into contact. I had stopped at a fairly low level of the Triangle and wondered what it was that stopped me following the path detailed by The Master.
Discussion with those more learned than I - yes, maybe with the alcoholics under the bridge - showed that I had in fact got to the top of his triangle by getting a full grip on what he describes as Adventure. Adventure is the need for an adrenaline rush, to have new experiences, to travel, to have major experiences, to have drama in their life, to have a sense of anticipation about upcoming events. I have been described as an adrenaline junky. If I cannot access the juice, I may create a situation where fight or flight becomes important. Not always a good thing.
I found psychology and sociology very interesting when I did my studies courtesy of OU. I thought that my service life had taught me a heck of a lot about these. What I got from the formal studies was WHY things I foresaw actually arose or came about. People are fascinating and Maslow is a good place to start. Even if you just look-in to see what is your prime motivator or need.

The Mouse wandered

Oh – good Lord!
I was in M & S web looking for ideas for a lunchtime sandwich. Whilst I agree that in certain circumstances, this would form a very acceptable sandwich, I think it would be a bit too rich at my time of life.

Same shit - different date.

It seems that the Government has a busy agenda for today. Amongst other things I see:

1. Early reports this morning suggest that with fuel protestors numbering in the dozens, widespread disruption to petrol supplies is not likely. Ahead of the protests the head of the Environment Agency urged ministers to stand firm in the face of "sabre-rattling" from the haulage industry. Talking to ePolitix.com, Baroness Young, the agency's chief executive, said the industry was failing to take advantage of government services which would help them use fuel more efficiently. "It is always disappointing if government wavers in the face of blackmail," she added. Will she repeat this to those engaged in dealings with Sinn Fein/IRA? Are there not situations where the Government is the blackmailer? Oh yes – where is pc now with the adverse connotations of blackmail?


2. The Ulster secretary has announced that the government no longer recognises the Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando ceasefires. Peter Hain told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What I have done in this decision overnight is to send an absolutely crystal clear signal out to everybody that we will not tolerate violence, that it does not pay." The Cabinet minister also holds talks on loyalist violence and the peace process with a Sinn Fein delegation including Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly and Alex Maskey. Surely the very fact that he will meet and discuss such matters with three (supposedly ex-) terrorists makes a nonsense of his declaration of the value of violence.


3. Foreign secretary Jack Straw delivers a keynote speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies on 'why Iran matters'. Can he include George Bush in the distribution of his draft speech?


4. Culture secretary Tessa Jowell today defends the government's decision not to require cricket Tests to be broadcast on free terrestrial television. Writing in the Telegraph, she says that the government is unable to prevent the contract with Sky going ahead. They have already protected some sporting etc. events saying they are Heritage Events and have to be shown free-to-air.


5. Environment secretary Margaret Beckett delivers a keynote speech in New York on green issues. Appropriate given the backlash about conditions in New Orleans>


6. Defence secretary John Reid holds talks with his Russian counterpart. How to stage a withdrawal from Afghanistan that looks reasonable?


7. Health secretary Patricia Hewitt delivers a speech on care outside hospital. Most likely place to find it – outside.


8. The government's environmental watchdog has warned ministers not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" in their drive to reduce red tape. Speaking to ePolitix.com, the chief executive of the Environment Agency said that "modern regulation" should not become "no regulation or deregulation". Baroness Young said it was possible to reduce the burdens on businesses without lowering standards of environmental protection. But she also highlighted the usefulness of government rules, saying they could create employment and encourage innovation. There was also a call for ministers to bring forward new incentives for environment-friendly behaviour. And consumption should be tackled by "getting up the price of things that we don't want consumed", she added. Rules = employment. Gainful employment or checkers of tick-boxes on official forms


9. Rural affairs minister Jim McKnight launches a consultation on heather and grass burning and is later among the speakers at the LGA's annual rural conference. Something tha has been done since time immemorial - what's new?
   


10. Sports minister Richard Caborn begins a regional Olympics tour in Cornwall. Likely to achieve a great deal towards an event centred on a relatively small part of London.


11. Jim Murphy, Cabinet Office minister with responsibility for e-government visits the Isle of Lewis to see how IT helps improve the lives of people in remote areas. Can someone not just tell him and save an expensive visit. If IT is so good – what price video-conferencing.

All in all, they’d be better off sitting at the Oval watching re-runs on the big screen.

Anyone smell a rat?

I have been re-reading the official 9/11 report. It is quite a complex document and requires study and not just reading. The style of the report is innovative to anyone who reads UK-style government reports as it is more like a novel that a Chapter 1, section 1 The Beginning sort of thing. I wanted to give it a bit of a revision after the hurricane of theories that have grown up around the incident. Real conspiracy-theory fodder certainly but some of these do seem well constructed.
Lots of things in the official story just don’t seem, prima-facie, to line up. There is the Pentagon attack where a considerable body of ‘evidence’ suggests that it was a missile strike and not a large airliner crashing into the building. Seems that Old Rummy has spoken in public about missile strike. Given he is a bit flaky, nothing conclusive about that but it is just another pennyweight on the scales of belief.
There is also argument about recovery of any black boxes. Seems labourers at WTC are quite clear that such items were recovered but that mention of these finds was muffled by the FBI. There is a suggestion that the second aircraft which struck the WTC was a military 767/300 and not a American Airline 767/200. Different shape and weapons pods under the wings are cited as background for this allegation. It is almost arbitrary in all good conspiracy theories that someone who gets close to ‘The Truth’ dies either at their own hand or some unlikely accident. Yes – there’s one here as well in the form of a TV reporter who claims that he was warned in an anonymous telephone call that he would be killed if he did not cease his inquiry. Sure enough, he dies in what looked like suicide and none of his friends is able to explain what made him do this.
There were initial reports that identification of the terrorists on the planes was wrong. Of these 19, seven have resurfaced alive and well. It is claimed. This may have a reasonable foundation as some deceased’s parents denied that their lovely boy could not possibly have done such a thing. Formal identity is not a high priority in many Arab countries,
There are a myriad pieces of ‘evidence’ which support these theories. As fast as the conspiracy supporters make their claims, the debunkers hit back. Just doing a search on Google for 911 Conspiracy shows how near to a business it has all become. One ‘fact’ has taken on a life of it’s own. Muslim media firmly believes that the attack on WTC was not just an attempt to divert attention from poor economics but involved Israel. This comes from a "news report" that 4,000 Israelis called in sick from their jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Nice, but no where near that number were employed in the building.
For?
Counter
And a nice Wiki

Might be a cop?

You Might Be A Cop If....You have the bladder capacity of five people. You have ever restrained someone and it was not a sexual experience. You believe that 25% of people are a waste of protoplasm. You think it is perfectly normal to discuss dismemberment over a gourmet meal. You can identify a negative "tattoo to tooth" ratio just by looking at a person. You find humour in other people's stupidity. You disbelieve 90% of what you hear and 75% of what you see. You have your weekends off planned for a year in advance. You believe that a "shallow gene pool" should be grounds for an arrest. You believe that the Government should require a permit to reproduce. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says "Boy, it sure is quiet around here". You believe that chocolate is a food group. You have wanted to hold a seminar on "Suicide, getting it right the first time., You believe that "too stupid to live" should be a valid jury verdict. You have had to put a complainant on hold, while you laugh uncontrollably. You have wanted a terrorist to deliver a Ryder truck to a particular bar. You believe the dispatcher is possessed. You think caffeine should be available in I.V. form. You have heard: "I have no idea how that got there," on more than a few occasions. You suddenly realize one night that you are patrolling the Twilight Zone. You have learned a lot about paranoia, simply by following random cars around in your patrol car.

Better than nothing?

Anti-terror police told to target Asians
A fresh row over stop-and-search powers has erupted after it emerged anti-terrorist police had received orders to single out black and Asian people.Civil liberties campaigners and black groups have reacted furiously over orders to the British Transport Police which say terrorist suspects are of "Asian, West Indian and east African origin". They have urged the Commission for Racial Equality to investigate.Independent8:35:13 AM   

Well, why not? Generalise or specific targets? I care not so long as someone is doing something and not just walking about with their thumbs up their fundament.

Give me back my Youth

I was waiting for a prescription at the chemists today when I was spoken to by a, what is it they call them, Lady of A Certain Age? I did not understand her approach at first – it was not as if either of us had stepped on the other’s toes. She was asking me if I had enjoyed the final day of the cricket. As I was not wearing my MCC tie at the time, (irony) she had no way of knowing if I was a supporter of Kipling and his muddied oafs. But, no, she gabbled on which gave me the chance to observe her more fully.

She was well coiffured and the war paint was impressive if a little much for Duns at 10:30 in the morning. She was quite trim and curvaceous in the Marilyn Monroe slightly chubby sort of way. Her secondary sexual characteristics were displayed in a style akin to Rigby and Pellier’s finest products where they were lifted as if on a shelf but not crammed together like economy class passengers. From the front, she suggested a nice backside. She had a quiet voice, upper register. I could not tell if she were one of those Scots who have no discernable accent or English. She had the habit of a low-frequency blink which served to draw attention to lashes and eye-socket make up. She seemed to hold her hands at about bust level and to flutter them to add emphasis to her speech. I was able to get this input in a very quick manner due to my many years as a heterosexual male with quick eyes. She remained on the subject of our cricket re-birth. I empathised with the occasional hmmn, hum or whatever one does.

I was served. I said to my Mata Hari look-alike that I had to go and wished her good day. It was as she manoeuvred to get ahead of me that I looked down at her feet and I then realised that I had been accosted by a Fluffragette. The idea behind this was explained by Cherri Gilham in her “Fluffy Manifesto” in the Daily Mail. A fluffragette is a pre-feminist type of woman who aims to control men by using feminine wiles and sexual power. As Ms Gilham put it, they intend to, “giggle, pout, flirt and coo” their way to emancipation. The term was popularised in a rejoinder by Suzanne Moore, a feminist and columnist in the Independent (and formerly of the Guardian, where she had a huge spat with Dr Germaine Greer, who famously described her as wearing fuck-me shoes, a term invented in the eighties). My accoster was wearing incredibly sexy shoes. Just little straps of almost nothing. Think Audrey Hepburn having Breakfast at Tiffanies. Of the whole composition that was My Mysterious Woman, these tiny flimsy sandals were the most expressive element. Sex on wheels – with a message exactly as described by the educated Aussie. I left the shop and looked around the Square. I almost expected to see a Daimler with a chauffeur booted and spurred. No – nothing out of the ordinary. Who she is or was, I do not know. What caused her to open a conversation with me is also a mystery. Whilst I was the best looking male in an otherwise empty shop, that does not explain it. At my advanced age, I was content to let things lie as they fell but in retrospect, it was very intriguing. Ships that pass in the night and all that sort of thing.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/wordsof97.htm