William Hague 2

I was ignorant when I wrote of the Hague virus yesterday. During the evening I caught up on reading Tuesday's newspaper and went through Wednesday's.
The Palestinians are not allowed pre-conditions by Messrs Hague and Clinton set theirs. They have to undertake not to pursue Israel for war crimes.
I recall an Israel supporter telling me that Israelis ( he said "Jews") cannot commit war crimes. When I asked why he said that they just can't.
Well, there is a case to answer and apparently the freedom loving Conservative Party thinks it legimitate to try to organise things so that Palestine cannot bring that case against its occupiers

William Hague sets a pre-condition for UK government support (he terms it "UK support" but he does not represent me) for the Palestinian request for upgraded status at the UN. The pre-condition is, inter alia, that they may not have any preconditions. He says this is because he supports them but does not want to risk the peace process.

The hypocritical smear of runny shit.

What peace process? Permanently Occupied Palestine, aka Israel, makes plenty of preconditions

Cougar Elinux

I just had a message to a colleague bounce.

He'd said he was having trouble.

But this email from Mailer-Daemon@cougar.elinuxservers.com says that he has exceeded his mailbox quota. That could explain a few things.

I noticed though that it also says “Spam detection software, running on the system "cougar.elinuxservers.com", has  identified this incoming email as possible spam.” and this would seem to be a message that was in the process of being sent to my colleague when the bounce cut in.

I went to their website and found that the sender is listed as “low trust”. Whether that applies to my mail provider or to me is unclear; they are writing in jargon to people who do not know their usage so they earn a few ignorance points there.

I went to their website and found that “low trust” in their private language is the default for most systems.

So someone is being paid to monitor mail for spam and their method is to say that any particular message is probably spam because most email is.

There was nothing in the message to suspect spam. They quoted it and drew attention to nothing. It was all based on origin, which a machine looks up in a list, a list written by a machine devised by a dog turd in a suit.

I think the people taking the profit have earned the right to wear the I am a frequent wanker t-shirt

Well done Cougar Elinux

BBC Bias

Newsday BBC World Service early today included an interview with a young Palestinian blogger in Gaza. She was telling them what it is like to live in Gaza. They interrupted her and asked: Yes, but what is it like? She said: I am telling you. And continued.

They interrupted her and asked if she supported Hamas.

She said it isn't that simple and continued.

They interrupted her and said: No, say yes or no.

She said it isnt that simple and continued.

They interrupted her and said: I can't understand you. Answer yes or no.

She continued.

They interrupted her and said: I am sorry we have run out of time.

The diction and phrasing of what she said were for sure familiar; but she wasn't programmed. She knew what she was saying and clearly understood what they were doing.

She was no more programmed than the official Israeli spokespersons who are left to practice their reasonable men accents on us at length.

This is how the Nazis did it, I believe.

One of the spokespersons said: Israelis just want to live normal lives

Like the settlers in America who are portrayed as muttering “murdering redskins” when their repro Euro lives were disrupted by dispossessed Americans.

In fact some of those films might be a rehearsal for the fib of a 2 state solution.

One of the Israeli Reasonable Men yesterday always referred to his people as Israelis, which is appropriate because they could give Jewish people a bad name. But whenever he spoke about Israelis being hurt, he referred to them as Jewish.

And so it continues. Maybe Jim'll fix it.

There doesn't appear to be any complaint system clearly displayed.

Gas and stupidity

It has been suggested that traders have been manipulating the price of gas; and the government says that it is worried. Didn't they know?
I knew that from nothing and I know nothing about it.
We are being ripped off.
I assumed the government knew. If they really did not then they have no business being the government.
I am put in mind of a quote I learned a few minutes ago, attributed to J S Mill: Conservatives are not necessarily stupid; but stupid people tend to be conservatives.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall go bang

I was quite deeply in blanking thought today, sitting in silence with others, and no one had spoken for 30 minutes; I was as good as nowhere and hardly aware and aware

and then a crash
and I was somewhere
full of questions and nonsense

an explosion

I thought it was a big firework
and began to reconsider my fellow bipeds as buffoons

and then I realised it must be some kind of remembrance day thing

two minutes later the same thing again
i hadnt even regained my composure

how odd it is that the death of so many people for no defensible reason should be marked by the firing of a big gun

Odd value sets

Things are the wrong way up.

Lawed McAlpine will have the world know that he is not a paedophile; and Mr Messham would seem to corroborate this by saying that he, Messham, made a mistake.

But McAlpine does not deny that he has been the Treasurer of The Conservative Party.In the light of that it strikes me as odd that he should express any concern about his reputation.

In USA Mr Petraeus resigns because it has been discovered that he's had a sexual relations with someone other than his wife. Sounds highly correct of him.

But he has resigned as Head of CIA. He doesn't apologise for that.

The United States Election

It would have been quite interesting to have a Mormon running much of the world. Mormons are lovely people. They are white and roundish, with large snouts. They are carefree and adventurous and live in their house in Mormon Valley.

Mormon Pappa is father of the family, but boyish and adventurous. He likes to be present when something unusual happens. He is philosophical at times and likes writing his memoirs.

Mormon Mamma is the calm and efficient mother, who takes care that Mormon House is a safe place to be. She wants everyone to be happy, appreciates individuality, but settles things when someone is wronged. She always brings good food as well as whatever else may be necessary on a journey in her handbag.

But they have elected Bollocks O'Blimey instead. Probably won't make any difference.

Urgent correction

I am so sorry. I have mixed up Moomin and Mormons. The Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith. The Moomins and the Great Flood was written by Tove Jansson and was meant to be funny. But Bollocks O'Blimey is still president of everything, even Mormonpappa says so.

Terminating Nadine Dorries

I am pleased that Nadine Dorries has agreed to join my campaign for post-natal termination. She is even taking time off work to be filmed. She will be sucked from the womb of the House of Commons by the promise of  money and publicity and deposited in a bucket of a place, all on film.

She has already described herself as a conduit. She's using most of the right words; but, unfortunately, not in the right order. Much of what she said recently isn't quite what I wanted. I regard the poor thing as frightfully muddled.

I do hope that when people see her, no more, they will understand my reasons forwanting to put unwanted human beings out of our misery.

Tombstone

I have heard bits of the reading on Radio 4 of “Tombstone” by Yang Jishen. This morning's broadcast spoke of the imposition of communal kitchens and then their closure.

Household kitchens were abolished. Vegetable gardens too. Even kitchen tools removed.

36 million people starved.

Any historical account is subject to later revision and Yang is a journalist rather than an hisorian.

But he seems to be of some substance, working for Xinhua in Beijing for decades and latterly a Fellow of Hong Kong University. He was until recently still in Beijing; but his book is banned there.

One had heard much of this aspect of the Great Leap Forward already.My assumption is that, from my point of view, one who is not going to use the time to study the period of the Chinese Famine – this hearing may be all I give to it – the account is substantially true.

As I heard it, I was imagining all the people who will latch on to it and say there you are – “Communism” or “Authoritarianism” or even “Chinese” followed by “what do you expect?”

But what I heard was a rather extreme example of something that is all too common. I have likened it to playing chess when you only know the rules of draughts. Actually, that may be too kind. It may be playing chess when you only know the rules to scrabble.

In practice the thinking which leads to all sorts of cock ups assumes that everything is more or less as good as it can get; but maybe a few things can be improved if we go about it slowly and someone else takes responsibility. (The analysis is that of fools.) Yet the only proof that is accepted is catastrophic failure. The infection of our ash trees is an example. Instead of saying “This is dangerous to our trees” the government (and the previous government) has said “Perhaps it will be all right”. (As I say, fools.)

A couple of examples that occur to me almost arbitrarily. First Great Western have an arbitrary policy of not selling tickets more than 12 weeks before departure. Ask them why and they give all sorts of reasons without managing to make it sound less than improvised. There may be changes to the schedule, they say. Well, yes, there are all sorts of changes now. Yes, they say, but after 12 weeks it would be worse. 

So, is 12 weeks optimal?

What do you mean?

Tell them that National Express will take bookings way ahead and they say “Well that's National Express” but never specify what the difference is. And so on.

They also stop a long time at Plymouth on the way to Penzance overnight. There is no reason. It used to be to tie in with the post office. Now it's because they have always done that. There would need to be changes to schedules and shifts, but nothing that could not be negotiated and organised. So the journey is much longer than it needs to be.

Where I live even a small change to the furniture of the street or the cabling or piping takes weeks because of the way they have taylorised the work force. Inquire into this and sooner or later someone will say something including the words “I suppose”. No one actually knows what the benefits are. They are deemed to be there.

It is a question of obedience. True obedience does not wait to be told, it sniffs out and second guesses what is to be obeyed and what others might like to be obeyed. Every religion and every political system, in so far as there is a difference, relies upon obedience.

Obedience then is a fundamental characteristic of the good citizen. The good citizen does not question too much. That is interpreted as not thinking too much.

So the apparatchik, whether they work for FGW or the Chinese Peoples' Republic, starts with an idea it is acceptable to hold and follows it like a sniffer dog to its logical extreme.

If you have ever been interviewed by a doctoral student you may have experienced this. Many of them start from assumptions that have a basis in some text somewhere but which anyone who knows the subject would find laughable. Challenge them and they will retaliate with their reference. In terms of the criteria for assessment under which they operate, that is fine; but in terms of good science it is not very reliable.

I have in the past summed it up: a dunghead has what they think is an idea and all their dunghead friends tell them it is a good idea.

This is the point at which a meme is to be distinguished from a me me.

In the case of China, Yang suggests that the family was seen as a source of “rightist” resistance and the family meal the centre of family life. Right then says the dunghead with power, we'll abolish family meals. Well, to do that, we must abolish cooking, and to do that we must abolish the family kitchen. This meant that the production of food increased greatly.

Yes, it has achieved the original (insane) response to “rightism” but it has consequences which are unintended. That they are unintended hardly exonerates anyone. Only a culpable fool does not consider the consequences of their actions.

In China, there were very few places you could buy food. There were fewer places producing food.

As things went wrong, instead of saying they were going wrong, they accused people of deviationist tendencies. They made it worse.

One of the earliest offices I worked in was completely revamped while I was there. One of my colleagues found it difficult to work at his new desk because it was right-handed and he was left-handed. They wouldn't let him have a left-handed desk because that wasn't in the plan. 

When it was said originally that the plan should be adhered to, no one intended that a left-handed man should work at a right-handed desk. They didn't even consider the possibility. 

In some cultures they might have given him therapy to make him right-handed I suppose. A past lover of mine told me she was hit with a ruler when she was a child because she used her left hand... She still writes with her left hand...

But the original ruling really meant: this is a good way to do things; do stick with it. Any sane person would have gone back to the base ideas of the plan; but what dungheads do, and dungheads predominate, is look for rules.

Instead of saying What do we want to achieve? Dungheads ask What problems must we solve?