[blogfocus saturday] those marines and other stories
1 The excellent Thersites is back and commenting on the hostage crisis:
The current situation of Iran’s capture of Royal Marines & naval ratings is a sad reflection on the state of our armed forces and the lack of respect — or fear — shown by the armed forces of other nations, made worse by the presence of women in the front-line. That naval boarding operations were being carried out without the necessary back-up, tactics and rules of engagement to prevent capture shows complacency and a serious lack of ability and planning. Prior planning prevents p*ss poor performance.
2 Cleanthes gives his take on Thersites’ post:
I disagree and in this I am supported by an interview (a link to which currently eludes me) that a senior army officer gave to the BBC. In it, he suggested that problems in the front arose not from the failing of women but from men. It is not that women are not valued, it is that they are too highly valued. Men in the front line have not adjusted and have not hardened their hearts to the fate of their female compatriots. We, as a society, have not done so either. this leaves us wide open to heart string tugging by our enemies. Worse still, we are too blinded by the heart string tugging to notice that we are being manipulated in an unscrupulous – and ultimately illegal – manner.
3 That leaves Flying Rodent to give his unique take on the matter:
Still, it’s good to see the British playing military operations by the book. Admittedly, the book in question seems to have been Bravo Two-Zero, but they’ve followed the plan to the letter…
Step One – Arrive at target. Step Two – Get lost.Step Three – Get captured. I suppose that we should probably look on the bright side – our troops are probably a hell of a lot safer in Tehran than in Basra. No doubt the Prime Minister has an audacious rescue plan in mind – after all, he’s talked a good game for the past few years. I bet he’s just lulling the mullahs into a false sense of security. Then Bam!
4 To round this topic up, Sisu, from across the pond, gives both an American and a woman’s perspective on the hostage crisis:
“I think we should do our best to humiliate them” says Fox News’s Geraldo, a human person we rarely quote with approval, but he’s right on about the latest pathetic Iranian attempt to intimidate the weak horses of the west. Unfortunately, Tony Blair is no Margaret Thatcher. Wobbliness could occur at any time. We’re no fan of mothers of very young children who go off to war. Presumably the family came to terms with her decision. Whatever her choice, there is no excuse for the Mullahs’ obscene use of her as a prop in their megalomaniacal fantasy.
5 Back in the UK, Mr. Eugenides takes a long hard look at Gordon and his colleague, the bespectacled one:
Gordon Brown’s poll numbers are looking fairly wretched at the moment, but the guy is, in his own way, a formidable operator. He’s built up a reputation for economic competence – however massively undeserved – and while the skills he’s so brilliantly deployed to maintain his hegemony over his Labour colleagues for a decade are rather different from those required to woo the voters (who are being to realise that he’s a thief; and are increasingly sick of his incessant ratcheting up of the tax burden), I think it’s crazy to write the One-Eyed Bandit off this soon.
Miliband? He’s a no-mark. A non-entity. He’s got all the personality of a day-old cheese toastie.
6 Whilst Prodicus gives his inimitable take on the former:
He’s robbing the poor to pay for the rich(er). But they seem to have spotted it, despite his fantastic ‘fill the stage with flags and flowers trick’ and his setting off fireworks just before he sat down. Seems no-one was distracted. Well, except the BBC, obviously. Although, to be fair to Evan Davies, he was rather snooty about it all. I am now putting a fiver on a snap election as soon as Brown moves next door. The stupid bastard thinks he has pulled it off. Well, I think he has, in a way. Off the table and on to the floor with a crash … tablecloth, china, glass, the lot.
7 Serious Corner, for a moment, while Bonnie Wren mentions the unmentionable word ‘cancer’:
Thank goodness we know people who have survived cancer, too, or who are fighting it successfully—like Sang is. To me these people are walking, talking miracles; the souls who have been through hell and back while all the rest of us had to worry about was whether or not the repairman showed up when he said he would.
This week Sang finally gave in and got a port for her chemo and was a little sore. I won’t go into detail about this procedure, but let’s just say it’s close to Roto-Rooter Meets Your Carotid Artery and damn! I immediately stopped griping about having to do our taxes.
8 Still in the Serious Corner, the Two Wolves, in a tightly written piece, look at the dilemma of the increasing complexity of agriculture and where it’s going:
Thus increasing the energy [output] of their society, agriculturalists can arbitrarily raise their level of complexity. This draws all individuals in that society, and all neighboring societies, into a catastrophic game of prisoner’s dilemma. Because complexity is subject to diminishing returns, the effort required to further increase complexity rises, while the value of such an investment drops. Competition, however, keeps driving the assemblage forward, even after further investment in complexity has long ceased to be an economic decision. If any party does decide to make that investment, however large it may be, then they will enjoy an edge over everyone else, forcing all parties to move to the next level of complexity to remain competitive (Globalization being a hyper-variant of this model). Thus, competition drives civilization headlong towards collapse.
9 Vox Day sees the connection with education levels and extraordinary book publishing decisions:
While I am second to no man in expressing serious doubt regarding the effectiveness and importance of a college education for most people, I rather suspect there may be a direct connection between the gentleman’s lack of an education and the way in which so many Tor books absolutely and utterly and completely suck from a literary perspective. As Spacebunny once muttered in exasperation while determinedly slogging her way through yet another execrable hardcover: “who on Earth keeps giving these people book contracts?” Answer: a guy without a high school diploma. Thus is great American literature born….
10 Jon Swift writes about the Presidential right to hire and fire or not:
I thought President Bush could fire anyone, but he was just extremely reluctant to do so even when someone screws up. But it turns out that there are a bunch of people in the government he can’t fire.“Unfortunately, we have Civil Service, which protects most federal employees from being fired,” Surber explains. “This makes it difficult to have the government serve the people.” I did a little research into this government cabal called Civil Service and it turns out that things were not always this way. Back in the early nineteenth century when everything was better in this country for everybody, except for blacks, women and apparently civil servants, everyone in the government served at the pleasure of the President and anyone could be fired at any time for any reason.
11 And Morag’s finally back posting, thank goodness and this evening she relates the vicissitudes of the travelling blogger. [By the way, does anyone know the technical term for using three fullstops [periods] to link passages?]:
Morag on the move … Sitting on a bus in Costa Rica staring out the window while eating the most delicious banana I have ever eaten (which for someone who grew up in Jamaica that is really saying a lot). I have given up trying to remember my access code to get into my blog and have decided to just take in what I am seeing and reporting upon my return … a brilliant idea. And it was, except for the time I stuck the battery pack for my microphone in the back of my undergarments then somehow managed to saunter across the stage with the back of my dress tucked up in my … well at least I now know that I was wrong all along and yes it IS possible for me to be embarrassed …
12 Finally, this evening, on a happy note, the Periodic Englishman is excited because cricket fans make better lovers. Yes they do – don’t argue. The PE introduces his proof:
Sport is weird. Men who take sport seriously are weirder still. Men who call other men weird for taking sport seriously, whilst all the while taking a particular sport seriously themselves, are perhaps the weirdest men of all. I take cricket seriously and say that other men who take other sports seriously are not only weird, but stupid. This makes me both stupid and hypocritical. And last, but by no means least, it irrefutably makes me weird as hell. I’ll live.
Hope to see you on Wednesday evening once again. As Cleanthes would sign off with: “Toodle pip!”
[country quiz] ten to tickle your talent
This country …1 … has the highest tea consumption per head in the world, a tourist attraction in the south is a stone high in a castle, the capital in the south translates as black pool and their arms seem paralysed when they dance.
2 … falls into tropical and non-tropical zones, is fertile in the south east and south west, with rainforest up the north east coast and across the top and they don’t much drink billy tea any more. They use a kettle and pot instead.
3 … likes to decorate the roofs of its houses in the capital in bright colours, has many sulphur springs, has a very old parliament, people usually work two jobs if they can get the work and they have just had a record catch of fish.
4 … has a mainly red and blue flag, was the only nation ever to form from a successful slave rebellion, lost its leader when he was supposedly kidnapped by the U.S., does not appear to have the tonton macoutes any more and many live in Florida.
5 … is not sovereign in itself, it was fought for by ‘two bald men over a comb’, is situated west of the Shag rocks, its first settlers came from St. Malo, was visited by the American sloop USS Lexington and the capital is twinned with Whitby.
6 … has 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, has a 4% Christian and 2% Islamic population, is hot on calligraphy, may have invented football around 1000 AD and even the elderly keep physically fit.
7 … called Aotearoa by much of the populace today, it was originally the name for the north island, the south being known as ‘the waters of jade’ in translation, it’s a keen sailing nation, its sporting colour is black and it has no written constitution.
8 … lost its nationhood in reality in 1603, one of its main rivers was linked to the Seine, its summer temperatures can reach 38 degrees but not often and it invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.
9 … had a long history of free will, had a famous mathematician and poet, was told by the Germans that the Kaiser had converted to Islam and was a centre for the manufacture of scientific instruments well into the 19th century.
10 … is bounded by the river plate in the south west, is larger than Surinam, its political parties are the Colorado and the National, the natives often drink yerba mate and it’s administratively divided into 19 ‘departments’.
[country quiz] ten to tickle your talent
This country …1 … has the highest tea consumption per head in the world, a tourist attraction in the south is a stone high in a castle, the capital in the south translates as black pool and their arms seem paralysed when they dance.
2 … falls into tropical and non-tropical zones, is fertile in the south east and south west, with rainforest up the north east coast and across the top and they don’t much drink billy tea any more. They use a kettle and pot instead.
3 … likes to decorate the roofs of its houses in the capital in bright colours, has many sulphur springs, has a very old parliament, people usually work two jobs if they can get the work and they have just had a record catch of fish.
4 … has a mainly red and blue flag, was the only nation ever to form from a successful slave rebellion, lost its leader when he was supposedly kidnapped by the U.S., does not appear to have the tonton macoutes any more and many live in Florida.
5 … is not sovereign in itself, it was fought for by ‘two bald men over a comb’, is situated west of the Shag rocks, its first settlers came from St. Malo, was visited by the American sloop USS Lexington and the capital is twinned with Whitby.
6 … has 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, has a 4% Christian and 2% Islamic population, is hot on calligraphy, may have invented football around 1000 AD and even the elderly keep physically fit.
7 … called Aotearoa by much of the populace today, it was originally the name for the north island, the south being known as ‘the waters of jade’ in translation, it’s a keen sailing nation, its sporting colour is black and it has no written constitution.
8 … lost its nationhood in reality in 1603, one of its main rivers was linked to the Seine, its summer temperatures can reach 38 degrees but not often and it invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.
9 … had a long history of free will, had a famous mathematician and poet, was told by the Germans that the Kaiser had converted to Islam and was a centre for the manufacture of scientific instruments well into the 19th century.
10 … is bounded by the river plate in the south west, is larger than Surinam, its political parties are the Colorado and the National, the natives often drink yerba mate and it’s administratively divided into 19 ‘departments’.
Answers here.[eu] next step in the backdoor agenda
‘Think tanks’ can present papers all they like but will they be adopted by the legislatures? In the case of Germany – yes.
The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said “The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace”.
Why? Why war? Against whom? Against America? Against the infidels in the Holy Land? Or against their own people?
Government circles have let it be known that the method of instituting the “Berlin Declaration” is “ of value in itself because we wish to use this method for progressing the second half of our presidency and the road map for the constitution, if member states can live with it and something useful comes out of it”.
The method referred to here is to ignore referenda results and bring in what you wanted anyway, without reference to either national assemblies or the European Parliament, to present it as a fair accompli.
The foundation funded by the German media group Bertelsmann is demanding further large steps. At the end of February it called together 45 high ranking participants from 21 countries to a “Strategy Group”.
The Bertelsmann Foundation publicised the event, claiming that “the hand-picked circle of participants (…) covered all the great geographical areas of today’s European Union, EU candidate states and the USA,” aimed at “the strategic reorientation” of the EU. (4)
According to the report, further development of the EU “is only possible on the basis of an altered treaty”. (5)
The EU constitution proposed in Berlin today is “simply the point of departure to enable the achievement of totally new goals”.
“Europe wishes to be acknowledged alongside the United States of America as the voice of the West,” it states in a “memorandum” upon which the debate was based.
“For this, considerably greater efforts are necessary on the world stage, from world trade through global environment up to civil and military crisis management”. (6)
Civil and military crisis management? What sort of crisis from the people themselves would necessitate ‘crisis management’? How would they facilitate this?
As the next step, the members of the “Strategy Group” took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army. The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own.
“In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army,” demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin’s tabloid press last week. (7)
This drives the EU debate far beyond the EU constitution and limits the elbow room of those previously opposed to it. The same goes for another suggestion by the Bertelsmann foundation which was laid before the “Strategy Group”.
According to this proposal, the internal hierarchy of the EU should be more strongly formalised than proposed in the constitution. Increased powers of political decision should be conferred on those states which have adopted the euro currency.
“The euro group should have a special role in designing the future of the EU”. (8)
So, if you’re not on the Euro, you’re not on the inner – formally.
To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe – war.
That word again. Why speak of war when we are in an era of unprecedented peace in terms of national conflict within Europe?
The Federal Chancellor announced, “We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace.” (9)
Why should we not take them for granted? Isn’t that what the EU is for – to ensure this?
Similar threats already enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against massive resistance in the mid Nineties.
Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that, “Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner”.
It never alters, does it? The Bruderheist then financed Hitler’s rise from street thug to Chancellor and now, in yet another manifestation, the Bertelsmann Foundation is at it again.
This paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany’s attack on Poland. (10)
Interesting, don’t you think? Of course, the main obstacle to their plans is France and Britain – France because she’d want to be the glorious leader of the Euromonolith [and she has more claim to this than the Axis] and Britain because she must be onboard to facilitate the process.
Unless, of course, Britain broke into little pieces. One way to ensure this would be to covertly assist Scotland to ‘devolve’, causing England to boot them out and they’d then take up the promises which were made by the EU.
Then England, the main difficulty, would be given an ultimatum on rejoining the EU. If she refused … well …
[eu] next step in the backdoor agenda
German think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation recently presented a draft paper to top politicians from twenty EU countries and the USA over the “strategic reorientation” of the EU in which it recommended, as a first step, that the national armed forces of all member states should be combined into a single EU army.
‘Think tanks’ can present papers all they like but will they be adopted by the legislatures? In the case of Germany – yes.
The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said “The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace”.
Why? Why war? Against whom? Against America? Against the infidels in the Holy Land? Or against their own people?
Government circles have let it be known that the method of instituting the “Berlin Declaration” is “ of value in itself because we wish to use this method for progressing the second half of our presidency and the road map for the constitution, if member states can live with it and something useful comes out of it”.
The method referred to here is to ignore referenda results and bring in what you wanted anyway, without reference to either national assemblies or the European Parliament, to present it as a fair accompli.
The foundation funded by the German media group Bertelsmann is demanding further large steps. At the end of February it called together 45 high ranking participants from 21 countries to a “Strategy Group”.
The Bertelsmann Foundation publicised the event, claiming that “the hand-picked circle of participants (…) covered all the great geographical areas of today’s European Union, EU candidate states and the USA,” aimed at “the strategic reorientation” of the EU. (4)
According to the report, further development of the EU “is only possible on the basis of an altered treaty”. (5)
The EU constitution proposed in Berlin today is “simply the point of departure to enable the achievement of totally new goals”.
“Europe wishes to be acknowledged alongside the United States of America as the voice of the West,” it states in a “memorandum” upon which the debate was based.
“For this, considerably greater efforts are necessary on the world stage, from world trade through global environment up to civil and military crisis management”. (6)
Civil and military crisis management? What sort of crisis from the people themselves would necessitate ‘crisis management’? How would they facilitate this?
As the next step, the members of the “Strategy Group” took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army. The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own.
“In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army,” demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin’s tabloid press last week. (7)
This drives the EU debate far beyond the EU constitution and limits the elbow room of those previously opposed to it. The same goes for another suggestion by the Bertelsmann foundation which was laid before the “Strategy Group”.
According to this proposal, the internal hierarchy of the EU should be more strongly formalised than proposed in the constitution. Increased powers of political decision should be conferred on those states which have adopted the euro currency.
“The euro group should have a special role in designing the future of the EU”. (8)
So, if you’re not on the Euro, you’re not on the inner – formally.
To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe – war.
That word again. Why speak of war when we are in an era of unprecedented peace in terms of national conflict within Europe?
The Federal Chancellor announced, “We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace.” (9)
Why should we not take them for granted? Isn’t that what the EU is for – to ensure this?
Similar threats already enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against massive resistance in the mid Nineties.
Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that, “Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner”.
It never alters, does it? The Bruderheist then financed Hitler’s rise from street thug to Chancellor and now, in yet another manifestation, the Bertelsmann Foundation is at it again.
This paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany’s attack on Poland. (10)
Interesting, don’t you think? Of course, the main obstacle to their plans is France and Britain – France because she’d want to be the glorious leader of the Euromonolith [and she has more claim to this than the Axis] and Britain because she must be onboard to facilitate the process.
Unless, of course, Britain broke into little pieces. One way to ensure this would be to covertly assist Scotland to ‘devolve’, causing England to boot them out and they’d then take up the promises which were made by the EU.
Then England, the main difficulty, would be given an ultimatum on rejoining the EU. If she refused … well …
[fresh fields] a thought for this sunny day
When the sun bursts out from behind the clouds and spring is in the air, WC Fields sums it up:
“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”[prostitution] does iceland have the answer
Prostitution has become legal in Iceland after a new provision in the Penal Code was accepted by parliament on March 17. It is both legal to solicit sex and to buy sexual services, but it is illegal for a third party to profit from prostitution. The government argues most people who solicit sex do so because they have no other choice or because they are forced into prostitution by others.
By making soliciting sex legal, the government believes individuals who have been forced into prostitution would rather come forward and lead police to those responsible. A new clause has been added to this paragraph making it illegal for a third party to organize sexual relations between others for money, even though he or she does not profit from it. With the new law provision it has also become illegal to advertise prostitution.
Maybe they’re onto something here. What do you think? Personally, from the male point of view, I can’t see the point of prostitution. Lots of good ladies around without running those risks.
[gerry adams] how can he live with himself
Gerry Adams, in Before the Dawn[1966], wrote:
“It might or might not be right to kill but sometimes it is necessary.”
In Brief
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Discerning Readers
