Trillion Dollar Drain

General Midwinter's invasion force sinks through the Baltic sea ice - a still from "Billion Dollar Brain" (1967)

Billionaire businessman and precious metal advocate Hugo Salinas Price notes that exactly one trillion dollars has disappeared from global Central Bank reserves since August 2014.

He comments:

"The fall in International Reserves is a clear indicator of a world-wide economic slump, which will become a severe depression... World liquidation has set in. The Piper must be paid. Growth is gone. This will be story in this epic year 2016."

- and asks, who bought that $ trillion-worth of assets?

I look forward to some expert opinion enlightening me.

Is this a sign that the super-rich and the offshore "dark pools" are offloading their cash for something safer? If so, is that an indication that they expect inflation as governments try to pay their obligations with debased currency?

Alternatively, has there been a secret write-off of unpayable debt?

Or did somebody at Bloomberg just hit the wrong key when updating the figures?

This infographic from Demonocracy shows what a trillion dollars in (100-dollar bills) looks like, compared to a football field (it's still only 6% of the US debt ceiling):

(Pic source)

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Inspiration

"This was not the first, nor was it to be the last, time that I had taken over a situation that was not going too well. I knew the feeling of unease that comes at first at such times, a sinking of the heart as the gloomy facts crowd in; then the glow of exhilaration as the brain grapples with problem after problem; lastly the tingling of the nerves and the lightening of the spirit, as the urge to get out and tackle the job gets hold."

- Field Marshal Viscount Slim, "Defeat Into Victory"


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Wind power in hot water

source

In Sweden a helicopter sprays hot water on iced-up wind turbine blades. 

Glaciated rotor blades are the scourge of wind turbine owners in cold climates. Alpine Helicopter in Constance has developed a new way to kick-start production when the ice forces the turbines stop: a helicopter that sprays hot water.

It takes us about 1.5 hours to process a sharp occurrence of icing wind turbines, says CEO Mats Widgren.

The water is heated over night using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner. When morning dawns are 44 cubic meters of the 60-degree water in the tanks, and the helicopter can start running in the shuttle to the icy wind turbine.

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Is the world reverting?

Perhaps democracy never really had a hope. Voters don’t do anywhere near enough political analysis to make it work. Depressing surveys such as this one even suggest that voters know how little they know as they cast their vote. From the beginning the romance of democracy was usurped by political parties who understand the low information voter only too well. So they make it easy for us by selling a political brand instead of something concrete or radical. We might ask for more. 

Inevitably voting for a brand was never enough to keep alive the charade of democratic accountability. Now we reap the consequences. We are reverting to the old ways, to the days of a remote elite, an aristocracy based on nepotism, armies of functionaries, cosy deals with business elites and millions of graded sinecures for the faithful.

Our evolving aristocratic world is not a world of kings, queens and ancient titles because the new brand has to be differentiated from the old - obviously. So fewer top hats and conspicuous displays of wealth and power because the visual clues must be kept to a minimum. Aristocratic life is also far more complex than it was in the old days, with many more grades of membership. Yet the rise of new style courts, courtiers and functionaries has become too obvious to ignore. The EU is one such court, Westminster another.

As well an evolving global elite, our new world teems with millions of functionaries and servants whose lives depend not on the votes they cast but on the developing patterns of power which constitute the new world order. The ultimate shape of a global aristocracy may be a matter of conjecture, but the omens are not good. We are not naturally benign when it comes to dealing with outsiders. 

An emerging global aristocracy also raises a question about Cameron’s EU referendum. It seems to be the only move we in the UK have left to put a stick in the global elite wheel. Not a very big stick though. A Poohstick perhaps?

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Trident: the "sore thumb" problem

Joking apart, Jeremy Corbyn's objections to nuclear Trident submarines, and his suggestion of non-nuclear missile loads, have some point.

As Ken Livingstone (I know, but bear with me) said on this week's Radio 4 "Any Questions?", the sea is no longer a cloak of invisibility. As David Connett reported in The Independent's Boxing Day issue:

"... a revolution in underwater drones, as well as advances in sonar, satellite and other anti-submarine warfare systems, mean that even totally silent submarines are likely to become detectable. Some sensor technologies can detect large submerged objects by monitoring small movements of surface water."

Defence expert Bryan Clark foresees a change in role, whereby big, manned subs will operate from further back and smaller, drone subs will be deployed up front:

"Submarines will increasingly need to shift from being front-line tactical platforms like aircraft to being host and coordination platforms like aircraft carriers. Large UUVs and other deployed systems that are smaller and less detectable will increasingly be used instead of manned submarines for tactical missions such as coastal intelligence gathering, land attack, or anti-ship missions."

There is indeed scope for serious discussion of Trident, and not just in Labour Party circles.


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Archbishop of Canterbury "to move Christmas"

We understand that Where's-God?-Welby (Eton, Cambridge and Cantuar) has extended his plans to rationalise Christian festivals.

A secret discussion document leaked to Broad Oak Magazine builds on his proposal to make Easter a fixed-date feast with a scheme to combine it with Christmas.

"You are statistically more likely to have a white Easter than a white Christmas," explains the paper, quoting a BBC webpost from 2010. "So why not do a two-for-one and get it all over with in springtime?"

Time-slots under consideration include April 5, so that Christmas and end-of-tax-year sales figures can be published simultaneously (to be known as "The Annunciation") and alternatively, February 29 (offering the productivity advantages of three celebration-free years).

"The birth of Santa has a deep personal meaning for me," comments the prelate, "as I used to work for an Elf."


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Krazy Korbyn on Trident

All right, so maybe some of you agree with Jezza that we should stop our steel industry disappearing. But just read this treacherous b*st*rd on giving up our nuclear protection:

"Trident is a waste of money... Modern Russia... has no interest in attacking us or any conceivable reason for doing so... Trident is useless against [the encroachments of the EU] ... mass migration... the IRA (to whom we surrendered, despite being a nuclear power) and Islamic State.

 

"We do not even control Trident, relying on the USA for so much of its technology and maintenance that we could never use it without American approval. How independent is that?

"Trident... will probably end up more than £100 billion, at a time when we are heavily in debt already. If there were any obvious or even remote use for it, then maybe this could be justified. But there isn’t. We could easily maintain a small arsenal of H-bombs or nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, just in case, for far less.

"It is not just bearded pacifists who doubt its use. Senior civil servants, serious military experts, senior officers in all branches, privately and in some cases publicly reckon it is simply not worth the money."

Bang to rights, let's lock the b*gg*r up -

oh sh*t sh*t sh*t it's not Corbyn it's Peter Hitchens, sorry. Still, we've got him on the IRA, haven't we - damn, no, that was Blair and the Yanks...

I'll have him on something yet, talk amongst yourselves while I keep looking...

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Krazy Korbyn Korner

Wacko scruffmeister Jeremy Corbyn has come up with another honkeroo of a daft idea: helping the steel industry! Yes, it's true multiple exclamation marks emoticonfest ffs lol.

He is to speak at the Fabian Conference today, saying among other things that the Tories’ “laissez-faire attitude to the steel industry could let a downturn become a death spiral”.

As the BBC website said last October, "Many argue that this is not just a crisis for the steel sector, but one affecting UK manufacturing in general, which accounts for roughly 10% of UK economic output."

And now Jezza wants to do something about it.

What a b*st*rd.


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"Settled science"

"Chinese symbols for interrogative, questioning, curious, inquiring, uncertainty,
hesitation, misgiving, distrust, skepticism, interrogation, question, query, inquiry, doubt."

 

Beware of unanimity:

"R[abbi] Kahana said: If the Sanhedrin unanimously* find [the accused] guilty, he is acquitted. Why? — Because we have learned by tradition that sentence must be postponed till the morrow in hope of finding new points in favour of the defence."

- from the "Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin", Folio 17a.  According to Wikipedia, this Talmud from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) was composed of "documents compiled over the period of Late Antiquity (3rd to 5th centuries).^"

*(Usually the Sanhedrin was composed of 23 judges.)

A recent law paper by Ephraim Glatt argues the relevance of this to modern jurisprudence, pointing out the difficulties and drawbacks of attempting to get a unanimous jury verdict.

But a statistics paper out this month discussed here (hat-tip to Anna Raccoon) also argues that beyond a certain level of corroboration (e.g. in a police line-up of suspects) there is an increasing risk of false positives.

Perhaps more of us would be persuaded by the claims of "warmists" if climate "experts" had more dissenting voices? Similarly, Matthew Parris in last week's Spectator said he would be more likely to vote for Prime Ministerial motions on such matters as Europe, Iraq and Syria if we had "leaders with the intellectual self-confidence to ask us for no more than a modest two cheers for a halfway decent case."

As the old saying goes, "“Ask two Jews, get three opinions.”

More light, less heat?


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Paralysis, action (and obstruction)

Two parables of initiative and leadership, and one of selfishness versus the general good:

World War Two: the Chindits are behind Japanese lines in the Burmese jungle in the lead-up to the battle of Imphal. The Gurkha column is turning right, towards a road they must cross. The Brigade commander, Jack Masters*, reaches the turn:

"I glanced up, and saw, straight ahead of me, a hundred feet distant, four soldiers [...] I realised that the four soldiers were Japanese. They were staring at me. I moved behind a tree, called the nearest officer, Baines, pointed out the Japanese, and told him to kill them. When he had done that he was to keep the huts under observation until the rear of the force got well past the spot. Baines, too, stared at the Japanese. 'My God, so they are,' he said. The Japanese kept staring. 'Get going!' I snapped. The Brigade Defence Platoon ran down the ridge, firing. Two Japanese ran away, two were killed. They were all armed. Ten minutes later, we crossed the road, unmolested.

"This incident, at an unmarked place on a vague map, still baffles me. What were those Japanese doing there, staring at us as we marched by? Why had no one in front of me seen them? It was inexplicable..."

3 September 1666: John Evelyn** witnesses the Great Fire of London. Oddly, as the flames spread, no-one makes any rational move...

"The Conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonish'd, that from the beginning (I know not by what desponding or fate), they hardly stirr'd to quench it, so as there was nothing heard or seene but crying out & lamentation, & running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them..."

Then the King takes charge:
 
"It pleased his Majestie to command me among the rest to looke after the quenching of fetter-lane end, to preserve (if possible) that part of Holborn, while the rest of the Gent: took their several posts, some at one part, some at another, for now they began to bestirr themselves, & not till now, who 'til now had stood as men interdict, with their hands a crosse, & began to consider that nothing was like to put a stop, but the blowing up of so many houses as might make a <wider> gap, than any had yet ben made by the ordinary method of pulling them down with Engines: This some stout Seamen propos'd early enought to have saved the whole Citty: but some tenacious and avaritious Men, Aldermen &c. would not permitt, because their houses must have ben <of> the first..."

___________________________________________

 * "The Road Past Mandalay" by John Masters (Michael Joseph, 1961), pp. 212-213
** "The diary of John Evelyn" ed. Guy de la Bédoyère (The Boydell Press, 1995), pp. 154-155


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Cameron to extend culling program

Pilot cadger-culling schemes are to be extended into a nationwide drive to eradicate bovine TB, the Prime Minister announced today.

"Cattle-like total brainlessness, or bovine TB, is a serious threat to the economy," said Mr Cameron. "There is now little doubt that the cadger is the main vector."

Living closely together in overcrowded, flea-ridden rooms, cadgers are rarely seen in daytime.

A typical cadger family, enjoying unearned comfort

Instead, these dim, workshy creatures venture out at night, snuffling round alcohol outlets and fast-food takeaways, infecting others with their example of effortless entitlement. 

"The touching British affection for cadgers is miguided," said the premier. "If anyone deserves effortless entitlement, surely it should be those who vote for us, or give us jobs in the financial sector when we've finished playing at politics. My plan to redevelop Labour-voting housing estates will deal with the problem at its source."

Some commenters contend that Mr Cameron is intent on showing his effectiveness as a leader. Other observers say he's NFU.


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Cameron's giant plan for unaffordable housing

The Prime Minister has electrified the country with his pledge this week to "build the paupers out of London."

Responding to a long-standing demand for unaffordable housing, Mr Cameron said, "It is time to clear out the riff-raff. They've cluttered up the place for far too long."

"There's just too much money to be made," he added. "We have to make our capital safe for foreigners, and make their capital safe as well."

"To those who worry about diluted standards in a building boom, let me say that safety is our first concern. There is no Council or Parliamentary seat safer for the Conservatives than one where the absentee owners can't vote Labour and the tenants won't. High-priced flats are a win for them and a win for us."

His parting remark, "Let's see how John Healey likes that" is taken to refer to the shadow housing minister's mooted plan for a programme of new social housing.

We contacted a number of property developers known to make political donations to the Tories, but they were unable to comment as they all fainted from greed on hearing the news.


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Drunken robots

The biped robots shown after the quadruped door opening device - they look drunk to me. How does one make a robot drunk though? One of the marvels of technology I suppose.

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Who is Shaun Connell? And the end of liberty

A friend reposts this picture on Facebook:

Plain common sense, isn't it?

Isn't it?

No. Unemployment is not a simple issue with simple answers. And there are systemic global issues of the kind the late Jimmy Goldsmith did his best to publicise at the time of the GATT talks in 1994.

The "Capitalism Institute" was set up by Shaun Connell, who describes himself on the Seeking Alpha investor website as "a 26-year-old retiree, enjoying some time to pursue passion projects after hustling with 18-20 hour workdays for years." He says a bit more about himself on his blog, "Stand Strong Finance."

One tries to find a little more on this paragon, e.g. on Vebidoo - snapshot here:

- but the first three links lead to "page not found" or similar.

Well, by his own account he worked hard for years (how many? Not as many as Jimmy Goldsmith, for sure) - though I wonder whether anyone actually works 20 hours in a day.

Fair play to him if it's true, though he's not the only person who works hard.

And he probably underestimates the degree to which good luck came his way. Or understates it - remember Josiah Bounderby in Dickens' "Hard Times"?

I have a theory that's been taking shape in my mind recently, about the historic end of Romanticism and popular democracy. It seems to me that we're headed backwards into the eighteenth century, a time when slave traders tried to claim insurance on heavily overloaded ships that sank and have the human cargo treated as goods for which compensation should be claimed. Indeed it surprised me - I am so naive - that English involvement in slavery ended not out of Christian compassion and conscience (though that was certainly the motivation of many activists including Wilberforce) - but because a Parliamentary deal was struck whereby the British State would buy out the plantation owners. The fortunes established by this deal continue to have beneficiaries to this day, including our present Prime Minister David Cameron.

The modern American right wing seems to include many who, dressed appropriately, would fit comfortably among the rhino-skinned plutocrats of 18th-century London clubland (why does Bilderberger Ken Clarke spring to mind?) And they look for propagandists like Connell, who argue for even softer tax and regulatory treatment of the super-rich and moralise at the ordinary people on whom they prey.

Liberty and a fair chance in life are not natural or inevitable. War and national insolvencies were what led to the French and American revolutions, otherwise Rousseau, Tom Paine, Robespierre and others would have been merely obscure footnotes in history.

We read much these days about inequality and how it will break the system. Nonsense. Injustice is eminently sustainable. As John Masters* commented from his 1941 visit to Iran:

"For centuries Persia has consisted of a small number of immensely rich and ruthless men and a large number on the edge of starvation. We were invaders, but the huge majority of the people only wished we would stay, and overturn the country's whole polity, so that they could breathe."

The great fortunes are being re-made; the aristocracy is re-forming (and co-opting such members of the currently-democratic political class and Fourth Estate as are willing to wear their livery); the gyre is turning again. The rough beasts are slouching towards Brussels and Washington for their rebirth.

___________________________

*The Road Past Mandalay, Michael Joseph, 1961

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Smoking gun: BBC news manipulation

How the BBC has taken it on itself to "make" the news

Please see "Pride's Purge" at https://tompride.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/bbc-producer-deletes-blog-where-he-admits-political-manipulation-before-pm-questions/ - found via Mike Harding on Facebook.

The original piece on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/82a00c77-c0cc-4e79-99ca-25e9c21d01a7 has been deleted.

The cached copy is here http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tCufUeYIpA4J:www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/82a00c77-c0cc-4e79-99ca-25e9c21d01a7+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk 

- and I reproduce the full piece below in case that, too, becomes an unpiece:

_________________________________________________________________________

Resignation! Making the news on the Daily Politics

Thursday 07 January 2016, 15:17

Andrew Alexander

is an output editor for the Daily and Sunday Politics series

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Wednesday’s edition of BBC Two's Daily Politics was notable for a shadow front bench minister announcing his resignation on live television. We asked the programme’s output editor Andrew Alexander what went on behind the scenes.

 

An error occurred [i.e. video no longer available]

Wednesday is always an important day for the Daily Politics because we carry Prime Minister's Questions live, which brings with it our biggest audience of the week and, we hope, a decent story.

As I arrived at Millbank at 7am it was clear that Jeremy Corbyn's cabinet reshuffle, which had ended before 1am, was going to dominate at Westminster.

When the programme editor phoned in we agreed that in addition to covering other major stories, including the junior doctors' strike, fallout from the reshuffle was likely to continue throughout the morning and this was a story where we could make an impact.

When the producers arrived at 8am they began putting out texts and calls to Labour MPs we thought were likely to react strongly to the sacking of several shadow ministers for "disloyalty".

Just before 9am we learned from Laura Kuenssberg, who comes on the programme every Wednesday ahead of PMQs, that she was speaking to one junior shadow minister who was considering resigning. I wonder, mused our presenter Andrew Neil, if they would consider doing it live on the show?

The question was put to Laura, who thought it was a great idea. Considering it a long shot we carried on the usual work of building the show, and continued speaking to Labour MPs who were confirming reports of a string of shadow ministers considering their positions.

Within the hour we heard that Laura had sealed the deal: the shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty would resign live in the studio.

Although he himself would probably acknowledge he isn't a household name, we knew his resignation just before PMQs would be a dramatic moment with big political impact. We took the presenters aside to brief them on the interview while our colleagues on the news desk arranged for a camera crew to film him and Laura arriving in the studio for the TV news packages.

There's always a bit of nervous energy in the studio and the gallery just before we go on air at 11.30am, but I'd say it was a notch higher than usual this week. By this point we weren’t worried about someone else getting the story as we had Stephen Doughty safely in our green room. Our only fear was that he might pull his punches when the moment came.

When it did, with about five minutes to go before PMQs, he was precise, measured and quietly devastating – telling Andrew that “I’ve just written to Jeremy Corbyn to resign from the front bench” and accusing Mr Corbyn’s team of “unpleasant operations” and telling “lies”.

As Andrew Neil handed from the studio to the Commons chamber we took a moment to watch the story ripple out across news outlets and social media. Within minutes we heard David Cameron refer to the resignation during his exchanges with Jeremy Corbyn.

During our regular debrief after coming off air at 1pm we agreed our job is always most enjoyable when a big story is breaking - but even more so when it’s breaking on the programme.
 

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Crisis? What crisis?

As Dave Barry said in 2002:

Q. But with the market down, isn't this a smart time to buy stocks?

A: Definitely. There has never been a better time!

Q. Which ones do you recommend?

A: I will sell you mine.


For a contrary opinion, please read James Altucher's latest: "Financial Fridays: The Stockmarket Is Bullshit."

In these paradoxical times, the opposite of the truth is also the truth. As Altucher often says, nobody knows anything. Including him, and he says that, too. Bullshit and chutzpah rule: he started a personal advice service when he was broke and friendless. Like many successful people, he has been - is - on a rollercoaster ride.

Problem, is, not everyone wants that.

Other problem is, we were fooled into expecting a steady alternative.

Out of the wreckage of the postwar world we climbed, and there were jobs and businesses aplenty. You could make money and save money. One client I had in the '90s explained: "I overcharged you, you overcharged me, we all did well. Now I undercut you and you undercut me."

Big business helped the developing world develop and made insane amounts of cash selling its products to Western lunkheads who had come to think the party was forever.

Then the party was extended by getting us into debt so we could carry on overspending. Then again, by getting the government to bail out the banks and to continue to issue bonds to support the unemployed, the underemployed and the low paid. Then the Left was happy to import poor people to teach us a cultural lesson, and the Right agreed because it helped businesses with their bottom line - continuing to externalise present and future costs of the operation to the State's account.

It'll go on, until it can't. Look up the Martingale system of betting. Meanwhile, enjoy the complimentary drinks.


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The loneliness of the battlefield

June 1941: newly-appointed Major-General Bill Slim addresses the officers of 10th Indian Infantry Division in Iraq. The audience, like all in HM Armed Forces connoisseurs of bullshit, half-expect to go away as usual with "the impression that their general was a pompous old blatherskite."

But having congratulated them on their success in skirmishes so far, Slim makes practical recommendations for further improvements in tactics and training, and goes on to prepare them mentally for the harder fighting to come:

""... in the end every important battle develops to a point where there is no real control by senior commanders. Each soldier feels himself to be alone. Discipline may have got him to the place where he is, and discipline may hold him there - for a time. Co-operation with other men in the same situation can help him to move forward. Self-preservation will make him defend himself to the death, if there is no other way. But what makes him go on, alone, determined to break the will of the enemy opposite him, is morale. Pride in himself as an independent thinking man, who knows why he's there, and what he's doing. Absolute confidence that the best has been done for him, and that his fate is now in his own hands. The dominant feeling of the battle is loneliness, gentlemen, and morale, only morale, individual morale as a foundation under training and discipline, will bring victory."

"I went back to our camp in a thoughtful mood. Slim's sort of battle wouldn't be much of a lark, after all.""

- from John Masters' autobiography, "The Road Past Mandalay."


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It's official: kittens more important than liberty or drugs

The 65-year-old piece about a young cat on the Matterhorn has displaced "Liberty and drugs" on the all-time most-read list (left sidebar).

In related news, our attention span has dwindled from 12 seconds to 8 - one less than goldfish - thanks to smartphones.

Naturally, the class of people who read will continue to direct our lives. As Pantsov and Levine reveal, the Chinese Communist "Long March" of 1934-35 was, in Mao's case. the "Long Carry", as he was borne for thousands of miles on a litter in which he continued to absorb knowledge from books, so that he could eventually model his long and brutal reign on the worst and most effective aspects of the old Emperors.

Let's leave it all to the higher-ups to manage, shall we?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a kitten.

- Old Possum's Book of Practical Distraction

Lol.


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What is it with slugs?

Yet again, last night, checking the kitchen before bed, my bare foot steps on something slimy. I have to evict the soggy-cigar thing with kitchen roll and wipe my foot repeatedly.

We now have a bunker-grade triple-glazed back door. How do they get in?

https://d861dk9kf78fl.cloudfront.net/CreatureComforts2_NewsThumb_Big.jpg

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The Yeomen Of The Guard

World War Two: the Household Cavalry prepares for combat...

At the general's final inspection before the division left England for war, he had asked one of the Yeomanry colonels whether everything was in order. The colonel replied, "Oh, I think so, George." The general gently pressed for details - ammunition? Vehicles? Non-coms' training? Gas-masks? The colonel scratched his head and said, "Dash it, I don't know about any of that, George... but we've got forty dozen of champagne, well crated, and the pack of foxhounds is in fine fettle."

- from John Masters' autobiography, "The Road Past Mandalay."


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New poll - exercise your democratic right!

See right sidebar - answers by Twelfth Night, please.

UPDATE:

The question was: "It's another rainy bloody day. Do you..."

Put the world to rights on Blogger?

Watch Rhod Gilbert on Youtube?

Get your burnt-out car headlamp replaced?

Go shopping?

 

The winner - on a tiny poll - was the last. Personally, I found Rhod Gilbert far and away the best use of my time.

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Could there one day be liberalisation in Islam as there was in Judaism?

Extract from the article on “The Muslim Enlightenment Movement of the early 2200s” from the International Enseculopedia (2416 edition)

“… The Almustaniri ("enlightened") main motivation and aim was the modernization of the Muslims, in accordance with the rationalistic and liberal ideals of the Western Enlightenment. Members of the movement sought to acquaint their people with European culture, have them adopt the vernacular language of their lands, and integrate them into larger society. They opposed Islamic reclusiveness and self-segregation, called upon to discard traditional dress in favour of the prevalent one, and preached patriotism and loyalty to the new centralized governments. They acted to weaken and limit the jurisdiction of traditional community institutions - the Sharia courts, empowered to rule on numerous civic matters, and the Council of Elders, which served as lay leadership. The Almustaniri perceived those as remnants of medieval discrimination. They criticised various traits of Muslim society, such as child marriage - traumatized memories from unions entered at the age of thirteen or fourteen are a common theme in Almustaniri literature - the use of anathema (laenatan) to enforce community will and the concentration on virtually only religious studies.

“As long as the Muslims lived in segregated communities, and as long as all social intercourse with their non-Muslim neighbours was limited, the imam was the most influential member of the Muslim community. In addition to being a religious scholar and "clergy", an imam also acted as a civil judge in all cases in which both parties were Muslims. Imams sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. To become an imam was the highest aim of many Muslim boys, and the study of the Quran was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Almustaniri followers advocated "coming out of ghetto," not just physically but also mentally and spiritually in order to assimilate among non-Muslim nations…”

Couldn't happen? The above paragraphs are only very slightly adapted from this article on the 18th Century Jewish Enlightenment or "Haskalah".

But surely the Wahhabite version of Islam currently tearing up the Middle East is too ferocious to ever permit liberalisation?

So was Judaism at one point. Have a look at the Bible, for example the Book of Numbers, Chapter 25. Here's a snippet:

"6 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

"7 And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

"8 And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly."

That (and other things) brought me up short when I was trying to read my way through the Bible as a child.

Things will change, over time, once the worst have been dealt with. One hopes. In any case, the headbangers do not represent the majority, even now.


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Superseded by machinery

source

He was one of that large class of purely mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science, be superseded by machinery.

Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife (1870)

The other day I received an email from our electricity and gas supplier asking me to submit a new meter reading. Of course the email was composed and sent by a computer. I duly read the meters, entered my readings online and the machine calculated our latest statement. Mine was probably the only human role and a subservient one at that. One day smart meters will get rid of my job too.

Early in the New Year I’ll receive another email from another machine reminding me that our credit card payment is due. I’ll pay our credit card bill via the online machine and another machine which is our bank. Nobody else involved here either.

Later I’ll probably visit Tesco and pay for some groceries using that same credit card. When I reach the checkout a Tesco machine will validate my credit card and issue a receipt allowing me to take the goods. If I buy a bottle of wine a machine will tell the Tesco checkout operator to confirm that I’m old enough. One day it will already know.

At some point I may take the car to the unmanned fuel station at Asda to buy some diesel from yet another machine. Some machines have permanent human minders, but that may change. Supermarkets alone give us some pretty strong clues about our future – machine minders.

Picture a solicitor behind a desk a few years into the future. On the desk is a computer and this is where the solicitor’s professional expertise really is. The solicitor consults the machine but it is the machine which really sorts out the legal work. The solicitor is merely its trained minder, its human face.

How about teaching, job interviews, accountancy, driving a car, lorry, taxi, bus or train? How about delivery drivers, journalism, supervision and even management? How about politics? In many ways David Cameron is a machine minder. He looks after that little cog in the global machine, the cog we used to call the United Kingdom.

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WWII: the war in the airwaves

(Pic source)

We watched "Ice Cold In Alex" yet again, a few days ago. A classic, and a dream for lager marketing men (Dad used to recall the instant headache he'd get stepping out into Egyptian sunlight after a few pints of Stella.)

But the war took many other forms.

70-odd years on, we're familiar with WW2 war room scenes of girls plotting plane movements and communicating with pilots in-flight. What's less well known is that elsewhere in Britain, some were speaking to enemy airmen...

"Starting in 1943, Aspidistra was used to disrupt German nightfighter operations against Allied bombers over Germany. German radar stations broadcast the movements of the bomber streams en route to targets during RAF Bomber Command's Battle of Berlin. As part of their strategies to misdirect the German fighters, German-speaking RAF operators impersonated these German ground control operators, sending fake instructions to the nightfighters. They directed the nightfighters to land or to move to the wrong sectors."

Here is a Youtube recording of a 1973 radio programme about the deception work of Sefton Delmer, who set up a number of radio stations broadcasting "psyops" man-in-the-middle transmissions, ostensibly by Germans, to the German military and public:




Besides Delmer's own revelations in the second volume of his autobiography, called "Black Boomerang," there are accounts by R V Jones and David Garnett.

As the drama-doc above says, Delmer had hoped to fake the Germans into a premature ceasefire in 1945 but was told that it would not be good if the latter could claim afterwards that they had been defeated by a trick. (There is some merit in the objection, since WWI diehards had claimed that Germany was defeated not militarily but because of domestic treachery. No need to set up another propaganda hostage to fortune.)

But ironically, Delmer's apparently unfinished early '70s memoir "Tail of a Tale" begins with his own sense of betrayal - by our US allies as the British Empire was undermined and dismantled:

"I would have laughed at anyone who told me in that hour of triumph that our governments, Socialist and Conservative, would be competing over the next twenty years as to which of them could do most to liquidate the Empire and betray the trust of the colonial peoples that looked to us for sound administration untrammelled by nepotism, tribalism or corruption. Or that on the one and only occasion when a British statesman stood up to defend a lifeline of the Empire, the United States government with a dumbfounding blindness to its own long term interests and disregard for the international rule of law would join the Soviet Union in supporting the aggression of the Egyptian Hitler, Gamal Abdel Nasser. (Not that this deterred the Americans from reproaching us with a lack of loyalty and vigour in supporting them in the areas east of Suez - our line of communication with which they so rashly helped to sever - when they themselves in their turn became embroiled in Vietnam and the Middle East with the same forces they had supported against us in their post-war anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist fervour)."

(Above-quoted extract found here.)

Funny how "right-wing" and "left-wing" don't seem adequate to cover the full spectrum of political opinion. We're not what we were, but nor, as Delmer says, are yesterday's anti-imperialists.

Today, when Saudi Arabia is funding terrorism while ostensibly opposing it, Turkey smuggling oil from IS while sheltering Syrian refugees, and Russia and now China stepping in to help Syria's government against what is under international law an illegal attempt by Western powers to overthrow it, the fog of disinformation is rising again.

I guess that's what Delmer meant by the boomerang.


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College education and the 1944 GI Bill

One of the first things I learned from reading Donleavy's "The Ginger Man" was that WW2 veterans were entitled (among other benefits) to a free college education and living expenses.

What a far-sighted investment that was! Wikipedia comments:

Historians and economists judge the G.I. Bill a major political and economic success—especially in contrast to the treatments of World War I veterans—and a major contribution to America's stock of human capital that sped long-term economic growth.

Even now, there are European countries where university education is free.

But it seems that in the USA and UK it's just another way for the financial system to load people up with debt - at an age when they should be starting to buy a house and form a family.

What went wrong?


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Drinking

I'm reading J P Donleavy's first - notorious - book, "The Ginger Man". I was intrigued years ago by his sparky titles ("The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B" etc) but never got around to opening one until now.

The back cover quotes Dorothy Parker: "... brilliant.. the picaresque novel to stop them all, lusty, violent, wildly funny." That should be a warning bell: DP would look back on her own disorderly days with rue, calling herself a "smartcracker".

The book, set in Dublin in the late 1940s, is not so much funny as horrifying. The protagonist is a raging sociopath called Sebastian Dangerfield, modelled on one Gainor Crist according to Ken O Donoghue (who himself is in part the model for Dangerfield's pal Kenneth O Keefe). Dangerfield chisels evryone for money, women are groomed and exploited with satanic skill and discarded ruthlessly, and forever there is drink.

O Donoghue, who also knew Brendan Behan, reflects:

I, at that time, still liked the pubs. So I would frequent them. But to avoid the poisonous drinking I would slowly consume a sandwich. If asked what I was having I'd always say, "A sandwich, please." Most wouldn't buy me one but now and then the odd one would. I never bought drinks in return for anyone. I would offer to return the compliment by offering the buyer a sandwich in return. But, as you may know in OZ, drinkers, especially those who are Irish or of Irish descent, care nothing for food while they are drinking. They then progress to the stage where they practically never eat, then into the box for good.

Today, like an old Puritan, I think Irish pubs are the most gloomy, uncomfortable, smoky, highly unpleasant places ever invented for the entertainment of man. Murderers of Irishmen I think of them now.

It was living on the continent that taught me drinking and eating go together. The Irish never drink while eating, except milk, or tea and sometimes even water. Drinking is something else; not to be contaminated by food. They go into the pub. Throw it back like crazy; go out with the poisonous alcohol in their blood eating away at their brain tissue, slowing down their reflexes, get into packed cars, career down the roads with the hope of killing themselves which many do. Or outside the pub get into a fight over some alcohol inflamed set of ideas. I've done it all and now wonder why I did.

Gainor Crist is dead, Paddy Kavanaugh, is dead. Brendan Behan is dead. Myles na gCopaleen is dead. John Ryan is dead. There are others. They committed suicide using the Irish pub as an instrument.

To me Donleavy's writing has echoes of James Joyce, but the spirit is reminiscent of Henry Miller: darkness, desperate dissolution.

Here in Britain the radio is advertising deals on canned cider with the sound of the ringpull pop and into the glass gurgle. The TV tells us where you can get litres of vodka for £15. And in Dublin, you can book a literary pub tour to follow in Flann O'Brien's footsteps.

Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies" refers to "the real aristocracy... the two or three great brewing families which rule London" (to tickle his friends Bryan and Diana Guinness); a Guinness descendant was 15th in the 2014 Irish rich list, thanks largely to a stake in the parent company Diageo.

Without drink, what would we do to celebrate? Is British culture that nihilistic?


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Walls

All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they themselves have built, and most: men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is impersonal, useful, and beautiful.

Word of his activities is carried over the walls. His name is shouted and is carried by the wind into the tiny inclosure in which other men live and in which they are for the most part absorbed in doing some petty task for the furtherance of their own comfort. Men and women stop their complaining about the unfairness and inequality of life and wonder about the man whose name they have heard.

Sherwood Anderson – Poor White (1920)

This was one of Anderson’s themes, our inability to scale the walls of misunderstanding we ourselves have built. He saw it as an ineradicable feature of human nature when faced with the flux of interests and social convention in which we find ourselves so firmly enmeshed. Powerful interests know it well and build more walls by fostering even more misunderstanding.

One might have supposed that Anderson’s view would become dated, that the walls would be at least partly demolished by modern communication, but it doesn’t appear to be so. If anything the situation is worse now that it was almost a century ago because we have more powerful forces intent on building walls designed to suit their interests.

As always the most pernicious walls are those between elite classes and everyone else. David Cameron builds such walls, building them with care from obfuscation, misdirection and endless petty dishonesties.

Rats and mazes come to mind, but who is the master builder?

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Energy and liberty

An excellent long-range thinkpiece by Nick at Capitalistsatwork, looking at the energy landscape in the wake of the closure of the UK's last deep coal mine.

I comment:

Bang on. It's very worrying. England's population was only 7.1 million in the early 18th C; for GDP-expanding reasons, we seem to have a policy of suicidal population overshoot. If ever the wonderful world-wide goods trading system hiccups we're sunk into the most terrible chaos - WW2 ended just in time for us, as our soil was getting exhausted ("losing heart" was the phrase used, I understand) - and that was with a population considerably smaller than now, and much more growing land.

And I've been thinking recently that our quasi-democracy and civil rights are luxury by-products of the new energy sources and technological development and empire-building of the Industrial Revolution, else we might easily have gone the way of the French Terror. Funny how we suddenly stopped burning women at the stake in 1789.

We've had Illich's "energy slaves" for two or three centuries and that's going to change. US/Mexican billlonaire Hugo Salinas Price reckons we'll see the return of domestic service. And maybe the servants will lose the franchise.

Follow-up: Google "Olduvai Theory."


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Elite scientists

Sackerson sent this interesting link about elite scientists and their tendency to retard the evolution of new ideas until they peg out.

Max Planck — the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who pioneered quantum theory — once said the following about scientific progress:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light,     but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Shorter: Science is not immune to interpersonal bullshit. Scientists can be stubborn. They can use their gravitas to steamroll new ideas. Which means those new ideas often only prevail when older scientists die.

The piece goes on to demonstrate the validity of this claim via patterns in published work. It comes as no surprise of course. Scientists are human; they have families to support, mortgages to pay, status to earn and maintain.

To explain what is going on here we could adapt an idea from Wittgenstein – the distinction between symptoms and criteria. Acolytes may present the opinion of Celebrity Scientist as a criterion of valid science. Celebrity Scientist says X, therefore X must be scientifically valid. Celebrity Scientist has become a criterion of sound scientific opinion.

In reality Celebrity Scientist's opinion may not be a criterion of sound science at all. It may have been once upon a time, but perhaps other possibilities are emerging within Celebrity Scientist's field. Celebrity Scientist's opinion may have become a symptom of hierarchy, personal vanity and the inability to accept new thinking.

Confusing symptoms with criteria is very common. For example, is an Ofsted report a criterion of educational excellence or a symptom of educational malaise? Both perhaps. Symptoms and criteria are often mingled.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is another example. Widely known to be a misleading metric, GDP could be seen as a symptom of political mendacity rather than a criterion of economic health.

GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided.

UK general elections seem to have have become a symptom of democratic decline rather than a criterion of healthy democratic government. Which is why useful reform is unlikely.

One could go on and on because elites often confuse symptoms with criteria. Even elite scientists may find it useful once perched atop the greasy pole.

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"EU renegotiations: Pathway for deal found - Cameron"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35128648

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