worldconcerns.blogspot.com/

Germany, Frau Merkel

2012-01-20T14:49:00.000-05:00

Please don't get me wrong...it's not that I dislike the Chancellor... Mrs. Merkel; or the fact that she is a woman...nothing like that whatsoever I assure you.

What bothers me is her obvious ignorance of historical facts and the total sucking up to the Americans.
And again...I am not anti American, hell....I'm German born with a green card in Florida but why is it wrong to disagree with the crimes committed by the US administration...like Truman, or Bush II or those associated with the rulers of the USA who clearly committed crimes against humanity.

I have lived in North America for over 50 years. I own a nice home in Florida.I enjoy the freedom of being able to speak out in Canada and or the USA. That should not mean that when the German Chancellor talks about the USA and uses vocabulary in referring to Americans as unsere Befreier, translate our liberators...that I have to buy this crap and agree with it.

The war with Germany was just about over back in 1945, the country, Germany more than 85% destroyed when Churchill decided on one more act of total revenge. Dresden. This beautiful city was filled with fleeing women and children, who were heading west from the Russian and Polish regions, there was no significant military value in or about Dresden, when it was decided to totally destroy this place and kill, burn to death somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 million innocent civilians and refugees.

You have to be an idiot to consider this stupid revenge act as anything describing liberation- it was nothing short of mass murder; please Frau Merkel...study the history. And while you're at it look at Nagasaki and Hiroshima..and the Truman revenge connection.Was it really necessary to kill 1/4 million people with the atomic bomb at a time the Japanese were ready to call it quits? And why the second bomb just a few days later. But that's another story, a tragedy in my view, nothing for the American administration under Truman to be proud of.

Computer stuff, like you need more of it?

2012-01-03T17:38:00.002-05:00

If you need to check for malware here are my recommendations - these will allow you to do
a thorough check and removal without ending up with a load of spyware programs running
resident which can cause as many issues as the malware and maybe harder to detect as the
cause.

No one program can be relied upon to detect and remove all malware. Added that often easy
to detect malware is often accompanied by a much harder to detect and remove payload. So
its better to be overly thorough now than to pay the high price later. Check with these to an
extreme overkill point and then run the cleanup only when you are very sure the system is clean.

These can be done in Safe Mode - repeatedly tap F8 as you boot however you should also run
them in regular Windows when you can.

Download malwarebytes and scan with it, run MRT, and add Prevx to be sure it is gone.
(If Rootkits run UnHackMe)

Download - SAVE - go to where you put it - Right Click on it - RUN AS ADMIN

Malwarebytes - free
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Run the Microsoft Malicious Removal Tool

Start - type in Search box -> MRT find at top of list - Right Click on it - RUN AS ADMIN.

You should be getting this tool and its updates via Windows Updates - if needed you can
download it here.

Download - SAVE - go to where you put it - Right Click on it - RUN AS ADMIN
(Then run MRT as above.)

Microsoft Malicious Removal Tool - 32 bit
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=AD724AE0-E72D-4F54-9AB3-75B8EB148356&displaylang=en

Microsoft Malicious Removal Tool - 64 bit
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=585D2BDE-367F-495E-94E7-6349F4EFFC74&displaylang=en

also install Prevx to be sure it is all gone.

Download - SAVE - go to where you put it - Right Click on it - RUN AS ADMIN

Prevx - Home - Free - small, fast, exceptional CLOUD protection, works with other
security programs. This is a scanner only, VERY EFFECTIVE, if it finds something come back
here or use Google to see how to remove.
http://www.prevx.com/ <-- information
http://info.prevx.com/downloadcsi.asp <-- download

PCmag - Prevx - Editor's Choice
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346862,00.asp

Try the trial version of Hitman Pro :

Hitman Pro is a second opinion scanner, designed to rescue your computer from malware
(viruses, trojans, rootkits, etc.) that have infected your computer despite all the security
measures you have taken (such as anti virus software, firewalls, etc.).
http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro

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If needed here are some online free scanners to help

http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

New Vista and Windows 7 version
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm

Original version
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

Other Free online scans
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=antivirus+free+online+scan&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1

--------------------------------------------------------

These are for Windows 7 however the same can be done in Vista and even XP.

After removing any malware :

Also do these to cleanup general corruption and repair/replace damaged/missing
system files.

Start - type this in Search Box -> COMMAND find at top and RIGHT CLICK - RUN AS ADMIN

Enter this at the prompt - sfc /scannow

How to Repair Windows 7 System Files with System File Checker
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

How to analyze the log file entries that the Microsoft Windows Resource Checker (SFC.exe) program
generates in Windows Vista cbs.log
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228

Also run CheckDisk so we can rule out corruption as much as possible.

How to Run Disk Check in Windows 7
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

virtual pc doctor

2012-01-03T16:25:00.001-05:00

heard of "Virtual PC Doctor?"

Applies To: Windows | Windows XP | Security, Privacy, and User Accounts

Has anyone heard of "virtual pc doctor"? A friend asked me to look into this. She received an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be from a company with the above name saying that there has been alot of computer problems in her area, and that they can fix the problems but first they need to access her computer to find the errors. She was given a website to go to, a password kinda thing to enter and then voila, they were in her computer. Anyhow to make a long story longer, she realized afterward that perhaps they were not legit, and is now worried about what they could have done. I told her the possibilities were infinate, from identity theft, to viruses to phishing and on and on. Or they could be legit but i doubt it...or, at the end of it all they spouted off all the errors they supposedly found and said for 250 dollars they could fix it, and this would give her a subscription for their service to continue...so it could be just a straight forward financial scam....has anyone heard of them and if so, what is their game if any and what do you suggest for her now that she has already given them access at least once.

2012-01-03T13:51:00.001-05:00

Company of Young Canadians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Company of Young Canadians (CYC) was a short-lived Canadian youth program sponsored by the Canadian federal government, which existed from 1966 to 1977. It was inspired by the U.S. Peace Corps, but was designed to be run autonomously without government direction.
It generated considerable controversy shortly after its founding: coordination with volunteers in small communities was poorly organized, and several of the youth involved in the program were prominent political activists. Among other things, it was accused in 1969 of harbouring terrorists by municipal officials from Montreal, including Mayor Jean Drapeau. These claims were never verified. In March 1970 its administration was taken over by the federal government, and in 1977 it was formally abolished.

The Peace Corps

2012-01-03T13:22:00.002-05:00

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.
Since that time, 200,000+ Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.
Today's Peace Corps is more vital than ever, working in emerging and essential areas such as information technology and business development, and contributing to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Peace Corps Volunteers continue to help countless individuals who want to build a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities.

America, 2012, politics

2012-01-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

As much as I hope that Mr.Obama will be re-elected, one must always be aware that things can change, stranger events have happened in the recent past and if someone like Bush 2 the shrub can be elected...even for a second term, than anything is possible.

Much to my own surprise I see Mr. Gingrich, the obstructionist,speaker of days gone by, slowly emerging as a credible candidate...if the republicans should be in the position to elect the next president.
The man appears to have a good grasp of history, especially in the middle east region.

Palestine is not a country and never has been a country he says. And of course he is right.
The once mighty Ottoman Empire was friendly with the German Reich (1871-1918) and after the armistice somehow or other the British, France and the USA were involved to a lesser extend decided to create a bunch of kings or regents to manage most of the orphans of the former Ottoman Empire, which was now reduced to Turkey.

Most of these puppet kings have by now disappeared, replaced one by one by emerging army commanders who took over as dictators and have only recently been killed or turned out of office.
There are a few of them left, one being Saudi Arabia, from Ibn Saud the self declared king the regime has grown to a royal family of about 6,000.

Ibn Saud apparently pointed out to Roosevelt that there were huge oil reserves available to the USA. The president remarked, we have Texas....of course that was in 1944 and long before Onassis started building supertankers as the Texas reserves started to be depleted.

Iraq, the war is over...

2011-12-31T11:08:00.004-05:00

To truly honor those brave men and women in uniform – and, even more because there are more of them — the millions of Iraqis whose lives we destroyed, Americans need to look unflinchingly at this dreadful war.

They need to look at the ignorant, twisted and duplicitous men and women who started it, at the institutions that failed to stop it, and at their own complicity in it. Above all, they need to look at its terrible toll.

We need to remember that this war was launched under false pretenses ( this is a link click on it for details ) by an administration that used fake evidence to push it through. Americans need to remember their own understandable fear after 9/11, and how they allowed cunning and manipulative ideologues to exploit it.
We need to remember that the institutions that should have resisted the war – Congress and the media – completely failed to do so. Drugged by post-9/11 patriotism and groupthink, America’s representatives and their journalists abandoned their posts at the crucial hour.

we the people...where were we when we allowed this idiotic war by Bush...?

Yes, the US politicians and US corporate media lied from start to finish on this hideous occupation of Iraq. And they show no signs of stopping, and no signs of noting how TENS OF MILLIONS of lives were damaged forever.

USA, trouble piles up

2011-12-21T20:21:00.001-05:00

Cincinnati Ohio, hundreds of homes have been torn down, perfectly good houses, fully inhabitable most of them in decent and generally nice neighborhoods.
Many of these homes sold about 10 or 12 years back in the range of 75 to about 150,000 Dollars. Resale homes less than 50 years old.
Somehow or other these places were refinanced in the recent ridiculous housing boom and many of these family homes ended up with bank loan mortgages of about double of what these places were worth.
Then came the big bust, Federal agencies like Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae needed to be bailed out and the old administrations buried their head in the sand. Foreclosures by the banks and evictions followed and in some neighborhoods as many as one out of five homes were abandoned by the owners many even prior to the eviction proceedings.
Vandals and thieves rip these places apart, taking things like siding (scrap), plumbing-copper, air conditioners,kitchen and bathroom fixtures, pretty well anything they can strip of the place and leave the bank owned places as junk piles.
The city,towns,municipalities to avoid having these areas fall into total slums are ripping these homes down and selling the lots cheaply to the next door neighbours.
Sadly beacuse of the inaction of some form of governing body to stop this criminal nonsense thousands of these useful and needed homes will disappear. The municipality is not only stuck with the loss of tax revenue for these homes but as well are covering the costly expense of cleaning up and demolishing these homes.
Some efforts are made to rent or sell homes cheap but with more than 10,000 units in this precarious situation this scene looks like a disaster in the works.

Apparently, Detroit Michigan faced with a similar situation recently ended up giving free homes to police and firemen, homes in the city, with the aim of keeping them in decent repair.

...you can buy or rent some of these homes from 400 to 600 Dollars a month.....

Remember...what's his name?

2011-12-19T18:50:00.001-05:00

Remember back when President and Alzheimer's Poster Boy Reagan, grade B actor president, the Great Communicator, had his shaky finger on that red telephone in the oval office. The red telephone with the red button on it--isn't that the way it worked?--Ronnie hits that red button and Armageddon begins--and back then I imagined old Ronnie Reagan waking up in the middle of the night in a bit of an Alzheimer fog and imagining the Soviets had fired a missile at the White House--"Mommy, wake up, help me down to the Ovaltine office so I can get on that red phone and warn the Air Force, like I did in...Mommy, what was that movie where I was an Air Force hero?...er-ah...." "Oh, Ronnie, relax you've had another nightmare

2011-12-19T18:27:00.002-05:00

Jimmy Carter and the Shaw of Iraq

an article from 2004,worth reading...who knows.

Strong intelligence has begun to emerge that US President Jimmy Carter attempted to demand financial favors for his political friends from the Shah of Iran. The rejection of this demand by the Shah could well have led to Pres. Carter’s resolve to remove the Iranian Emperor from office. 1 GIS. The linkage between the destruction of the Shah’s Government — directly attributable to Carter’s actions — and the Iran-Iraq war which cost millions of dead and injured on both sides, and to the subsequent rise of radical Islamist terrorism makes the new information of considerable significance. Pres. Carter’s anti-Shah feelings appeared to have ignited after he sent a group of several of his friends from his home state, Georgia, to Tehran with an audience arranged with His Majesty directly by the Oval Office and in Carter’s name. At this meeting, as reported by Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda to some confidantes, these businessmen told the Shah that Pres. Carter wanted a contract. previously awarded to Brown & Root to build a huge port complex at Bandar Mahshahr, to be cancelled and as a personal favor to him to be awarded to the visiting group at 10 percent above the cost quoted by Brown & Root. The group would then charge the 10 percent as a management fee and supervise the project for Iran, passing the actual construction work back to Brown & Root for implementation, as previously awarded. They insisted that without their management the project would face untold difficulties at the US end and that Pres. Carter was “trying to be helpful”. They told the Shah that in these perilous political times, he should appreciate the favor which Pres. Carter was doing him. According to Prime Minister Hoveyda, the Georgia visitors left a stunned monarch and his bewildered Prime Minister speechless, other than to later comment among close confidantes about the hypocrisy of the US President, who talked glibly of God and religion but practiced blackmail and extortion through his emissaries. The multi-billion dollar Bandar Mahshahr project would have made 10 percent “management fee” a huge sum to give away to Pres. Carter’s friends as a favor for unnecessary services. The Shah politely declined the “personal” management request which had been passed on to him. The refusal appeared to earn the Shah the determination of Carter to remove him from office. Carter subsequently refused to allow tear gas and rubber bullets to be exported to Iran when anti-Shah rioting broke out, nor to allow water cannon vehicles to reach Iran to control such outbreaks, generally instigated out of the Soviet Embassy in Tehran. There was speculation in some Iranian quarters — as well as in some US minds — at the time and later that Carter’s actions were the result of either close ties to, or empathy for, the Soviet Union, which was anxious to break out of the longstanding US-led strategic containment of the USSR, which had prevented the Soviets from reaching the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Sensing that Iran’s exports could be blocked by a couple of ships sunk in the Persian Gulf shipping lanes, the Shah planned a port which would have the capacity to handle virtually all of Iran’s sea exports unimpeded. Contrary to accusations leveled at him about the huge, “megalomaniac” projects like Bandar Mahshahr, these served as a means to provide jobs for a million graduating high school students every year for whom there were no university slots available. Guest workers, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan were used to start and expand the projects and Iranians replaced the foreigners as job demand required, while essential infrastructure for Iran was built ahead of schedule. In late February 2004, Islamic Iran’s Deputy Minister of Economy stated that the country needed $18-billion a year to create one-million jobs and achieve economic prosperity. And at the first job creation conference held in Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, Iran’s Student News Agency estimated the jobless at some three-million. Or a budget figure of $54-billion to deal with the problem. Thirty years earlier, the Shah had already taken steps to resolve the same challenges, which were lost in the revolution which had been so resolutely supported by Jimmy Carter. A quarter-century after the toppling of the Shah and his Government by the widespread unrest which had been largely initiated by groups with Soviet funding — but which was, ironically, to bring the mullahs rather than the radical-left to power — Ayatollah Shariatmadari’s warning that the clerics were not equipped to run the country was echoed by the Head of Islamic Iran’s Investment Organization, who said: “We are hardly familiar with the required knowledge concerning the proper use of foreign resources both in State and private sectors, nor how to make the best use of domestic resources.” Not even after 25 years. Historians and observers still debate Carter’s reasons for his actions during his tenure at the White House, where almost everything, including shutting down satellite surveillance over Cuba at an inappropriate time for the US, seemed to benefit Soviet aims and policies. Some claim he was inept and ignorant, others that he was allowing his liberal leanings to overshadow US national interests. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office had enough doubts in this respect, even to the extent of questioning whether Carter was a Russian mole, that they sent around 200 observers to monitor Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign against Ronald Reagan to see if the Soviets would try to “buy” the presidency for Carter. In the narrow aspect of Carter setting aside international common sense to remove the US’ most powerful ally in the Middle East, this focused change was definitely contrary to US interests and events over the next 25 years proved this. According to Prime Minister Hoveyda, Jimmy Carter’s next attack on the Shah was a formal country to country demand that the Shah sign a 50-year oil agreement with the US to supply oil at a fixed price of $8 a barrel. No longer couched as a personal request, the Shah was told he should heed the contract proposal if he wished to enjoy continued support from the US. In these perilous, political times which, could become much worse. Faced with this growing pressure and threat, the monarch still could not believe that Iran, the staunchest US ally in the region, other than Israel, would be discarded or maimed so readily by Carter, expecting he would be prevailed upon by more experienced minds to avoid destabilizing the regional power structure and tried to explain his position. Firstly, Iran did not have 50-years of proven oil reserves that could be covered by a contract. Secondly, when the petrochemical complex in Bandar Abbas, in the South, was completed a few years later, each barrel of oil would produce $1,000 worth of petrochemicals so it would be treasonous for the Shah to give oil away for only $8. Apologists, while acknowledging that Carter had caused the destabilization of the monarchy in Iran, claim he was only trying to salvage what he could from a rapidly deteriorating political situation to obtain maximum benefits for the US. But, after the Shah was forced from the throne, Carter’s focused effort to get re-elected via the Iran hostage situation points to less high minded motives. Rumor has always had it that Carter had tried to negotiate to have the US hostages, held for 444 days by the Islamic Republic which he had helped establish in Iran, released just before the November 1980 election date, but that opposition (Republican) candidate Ronald Reagan had subverted, taken over and blocked the plan. An eye-witness account of the seizure by “students” of the US Embassy on November 4, 1979, in Tehran confirms a different scenario. The mostly “rent-a-crowd” group of “students” organized to climb the US Embassy walls was spearheaded by a mullah on top of a Volkswagen van, who with a two-way radio in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, controlled the speed of the march on the Embassy according to instructions he received over the radio. He would slow it down, hurry it up and slow it down again in spurts and starts, triggering the curiosity of an educated pro-Khomeini vigilante, who later told the story to a friend in London. When asked by the vigilante for the reason of this irregular movement, the stressed cleric replied that he had instructions to provide the US Embassy staff with enough time to destroy their most sensitive documents and to give the three most senior US diplomats adequate opportunity to then take refuge at the Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry rather than be taken with the other hostages. Someone at the Embassy was informing the Foreign Ministry as to progress over the telephone and the cleric was being told what to do over his radio. The vigilante then asked why the Islamic Government would bother to be so accommodating to the Great Satan and was told that the whole operation was planned in advance by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan’s revolutionary Government with Pres. Carter in return for Carter having helped depose the Shah and that this was being done to ensure Carter got re-elected. “He helped us, now we help him” was the matter-of-fact comment from the cleric. In 1978 while the West was deciding to remove His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi from the throne, Shariatmadari was telling anyone who would listen not to allow “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini and his velayat faghih (Islamic jurist) version of Islam to be allowed to govern Iran. Ayatollah Shariatmadari noted: “We mullahs will behave like bickering whores in a brothel if we come to power ... and we have no experience on how to run a modern nation so we will destroy Iran and lose all that has been achieved at such great cost and effort.” 2. Pres. Carter reportedly responded that Khomeini was a religious man — as he himself claimed to be — and that he knew how to talk to a man of God, who would live in the holy city of Qom like an Iranian “pope” and act only as an advisor to the secular, popular revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan and his group of anti-Shah executives, some of whom were US-educated and expected to show preferences for US interests. Carter’s mistaken assessment of Khomeini was encouraged by advisors with a desire to form an Islamic “green belt” to contain atheist Soviet expansion with the religious fervor of Islam. Eventually all 30 of the scenarios on Iran presented to Carter by his intelligence agencies proved wrong, and totally misjudged Khomeini as a person and as a political entity. Today, Iranian-born, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the dominant Shia leader in Iraq faces Shariatmadari’s dilemma and shares the same “quietist” Islamic philosophy of sharia (religious law) guidance rather than direct governing by the clerics themselves. Sistani’s “Khomeini” equivalent, militant Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was gunned down in 1999 by then-Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein’s forces. Sadr’s son, 30-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr, lacks enough followers or religious seniority/clout to immediately oppose Sistani but has a hard core of violent followers biding their time. According to all estimates, the young Sadr waits for the June 2004 scheduled handover of power in Iraq, opening the way for serious, militant intervention on his side by Iranian clerics. The Iranian clerical leaders, the successors to Khomeini, see, far more clearly than US leaders and observers, the parallels between 1979-80 and 2004: as a result, they have put far more effort into activities designed to ensure that “Reagan’s successor”, US Pres. George W. Bush, does not win power. Footnotes: 1. © 2004 Alan Peters. The name “Alan Peters” is a nom de plume for a writer who was for many years involved in intelligence and security matters in Iran. He had significant access inside Iran at the highest levels during the rule of the Shah, until early 1979. 2. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, March 2, 2004: Credibility and Legitimacy of Ruling Iranian Clerics Unraveling as Pressures Mount Against Them; The Source of Clerical Ruling Authority Now Being Questioned. This report, also by Alan Peters, details the background of “Ayatollah” Khomeini, the fact that his qualifications for his religious title were not in place, and the fact that he was not of Iranian origin.

Korea

2011-12-19T17:49:00.000-05:00

...beloved leader ...Kim Jong Il, 69 the Leader of communist Korea, North Korea.
Leader of a repressive regime, population of about 23 million this fellow just died, apparently of a hearth attack a few days back.
His youngest son...28, a four star general is supposed to be taking over,third generation dictator if the clique running the country approves this fellow.

Democracy today

2011-12-16T22:35:00.001-05:00

The results of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2011 show that democracy has been under stress in many parts of the world. The state of democracy deteriorated in 48 countries during 2011, out of the 167 that are covered by the index. In only 41 countries did the state of democracy improve, with it remaining unchanged in a further 78. In most regions the level of democracy, as measured by the average democracy score in the index, is lower in 2011 than in 2010. This deterioration was seen not just in emerging markets, but in the developed countries of North America and Western Europe. There was also a decline in the level of democracy in Eastern Europe and small deteriorations in both Asia and Latin America. These were offset by increases in the level of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Laza Kekic, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Director for Country Forecasting Services and main editor of the report, "2011 was an exceptionally turbulent year, characterised by sovereign debt crises and weak political leadership in the developed world, dramatic political change and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and rising social unrest. It featured important changes in democracy, both in the direction of unexpected democratisation and a continuation of decline in democracy in some parts of the world."

The unprecedented rise of movements for democratic change across the Arab world a year ago led many to expect a new wave of democratisation. But it soon became apparent that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt would not be repeated so easily elsewhere and that democracy remained a highly uncertain prospect. Many MENA autocracies resorted to a mix of repression and cosmetic changes, although the improvements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were sufficient to lift the region overall.

More generally, global backsliding in democracy has been evident for some years and strengthened in the wake of the 2008-09 global economic crisis. Between 2006 and 2008 democratisation stalled; between 2008 and 2010 there was a deterioration across the world. In 2011, however, the decline was concentrated in Europe.

Erosion of democracy in Europe
In Western Europe, there has been a significant erosion in democracy in recent years. Seven countries experienced a deterioration in 2011; none had an improvement. The main reason has been the erosion of sovereignty and democratic accountability associated with the effects of and responses to the euro zone crisis (five of the countries that experienced a decline in their scores are members of the euro zone—Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland). Most dramatically, in two countries (Greece and Italy) democratically elected leaders have been replaced by technocrats.

The near-term political outlook for Europe is disturbing. The European project is under serious threat and disputes within the EU are sharp. Harsh austerity, a new recession in 2012, high unemployment and little sign of renewed growth will test the resilience of Europe's political institutions.
The overall Democracy Index is based on scores for five different categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. The Index measures the state of democracy in 165 independent states and two territories, which account for almost the entire population of the world. Countries are placed within one of four types of regimes: “full democracies”, “flawed democracies”, “hybrid regimes” and “authoritarian regimes”.

Eight countries had a change in regime type in 2011. In four there was a deterioration and four had an upgrade. Portugal deteriorated from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy", a development that had already affected Greece, Italy and France in 2010. Ukraine and Guatemala regressed from flawed democracies to hybrid regimes, and in Russia a long process of regression culminated in a move from a hybrid to an authoritarian regime in the light of the cynical decision by Vladimir Putin to return to the presidency and because of deeply flawed parliamentary elections.

Tunisia experienced the biggest increase of any country in its democracy score in 2011. It moved from an authoritarian to a hybrid regime. Two Sub-Saharan African countries also moved from authoritarian to hybrid regimes (Mauritania and Niger), and Zambia improved from a hybrid to a flawed democracy.

Results for 2011
• Just over one-half of the world’s population lives in a democracy of some sort, although only 11% reside in “full democracies”. More than one-third of the world’s population still lives under authoritarian rule.
• Although almost one-half of the world's countries can be considered democracies, the number of "full democracies" is low (only 25); 53 are rated as "flawed democracies". Of the remaining 89 states, 52 are authoritarian and 37 are considered to be "hybrid regimes".
• Popular confidence in political institutions continues to decline in many countries.
• Mounting social unrest could pose a threat to democracy in some countries.
• Eastern Europe experienced another decline in democracy in 2011, with 12 countries experiencing a deterioration.
• US democracy has been adversely affected by a deepening of the polarisation of the political scene, and political brinkmanship and paralysis.
• The US and the UK remain at the bottom end of the full democracy category. There has been a rise in protest movements. Problems in the functioning of government have become more prominent.
• Although extremist political forces in Europe have not yet profited from economic dislocation as might have been feared, populism and anti-immigrant sentiment are on the rise.
• Rampant crime in some countries—in particular, violence and drug-trafficking—continues to have a negative impact on democracy in Latin America.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2011
is available free of charge at: www.eiu.com/democracyindex2011

Israel,Palestine,Syria

2011-12-09T12:53:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago one kept on hearing people say that peace between Syria and Israel was possible and within grasp. It's no secret that former PM Olmert pushed for a deal, though how strong he did and if it could even be OK ed in the Knesset is another matter entirely. The general shape of the deal would be peace between Israel whereby the Golan Heights would be returned to Syria, and, in exchange, Syria would sever its ties with Iran and stop arming Hezbollah. Basically it's a land-for-peace deal with some broader Middle East positioning thrown in.

Such a deal would be immensely beneficial for Syria, which has long demanded the Golan, having claimed to reacquire it by any means possible. However, for Israel, this deal makes no sense whatsoever, with perhaps one possible exception.

There are many obvious reason for not giving back the Golan from the Israeli perspective: it's an excellent military position, it gives Israel complete control of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), and the general fact that countries should never give up land unless they absolutely have to. Land is a country's most valuable resource, and the Golan is especially fertile land, a relative rarity in Israel. Not to mention the fact that Israel isn't exactly a huge country - giving up the Golan would amount to about an 8% reduction in territory, which is a huge economic and militaristic loss.

However, let us suppose that Israel was given such a tempting offer, no rockets from Hezbollah and Iranian isolation. Would it make sense for Israel to give up this land for peace?

It is doubtful, and one answer is simple: once the government leaves the Golan they will not enter it again without force. Possession is key here, and while it is hard to walk away from a huge chunk of fertile land, it is even harder to ensure that what you walked away from will be delivered. In essence, Israel has no reason to trust Syria that it will keep up its end of the bargain, and even less reason to believe that even if Syria stops arming Hezbollah, they won't get their rockets from somewhere else.

It's not land-for-peace, it's land-for-promises, which are far less valuable than possession. Israel would be crazy to trust Syria, bearing in mind that if they're ever double-crossed their only option is a full-scale invasion of the Golan, which absolutely no one would want.

America....what's in the name?

2011-12-07T22:46:00.001-05:00

In this region of the world we use a word every day and yet, few of us either know,or care about it's origin. The word: America.
The USA is generally referred to as America, its inhabitants are proud to be Americans.
In fact, the name, it appears was first used by a German mapmaker crediting some of the information and graphic details to a traveler explorer who's name was placed on this new map.

America; the name... a German connection

A work of art the above map was originally produced by a German Artist, a fellow named Waldesmueller, a painter and mapmaker.It should be one of the most important pieces of art in North and or South America.

The obscure map is based on the travels and explorations of an Italian monk, his name was Amerigo Vespucci. The artist put the monk-explorer-travelers name somewhere on the American map in the area which is now known a Paraguay.(1507 about, and only a few years after Columbus/ Colon discovered what he believed to be India).

The work of art clearly depicts India on the left side as being totally separate from the newly found continent. This was indeed the first time ever that the American continent, in this case mostly south America was shown as a distinctly separate continent, of course the great distance to Asia ( Indian ocean) was not known at that time.
Much later, the French...and then the English started to explore the Northern regions, building on the information already established by the Spanish and Portuguese, but the name, America was adopted , hence South and North America.
...and here, a picture of Martin Waldseemueller, the man mostly credited with creating the name for the new world America.

whats...up, something on the lighter side

2011-12-06T23:17:00.001-05:00

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning..

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special..

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP,

so........it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this.........

America....again, just to explain why...

2011-12-06T22:17:00.001-05:00

Gingrich the obstructionist is getting more popular by the day..the comeback kid I guess. It may not be a bad ticket for him and Michel Bachman to be the Republican competitors. I very much hope that Mr. Obama will be re-elected, but just in case he is not ( provided he runs again to begin with) Gingrich-Bachman would not be a bad combo, stranger things have happened.

No matter what...just keep Sarah out of it...get her to have someone write another book..anything, but keep her away. Can you imagine this fellow McCain and Sarah Palin in office, there would be two other wars raging by now, one with North Korea and the other with Iran for sure. It must be noted here that the Obama administration managed to a large extend to stay out of the current disaster region in north Africa involving the Mediterranean rim countries and the demise of the nut in Libya

Re my last post, there is something I should explain a little. It's important to me, I most certainly do not want to look or act anti American. That would be a mistake and is not my intention whatsoever." Yes But". Incredible advances have been made in the year since WWII, in science, technology, medicine, you name it. We've been to the moon and, yes, somehow we managed not to use any of these horrible atomic bombs against one another. There are thousands of these things around and everything possible should be done to reduce or eliminate this horrendous possibility of an unbelievable disaster. The financial woes in the USA as well as the so called Euro crisis if not appropriately managed could eventually result in a situation where mob on the streets although many with good intentions could well effect the orderly management by governments and the democratically elected representatives of the people. We have seen this in the thirties when the unrest of a kicked in the butt country, Germany, gave way to what was called as National Socialistic state who quickly eliminated any and all opposition and eventually ended up with this fellow Hitler playing Napoleon.

What followed, from 1945 til 48 was in my view a scene of mass murder literally starving the population to death and the treatment of the German prisoners of war was only one phase of this vulgar scene of genocide.

The second world war, or the end of it,the French had there little revenge,I was witness of it, the English lost their empire but managed to create Israel and put a number of fake Kings into the middle east circus. Russia grabbed parts of Germany and Poland. Poland was rewarded with parts of what was Germany ( Danzig region)...and America, the winner in this whole disastrous mess got itself out of the depression it was in.
The Marshal Plan ( Truman administration ) helped to keep the US economy going instead of coming to a slowdown or dead stop at the end of the war.

America ; the Germans,(DEF)Eisenhower and the disarmed combatants..

2011-12-05T16:42:00.001-05:00

Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF),Surrendered Enemy Forces ,disarmed combatants.. was a U.S. designation, both for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended, and for those previously surrendered POWs who were held in camps in occupied German territory at the end of WW two.
It is mainly referenced to Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post war occupied Germany. Because of the logistical impossibility of feeding millions of surrendered German soldiers at the levels required by the Geneva Convention during the food crisis of 1945, the purpose of the designation—along with the British designation of Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEP)—was to prevent categorization of the prisoners as Prisoners of War (POW) under the Geneva convention.
German agriculture had suffered extreme productivity decreases in 1944 and 1945. A shortage of synthetic fertilizers had developed after nitrogen and phosphate stocks were channeled into ammunition production. Consequently, crop levels had fallen by 20% to 30% at the end of the war.Allied bombing raids had destroyed thousands of farm buildings, and rendered food processing facilities inoperable. Lack of farm machinery, spare parts, and fertilizer caused an almost total disruption of agriculture when the war was over. After the release of slave laborers that were Russian POWs and Eastern Europeans, extreme agriculture labor shortages existed that could only be relieved by German DEFs and SEPs.. Roving bands of displaced persons and returning soldiers and civilians decimated the hog herds and chicken flocks of German farmers.
In addition, the destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical nightmares, with railroad lines, bridges, canals and terminals left in ruins. The turnaround time for railroad wagons was five times higher than the prewar average. Of the 15,600 German locomotives, 38.6% were no longer operating and 31% were damaged. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 kilometers of track in the British zone were operable.

By May 8, 1945, the Allies were swamped with 7 million displaced persons in Germany and 1.6 million in Austria, including slave laborers from all over Europe. Soon thereafter, German populations had swollen by 12 to 14.5 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe. Bavarian villages in the American zone faced 15% to 25% population increases from displaced persons, with Munich alone having to deal with 75,000 displaced persons.

The worst dislocation of agriculture was caused by the German zonal partitions, which cut off Western Germany from its "breadbasket" of farm lands east of the Oder-Neisse line that had accounted for 35% of Germany's prewar food production and which the Yalta Conference had given to Poland to compensate for lands of Eastern Poland. The Soviet Union, with millions of its own starving citizens at home, was not willing to distribute this production to the population in western Germany. In January 1945, the basic German ration was 1,625 calories/day, and that was further reduced to 1,100 calories by the end of the war in the British zone, and remained at that level into the summer, with levels varying from 840 calories/day in the Ruhr to 1,340 calories/day in Hamburg.The situation was no better in the American zones of Germany and Austria.

These problems combined to create severe shortages what was left of Germany. One summary report estimated that just prior to (V-E) Day, German consumer daily caloric intake was only 1,050, and that after V-E Day it dropped to 860 calories per day, though actual estimates are confusing because of the wide variation by location and because unofficial estimates were usually higher. It was clear by any measure that, by the spring of 1945, the German population was existing on rations that would not sustain life in the long term. A July 1945 CCAC report stated that "the food situation in western Germany is perhaps the most serious problem of the occupation. Average consumption is now about one third below the general accepted subsistence level of 2000 calories per day.

By way of contrast, the nutritional situation in many of Germany's neighbour states was close to pre-war levels and large quantities of food was offered to Germany. However, due to allied restrictions on German trade all the offers were rejected and in one case, this resulted in Holland being forced to destroy a large proportion of their vegetable crop and as late as 1948 Swedish fishermen were still destroying their catch or working only two days a week due to a lack of markets. In August, 1945 the Red Cross shipped 30,000 tons of high protein food parcels by rail to feed displaced persons in Germany but was forced to return them to storage where they eventually spoiled. A further 13.5 million Red Cross rations stockpiled in Europe were confiscated by the military and were never distributed. Senator Kenneth S. Wherry later complained about the thousands upon thousands of tons of rations rotting amid a starving population. Max Huber, head of the International Red Cross, wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department regarding the situation and received a letter in response, signed by Eisenhower, stating that giving Red Cross food to enemy personnel was forbidden.
In the spring of 1946 the International Red Cross was finally allowed to provide limited amounts of food aid to prisoners of war in the U.S. occupation zone.

Approximately 35 million POWs were taken in World War II, 11 million of them Germans. In addition to 20 million dislocated citizens, the U.S. Army had to cope with most of the surrendered German army. While the Allies had anticipated 3 million surrendering Germans, the actual total was as many as 5 million in American hands by June 1945 out of 7.6 million in northwestern Europe alone, not counting the 1.4 million in Allied hands in Italy. Approximately 1 million were Wehrmacht soldiers fleeing west to avoid capture by the Red Army.
The number of Germans surrendering to U.S. forces shot up from 313,000 by the end of the first quarter of 1945, to 2.6 million by April 1945 and more than 5 million in May. By April 1945, entire German Army groups were surrendering, which overwhelmed Allied shipping such that German prisoners could no longer be sent to POW camps in America after March 1945. According to a June 22, 1945 announcement by the Allies, a total of 7,614,914 prisoners (of all designations) were held in British and American camps.
Although the British and Americans agreed to split the western Germans who surrendered. the British recanted arguing that they "did not have places to keep them or men to guard them on the continent, and that moving them to England would arouse public resentment and adversely effect British morale.
By June 1, 1945, Eisenhower reported to the War Office that this refusal produced shortages in the 25 million prisoner-day rations which were growing at the rate of 900,000 prisoner-day rations. Feeding this number of people became a logistical nightmare for which frequently had to resort to improvisation.

The original discussion of the Allies treating post Victory in Europe (V-E) Day prisoners of war as something other than those protected by the Geneva Convention had its vague origins in the Casablanca Conference, but it was given specific form by the EAC in the summer of 1944 in a "draft instrument of surrender" given to the American government. The instrument required the surrendering German commander to accept that his men "shall at the discretion of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Allied State concerned be declared to be Prisoners of War.Several factors went into this consideration, including that the EAC member the Soviet Union refused to sign the Geneva Conventions, despite intense pressure from 1942 onward to sign the document. Behind the Soviets' refusal were a number of considerations closely linked with the regime, but a major consideration that emerged at the Tehran Conference was that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin desired four million German laborers for an "indefinite period", perhaps for life. The Soviets' refusal to even consider signing the GC created great problems for the EAC, including the fact that a single surrender instrument could not be drafted if a Soviet commander taking the surrender could not possibly commit his government to accord GC rights to prisoners. As a result the EAC instruments promised nothing in that regard, employed awkward and tortured language and made plain the premeditated Allied evasion of the Geneva Convention. In addition, other Allies also considered using Germans for prison labor, which the Germans themselves had already required of prisoners they had held during the war. Later EAC documents described the "Disabled Enemy Forces.

With regard to food requirements, regardless of the reasoning or GC legal requirements, the SHAEF was simply not capable of operationally feeding all of the millions of German prisoners at the level of Allied base soldiers because of the high numbers and lack of resources. In a March 10, 1945 cable to the CCS, Eisenhower requested permission for this designation per the earlier EAC documents, and was granted such permission. When the CCS approved Eisenhower's March 1945 request, it added that prisoners after Victory in Europe (V-E Day) should not be declared "Prisoners of War" under the Geneva Convention because of the lack of food.
The CCS then cabled British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, suggesting that the same steps be taken regarding the German surrenders in Austria, and then approved Alexander's similar request for a DEF designation, stating "in view of the difficulties regarding food and accommodation, it was so decided."^] Eisenhower's JCS superiors ordered him to change German POW's designation to "disarmed enemy forces" (DEFAlexander then requested that the CCS let British forces use such a designation for the surrender of German forces in Italy, the CCS granted his request and the conditions of such surrenders to British commander General Sir William D. Moran almost prevented the surrenders from occurring for worried German troops

By June 22, 1945, of the 7,614,914 prisoners were held in British and American camps, 4,209,000 were soldiers captured before the German capitulation and considered "POWs".This leaves approximately 3.4 million, who according to Allied agreements, were supposed to be split between Britain and the United States. As of June 16, 1945, the U.S. France and the U.K. held a combined total of 7,500,000 German POW's.

Further information: Rheinwiesenlager and Prisoner of war

After the DEF designations were made in the early summer of 1945, the International Red Cross was not permitted to fully involve itself in the situation in camps containing German prisoners (POWs, DEFs or SEPs), some of which initially were Rheinwiesenlager transit camps, and even though conditions in them gradually improved, "even the most conservative estimates put the death toll in French camps alone at over 16,500 in 1945.
The Geneva Convention was amended. Articles 6 and 7 of the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929, had covered what may and may not be done to a prisoner on capture. The wording of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention was intentionally altered from that of the 1929 convention so that soldiers who "fall into the power" following surrender or mass capitulation of an enemy are now protected as well as those captured in the course of fighting.
Most captives of the Americans and the British were released by the end of 1948, and most of those in French and Soviet captivity were released by the end of 1949, although the last big release occurred in 1956. According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POW's in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.

In his 1989 book Other Losses, James Bacque claimed that Allied Supreme Commander
Dwight Eisenhower deliberately caused the death of 790,000 German captives in internment camps through disease, starvation and cold from 1944 to 1949. Bacque charges that some of these deaths were DEF designated soldiers that could receive harsh treatment because they did not fall within the Geneva Convention protections. Stephen Ambrose, at the time director of the Eisenhower center at the University of Orleans, also organized a conference of eight British, American, and German historians. The result of this conference was a group of papers by these eight historians published in 1992 as the book Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood which strongly disputes virtually every claim in James Bacque's book, including his categorization of "other losses", their purported origination, Bacque's description of the DEF designation decision, Bacque's oral histories, Bacque's methodologies and Bacque's analysis of World War II documents. Even with regard to the poor conditions of prisoner camps highlighted by Bacque which the panel members agree existed, the New Orleans panel concluded that Bacque raised no new or novel issues that had not been raised since the Maschke Commission findings of the 1960s and 1970s, and studies thereafter that had also chronicled those conditions in far more specific detail.
Current academic consensus regarding the post-war death rate in Allied hands can—mainly based on work such as Ambrose's Eisenhower and the German POWs—be summed up in historian Niall Ferguson's words that Bacque's "calculations grossly exaggerate both the number of Germans the Americans captured and their mortality", although he also notes that "the mortality rate for German POWs in American hands was more than four times higher than the rate for those who surrendered to the British", but that the United States total mortality rate was under 1% and better than every other country in World War II except for the British. Ambrose did concede: "we as Americans can't duck the fact that terrible things happened. And they happened at the end of a war we fought for decency and freedom, and they are not excusable.

America, presidents

2011-11-29T10:42:00.001-05:00

America; a fine President

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Born: 12/28/1856
Birthplace: Staunton, Va.
(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 28, 1856. A Princeton graduate, he turned from law practice to post-graduate work in political science at Johns Hopkins University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1886. He taught at Princeton, and in 1902 was made president of Princeton. After an unsuccessful attempt to democratize the social life of the university, he welcomed an invitation in 1910 to be the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, and was elected

In 1912, at the Democratic convention in Baltimore, Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot and went on to defeat Roosevelt and Taft in the election. Wilson proceeded under the standard of the New Freedom to enact a program of domestic reform, including the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission, and other measures designed to restore competition in the face of the great monopolies. In foreign affairs, while privately sympathetic with the Allies, he strove to maintain neutrality in the European war and warned both sides against encroachments on American interests.

Reelected in 1916 as a peace candidate, he tried to mediate between the warring nations; but when the Germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Wilson brought the United States into what he now believed was a war to make the world safe for democracy. He supplied the classic formulations of Allied war aims and the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, was negotiated on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points. In 1919 he strove at Versailles to lay the foundations for enduring peace.
He reluctantly accepted the imperfections of the Versailles Treaty in the expectation that they could be remedied by action within the League of Nations ( forerunner of the United Nations an organization he helped to create).

He probably could have secured ratification of the treaty by the Senate if he had adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward the mild reservationists; but his insistence on all or nothing eventually caused the die hard isolationists and Wilsonites to unite in rejecting a compromise.

America, presidents

2011-11-27T15:35:00.003-05:00

America...the Yokel, one of the worst presidents leaving a mess...

Hey....Gingrich is back. Just as well, looks like this fellow is once again rising to the top of the republican bunch. Lord help us if they win the next term.

Hope he gets and stays there for the end run. I look forward to a second term by Mr.Obama but if this fails, Gingrich may well be the best choice for the Republicans. He can't possibly be worse than this last yokel Bush the shrub.. who actually managed to stay onjob for two terms...two new wars......he did not finishthe wars and the financial mess he left for Mr. Obama to deal with.

about this new blog form...

2011-11-14T20:01:00.003-05:00

I updated to this upgrade and things are not getting any easier. For one thing,new post efforts are more difficult than they used to be...too bad I can't get back to the old blog version.
In any case, CNN and other local,National TV channels are overloaded wit this Penn state ugliness as well as the financial turmoil in Greece and Italy.

I managed to revive my German blog ,Pirmasens,; for about six months there appeared to be a problem...this thing was stuck with hundreds of ridiculous spam related stuff in some strange to me languages...therefore, no more comments permitted. If you like the blog, fine. But no comments.Okay then..
I will try to write on the following topics:

India, the emerging nation democracy

China, the new great power emerging

Brazil, another emerging nation

...in the news today ,Brazil natives protesting the building of a new dam to be constucted,...I use the term Natives advisedly and will elaborate on this term..

2011-09-23T19:39:00.001-05:00

...so much to write about...so little time...and I'm retired...
I will comment on Mr.Obama and the dressing down he got by the Prime minister of Israel, hard to believe this scene.
More about Mrs.S.Palin..still on a promotional book tour..when will she give it up.
The horrendous scene in Europe ( financial) and the present shakedown of the Dow and TSX, my smallish pension fund invested in mutual funds just took a horrible beating.

The country is strong,the PC's finally have a majority and no opposition, I doubt that they will do anything positive with this position, badly needed repairs of the infrastructure and capital projects appear to get put on the back burner again.
What has Germanicus got to do with all this? Nothing.

oil and all that....

2011-08-15T19:22:00.001-05:00

Financial Post June 10 2011

In the first 25 years after Israel’s founding in 1948, it was repeatedly attacked by the large armies of its Arab neighbours. Each time, Israel prevailed on the battlefield, only to have its victories rolled back by Western powers who feared losing access to Arab oilfields.
The fear was and is legitimate – Arab nations have often threatened to use their “oil weapon” against countries that support Israel and twice made good their threat through crippling OPEC oil embargoes.
But that fear, which shackles Israel to this day, may soon end. The old energy order in the Middle East is crumbling with Iran and Syria having left the Western fold and others, including Saudi Arabia, the largest of them all, in danger of doing so. Simultaneously, a new energy order is emerging to give the West some spine. In this new order, Israel is a major player.

France...Napoleon

2011-08-15T19:18:00.000-05:00

...the man who changes the world..well,at least Europe. This amazing individual somehow managed to rule most of the continent,Europe and almost ended up ruling all of it...his amazing battles and conquests totally reorganised most of the established kingdoms and eventually this fellow who crowned himself emperor king put several of his brothers on the throne of European kingdoms.

Wars...comments

2011-07-04T11:34:00.001-05:00

Most Americans don't cheer on war, however. That's why our government has to make up reasons for war, because most of us wouldn't support such terror without a really,good reason; and the real reasons are never good enough. Some people see right through them. It is those Americans - the ones who burned their draft cards in the 60's and the ones who camped out at George W. Bush's ranch - who make this country truly great. Not the greatest, but great. People like them exist all over the world. I may not speak their language or practice their religion, but I see neither them nor their country as inferior

Health

2011-07-04T08:33:00.042-05:00

....about a dozen years back, in Lauderdale by the Sea I experienced serious problems with my right knee...I had trouble walking and there was no way I could handle stairs. I stumbled upon a product or product line called colloidal minerals, tried the stuff for a couple of weeks and like a miracle...I was healed..the pain in my right knee almost totally disappeared and I've been using this line of minerals in some form ever since. Over the years I have been able to help a few people, who, sceptical at first had to admit eventually that this stuff really works. I must insist here, that I do not in any way practice medicine, promote any product or label for profit or anything of the kind. My knowledge and interest in health products and or Vitamins and plant extracts is limited but I am a firm believer that on some level the use of the so called colloidal minerals has been extremely beneficial to me and a number of people who tried it.
Do not... confuse this item with colloidal silver, which is something totally different and should only be taken with the advise and supervision of a qualified health practitioner.(Colloidal silver kills bad microbes...but with excessive use also kills the good ones..I must warn you this is not the same as Minerals...beware).

Colloidal Minerals?
Minerals are necessary for normal metabolism,they add mechanical strength to bones, are a component of enzymes and hormones, function as buffers, and regulate the balance and movement of fluids in and out of cells.
Trace minerals are essential elements that occur in minute amounts, each one making up less than 0.005% of adult body weight. Many enzymes are only produced in the presence of trace minerals. Minerals are the catalyst that make enzymes function.

Trace minerals are an essential part of hormone structures and help regulate the hormonal activity of the entire endocrine system. Our bodies are dependent on these minerals for thousands of biochemical functions.
Food, drugs, herbs and vitamins cannot function unless minerals are present in the body, making minerals more important in nutrition than vitamins. There is a harmony between vitamins and minerals - both are necessary. e.g. vitamin C can triple iron absorption. Calcium absorption is impossible without vitamin D. Minerals help generate and maintain electrical production in our bodies (e.g. for transmission of nerve impulses). A small percentage of these elements are received directly from the air and sunlight. The remainder come from plants and animals which process minerals into a colloidal form that the human body can assimilate and use.
Our body cannot make minerals. These nutrients must be constantly replaced. Thirteen minerals have been identified as being essential to the physical well-being of humans. These are: sodium, potassium, chlorine, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, copper, iodine, manganese, cobalt, zinc, and molybdenum.

Twelve additional elements have been determined to be extremely beneficial in trace amounts. These are: selenium, chromium, fluorine, arsenic, nickel, silicon, boron, cadmium, lithium, lead, tin, and vanadium.

The human body requires 84 of the basic elements (out of the known 106 elements) to maintain good health.
Evidence reveals that cumulative deficiencies of minerals, especially the rare trace minerals, are the largest cause of physical problems and aging. Our grandparents had a much better, mineral-rich diet than you and your children do today. Research has shown direct correlations between mineral deficiencies and illnesses.
For example, diabetes or hypoglycemia involve chromium, zinc, and vanadium deficiencies; cancer and heart disease involve selenium, copper, and more. Almost everyone knows that osteoporosis involves a calcium deficiency, but few know about the need for magnesium and boron as well.

The list of correlations goes on and on. Even marginal deficiencies of essential nutrients can significantly impair the immune system, and the National Research Council has stated that "small amounts of (natural elements) are more efficiently absorbed than large amounts." Absorption, as used in a biological sense, is the transport of materials across a barrier and incorporation into the tissue itself. Not until the substances cross the thin cellular lining of the stomach and intestines and are picked up by the circulating blood and lymph, do the products of digestion become part of the body, that is, become "absorbed".

Absorption involves complex physical factors, such as the size and concentration of the molecules; water-salt concentration; surface tension; and active transport by the cells, which do chemical work and use energy in the process of transferring molecules across the cell membranes.

Every single person in North America has multiple mineral deficiencies and would experience substantial health benefits from taking plant source colloidal minerals.

America,sarcasm

2011-06-25T20:28:00.001-05:00

USA..Palin...I just had to do it..

2011-06-18T13:48:00.004-05:00

I mean the idiocy of Sarah and Mary Macias deciding our lives for us. Deciding how they want to spend our tax moneys. Make hunting our national sport! Make Guantanamo larger? Put illegal Mexican immigrants in Guantanamo? Make Sarah's bonehead daughter Secretary of State? Oh, damn, wouldn't that be so cool, Paleface gets elected president and she appoints her dumbass daughter as her Secretary of State. "Jest like I kin dance, Mommy, so can I be a secretary--unless I have to learn shorthand, and you know I'm no good in math stuff. In terms of figurin', I figure one thing for sure, the boys think I'm sexy like you, Mommy."

~~I spotted this article somewhere and decided to copy it...more to come...~~

Canada

2011-06-18T08:37:00.002-05:00

It's about Vancouver and the idiotic city riots a couple of days back....after the local hockey franchise lost the final of 7 games to the slightly more powerful gang from Boston. If the game had been won, the riots probably would have taken place anyway, to celebrate, hard to say really. My comment is not just simply to condemn the idiots, hoodlums or misguided party animals who took part in this ridiculous show of anarchy and downright stupidity. But, how can this sort of behaviour be changed or controlled in a city usually known for it's culture and hospitality.Big question, few answers.

Statistics

2011-06-11T10:27:00.002-05:00

Einwohner
Deutschland	West-Europa	357.000 km²	82,3 Mio
Frankreich	West-Europa	643.000 km²	64,1 Mio
Italien	Süd-Europa	301.000 km²	58,1 Mio
Japan	Fernost-Asien	378.000 km²	127,1 Mio
Kanada	Nord-Amerika	9.985.000 km²	33,5 Mio
Russische Föderation	Ost-Europa	17.098.000 km²	140,0 Mio
Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika	Nord-Amerika	9.827.000 km²	307,2 Mio
Vereinigtes Königreich	Britische Inseln	244.000 km²	61,1 Mio

America...just stuff

2011-06-11T10:20:00.001-05:00

..¿same crap today?
yes,the wiener swinging congressman, the Florida girl murder,Gingrich,Sarah,Arizona wildfire,Missouri flood...no mention of the Bilderberg conference..
To obtain a somewhat balanced and informed view of what goes on in the world I have to watch CBC(Canada),BBC(UK),Deutsche Welle(German),RTV(Russian) and other foreign news channels. The Americans are fixed on presenting the same bloed scheisse every day..with a bit of football,basketball thrown in and lately the hockey play off Boston and Vancouver.

America....

2011-06-09T21:04:00.003-05:00

In the news: North Africa is still in turmoil but the main news items here by the American networks are about:
This fellow Anthony Weiner (speak wiener) a Democrat New York State member of congress decided to publish pictures of his wiener (penis) and naked chest on face book contacts of younger females. Big deal. The world is in catastrophic state with floods, extensive forest fires,several wars,riots and the miserable state ( apparently) of the American economy. And yet, the networks are preoccupied with this idiots wiener and his jammering of unclear authorship statements and news releases...well...America where are you headed?
And, a 22 year old woman who stands accused to have killed her 2 year old daughter,daily court pictures and commentary in the news from my homestead town Orlando Florida about this event, hard to believe that this item should be featured daily in detail while other world concern items are totally ignored. Other news and newsworthy stuff covers the extensive fires in Arizona ( an area as large as New York and Chicago combined they say). And the flood state of the endless rain and spring snow run off..
No comments on the latest meeting of the current Bilderberg group conference in Switzerland, a gathering of somewhere between 130 to 150 Anglo American rich folks with friends ( japan not included)..
Another insult to our intelligence, Sarah Palin's e mail record of the past few years has been made public. Can't imagine what this twit has to say that's remotely useful or interesting. This lady should peddle her book and disappear. Quote...what's the difference between a rottweiler and a hockey mom..lipstick...Obama response, you can put lipstick on a pig...but it's still a pig..

America

2011-05-26T18:06:00.002-05:00

The President was busy to meet with the prime minister ( head of state). of Israel just after his extensive North Africa speech.
A few days later visits the area and hometown of his maternal forefathers in Ireland.
And, the Queen of England her majesty Queen Elizabeth ll.

Israel:
President Obama suggested in his extensive speech that perhaps the borders of an eventual Palestinian state should be based on the delineation prior to the 1967 war. Just how many more times will Israel have to defend itself and win wars to keep the acquired territories. Israel should keep the lands it has won and fought for....in war and make the borders permanent. To redraw the boundaries to the pre 67 scene is not acceptable to this prime minister.Unless of course the USA is willing to do the same, by example and give some territories back to Mexico, like Texas,Arizona,New Mexico and California...the reasoning is the same.

England, or Great Britain if you like: (meeting with the Queen).
Apparently the President committed a few no No's. So what? Get over it. He was talking during the god save the queen playing, proposed a toast impromptu and a few other small not to do minor boboos..
Not to worry...stiff upper lip...they'll get over it.

Oh Canada..

2011-05-25T20:42:00.002-05:00

No fireworks here on Victoria day..rained out...looks like we might as well keep the stuff for our annual 1st. of July Canada Day ( That's our 4th.of July thing...)..
Other comments and notes..
Oh Canada Post
Looks like we are facing another mail strike....it's a sick joke really, no I'm not anti labour, but these stupid and useless interruptions of the already tattered and tarnished Canada Mail joke has to end some day.
Canada Parks
Wonderful news about a new National Park in the works...Rouge Park. Toronto Ontario has three substantial valleys and rivers. The Humber, The Don and The Rouge.
A few years ago a friend,Lawyer and Environmental engineer produced a study on the Humber..river,valley etc.
I have it stashed somewhere, the Humber valley is in the west end of Canada's largest city,Toronto.
The Don river and valley runs north /south to the lake Ontario and much of it will need a great deal of help...soon. A rapid transit highway called the Don Valley Parkway ( or DV Parking lot) takes up much of it and a lot of old services, water,sewer and related big city links are grossly outdated and in infrastructure repair need.
And to the eastern limit of the city,formerly Scarborough, there is the Rouge...river and valley.

America....

2011-05-22T19:19:00.001-05:00

Indeed the last few days have been eventful. The world did not end as predicted by a few religious ...well whatever.
D.Strauss-Khan head of the IMF and possible future french head of state was arrested in New York for attempted rape of an African 32 year old single mother chambermaid and many are making a conspiracy thing out of the situation. Who would benefit..

America, President's speech May 19/11....North Africa etc.

2011-05-22T18:58:00.001-05:00

“Today,( that was May 19th/11) President Obama signaled to the world that he is still serious about Israeli-Palestinian peace and that he is a true friend of Israel. We welcome his clear statement that the U.S. position is that a permanent status peace agreement will be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed on land swaps, and that the outcome must be secure and recognized borders, with a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state and robust security arrangements for Israel. We also welcome his statement that such an agreement must find a way to resolve the issues of Jerusalem and refugees that is just and fair and that respects the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.
“What derives from these positions is clear. Palestinian leaders must come to terms with the fact that a future agreement will involve adjustments to the 1967 lines to accommodate some settlements – and educate their people to understand why this is so. They must also accept the fact that a future state will be demilitarized and that arrangements ensuring Israeli security will be paramount.

“At the same time, the Netanyahu government must accept that Israel’s appetite for settlements must be balanced, inch for inch, against its readiness to give up territory that is inside what is now sovereign Israel. This applies not only in the West Bank but also in East Jerusalem, where Netanyahu’s defiant determination to continue to expand settlements continues to send a message that he cares more about settlements than peace. Moreover, President Obama’s clear statement that a Palestinian state must be contiguous and have recognized borders with Jordan underscores the impossibility of Israel maintaining permanent control over the Jordan Valley.

“We also welcome President Obama’s pragmatic articulation of his approach to Palestinian efforts to establish a unity government. It is indeed incumbent on the Palestinians to provide a credible answer to those who suggest that Israel cannot negotiate peace with a unity government. As we have long argued, any Palestinian government should be judged by its actions and positions, not it composition.
“By articulating these positions, President Obama demonstrated that he is a real friend to Israel – one who recognizes that Israel’s security and viability as a Jewish state and a democracy depends on peace. He has also made clear his understanding that Israel’s future cannot be divorced from the fate of the Palestinians or from its relations with the rest of the region. We welcome President Obama’s message of support for freedom, rights, security, and democracy in the Middle East – a Middle East that include both Israelis and Palestinians.

The state of the State of Israel was only one component of Mr.Obama's well articulated speech, which on the whole tried to deal with the turmoil and rapidly developing events of the region of North Africa. Notably absent from his comments was any reference to this place called Saudi Arabia. I suppose this was to avoid dealing with a 900 pound gorilla, the wrong or critical approach to this subject could result in the price of a barrel of oil in the range of well over $200,and therefore the subject was best left alone.

The Right and the Left...Canadian Scene..politics

2011-05-03T16:35:00.005-05:00

The new PC's (recreated Progressive Conservative Part,with Manning touch) managed to get the Parliament majority they were looking for. Good for them.No fear of another election for the next four years.

The far Left, who after all these years still call themselves NDP, NEW Democrats are now the opposition, amazing. Under Jack they almost wiped out the separatist Quebec bloc party and managed to put my old Friends, the Liberal Party into third place.

(PC 167 /NDP103 /Lib43 and bloc 4...) Both, Liberals and the bloc could not even get their leaders elected in their own riding's, while a number of seats in Quebec for the NDP went to some kids,one of them 19 years old young students who almost ran as a joke against the blog.One seat for the green party.

We now have a Majority Party running the country, the Progressive Conservatives, Prime Minister the Honourable Stephen Harper. The Official Opposition, the NDP ( should change their name to National Democratic Party instead of New...) their gifted leader Jack ...no not Lenin...ah. Leighton... Full credit to this fellow.I think it is sad that the once mighty Liberal Party could not even get their leader elected and have been pushed into third place. A lot of rebuilding to be done here.

The Liberals, down to 43 seats...their own leader Michael Ignatieff..no seat..resigned.

The formerly powerful separatist Bloc, 4 seats...2 of them re-elected..leader resigned.

...the picture shows the prime minister and his wife returning to Ottawa from his Alberta riding..

Osama/Obama/the mafia hit scene...

2011-05-03T16:13:00.013-05:00

I'm convinced this Usama Bin Laden fellow was a horrible man .Someone with his intelligence, organizing skills, wealth connections and more went terribly wrong somewhere. Acting like a religious mystic of Islam...I can't imagine that he was much of a Muslim if a humanitarian at all. Almost 10 years after the miserable 9/11 misdeed he is finally dead it looks like. I'm not sure the world is any safer than last week but it least it's the end of one mass murder chapter...

Not much more I can add here, I'm sure it has all been said, not much else on the news here the last day or so. The North African region is ready for an individual or group to make something out of this area. By distributing the incredible oil wealth the people of the African Continent (over a billion) could easily prosper together instead of living in poverty. For a few thousand this ridiculous wealth,much of it totally wasted. Bin Laden should have taken aim at Saudi Arabia and similar related oil rich areas to do some good and distribute some of the riches. Instead, he ended up hiding in a big house in Pakistan...with wives and children..some hero,some mystic,until he finally got bumped of by an American hit squad.The highly trainet elite group, Navy Seals....
Next...Omar.

The picture shows the presidents team watching the action as it unfolds..

Der amerikanische Mob jubelt vor dem Weißen Haus über die Nachricht vom Tod des "Terror-Teufels" (BLÖD). Die USA sind eines der gewalttätigsten Länder der Erde mit den meisten Feuerwaffen in Privatbesitz und der höchsten Mord- und Totschlagsrate....German news detail..

The Germans are not all that enthused about this Bin Laden killing...not that the monster has been eliminated but how this was accomplished......they usually go right along with uncle Sam's strange ways...but appear to have reservations about this latest turn of events. Guess they've had their fill of world politics and are more interested in the fuss ball scores...

NEWS...the wedding

2011-04-30T18:31:00.002-05:00

UK...the wedding

Great TV worldwide, wonderful feel good peaceful coverage. I'm glad to see that this British event went without serious troubles and bloodshed.
Amazingly, the popular former PM Mr.Blair was not invited. Or for that matter Mr.Brown. Two former Prime Ministers of previous ( not Labour) Governments were there. The Ambassador from Syria was uninvited following the current turmoil there. Our own S.Harper ( Prime Minister until next Monday)...was invited but because of the upcoming uncertain election here he decided not to attend. My own invitation was probably lost in the mail along with my T4 slips.

revolution.evolution.ottomanempire.africa/asia turmoil..etc...

2011-03-20T17:17:00.001-05:00

...the last few days have kept us busy following events in Japan...truly a disaster,earthquake, tsunami and now the escape of radiation from the 5 atomic power reactors in the quake zone.

For a few days the efforts in North africa by the inhabitants of a number of countries have almost taken second place in the news.
Finally,a new coalition has made attempts to take a shot at this idiot in Libya.
to give you an idea as to what this region looks like today...here is an updated map:

Spanish....you really wanted to know...right?

2011-03-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia during the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the later Medieval period.

Modern Spanish developed with the "Readjustment of the Consonants" that began in 15th century. The language continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages, as well as developing new words. Spanish was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, where it became the most important language for government and trade.
In 1999, there were according to Ethnologue 358 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 417 million speakers worldwide. Currently these figures are up to 400 and 500 million people respectively. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and used as an official language of the European Union, and Mercosur. Spanish is the second most studied language in the world, after English.

revolution.evolution.ottomanempire

2011-03-02T19:05:00.001-05:00

Incredible historical changes in the region of North Africa. It's been a long time in coming nobody has any idea where this will lead...
The best thing that could happen would be a group of intelligent natives of the region to get together and form the United States of Northern Africa...

Egypt...and all that

2011-02-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

...this fellow Mubarak...when he's done is not exactly leaving empty handed. In fact,accordinng to wiki-leaks he and his immediate family managed to amass a fortune somewhere between Bill Gates and Warren Buffets worth, ...about 50 Billion Dollars of goodies invested in foreign bank accounts and businesses.

Egypt 101.0 the road to democracy

2011-02-11T12:30:00.011-05:00

Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922) was a Turkish state, which at the height of its power (16th - 17th centuries) spanned three continents controlling much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and most of North Africa. The empire has been called by historians a "Universal Empire" due to both Roman and Islamic traditions.[65]

The empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. The Ottoman Empire was the only Islamic power to seriously challenge the rising power of Western Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries. With Istanbul (or Constantinople) as its capital, the Empire was in some respects an Islamic successor of earlier Mediterranean empires - the Roman and Byzantine empires.
The Ottoman empire was friendly with the German Reich and after WW1 fell apart leaving the bulk of the territories to be administered by Britain, and the leftover base became Turkey.

Kingdom of Egypt
The new government drafted and implemented a constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary system. Saad Zaghlul was popularly elected as Prime Minister of Egypt in 1924. In 1936 the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded. Continued instability due to remaining British influence and increasing political involvement by the king led to the dissolution of the parliament in a military coup d'état known as the 1952 Revolution. The Free Officers Movement forced King Farouk to abdicate in support of his son Fuad. British military presence in Egypt lasted until 1954.[31]

Republic
On June 18, 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic. Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser – the real architect of the 1952 movement – and was later put under house arrest. Nasser assumed power as President in June, 1956. British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on June 13, 1956. He nationalized the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, prompting the 1956 Suez Crisis.

a reprint...we the people

2010-12-27T12:22:00.020-05:00

This scares the hell out of me. George H.W. Bush is the kingpin behind all these evil plots against us by Dick, Karl Rove, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, the like.
I found this somewhere...it's a couple of years old but still interesting...
Old Pappy brought with him to power, and these crooks would include his worthless spoiled-brat rich-kid sons and his one daughter. The Bush family from Day 1 of its existence back in Ohio when old Sam Bush went into cahoots with the Harriman family to grab banksful of government-back railroad equipment contracts--on down through Prescott Bush who through the Bush Family-Harriman-connected banking interests kept Adolph Schickelgruber's money and investments safe for him--on through World War II up to this very day has lived off government doles and tax-break-loopholes and rich-family privilege. And this is especially true about the very worthless Pappy Bush and his worthless branch of the family. Pappy's the Prescott-Bush boy who after failing in his business attempts (for instance his Zapata Offshore Drilling company--which he had trouble making ends meet with even given the big tax breaks for oil people on the books back in the late 40s and early 50s--remember the oil-depletion allowance?) turned to politics for his We-the-People-provided nest egg.

So We the People keep on supporting these worthless old political baggages and family empires and hidden-wealth "non-profit" thereby tax-free foundationed families. These richer-than-God assholes all of whom have lived off We the People for over a century now. This bunch of freeloaders also includes now all these hedge-fund billionaires and their worthless families. Did you know thanks to their power in Washington, the District of Corruption, hedge-fund pirates pay no taxes on their capital gains? Another gift to these crooks from We the Stupid Scardie-cat People. Like Warren "Jive Ass" Buffett, a filthy-rich hedge-fund pirate. His old pappy was a conniving shiftless-skunk politician and Wall Street finagler, which means Buffett's family have also feathered their nest with government doles and tax breaks.
It is so frustrating for a clear-thinking American to comprehend how in spite of these creepy Republicans, the Teabagger or the rightwing nutjob side of the Party, whichever, being responsible for our ungodly deficits in the first place--starting with the Great Communicator and his economy-wrecking economic policies and going on through the further economy-wrecking voodoo economics of Pappy "Read My Lips" Bush--the largest-ever deficit until his son took over in 2000 with a Democrat President's surplus and drove us down to the point of economic disaster we are now in--We the People of the USA who vote keep putting them back into power--this in spite of the Democratic presidents of the past being the only leaders to overcome these economic depressions Republican Hoover-Reaganomics gets us into.

In the current budget, the Pentagon rakes in about 1 trillion bucks--and since the Pentagon hasn't been audited in over a decade, We the People of the USA have no idea how these military monkeys are wasting that grabbag of good ole worthless US bucks they've got their unregulated sticky mitts on--all of which We the People's hard-earned money--dumbass Americans working for $30,000-a-year for fat cats making 10-to-100 times as much. How dumb are We the People to be also keeping on struggling to keep up payments on credit cards designed by these fat cat accountants/bankers/financiers/corporate lawyers to keep us in a perpetual debt. Or keeping our money in these big Goliath banks (like it's gotten so out of hand, Snoopy has his Met-Life Bank; Walmart has declared itself a bank; PayPal is a bank) or continuing to go to them for loans or remortgaging schemes. We the People as income-earners are in debt and the corporate bosses ain't creating any new lower-or-upper-level jobs and the workers look around and see half of the old staff now gone, outplaced, leaving them with more work, maybe a new title, but with less money. Plus, the new "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy (which Mr. Compromise Obama has taken up as his philosophy, too) says it's up to the worker to take care of himself and his or her family in terms of getting ahead and not the job of the 1% Power Elite who now control the US government and as such control us, too. Workers either working or out of work have no time or the knowledge to stop and think about their situations. Instead they keep on faithfully struggling for honest bucks at the same time FEARING either losing what barely-making-it job they currently have or FEARING perhaps not being able to find another job when they eventually do get laid off or FEARING suddenly being hit with a crippling disease or being in a car wreck and becoming unable to work, blah, blah, blah--while up above these scared shitless workers in their luxurious top-floor corner offices--those sacred corporate upper rooms containing those altars to Mammon housed in those sacred cathedrals of high finance all full of corporate priests, the fat cats who are busy planning their next fabulous vacation ("We're sailing one of the yachts down to Bora Bora....") or their next teleconference ("I want to meet with the Cleveland office on this workplace spying technology one of their best and brightest has come up with....") or their next vision for the company ("How do we get more work for less money out of these high-paid lazy American workers?"). Our economy is tanking--wars actually wrecking us, but, hey, you can't complain about these wars--without them, we'd all be shoveling shit or selling rotten apples and lead pencils on the street corners--or maybe our women, including our mothers, our wives, or our daughters will have to become whores; fat cats with lots of money and power need whores. That's the true role of women in the Power Elite world.
It is a New World Order dropping down on us like a big net. And this New World Order is a military order. The Bush Family has made millions off all the wars they've put into motion--Pappy Bush and his futile Persian Gulf War (the only war we've won, according to Pappy, since WWII (paying for it using Pappy's scheme of forcing Japan and his Saudi-Arabian pals and other of our allies to help him pay for it) and the two unending wars perpetrated on us by his worthless, spoiled-brat, AWOL-coward, numbskull (Skull & Bones--"Hey, Georgie Porgie, come 'ere and suck my dick! It's a brotherhood thing, bro"), lying-like-a-dog son. The Bushes love war and money. And We the People keep giving their wars and all our money along with 'em.

USA 150 years after the civil war...2011

2010-12-27T12:16:00.002-05:00

I don't think any country is easy to govern. Even a democracy or especially a democratically elected government will have its considerable problems and obstacles.
But I still believe, firmly, that President Obama is the right person for the time and if anyone can change the totally screwed up scene in Washington then I still believe he is the right individual to do so...
So much needs to be done. The infrastructure not only in the USA but as well in Canada needs to be updated,renewed,overhauled, repaired and brand new innovative ideas need to be put in place.

If we can find the money to keep the two idiotic war fronts going, with no gain or reward for us whatsoever, we should be able to find the resources to update the infrastructure systems of our country.

2010-12-27T12:01:00.000-05:00

Dear Fred --

This time of year, Americans around the country are taking the time to exchange heartfelt messages with friends and loved ones, reflecting on the past year. They write of achievements and setbacks, of births, graduations, promotions, and moves.
These messages allow us to overcome the miles that separate us. And they allow us to continue one of the most basic American traditions that has held folks close for centuries -- the simple sharing of stories.
And as families gather around holiday tables this season, we also have the opportunity to share the stories of the change this movement has achieved together.
It is a narrative woven by individuals across America -- in big cities and small towns, hospitals and classrooms, in auto manufacturing plants and auto supply stores.
These are stories of rebuilding, and of innovation. Stories of communities breathing new life into old roads and bridges, of local plants harnessing alternative fuel into new energy. Stories of small businesses getting up, dusting themselves off, and beginning to grow again. Stories of soldiers who served multiple tours of duty in Iraq now coming home -- and enjoying the holidays this year in the company of loved ones.
These are stories of progress.
They unite us, and they are ours to share.
We've pulled many of them together in one place, PROGRESS. You can see what our reforms have meant to Americans in every state -- block by block, community by community.
The reforms that we fought long and hard for are not talking points.
And their effects don't change based on the whims of politicians in Washington. They are achievements that have a real and meaningful impact on the lives of Americans around the country. They are achievements that would not have been possible without you. PROGRESS localizes them -- and brings them to life.
It tells of how a green technology business in Phoenix, Arizona, is using a grant through the Recovery Act's Transportation Electrification program to bring the first electric-drive vehicles and charging stations to cities around the country.
And about how, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 22,900 small businesses in Utah's 2nd Congressional District are now eligible for health care tax credits -- and how 17,500 residents in Idaho's 1st with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage.
Let's celebrate the spirit of service and responsibility that brought them to fruition. And let's steady ourselves with the resolve to continue pressing forward.
Because the coming year will hold new challenges -- battles that have yet to be fought, and stories of progress that have yet to be written.
Happy holidays, and God bless,
Barack

more...

2010-12-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

2010 almost over, many issues unresolved. America,the federal state as well as all or most individual states are in dire straits, hard to believe that this wealthy country could have sunk so deeply into a quagmire with no easy out.
Most of the euro group is in the same mess, either bankrupt or nearly so. How could this modern world with all it's universities and well educated people get into such a horrible rut? Greed.

And a happy thanksgiving to you and your family..sir

2010-11-25T12:36:00.000-05:00

Fred --
When Michelle and I sit down with our family to give thanks today, I want you to know that we'll be especially grateful for folks like you.
Everything we have been able to accomplish in the last two years was possible because you have been willing to work for it and organize for it.
And every time we face a setback, or when progress doesn't happen as quickly as we would like, we know that you'll be right there with us, ready to fight another day.

So I want to thank you -- for everything.
I also hope you'll join me in taking a moment to remember that the freedoms and security we enjoy as Americans are protected by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. These patriots are willing to lay down their lives in our defense, and each of us owes them and their families a debt of gratitude.

Have a wonderful day, and God bless.
Barack

flashpoints Korea and Iran...

2010-10-12T15:19:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Iran Magazine ( copied)
Iran is one of the biggest news stories. But it is being covered by the mainstream media in sound bites or by information disseminated by Web sites connected to interest groups, political parties and bloggers with no experience in journalism.The trend in journalism is toward specialization. But even as America’s central geopolitical position becomes ever more tied to the social, cultural and political conditions in the rest of the world, U.S. news organizations continue their contraction, closing or scaling back foreign bureaus, choosing to invest fewer and fewer resources to cultivate editorial and reporting staffs who can become, in effect, area experts.
The gap that has widened between the mainstream media coverage and the goings on in the region has contributed to increasing tensions between the West and East, dehumanizing the perception of Middle Easterners — Iranians in particular.
Tehran Bureau is a virtual bureau connecting journalists, Iran experts and readers all over the world. Our stories are written by Iranians in Iran and the Middle East, foreigners viewing or interacting with our culture for the first time, and hyphenated Iranians best suited to bridge the cultures.
Tehran Bureau is an independent news organization. It is not affiliated with or funded by any government, religious organization, political party, lobby or interest group. Read more about us on the Columbia Journalism School Web site.Iran...
North Korea:
It appears that the two serious flash points for the USA is Iran as well as North Korea. To a degree the attitude to North Korea is somewhat understandable, we must remember that the war with this nation was never concluded, finalised or whatever. Where this is going, nobody knows. I found the parade of young women on TV yesterday, with machine guns as rather grotesque.
Iran:
This country under the Shaw/King was a friend of the USA. It was USA and Canada I believe who sold Iran all sorts of atomic energy junk...they probably never needed it in the first place. Mr. Carter was unable to deal with the hostage crises and relations with this country never got back on the rails. It was okay with us for Iran and Iraq to beat up on one another, the west did not care and sold arms to both sides.

America....Taryn Simon...a must see

2010-10-10T10:19:00.001-05:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/643

Germany.. huge ransom paid, ten thousand tons of gold...

2010-10-04T01:40:00.006-05:00

A brief but important item on the news here yesterday....apparently, Germany just paid off the last of the world war 1 debts, an amount set by the then allies ( France, Britain and the USA) who were at war with the Reich from 1914 til 1918. War broke out in 1914, lasted until 1918 and the settlement conditions were imposed on the new German Republic ( Weimar Republic) in 1922. The USA only got involved in1917 but President Woodrow Wilson attempted to play a large role in the settlement.

...an ounce of gold in today's market sells for between 1200 and 1300 Dollars...I believe an ounce is equal to 35 grammes...1000 grammes per kilogram or 1,000- Kilogrammes per ton (2,000 pounds per ton or is it 2240#)...you do the math...it's horrendous.

The amount set by the so called victors, mostly France and Britain amounted to trillions of Gold marks or dollars...the equivalent of 9,800 tons of gold. After over 90 years, apparently Germany just paid off the last part of this horrendous assessment.

It must be remembered that four years after the end of WW1, the victors imposed this on Germany. It must be undersdtood that this war was not won or lost, there was an armistice but it also was the end of the golden years for Germany, lasting from 1871 when Germany was created until 1918, the end of WW I and the turmoil that followed.
It was the Versailles Treaty which to a large extend brought about the Hitler 3rd. Reich fascism regime and the disastrous second world war. (1939-1945 ending in total capitulation and destruction of Germany,loss of large regions of the country to Poland and Russia, and finally the creation of two german countries...one a puppet state of the USA, the other an even worse puppet dictatorship of the Soviet Union)....

Back in 1870....

Prussia beat the French ( Napoleon 3rd.) and Germany was created (1871)out of hundreds of bits and pieces of German speaking duchies and communities,( Flickenteppich they called it, or Carpetpatchwork).. miniature bits and pieces of what once was supposed to have been the holy roman empire of German nations.....which was never holy or roman, or for that matter much of an empire...The largest original component was the Kingdom of Prussia..

French provinces or territories, Elsass and Lothringen became part of the newly created German Reich.

Israel....now

2010-09-14T12:41:00.003-05:00

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post shares Time’s malevolence toward the Jewish state, but both of these papers ran major features in the past week discussing whether Israel’s hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu could turn into a peacemaker.

All Israeli prime ministers have seized any opportunity for peace. The hawkish Begin returned the Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt and sought one with Lebanon as well.
The even more hawkish Sharon ordered the Gaza withdrawal. The left-of-center hawk,
Rabin, signed the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan and the Oslo agreements with the PLO, and,
Barak, a former military commander, pulled Israeli forces entirely out of Lebanon. The Israeli public’s yearning for peace is so strong that no leader, of whatever feather, can afford to spurn a chance for it.
In contrast, Arab publics have rarely supported peace and few of their rulers have espoused it. The exceptions have mostly been assassinated, notably Jordan’s first King Abdullah, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, and Lebanon’s Bashir Gemayel.

President Abbas, who presides over the West Bank, is clearly more a man of peace than his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, or than Hamas, the anti-Semitic terror group that rules Gaza. Is he ready and able to make a deal? Would he dare? And does he or the Palestinian Community Network represent Palestinian sentiment? These are the real questions, and not whether Israelis want peace, which only the blind or the bigoted could doubt.

9th.anniversary...9/11

2010-09-11T12:51:00.001-05:00

9/11 a day to remember.
But more later,
I just wanted to get this date on the blog. I usually write my stuff on the fly..but this subject needs a bit of thinking and putting down the right words. The deed itself, blowing up the world trade center towers, part of the Pentagon and attempting to do even more damage, all on one day, is actually quite remarkable for a bunch of suicide committing religious fanatics. Subsequently, for the USA to murder 1.3 million people in Iraq and totally destroying their country is of course another matter.

We are lucky to have a fellow like Mr. Obama who may possibly be able to bring this totally idiotic nonsense to an end. Will the responsible parties ever have to face justice? Probably not. I'm talking about Blair and Bush 2...along with the military ammo pushers who promoted these crimes in the first place.
....the picture has nothing to do with it...Muslim females running from something...one of them dead or wounded in the gutter...could be Gaza for all I know, but the effect is the same.
An end must be found to stop this.

Iraq

2010-09-07T18:16:00.002-05:00

"Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result.It is immoral and unjust, because it had nothing to do with United States security and because Iraq had not initiated aggression against us."
Congressman Ron Paul (How true that statement has proved to be).

THE IRAQ DEBACLE: THE LEGACY OF SEVEN YEARS OF WAR

The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge “enduring bases” and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.

The U.S. military’s overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis—just the opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of basic infrastructure—electricity, water, sewage—that continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq’s electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq’s health care and higher education systems, once the best in the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the nation. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis, creating a lifetime of suffering and economic hardship for them, their communities and the entire nation as it struggles to rebuild.

Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system. The U.S. use of weapons such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous has taken a severe toll, with the cancer rate in Fallujah, for example, now worse than that of Hiroshima.

The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created by the US intervention have been abandoned. Of the nearly 4 million refugees, many are now living in increasingly desperate circumstances in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and around the world. As undocumented refugees, most are not allowed to work and are forced to take extremely low paying, illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on the UN and charity to survive. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has documented a spike in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women.

Iraq still does not have a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elections, there is still a political vacuum and violence that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. There is no functioning democracy in place and little sign there will be one in the near future.

The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops. More than one million American service members have deployed in the Iraq War effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed suicide.

The war has drained our treasury. As of August 2010, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $750 billion on the Iraq War effort. Counting the cost of lifetime care of wounded vets and the interest payments on the money we borrowed to pay for this war, the real cost will be in the trillions. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the economic crises we are experiencing, including the lack of funds for our schools, healthcare, infrastructure and investments in clean, green jobs.

The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis of lies have not been held accountable. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Neither have the Bush administration lawyers who authorized torture, including Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The “think tanks,” journalists and pundits who perpetuated the lies have not been fired—most are today cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan.

The war has led to the pillaging of Iraqi resources. The U.S. Department of Defense has been unable to account for $8.7 billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and reconstruction after the 2003 invasion. The invasion has also led to the dismantling of Iraqi government control over the nation’s oil. In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended opening up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment. The resulting Iraq Oil Law has led to the global grab for Iraq’s resources.

The war has not made us more secure. The US policy of torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, violent and deadly raids on civilian homes, gunning down innocent civilians in the streets and absence of habeas corpus has fueled the fires of hatred and extremism toward Americans. The very presence of our troops in Iraq and other Muslim nations has become a recruiting tool.

Iraq

2010-09-01T07:43:00.002-05:00

Iraq‏
Barack Obama

September 1, 2010 12:21:43 AM
Fred
Tonight marks the end of the American combat mission in Iraq.As a candidate for this office, I pledged to end this war responsibly. And, as President, that is what I am doing.Since I became Commander-in-Chief, we've brought home nearly 100,000 U.S. troops. We've closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of our bases.As Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, our commitment to a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq continues.

Under Operation New Dawn, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain to advise and assist Iraqi forces, protect our civilians on the ground, and pursue targeted counter terrorism efforts.By the end of next year, consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, these men and women, too, will come home.Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest -- it is in our own. Our nation has paid a huge price to put Iraq's future in the hands of its people.

We have sent our men and women in uniform to make enormous sacrifices. We have spent vast resources abroad in the face of several years of recession at home.We have met our responsibility through the courage and resolve of our women and men in uniform.

In seven years, they confronted a mission as challenging and as complex as any our military has ever been asked to face.Nearly 1.5 million Americans put their lives on the line. Many returned for multiple tours of duty, far from their loved ones who bore a heroic burden of their own. And most painfully, more than 4,400 Americans have given their lives, fighting for people they never knew, for values that have defined our people for more than two centuries.What their country asked of them was not small. And what they sacrificed was not easy.For that, each and every American owes them our heartfelt thanks.Our promise to them -- to each woman or man who has donned our colors -- is that our country will serve them as faithfully as they have served us. We have already made the largest increase in funding for veterans in decades.

So long as I am President, I will do whatever it takes to fulfill that sacred trust.Tonight, we mark a milestone in our nation's history. Even at a time of great uncertainty for so many Americans, this day and our brave troops remind us that our future is in our own hands and that our best days lie ahead.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

USA, midterm circus

2010-08-29T16:22:00.002-05:00

Housing sales down, unemployment up...but why are we so unfair with this fellow Obama.
He is probably the best man for the job and on the job since Woodrow Wilson.
It will take years to repair what this last yokel screwed up and or allowed to happen.
Had McCain been elected things would be even worse.

Give the man a chance, he's on the right track.

floods..hunger..famine..asia..pakistan...perspective

2010-08-25T09:52:00.002-05:00

The recent G8 G20 conference in Toronto cost about 1.2 Billion Dollars to run and police. That is 1,000 million and 200 million, total, 1.2 billion.

In contrast, Canada so far has come up with the support of 32 million dollars for the catastrophe assistance in Pakistan. Combined with all the efforts and support from Europe, about 800 million dollars have been pledged for the support in Pakistan. Compare that with the G policing cost in Toronto and it tells you how much we (humanity) are prepared to spend for useless efforts as compared to true human urgent needs.

more...on the Israel scene...

2010-08-16T08:17:00.001-05:00

Since its founding in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America has been fighting for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Under the leadership of such illustrious presidents as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, and current National President Morton A. Klein, the ZOA has been on the front lines of Jewish activism.

With a national membership of over 30,000, and chapters throughout the United States (including Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, North Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, South Jersey and Washington D.C.), the ZOA today works to strengthen US-Israeli relations, through educational activities, public affairs programs, working every day on Capitol Hill, and by combating anti-Israel bias in the media, textbooks, and on campuses.

the boatpeople have arrived

2010-08-13T18:13:00.001-05:00

....about 500 passengers and crew arrived this morning at the west coast, boat people from Somalia. Tigers.Smugglers. Who knows. This has happened before and no doubt the scene is being watched for more of the same. They will be processed...takes about a year and a half and going by recent history about 80% will receive refuge status and be allowed to remain here. Most will probably end up in Toronto...apply to bring a bunch of other family members over within the next fife years and on the Summer weekends they all end up here uptown at the Cobourg beach.

What's wrong with that? Nothing.\It will give our government departments something to do...
Anyway that is what's in the news today and after being crammed up in a small ship for over three months on the pacific journey, these folks need a break, no matter what or why they find themselves in this situation.

why more time?

2010-08-12T20:12:00.001-05:00

Standing meekly aside while Karzai's cadre rips-off the country; blissfully ignoring the total ineffectiveness of COIN; and, shelving our real strategic advantage--our commitment to self-government, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law - is a formula for self-defeat. Hawk Ann Marlowe thinks that's exactly what America is doing. And more time, of more of the same, will give the same result. Google Anne Marlowe, writer.

Israel....

2010-08-10T09:14:00.003-05:00

I remember...way back when...1949..50..51..etc I used to feel sorry for the poor, displaced people of Palestine who were forced into UN camps to make room for the new Israeli settlements..such horror, such injustice.
War is hell and Israel has bravely fought several wars for their conquered space, territory and Independence.
And then...they end up giving part of it back, only to be sniped at and attacked from these areas.

I can not think of any wars or conflicts in the world since Hitlers Army crossed Poland to take on the Soviet Union that have resulted in permanent territorial gain for the aggressors...Israel is about the only nation I know of which has been formed, exists as a country ( and the only democracy in the region).

Just how many wars does Israel have to win to be able to build the kind of country they deserve. Enough is enough ...next time fight for , keep and defend the conquered lands for good...
This may include part or all of Lebanon,Saudi Arabia...parts of Egypt if need be, and a host of other neighboring Territories. Iraq, Iran, Syria,as well as Jordan which already is home to many Palestinians. There, I finally said it...

billions of dollars...wasted

2010-08-09T19:30:00.001-05:00

Well, ...this week pictures the cover of Time as a young woman, a girl from Afghanistan with her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban. That's why we're there to stop this outrageous nonsense.

...and this picture is of a woman, pregnant widow, being executed with three rifle shots to the head...I don't think we can leave this horrible and corrupt place until some kind of humanity has come to it to protect women and children.

2010-08-07T19:11:00.003-05:00

Dear Fred:
I want to thank you for signing my birthday card.
Michelle told me that she was planning something a little different this year, and I was overwhelmed by the kind words I received from so many supporters like you.

This job has a way of offering humbling moments. And the support you have shown me, time and time again, has sustained me through any number of difficult days. It is more than any president deserves, and I could not be more grateful.

On my birthday, I spent some time considering what the year ahead will bring -- a new set of challenges and opportunities, some that we can foresee and some that we cannot.

If we continue to stand together, I know we will continue to move America forward and win these fights for change.
Thank you again for taking a moment to sign my card. As far as birthdays go, it is hard to imagine topping this one. But then again, Michelle always has a way of surprising me.

Sincerely,
Barack

Mr.Obama is probably one of the finest men and best choice to occupy the white house since Woodrow Wilson. I signed his Birthday Card along with another million or more others and above is the nicely worded response.

a billion dollars...waste

2010-07-31T09:02:00.002-05:00

It's difficult to get my head around this billion dollar thing. The Germans call it Milliards...instead of Billion. I believe a billion is is 1,000 Millions.
The recent in Toronto Canada G8 & G20 event apparently cost over a billion dollars to police. Including local ,provincial, federal RCMP...army?...all together a billion dollars cost to police this event.
Unless I'm out a decimal point...that's the equivalent of the cost of building 4,000 homes at $250,000 each or over 20,000 seniors residences at $50,000 each. What a waste.
Other billion dollar efforts with little or nothing to show for are:

The long rifle gun registry efforts, money wasted by the last federal liberal government ...

The E-Health registry attempt, Ontario Provincial government waste by the current Ontario Liberal government.

G20 and all that...

2010-07-22T16:59:00.002-05:00

In the nutshell....America wants to run the world. OK. Can't do it alone, so they asked the British to join them...after all they saved their butt in WW11. France was added...the world war 2 winners were: the USA, Britain, France (?) and the communist Soviet Union. The principal losers of course, Germany and Japan...
Back to the G20.
Because the U.N. as it is structured accomplishes little or nothing on the worlds economic scene, the G club added Japan and Germany to the original 3 participants...G5 then...They later added Canada and Italy and there you are, G7. More recently The Russian Federation was invited and the G8 created.

As a result of the G8 & G20 meeting here in Toronto Ontario Canada an expense of over a Billion Dollars incurred....not sure if that included the damage a bunch of idiots caused during the meeting...on the whole apparently the meeting went well...not sure what agreements resulted and what world piece progress was made.

July2010

2010-07-22T16:43:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been an eventful month, the G20 thing in Toronto, the soccer scene, the Queen visit, busy month indeed..
My hope was that the financial happenings would improve somewhat but sadly another pile of money is lost in mutual funds, it looks like while the stockmarket is only down about 1% from last year end, the mutuals took a loss of over 4 points in the last three months...one wonders where this is going.

2010-06-09T00:57:00.005-05:00

..much in the news...
I tried to post a note but the cut n. paste function is not working...probably something I missed to install in this new confuser..

four years...

2010-05-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

I've been writing in bits and pieces on this blog for exactly 4 years. My main attempt in putting some lines togeter from time to time was to point out the stupidity of our ways in this world.
Finally the yokel administration of this idiot in the USA has come to an end, but we may have to live for a long time with the screw ups and inaction of this fellow Bush 2. To this day I don't think he has a clue why some people in this world hate America. It looks like Mr. Obama is quite capable in reversing the downhill route america was on. I wish him luck...so far so good.

in the news...

2010-05-24T11:10:00.001-05:00

.The BP Oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico...they call it a spill,it's a disaster..
.Tea Party member elected, blows in the face of both, the democrats and republicans....
.The Greek bailout by the other Euromembers put pressure on the Euro...it dropped versus the Dollar..
.New faith in the Greenback acted to reduce the Can. $ from parity to 94cents US; at this moment it is undervalued..

THEN...

2010-05-18T10:34:00.000-05:00

On 16 July 1945, the Americans successfully tested an atomic bomb at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert, USA. July 21; Churchill and Truman agreed that the weapon should be used. Truman did not tell Stalin of the weapon until July 25 when he advised Stalin that America had 'a new bomb of unusually destructive force.' While Stalin seemed unaffected at hearing this news, he was later noted as being outraged at President Truman for not sharing this information earlier. Stalin was actually aware of the atomic bomb before Truman was as he had two spies that had infiltrated the Manhattan Project. By the 26th of July, the Potsdam Declaration had been broadcast to Japan, threatening total destruction unless the Imperial Japanese government submitted to unconditional surrender.

happy...happy...happy...happy.

2010-05-05T20:27:00.006-05:00

Ah..well....it was my birthday...number...oh well...and Diana took me for dinner to a German Restaurant in Toronno...I just had one beer and can not explain the somewhat dipped look on my face..back to more serious stuff like Obama,Sarah Palin King George the Shrub and related events.
In the news, the bailout of Greece by mostly Germany and their grip on the Euro, and...the ridiculous disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the event they like to call the spill....

America,America

2010-03-28T08:53:00.009-05:00

Please,do not mistake my comments as sour grapes or any kind of attemptto badmouth Americans, not at all. German born in Palatinate at the French border 1937, I spent my first 18 years in Germany. I emigrated to Canada in 1956 and became a Citizen of Canada in 1967 our centennial year.
In the 80s I obtained a proper "green card" and decided for mostly climate preference reasons to buy a home in Florida. But.

I therefore consider myself ethnic German with Canadian Citizenship and American Alian (green Card).
But History is what it is. Truth, a bunch of dates and many distortions. I like Mr. Obama, what he stands for and what he appears to believe in. My remarks are directed to those who have no clue as to the past, that includes Frau Merkel and most likely Mrs. Sarah Palin..among others.
I disaprove most of what Mr.Bush II had a part in, involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the World financial crisis and his inability to even try to cope with many domestic and world problems.(Hurricane Katherina, for instance). I suspect that for most bof his eight years in power he had no clue of what he was doing. One of his more ignorant remarks after 9/11 was "why do they hate us?"

beginning of modern warfare 1861

home sweet home in Gaza

Germany....read this Frau Merkel!

2010-03-27T19:33:00.003-05:00

German occupation zones in 1946 after territorial annexations

More than 7 million Germans, including almost 2 million civilians, died during World War II.After the end of the war in Europe additional casualties were incurred during the Allied occupation and also during the population expulsions that followed.

After the war, the German people were often viewed with contempt because they were blamed for Nazi crimes by other Europeans. Germans visiting abroad, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, attracted insults from locals, and from foreigners who may have had their families or friends live through or perish in the atrocities. Today in Europe and worldwide (particularly in countries that fought against the Axis), Germans may be scorned by elderly people who were alive to experience the atrocities committed by Nazi Germans during World War II.

Germany itself and the German economy were devastated, with great parts of most major cities destroyed by the bombings of the Allied forces, sovereignty was taken away by the Allies and the territory filled with millions of refugees from the former eastern provinces which the Allies had decided were to be annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, moving the eastern German border westwards to the Oder-Neisse line and effectively reducing Germany in size by roughly 25%. (see also Potsdam Conference) The remaining parts of Germany were divided among the Allies and occupied by British (the north-west), French (the south-west), American (the south) and Soviet (the east) troops.

.The expulsions of Germans from the lost areas in the east (see also Former eastern territories of Germany), the Sudetenland, and elsewhere in eastern Europe went on for several years. The number of Germans expelees totaled roughly 15,000,000. Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion range from under 500,000 to 3 million.

After a short time the Allies broke over ideological problems (Communism versus Capitalism), and thus both sides established their own spheres of influence, creating a previously non-existent division in Germany between East and West, (although the division largely followed the borders of states which had existed in Germany before Bismarck's unification less than 100 years before).

West Germany, (officially: Federal Republic of Germany, FRG - this is still the official name of the unified Germany today) received (de facto) semi-sovereignty in 1949, as well as a constitution, called the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). The document was not called a Constitution officially, as at this point, it was still hoped that the two German states would be reunited in the near future.

The first free elections in West Germany were held in 1949, which were won by the Christian Democratic Party of Germany (CDU) (conservatives) by a slight margin. Konrad Adenauer (who spent the war years in the USA), a member of the CDU, was the first Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) of West Germany.The communist party was outlawed in West Germany, so much for democracy.

Foreign troops still remain in Germany today, for example Ramstein Air Base, but the majority of troops left following the end of the Cold War (By 1994 for Soviet troops, mandated under the terms of the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany and in the mid-1990s for Western forces). The Bush Administration in the United States in 2004 stated intentions to withdraw most of the remaining American troops out of Germany in the coming years. During the years 1950-2000 more than 10,000,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Germany.

The West German economy was by the mid 50's rebuilt thanks to the abandonment in mid-1947 of some of the last vestiges of the Morgenthau Plan and to fewer war reparations imposed on West Germany (see also Wirtschaftswunder). After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Generals Clay and Marshall, the Truman administration finally realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously had been dependent.In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds the punitive JCS 1067, which had directed the U.S. forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany.

The dismantling of factories in the western zones, for further transport to Russia as reparations, was in time halted as frictions grew between East and West. Limits were placed on permitted levels of German production in order to prevent resurgence of German militarism, part of which included severely restricting German steel production and affected the rest of the German economy very negatively (see "The industrial plans for Germany"). Dismantling of factories by France and Great Britain as reparations and for the purpose of lowering German war and economic potential under the "level of industry plans" took place (finally halted in 1951), but to nowhere near the scale of the dismantling and transport to the Soviet Union of factories in the eastern zone of occupation. The Eastern Block did not accept the Marshall Plan, denouncing it as American economic imperialism, and thus it (East Germany included) recovered much more slowly than their Western counterparts. German political end economic control of its main remaining centers of industry was reduced, the Ruhr area was under international control. The Ruhr Agreement was imposed on the Germans as a condition for permitting them to establish the Federal Republic of Germany. In the end, the beginning of the Cold War led to increased German control of the area, although permanently limited by the pooling of German coal and steel into a multinational community in 1951 (see European Coal and Steel Community). The neighboring Saar area, containing much of Germany's remaining coal deposits, was by the U.S. handed over to French economic administration as a protectorate in 1947 and did not politically return to Germany until January 1957, with economic reintegration occurring a few years later.

The Allies confiscated intellectual property of great value, all German patents, both in Germany and abroad, and used them to strengthen their own industrial competitiveness by licensing them to Allied companies Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years the U.S. pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. John Gimbel comes to the conclusion, in his book "Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany", that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion. Meanwhile thousands of the best German researchers were being put to work in the Soviet Union and in the U.S.

For several years following the surrender German nutritional levels were very low, resulting in extremely high mortality rates. Throughout all of 1945 the U.S. forces of occupation ensured that no international aid reached ethnic Germans It was directed that all relief went to non-German displaced persons, liberated Allied POWs, and former concentration camp inmates.
During 1945 it was estimated that the average German civilian in the US and UK occupation zones received 1200 calories a day. Meanwhile non-German Displaced Persons were receiving 2300 calories through emergency food imports and Red Cross help.In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that German civilian adult death rates had risen to 4 times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels. The German Red Cross was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and on travel.The few agencies permitted to help Germans, such as the indigenous Caritas Verband, were not allowed to use imported supplies.
When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to German infants the US State Department forbade it.
The German food situation reached its worst during the very cold winter of 1946-1947 when German calorie intake ranged from 1,000-1,500 calories per day, a situation made worse by severe lack of fuel for heating. Meanwhile the Allies were well fed, average adult calorie intake was; U.S. 3200-3300; UK 2900; U.S. Army 4000.German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948.

As agreed by the Allies at the Yalta conference Germans were used as forced labor as part of the reparations to be extracted to the countries ruined by Nazi aggression. By 1947 it is estimated that 4,000,000 Germans (both civilians and POWs) were being used as forced labor by the U.S., France, the UK and the Soviet Union. German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the low countries. By December 1945 it was estimated by French authorities that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or maimed each month in accidents. In Norway the last available casualty record, from August 29, 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers died while clearing mines, while 392 had been maimed. Death rates for the German civilians doing forced labor in the Soviet Union ranged between 19% - 39%, depending on category.

Norman Naimark writes in "The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949." that although the exact number of women and girls who were raped by members of the Red Army in the months preceding and years following the capitulation will never be known, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, quite possibly as high as the 2,000,000 victims estimate made by Barbara Johr, in "Befreier und Befreite". Many of these victims were raped repeatedly. Naimark states that not only had each victim to carry the trauma with her for the rest of her days, it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation (the German Democratic Republic). Naimark concludes "The social psychology of women and men in the soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until-one could argue-the present.

The post-war hostility shown to the German people is exemplified in the fate of the War children, sired by German soldiers with women from the local population in nations such as Norway where the children and their mothers after the war had to endure many years of abuse. In the case of Denmark the hostility felt towards all things German also showed itself in the treatment of German refugees during the years 1945 to 1949. During 1945 alone 7000 German children under the age of 5 died as a result of being denied sufficient food and denied medical attention by Danish doctors who were afraid that rendering aid to the children of the former enemy would be seen as an unpatriotic act. Many children died of easily treatable ailments. As a consequence "more German refugees died in Danish camps, "than Danes did during the entire war.
During the Cold War, it was difficult for West Germans to visit East German relatives and friends and impossible vice versa. For East Germans, especially after the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 and until Hungary opened up its border to the West in the late 1980s, thus allowing hundreds of thousands of vacationing East Germans to flee into Western Europe, it was only possible to get to West Germany by illegally fleeing across heavily-fortified and guarded border areas.

The above was taken from Wikepedia, most of it in any case does not just reflect the views of the Germans but appears to be world opinion based on facts as exposed by some decent American , Canadian and British sources. I think Frau Merkel should be aware of some of these stated facts before she engages in stupidspeak such as describing the Amerticans as "unsere Befreier" ...our liberators.

44 years after the end of World War II, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. Both the East as well as the West parts of Germany were reunited on 3 October 1990.

...finally...success, Obama Health plan..for all Americans

2010-03-23T19:49:00.010-05:00

The Laundrylist
picture is a watercolour 4x6 by Diana

It is truly a significant accomplishment to have finally instituted coverage of some sort of health insurance for all Americans, including the somewhere between 30 and 50 Million people who had no medical coverage of any kind until now.
Germany....loser of two horrendeous world wars has had medical coverage since 1871, France probably has the best insurance of the western world, Britain has covered their people for some time and Canada has been with a countrywide healthplan administered by the provinces for almost two generations.

The USA should look at this as an opportunity as this new situation will undoubtedly create many rewarding careers although it is presently viewed as a considerable new tax burden.
I have been subjected to this totally ridiculous situation of finding myself without medical coverage about ten years ago. One afternoon at an Orlando Florida area hospital to check me out for a possible pnemonia problem ended up costing over $2500, I can just imagine how many poor americans end up bankrupt because of an accident or medical condition and the lack of medical expense coverage.

Hurray for Mr.Obama, he and those who stuck with him on this most difficult undertaking accomplished what no other american leader of the past 100 years have been able to do.

Let me recall his laundry-list:
Healthcareplan for all Americans
End the war in Iraq..Afghanistan
Close Q camp in Cuba
Resolve ever increasing unemployment in Aberica problem
Unexpected additional mess left by Bush ll:
Collapse of the financial system with worldwide consequences,AEG and big banks multibilliondollar bailout
Almost total demise of GM and Chrysler, financial assistance to restructure these auto giants

it's complicated....

2010-03-13T12:08:00.002-05:00

It is useful to see how we got to where we are. It may be a way of avoiding pitfalls, making the same stupid mistakes over and over again.

We are presently watching the rapid emergence of China, possibly to take over the world leadership, ( unless we keep believing that the USA is the leader of the so called free world...) no matter, like or not.
After the near total collapse of the American economy and the resuling pressure on the Euro ( work in progress...Greece, possibly Portugal,Spain and Italy...Turkey?) the world is stupified by the changed value system as we know it.

Mr. Obama was on the right track to find a way out of this mess, but the warboys appear to have ganged up on the man and no-one can predict where this is going. Most of what he promised to change is slowly going down the drain.
Some ideas....paradime changes:

A- Americans and their so called allies,get out of Iraq, now, no point to linger there any longer.
B- Americans and their companieros including Canada and Germany, get out of Afghanistan, now.
C- America, create a health plan of sorts to give every Americans including 30 to 50 Million people without insurance some kind of basic coverage.
D- Make peace with Cuba, the current useless state of affairs has been going on way too long. Make piece with North Korea. Try a working agreement with Iran.
E- Revamp, revise the infrastructure of America, USA, Canada, Bridges, Roads, Railways, Airports and Waterways should be updated. Many local sewer systems in the USA and Canada, watermains railways and bridges are over 100 years old and must be replaced. Some of these badly needed updates are far too extensive to be handled by local governments and need federal or state/provincial massive input and long term financing.

theft,fraud,and related lowlife activities..a Bell Canada Cellular complaint.

2010-02-21T18:43:00.006-05:00

Miserable service by Bell Cellular Canada
I recently received a call from a collection agency...D&C or something like that..looking for about 1200 bucks...a collection effort for Bell Cellular...overdue bill.

Closer scrutiny by the collection agency caller quickly revealed that this bill obviously was not for me...not sure why Bell were not able to figure this out before handing their crap-bill to their collectors. They have phone records and to track this down does not appear to be a big task.

I do have a Bell Cellular account, have had a Bell Cell account for many years and for what little I use it..it's paid up.
It is hard to believe how I got switched around talking to all sorts of telephone company reps...all over the world...to get this sorted out.( Costa Rica, India, and somewhere out east..)..I got nowhere until I visited a local Bell-Phone l center and insisted that a security representative contact me.

Some piece of lowlife garbage managed to use my name with Bell ,supposedly used my social insurance number and set up an account. Apparently with a home location and references in Etobicoke that is part of ol Toronno .
I have never lived in or near Etobicoke.
I have not lost my wallet, or identification, heaven knows how this kreep got my I.D.

The collection agency contracted by Bell:
D&A Corporation 131 Brunell Rd Mississauga Ont L4Z 1X3
employee to contact me,
Sam at 905-507-8889 1-888-395-1147 x6273
unpaid account, Bell ref 508851175 amount to collect $1139.345
name Fred ~~Weiss~~ reference Mark Quirk ( name slightly altered to prevent fraud)..
at 35 28th Street or St.Attol St. Etobicoke or similar
work phone 416-259-6322 turned out to be a leave message number by electronics firm?
refererred cel phone number...289-257-1205...that was the fraudulent Bell cel number...

My first contact with Bell Cellular about this fraud scene was shabby at best. The only way I was able to make contact was by using my actual existing cel phone reference. I was informed that I should file a police report and submit it to Bell Cellular by fax, number 1-800-865-3055. Bell, at that time appeared to be totally uninterested in putting this right.

My visit to the Bell center (mall outlet) resulted in a contact with and a promise that Bell Security would contact me within 5 working days...they called me the next morning , a nice professional sounding lady finally understood the situation and cancelled this fraudulent account and collection order.

What more do I want?
To begin with, it appears that it is made far too easy for fraudsters to aquire cel phone in other peoples name.

Finally, instead of going after a long time customer with a fraudulent collection order, Bell shoulde have contacted me..with their extensive resources and phone contact records they should have been able to do at least as much as this collection outfit was able to do.That is, contact me to establish if this is a valid claim and then gone after the damned fraudster.
In all,
Shabby service by old Mother Bell to be sure....
I am now expected to connect with the various credit rating agencies to put the record straight .

Help...Haiti..

2010-01-17T11:42:00.005-05:00

If anybody can help it's the USA...and they are in the process of doing so.
The task is grim, difficult and thankless.
Haiti, a totally failed state and the poorest of the american hemisphere.
~~..almost reminds you of civilwar pictures in the congo or somalia...~~

Ugly...part 16

2010-01-16T23:12:00.005-05:00

I found this a picture of the highway of death...that's the stretch between Kuwait and somewhere in Iraq. That's back in the days when Saddam Hussain was playing his ill fated,stupid war games.
After the Iraqs invading, plundering army was driven out of Kuwait by the American Army ( C.Powel, General Schwarzkopf, Gulf war Bush One)....
...leading to " no fly zone" bullshit during the Clinton years,and eventually the invasion of Iraq by BushTwo and leading to the present quagmire in that country. But, please consider this:-
Go back for a moment to the highway of death...the fleeing troups of Saddams army with their loot were running north, direction Iraq, in vehicles...on a dirt road in desert terrain.

The American Airforce cut of both ends of the fleeing army...and bombed them..burning, killing somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 men.This invasionforce in their stuper to invade and occupy Kuwait had no airsupport...only tanks and ground vehicles, unable to even defend attacks from the sky.

Mass murder is my opinion today, no matter how you look at the misdeeds of Saddam or his soldiers.The US Army/Airforce had no right to kill...execute these men.Based on the Geneva convention these soldiers should have been captured as soldiers, interned and eventually sent home.
What the American ~~Walker~~ Bush Two administration did is nothing short of mass murder.

American...that is...the ugly american...part 15

2010-01-16T22:38:00.000-05:00

Much of what happened at wars end,45 has been swept under the carpet...there ane many lies, much misinformation and of course this is going on to this very day.
At this time, the USA has a fine President, a decent and well spoken man who truly cares for his nation and the well being of the world and it's people.
But we must also understand that he is almost obligated to accept the lies of those who have gone before him..remember this fellow is in charge of 2,500 Generals and Admirals, with the by far largest armament budget of any nation in the world.
Are we ready to face the truth about Iraq? Iran?Afghanistan? Are we ready to change our attitude obout other people on this earth? Surely if we are not the third world will gang up on America and or the so called West and take it's revenge in whatever form they can.

Computer bugs,worms,viruses & Spyware,Adware,Spam

2009-12-17T12:03:00.007-05:00

...not exactly a worldshaking event,just annoying and timeconsuming junk thrown at me and most of us hobby computer users as well as businesses, institutions and so on..

Once more my confuser has been highjacked by some garbage programme...this thing makes useless ads pop up while I do something else, it also shows a number of green underlined common words such as cash,hotel,credit,phone and a number of others converted to link sources. I guess I can live with it but it is not exactly fun. I keep cleaning and desinfecting my machine as much as possible, I do not open e mail unless I know the source, but still this stuff keeps creeping into my gadget.

So...what to do..

To start with, you may want to use the programme provided by your IAP..internet access provider, in my case The Bell Telephone Company.
Their programme is called Sympatico Scan & Clean...it sort of works but still misses a lot.

..later the same day:-/
at least one mystery has been solved..this multiple keyboard thing...to restore the slash thing////
turns out that all I needed to do is to hold down Ctrl and tap on the Shift key.../ amazing/ it works.
But I still have this spy bug in the system...
more later, if and when I find the answer.

Thank you to our hosts...

2009-12-09T14:44:00.004-05:00

It was....just past thanksgiving.. that is American Thanksgiving....I guess this is as good a time as any to thank our hosts...the natives of north-america for their understanding, hospitality and their willingness to tolerate our continued presense here in this wonderful land we like to call USA and Canada...

We are confused as to what we should call our hosts...Native is one descripion often found on the front tag of cars.

Indians we called these people for several hundert years since it turns out Cristobal Colon (Columbus) was under the impression that he somehow ended up in India on his voyage to find a shorter route to China and mistakenly referrred to these folks as Indians.

Big mistake.

If I can speak, and think of myself as a European...I find it astounding what we have done to these people over the past several hundert years...it is amazing that some are still around after all the horrible treatment we have put them thru.

worldconcerns....thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-26T10:22:00.002-05:00

This was New York, September 12Th. the day after the 9/11 tragedy with the dust and dirt of this horrendous happening still in the air.

the ritual...

2009-11-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

rememberance day...when will we ever learn...

the ugly American 12

2009-10-21T11:33:00.004-05:00

After WWII, 1945 statistics indicate that the number of newborn babies surviving the first year had dramatically changed, American policy or applied action systematically starved the Germans to death. I know it's true, I was six years old at the end of the war and part of the starvation period between 1945 to 48.

Tribal pain....

2009-10-16T19:33:00.006-05:00

I think I look about as German as your typical German looks like. Blond, blue eyes at 5ft9 probably a bit short..but features mannerism, gate etc German alright.
I have been in North America for over fifty years. But that is not exactly what I wanted to write about. There are moments when I feel this nagging tribal pain. Looking at an old news clip for instance seeing close to a million German soldiers marched off to Siberia, that gives me deep feelings of sadness and pain.
Somewhere about 1925 one of my mothers brothers decided to leave Germany for America. Mother grew up with several siblings in an orphanage and lost contact with brother Karl who presumably was alive and well in America. About a year ago when the names of several Iraq GI casualties were announced , one of the fellows killed was named ... Bixler. Could he have been the grandson of my long lost uncle I wondered. Somehow I felt a sense of loss...someone I never knew gave me a feeling of tribal pain..

Nobel Prize winner Obama

2009-10-11T19:52:00.009-05:00

Much has been made the last few days of the fact that US President B.Obama received the Nobel Piece award. I agree with this decision...but the remarks I observe are generally negative...like, he just got started...has not accomplished much so far.
I disagree, strongly.
The mere emergence and presence of the man has had a more positive effect on the world than the various misdeeds during eight long years of GWB the shrub yokel. Well, that's my opinion anyway. Out of over 200 nominations for this award I believe Mr.Obama is the first choice.

Public commentary:
How ironic that Obama should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at a time when he is planning to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He now joins other illustrious 'men of peace' such as Teddy Roosevelt (invaded Cuba), Henry Kissinger (helped plan the bloody coup that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically elected government in Chile) and Arafat (one of the progenitors of today's Islamic terrorist movements).
Although they didn't win, some of the other nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize included Adolf Hitler (nomination withdrawn), Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini. It is especially noteworthy that Mahatma Gandhi also failed to win the prize. Clearly, the Nobel Peace Prize, like so many other accolades given to and by the wealthy, influential and powerful of the world, has less to do with peace than with the elite rewarding those within their club...

Ontario...waste of good money

2009-10-09T00:32:00.007-05:00

Apparently...it has just come to light from a report by the Ontario Auditor General ( financial provincial watchdog reporting annually); that over a Billion Dollars of Health Contributions..by the Taxpayers have been pointlessly wasted with little or nothing to show for it...and yet the Ontario Liberal Premier looks like he and his gang have nothing to do with it...sticking their head in the sand and pleading ignorance is a lousy excuse for this squander of funds. This money was supposed to be used for a E-Health registry system to combat waste in the health care business.

The last true Tory...

2009-10-05T12:50:00.005-05:00

...25 years later....Montreal party for the ex Prime minister....Brian Mulroney.

A fitting tribute to our past Federal PC Prime Minister and a remarkable feat his election was indeed.

Two back to back Majority Elections by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, followed by a long reign for the Liberals.

When he was done...the PCs were finished. The party was in dire straights.But that was then.

The PC party of today is a totally different organization ,born out of the Alberta based( Preston Manning) Reform party, the Ontario remnants of the Provincial PCs. and fragments of the Eastern Region leftovers of the once powerful ruling PCs. the party is struggling to hold on to power with a minority government which could fall almost any time. My hope is that the next election will give us a slightly bigger PC government..hopefully picking up a few seats in Quebec from the ridiculous separatists. Good luck Mr. Steven Harper.

Libya

2009-10-05T12:45:00.006-05:00

Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi

...after watching this cook dictator on TV for almost two hours doing his United Nations thing...I have these comments......what a joke...this clown covered everything imaginable during his almost two hour rambling mutterings..

At 27 he managed to get rid of the king who was away for treatment in Turkey. After the demise of the once powerful Ottoman Empire of which Libya was a part, it became an Italian Colony for a while and eventually gained independence.

the ugly American 11

2009-10-05T12:15:00.006-05:00

I just spent a few days in the states... we finally managed to get a family reunion thing into the works, decided to stay a couple of days just east of Buffalo NY at a nice Hampton Hotel..Walkerville.
On the way back from Buffalo and the American Falls, just about at the Hotel an incident took place which could easily have turned into a disaster. I crossed the light,driving my Impala, then it turned red. I was about to turn into the Hotel Parking lot when I took one more look into the rear view mirror...no good reason..just prudence I guess, at high speed a black pickup truck rapidly approaching...there was no way this idiot would or could stop at the red light...and if I had made my proper legal turn into the hotel parking lot..we surely would have been hit or wiped out.

My point here is that there are an overabundant number of stupid and ugly drivers on the road in the USA and one must wonder why.Is it the easy and relatively inexpensive availability of booze or what brings these maniacs out...or the inadequate policing or what else causes these idiots to act the way they do. Bullies.. This was not the first time I've seen this erratic and criminal behavior on the road...we are no angels here in Canada, particularly in Toronto but this scene and similar situations I've observed in the USA are far worse.

Actually....a few days later....,I've reflected on this..my writing above that is, kicked it around long and hard. My opinion has not changed much.In fact, if we...North Americans want to tell the world how to live, we should straighten out our own act. We have no business in Iraq or for that matter in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world if we are unable to behave decently on our own territory.We Americans....hm...have the highest incarceration rate in the world...and in my view a lot of evildoers are out there never apprehended I know a thing or two about the criminal element...thieves...I've been in the business of selling and installing burglar alarms for many years.

now

2009-09-21T19:17:00.003-05:00

...mid august was my last posting..much work here in Cobourg, a new garage roof,the driveway fixed, a new large solid deck was built in the back and a number of other related tasks have been completed..a new little Ford Ranger truck was purchased as well as this goofy little front loader yard tractor....

Canada-Ontario;Courtice,east of Toronto

2009-08-14T16:49:00.004-05:00

Just a sign of life folks, yes I am still around. The puter still gives me some challenges but I am all hooked up now in the new town and ready to roll.

I hope to be able to get back and do some art in the near future, just as soon as all my junk is unpacked or disposed off.

computer virus etc

2009-06-24T18:56:00.004-05:00

...somewhere down page I've been dealing with this problem, a Russian Rip off scheme which sells antivirus software that does damage instead. These bandits make millions off cheated customers and it does not appear that there is anyone to make a serious effort to curtail their activities.

Ten major viruses, Trojans, and spy ware applications that you may be at risk for.

This is an important announcement for all ParetoLogic customers to make you fully aware of the current major threats to your PC's safety and the security risks associated with them. Our analysis team has designated the top 10 threats affecting PC users worldwide: Privacy Center, Pro AntiSpyware 2009, Antivirus XP, Antivirus 2009, Antivirus 360, Internet Antivirus Pro, Ultimate Antivirus 2008, Ultimate Cleaner, Ultimate Defender, and Renus.
Malware threats such as these can lead to criminals turning your computer into servers for SPAM email and installing spyware applications. These threats can also allow intruders to steal address books, credit card numbers, private information, and browsing histories.
If you do not have proper virus protection,
please scan your PC with Anti-Virus PLUS today to see if you are infected.
Run a Free Virus Scan and See If You Are Infected
Thank you and best regards,
The ParetoLogic Email Teamhttp://www.paretologic.com/
I purchased this software a while ago and am quite impressed with it.
I am promoting this software because it works, there is no reward involved.

CP Train derailment...Oshawa Ontario Canada

2009-06-06T20:59:00.007-05:00

Apparently 27 rail cars went of the track this week in Oshawa...CP this time...some of them ending up in residential backyards. People were evacuated until it was considered save to return to their homes. Toxic cargo. ...sooner or later there must be some changes made. What are we waiting for? Do we really need a huge disaster to happen and only then take any needed action,
should we not be proactive and fix this now?

I wrote about this sort of thing a little while back....Ratatat..see details on my blog.
Derailments will happen occasionally, one would think with modern technology this could be avoided or minimized...27 cars in a city that's serious stuff and just to clean the mess up...pay the customers for their lost or spoiled cargo and collect insurance is not good enough.
I believe we lost CN and CP...both sold out to American interests. Can't see them investing in new and relocated facilities any time soon although that should be a mayor consideration...get dangerous cargo..or in fact any cargo away from residential areas...
We live in the second largest country on earth, surely the time has come to invest heavily in the future and improve the railway system. I can not comment much on reasons or causes for these derailments, antiquated rail lines and equipment are only some of the causes....but there is one cause I can and should comment on.

Jim D. two doors up from my house in the city ( Torronno) worked for CN. It was his job to replace bearings on rail cars. Apparently they wear out after a while and need to be replaced.These things were not like the ball bearings we are familiar with. But instead they were cast brass and lead hunks of metal...sort of kidney bean shaped,about 40 pounds or more a piece, and they are placed around the Axel pressure or weight point of the rail car. As they wear out, they need to be replaced. Instead of installing and replacing these bearings Jim would simply take them to a scrap dealer...never mind the old ones...the brand new bearings never got installed. He did that for years. Sometimes several hundred pounds a week, straight from the repair yard brand new stuff to the scrupulous scrap dealer.
I would imagine that sooner or later as these old bearings get worn out....the axle runs hot, ceases up and there you have it...one of many reasons for a derailment....
...see my blog of Feb.17/09 with these comments...:-
Rut-tat-tut-rat-ta-tut.....a train with about 100 rail cars rumbles through town..a small town on lake Ontario, Port Hope or Cobourg..does it really matter?The point is,that these rail-links are old and should have been replaced long ago.Rail is about the cheapest way to move goods unless there is a possibility of traffic by water, a barge system.And yet we see thousands of transport trucks 18 wheelers with often overtired operators slugging it out on our highways.Does it not make sens to review our transportation system? Is it not time to have a good look at where we are and where we should be going with this. During economic so called hard times we should find or create the resources to fix or renew this part of our infrastructure. People are looking for jobs and things to do and are less likely to want to go on strike for unreasonable demands. We should claim our railways back, they once were the backbone of what we were as a country and this would be the time to update the antiquated system .Years ago I suggested to build a rapid rail-link between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal with an international Airport in or around Kingston..If this system would have been implemented we could have, today one of the most modern commuter, people moving systems in the world.Instead multi millions were wasted acquiring land in Pickering ( east of Toronto) and a totally useless airport was built in Montreal ( Mirabel,now mothballed).

GM

2009-05-28T07:59:00.003-05:00

....two weeks after my gm notes...they're bust...bankrupt...and as well as with Chrysler,General Motors will be in a chapter 11 situation.
Once more, Ford will be the only American Automobile manufactures in the USA, Ford once produced 55% of all cars made in the USA. That was in the model T days.
According to the news reports it looks like GM's Pontiac and Saturn operations may be shut down completely and the Chevrolet operations will be the only operating part of the once mighty General Motors.
Chrysler, after Chapter 11 may sell it's remnants to Fiat... and wherever that's going nobody knows.

mighty GM

2009-05-14T20:23:00.007-05:00

For the once mighty GM corporation,today is the day the award winning small truck plant in Oshawa is closing down...apparently for good....gloom and doom all around. I live here and the change in the GM structure is taking it's toll on the town and the region.

They( the Motors)... are now frantically building the new Camaro here, about the only thing left out here to assemble...the new model Camaro, but to introduce a new muscle car at a time when gasoline is 96 cents a liter may not be the thing needed at this time to pull GM out of the dumps.

They say Saturn and Pontiac brands will disappear. At the same time it was announced today in the States that about 900 Chrysler dealers are about to shut down and the company will indeed declare chapter 11... Fiat takeover or not.

I have no idea where all this is going...obviously gross mismanagement of resources is one reason. It is easy enough to blame the Unions for their excessive and costly demands but I think most of that is just nonsense. Management is as much or more to blame for the ridiculous state GM and the industry as such is in today.

There will be cars built in North America, it's ironic that the two former enemies of the USA, Japan and Germany may end up supplying most of the future cars running in this region of the world built in USA or Canada.

One of the greatest creations of man, the "Automotive Car" or popularly known as the "Car" is a result of man's consistent efforts and perseverance. Over the years, the automobile industry has evolved as one of the main revenue generators, provider of employment and has progressed a lot.
Though the credit for the modern day automobile goes to Karl Friedrich Benz (from Germany), the first theoretical plans for a motor vehicle were conceptualized by both Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci.

...the picture features a Tata Indica car made in India by the most rapidly growing car builder in the world....watch them grow and produce the cheapest quality car in the world...

Tamil

2009-05-12T09:29:00.008-05:00

Much in the news here lately ( Canada Toronto Ontario ) people of Sri Lanka who more recently came to Canada as immigrants.... still much involved in supporting efforts in their former homeland to create a separate country on the formerly called island of Ceylon, south of India...

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), more commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, is a political and military group that is fighting for an independent homeland in Sri Lanka.
It emerged in response to tensions between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils in the island nation south of India.

(Source: Public Safety Canada)
The group's roots can be traced back to 1974, when several Tamil militants created the Tamil New Tigers (TNT). LTTE was officially founded two years later, in May 1976, by Velupillai Prabhakaran and members of the TNT,considered a terrorist organization by Canada, is known for its suicide attacks and is said to have pioneered the use of suicide vests.
The Tigers are fighting for an independent state in the north and eastern parts of Sri Lanka, an area they refer to as Tamil Eelam.
In 1983, 13 Sinhalese soldiers in northern Jaffna were killed in an ambush by Tigers, sparking anti-Tamil riots that led to the deaths of an estimated several hundred Tamils. It also forced thousands of Tamils to flee the country.
That marked the beginning of what the Tigers call the First Eelam War between the Tamil separatists and Sinhalese-dominated government.
It is a civil war that would continue to claim 70,000 lives over the years and is still not over.
Attempts at peace
In the 1980s, the Indian military service became involved in the conflict by helping train and arm the Tigers.The Tamil Tigers want an independent state in north and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. (CBC)
In 1987, India and Sri Lanka signed an accord in which Colombo agreed to create new councils for Tamil areas in the north and east. It also reached an agreement with India to deploy an Indian peacekeeping force to curb the violence in northern Sri Lanka.
But the peacekeeping force soon found itself embroiled in the bloody conflict and eventually withdrew.
On May 21, 1991, a suspected female member of the LTTE assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu in an apparent act of revenge against India for sending a peacekeeping force who ended up fighting the rebels.
The Tigers have been known to use women and children in their suicide attacks. UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, said they recorded more than 6,000 cases of children recruited by the LTTE between 2003 and 2008.
The Tigers and the Sri Lankan government agreed to a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in 2002 that a war-weary public hoped would bring lasting peace. But talks broke off in 2003 and violence flared up yet again.
When the Boxing Day tsunami hit Sri Lanka in 2004, the civil strife was set aside as the country struggled to deal with the worst disaster in its history.
About two-thirds of the damage was in the northeastern areas of the island, parts of which were Tiger territory. However, in the aftermath the Tamil Tigers were reportedly preying on tsunami orphans to use as child soldiers, according to UNICEF.
When billions of dollars in foreign aid flowed into the country for tsunami relief, the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission brokered a deal between the Tamil Tigers and the government. The controversial agreement had the groups share responsibility for the money allocated for the disaster's survivors. But the Sri Lankan Supreme Court struck it down.
Fundraising abroad
In February 2006, the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government met for the first time since 2003 and agreed to extend the ceasefire. They also planned to meet again for more negotiations.
But it didn't stop the violence. Among the deaths blamed on the fighting was a deadly sea battle on May 11, 2006, that claimed the lives of 17 soldiers and about 45 rebels.
A Human Rights Watch report released in March 2006 said the Tamil Tigers were using threats and intimidation tactics to extort money from Sri Lankans living in Canada.

Fundraisers, often working in pairs, knocked on the doors of Tamil families to solicit donations.
The fundraisers were quoted as saying they were "collecting for the final war against the Sri Lankan government." The donation drive targeted Tamil families in Toronto, home to one of the largest Tamil populations outside Sri Lanka.
"Tamils unable to pay say they have been told by LTTE fundraisers to borrow the money, make a contribution on their credit card or even re-mortgage their home," Human Rights Watch said in a news release.
In April of 2006, the Canadian government added the LTTE to its official list of terrorist organizations for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers in the conflict. The designation makes it a crime to fundraise for the group.
Ceasefire ends
The Sri Lankan government officially ended the ceasefire agreement on Jan. 16, 2008.
By early 2009, the Sri Lankan army said they had ousted Tamil Tigers from many of its strongholds in the north and said it was poised to defeat the rebel group in its heartland after the 26-year civil war. The government acknowledged wiping out sleeper cells across the country could take another two years.
Though many senior Tigers figures have been killed in the fighting, the group's leader and founder, Prabhakaran, is still at large.
In April 2009, Sri Lanka rejected a call from the UN for a ceasefire, saying that would allow the rebels to regroup.
But as the fighting continues, aid groups are worried about thousands of civilians who fled to an area declared by the Sri Lankan military as a no-fire zone earlier in the year and are now trapped near the fighting.
The United Nations estimates 150,000 to 190,000 civilians are trapped there, with dozens dying each day. The government says 30,000 to 40,000 still remain, and more than 23,000 civilians escaped last month.
Expatriate Tamils have condemned the government's offensive, accusing the government of targeting civilians.
The Sri Lankan government has also accused Tigers of using Tamil civilians trapped in the north as human shields against the military campaign.
International aid organizations accuse both government forces and the rebels of breaking international humanitarian laws, and warn of a high rate of civilian casualties.

one more star ***** for Colin Powell

2009-05-11T09:28:00.005-05:00

CNN coverage by Larry King of the former VP, sour faced ( what's his name...Cheney the munition master) proclaiming that he was under the impression that C.Powell had already abandoned his party
( remember the Republicans ?) and joined the Democrats by supporting or rather endorsing Obama.
I think this bunch of misguided warmonger screwballs ( that's the former administration of shrub hangers on) should keep a low profile for a while and allow the new administration to clean up some of the horrendous mess they left.
Comparing Limbaugh with Powell is like comparing an elephant with a chicken...why is this loudmouth radio entertainer even being discussed..?
Iraq-Afghanistan-border problems-9/11 unresolved-incredible financial meltdown-AEG-inability to make progress on health care.....big industry going bankrupt, trade imbalance with former enemy China, the list goes on....

size....educating Sarah....

2009-05-10T18:37:00.002-05:00

...and here is something else you really should know...
what are the largest ten countries in the world...?
1-Russia...or as it is now called the Russian Federation. About 12 % of the earths surface is under Russian control with a population of about 144 Million, even after the break up of the Soviet Union, Russia is still by far the largest country in the world today.
2-Canada...with just under 10,000 sq km as compared to Russia's 17,000 Canada is the second largest country, with a population of under 40 million. and 6.7% of the land area.
3-China, 9.6k sq km or 6.6% at about the same size as the USA
4-USA, about the same size as China 9.600 sq km or 6.5%
5-Brazil, 8,5k sq km 5.7%
6-Australia..country and continent at 7.700 sq km and 7.7% earths surface
7-India, 3,200 sq km
8-Argentina, 2,700 sq km
9-Kazakhstan, former component of USSR 2,700 sq km
10-The Sudan...1,700 sq.km

Places like Britain, Germany,France,Spain, Italy and Sweden are well down the list as an example GB is .16% of world land area, Germany .23%

Time.....

2009-04-30T17:45:00.003-05:00

Long gone are the days when I could pick which Porsche I should drive that day...the red one or the white one...
or how much fun I could have with the horses.... at my own horse farm,
or take a walk along the ocean shore at Fort Lauderdale by the Sea and return to my own luxury suite by the ocean or the Oceanside pool. But times change...and yet if we refuse to learn from and understand yesterday it will be hard to anticipate what tomorrow will have in store.

Times change, the economy is down once again and we are looking at an extremely risky depression we somehow ended up in, without the necessary smarts or fortitude to work our way out of it. One can only hope that the new administration in Washington put things back on a positive path. Mr. Obama is on the right track but as he was saying the ship of state is large and turns slowly....too many immediate problems to face and deal with. But he is beginning to sound more positive.

Which reminds me as to how some events change the world....forever....
Way back when...somebody on a German submarine ( WW1) decided to torpedo a British Passenger ship...the Lusitania...Germany was at war with Britain and France and it was known that English ships were transporting weaponry from the USA. The passenger ship captains were told as well to ram the relatively small German U boats if they stumble upon them. It was generally assumed that unarmed passenger ships would not present a target to be attacked by the Germans. Bad mistake. Someone did sink the Lusitania with a torpedo to the bow..the ship went down with loss of life including many Americans who were on a cruise between the USA and the UK.

It is widely believed that this act dragged the USA ( by 1917) into the war, obviously on the side of France and Britain...and it is quite possible that President Woodrow Wilson, a fine and intelligent gentleman had little choice but to get involved.

Armistice, totally unfair and ridiculous treatment of Germany after 1918, installation of an allied created government ( Weimar Republic) made it possible for this idiot Hitler to eventually gain power...the rest is history. Total defeat of the Germans, rise of communism, iron curtain and attempts by the US to contain communism followed.
Today...the USA is involved in two wars...if one can call it war, with an unseen enemy with reasoning for their action difficult to sort out. And where do we go from here?

Brent Herbert:
As for ministers, you are preachers, and so I thought I would drop off a few sermon ideas. If you were preaching to some capitalist you might want to go with the ever useful all purpose sermon, 'repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' Other good ideas for sermons would be that psalm, the one that reads, 'we dwell in a strong city, its walls are strong and tall. Open wide the gates and let a righteous people enter.' Or how about, 'My God trains me for battle. I leap over walls.' The possibilities are endless.