I learn the interesting news that David Aaronovitch tweeted to Joan Smith and Jenny Jones that I am:
“an angry and dangerous man who could as easily be on the far right as the far left”.
I had no idea I was on the far left, though I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and from where Mr Aaronovitch stands I, and a great many others, look awfully far away to the left. I don’t believe you should bomb people for their own good, I don’t believe the people of Palestine should be crushed, I don’t believe the profit motive should dominate the NHS, I think utilities and railways were better in public ownership, I think education should be free. I guess that makes me Joseph Stalin.
But actually I am very flattered. Apparently I am not just angry – since the invasion of Iraq and the banker bailouts everybody should be angry – but “dangerous”. If I can be a danger to the interests represented by a Rupert Murdoch employee like Aaronovitch, I must have done something right in my life. I fear he sadly overrates me; but it does make me feel a little bit warmer, and hold my head that little bit higher.
The 200 max comments limit seems to be slicing off earlier comments, which makes the Comments section look slightly odd, since it looks as though the first comments have little to do with the past and they arise as though from the middel of a conversation – but of course they were made several hundred comments in! Are the earlier comments simply deleted? Or hidden? Or am I missing something really simple and obvious?
Although they could be slow to open on certain machines, the gargantuan threads exhibited a certain resilience and had the aura of a late-night conversation, with fag-ends and cold coffee. The sound of a distant piano…
Now, it’ll be as though we are playing a pianoforte, the scroll rotates and then it’s gone.
When Craig’s busy and not posting, so that threads lengthen, it might be a slight issue.
Ah – what an eejit I am! I see the 1,2,3,4…
Ignore my previous comment!
eejit (smiley icon)
mind you, made same mistake myself – ah, the mirror
Nuid, thanks. In all of this I detect a hideous dehumanising.
@Cheebacow, I just rubbed the WordPress lamp, and another feature popped out!
It’ll be useful for Suhayl too 😉
Hello All, I finally re-emerged from the Rabbit Hole this evening, but I’m still in the area. I took Craig to the station on Tuesday; he was off to do research for his book.
Sorry if I’ve not replied to any e-mails. Jon, I see that you’ve been improving the blog, a Twitter field and paged comments; excellent. Best wishes to everyone. I’ll probably be off-line for a few more days.
I thought the festival was wonderful. I’ve really enjoyed myself.
It’s a spoof, is it? I woke up at 3am thinking “It’s an odd title: ‘Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East’.”
I’m glad you enjoyed the break, Clark.
Thamks jon.
I hope to write better, this is something im trying to grasp.
Too many neuroleptics in my youth.
Best advice from a scnrink.
“go back to work”
The world is one crazy place.
Welcome back Clark. You were missed.
A good one here from Glenn Greenwald. He’s on a roll.
Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA
Mark Mazzetti’s emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia
~~~~
When discussing the appearance of an emotional Condoleeza Rice at the Republian convention, Naughtie referred to ‘Bush era compassionate conservatism’ on Radio 4 this morning. Absolutely no irony in the context of the presence of this female war criminal on the stage working the crowd with false emotion.
Then followed a report on the new book written by a member of the Navy Seals who supposedly killed OBL. A cold blooded shot to the head from this author finished him off apparently. The book will presumably be found in the bookshop’s fiction section.
‘Written anonymously and published under the name Mark Owen, ‘No Easy Day: The Autobiography of a Navy Seal’ contradicts many other accounts of the raid which said bin Laden had a weapon and was resisting arrest when soldiers entered the room.’
The Independent
Nuid, enjoying; I’m still 400 miles from home! It’s a beautiful morning here in the Carron Valley. I’m testing out Ubuntu which I installed yesterday for the proprietor of the Carronbridge Hotel (locally “The Brig”); he sees through the propaganda and he asked Craig a lot of questions; stay at his hotel; I guarantee you a lively chat in the bar! He deserves a link for looking after lots of the Rabbit Hole team; please don’t delete it as spam, Jon!:
http://carronbridge-hotel.co.uk/index.html
Hello Technicolour, Suhayl, CheebaCow; sorry I got mad.
Hello Mary! I’m going off-line again now. Time for breakfast…
Clark You are just like the French shepherd who planted acorns except you go around planting Ubuntu!
http://evs.astate.edu/Green/Man%20Who%20Planted%20Trees.pdf
“Nuid, enjoying; I’m still 400 miles from home!”
That’s even better then!
Nuid,
The idea of a post-Israel Middle East cheered me enormously. However, I have to wonder how Franklin Lamb managed to get the information, and why his article appears where it does. No disrespect to Dr. Lamb, but questions have been asked about him before:
http://sietske-in-beiroet.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/who-is-franklin-lamb.html
…and the assertion that the report was written by “the intelligence community” is a bit general, given that if the various kingdoms in the US intelligence community ever intentionally co-operated on anything, bacon wings would be the ‘in’ delicacy.
So, sorry, suspending my delight.
Yes, Komodo, I googled him, and he turns up as an activist and writer in a variety of places, including PressTV (not that that makes him suspicious, necessarily.)
“the assertion that the report was written by “the intelligence community” is a bit general”
If I said that, I was wrong. It says “commissioned by” (16 intelligence agencies). But still …
and the link you provided is interesting.
It amuses me how our brains are active while we sleep. As I said, I woke at 3am thinking “There’s something odd about that”.
Yeah, didn’t want to be over-critical, but he does seem to be very close to Hizb’ullah, and this is a propaganda war.
Mary, people deserve better than Windoze. Tim, the propreitor here, was quoted £150 by a shop, just to install M$ Windows! Community software, community festivals, communities on blogs exploring current events; if we want anything done well, we’d better do it ourselves; the corporate world cares only for money.
@Mary
Welcome back Clark. You were missed.
A good one here from Glenn Greenwald. He’s on a roll.
Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA
Mark Mazzetti’s emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia……”
I’ve just posted on the comments section congratulating him on an impressive article. I have also taken the opportunitiy to invite him to investigate the level of collusion between the Guardian and the authorites with regards to the propogandist coverage of the Assange case.
It’ll be interesting to see if the pre-mods let it through. I doubt it.
Nuid: ‘It amuses me how our brains are active while we sleep. As I said, I woke at 3am thinking “There’s something odd about that”.’
The Radical Atheists will probably ridicule me for suggesting so, but I think our consciousness might disconnect from reality when we sleep so that it can let wave functions expand and propagate for a bit, instead of the brain continually collapsing its own quantum states by self-observation, or something like that.
@Clark
I’ve been on Ubuntu now for about 4 months. The last month of which has been on the latest Ubuntu 12.04. I use the Classic Gnome interface, though, because the 12.04 Unity interface is horrible.
Overall, I’m very happy with Ubuntu, Though, the peripherals can be a bit of a bugger to get going.
And this indicates the state of play in the US, regardless of any subterranean intelligence products:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/house-stealth.html
In which the appalling Illena Ros-Lehtinen figures prominently. Interesting that Ron Paul spots the obvious, that this is in terms of foreign policy, a complete train crash. No-one else does…
“@Clark
…..The Radical Atheists will probably ridicule me for suggesting so, but I think our consciousness might disconnect from reality when we sleep so that it can let wave functions….bah blah….or something like that.”
You’re probably right…:)
I’ve been on Ubuntu (not on this box though) for three years, after trying out Mandriva, Red Hat etc….though the last couple of releases are creeping towards bloatware, and I’m on the Meerkat one. I keep an old box with W2000 for esoteric peripherals.
As a Radical Atheist, I can assure you that when you are asleep, DefragmentDrive.dll is automatically run. On reboot, the bits of files are all in the right place….on Linux the programme is of course open source – /user/bin/zedz will find it.
@Steve Cook
Just an update.
Didn’t get through. Surprise surprise…
Correction – on Linux, of course, defragmentation is not needed!
Unity looks a lot like the iPhone GUI. It is a little more demanding than Gnome, but much less so than Windoze Vista, and it runs fine on modern laptops. I’ve put Gnome on this Dell so that users have the choice. I’m running a Unity Guest Session now; Ubuntu 12.04, less than 310 MByte of RAM in use, dual processors ticking over at arount 10% each, hard disk quiet. Windows is only less demanding than that when it’s off! OK, Ubuntu isn’t as lean as most distributions, but bloatware it certainly isn’t. I think you’ve been getting a bit pampered in the last three years, Komodo.
“@Komodo
Correction – on Linux, of course, defragmentation is not needed!…”
I’m definitely a convert. I’ve persuaded at least one other person to try it.
The only thing that can put people off is the hassle to get some peripherals working. For a nerd like me it’s not a problem. But, for others it could be a deal killer.
Komodo, yes, we “defrag” during sleep, i.e. we take the broader view, relate one thing to another, take a break from chopping the world up into little arbitrary pieces. And I think the quantum description would be of less ‘measurement’, and a diversification of the possibilities of mental process… They’ll work all this out one day. I bet conscious machines will need to sleep, and can’t exactly be programmed.