Paradoxes for our times / 5
November 5, 2016
The sum of all wisdom by the mathematics of philosophy
November 4, 2016The sum of all wisdom is the summation across the population, of the integrals over time of the second values derivative of knowledge.
Not the philosophy of mathematics but the mathematics of philosophy!
Brexit is still some way away – as a way opens to stop it
November 3, 2016It was already clear in July that constitutionally, a non-binding referendum result needed an explicit parliamentary vote to trigger the formal Brexit process. The High Court in the UK agrees with that view – though the Supreme Court will still have to have its say.
Back in July, I posted:
Brexit is not going to happen any time soon.
If it happens at all.
It seems according to constitutional law experts that any government with any Prime Minister will need a vote in parliament to give authority to an Article 50 notification of intention to withdraw from the EU. Once triggered, withdrawal is inevitable and time-bound. But there is no majority in the current parliament for leaving. And it could be the best part of a year before such a vote in parliament can even be held. For any chance of such a vote being passed it will need a General Election fought on precisely such a question and that the party or parties in favour of an exit win such an election. But it is also possible that such a vote can not, in the reasonable future, be passed. ….
….. (It occurs to me that if Nicola Sturgeon wants to postpone, if not block, Brexit she should get the European Court of Justice to rule on whether or not a parliamentary vote is needed to give authority to a government to invoke Article 50. Even EU bureaucrats can not quibble with that).
Now the High Court confirms that opinion.
BBC:
Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the European Union, the High Court has ruled. This means the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – beginning formal discussions with the EU – on their own. Theresa May says the referendum – and existing ministerial powers – mean MPs do not need to vote, but campaigners called this unconstitutional.
The government is expected to appeal.
Ministers were given the go-ahead for a further hearing to take place at the Supreme Court, which is expected to take place before the end of the year.
The prime minister has said she will activate Article 50, formally notifying the EU of the UK’s intention to leave, by the end of next March. This follows the UK’s decision to back Brexit in June’s referendum by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%. The EU’s other 27 members have said negotiations about the terms of the UK’s exit – due to last two years – cannot begin until Article 50 has been invoked.
Gina Miller, who brought the case, said outside the High Court that the government should make the “wise decision of not appealing”.
To what extent the referendum would compel UK MP’s to follow the referendum results remains to be seen. Probably the government will not be quite brave enough to hold a free vote among MP’s. Whether the EU will shoot itself in the foot (again) or actually take on much overdue and much needed reform is perhaps even more interesting.
I have a theory that while representative democracies used to, from time to time, throw up genuine leaders, the current trend of giving in to mass demonstrations and calling a referendum for any and all questions only allows space for sheep-like followers. The point in this case is whether a government is to be one of sheep or one of leaders?
Stop Brexit – image Market Watch
FIFA goes from corruption to idiocy
November 3, 2016FIFA now goes from the heights of corruption to the depths of idiocy. Why is a Senegalese with little common sense now the Secretary General of FIFA? Of course she is a woman and a Muslim and supremely correct politically. But not very sensible. Clearly – with her UN experience – she is very well trained in “world government” idiocy.
She wants to ban the poppy. If she thinks the poppy is a religious or political statement then she is an idiot.
BBC: The Football Associations of England and Scotland say they will defy a ban on players wearing poppies when the teams meet on Armistice Day. The FAs will let players wear black armbands with poppy emblems and are willing to accept any punishment.
Fifa general secretary Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura told BBC Sport “any kind of sanction” could follow. World football’s governing body prohibits political, religious or commercial messages on shirts.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has called the rule “outrageous”.
What the new FIFA Secretary General has not the intelligence to understand is that she is herself a political statement of the worst kind.
Samoura – the politically correct face of FIFA
FIFA:The FIFA Council today appointed Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura of Senegal as FIFA Secretary General (SG). Ms Samoura is a 21-year veteran of United Nations programmes who is currently the UN’s Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria. The announcement was made by FIFA President Gianni Infantino at the 66th FIFA Congress in Mexico City.
“Fatma is a woman with international experience and vision who has worked on some of the most challenging issues of our time,” President Infantino said. “She has a proven ability to build and lead teams, and improve the way organisations perform. Importantly for FIFA, she also understands that transparency and accountability are at the heart of any well-run and responsible organisation.”
As required under FIFA statutes, Ms Samoura will undergo an eligibility check administered by the independent Review Committee, per Article 37 of the FIFA Statutes. Ms Samoura will assume the role of FIFA Secretary General before mid-June.
The FIFA eligibility check does not check for stupidity.
The strange tale of King Bho, the witch and the buffoon
November 1, 2016A fable for our times
In this time, in a land across the sea, the people of a Once Great Country are to decide on a new ruler. The incumbent king has no choice but to step down because rulers are not allowed to reign forever. They have to relinquish their power after 8 years of wearing the crown and King Bho’s eight years are up. The ruler does not have to be a King. The people can choose a Queen if they wish though they had never done so before. The ruler has to be either a King or a Queen. The rules of Monarchy did not allow for a half-King/ half-Queen to be enthroned. However the consort of the King or Queen, though expected to be of the opposite sex, may, in fact be either.
At this particular time, about 2 months before King Bho has to step aside, a Great Convention of all the people is to be held on one particular day (November 8th). All the people will have their say to choose between the two main claimants to the throne. Nobody is still quite sure how the two claimants have taken their places on the Final List. (During King Bho’s reign the Once Great Country has degraded slowly to become a somewhat indulgent, degenerate and depraved place. But that is another story.)
The first contender, a woman, (Witch Hills of Little Rock) is known to be a powerful witch who desperately wishes to be Queen and to rule with her own Court. Even her own supporters acknowledge she is a witch but claim she is a “white witch”. Of course her detractors claim she is all evil and a “black witch”. There is little doubt that if she becomes Queen she will reign as a Red Queen and many “heads will off”. She has claimed that she is well-trained to be a Queen since she had been the consort of a previous King (the infamous King Bill of Lewinsky). Many suspect that King Bill had only become King, and remained King, because she had used her witchcraft and her weirding powers not only to eliminate all whistlers but also to procure buxom paramours to satisfy the depravities of the King. Nevertheless, Lady Hills has developed and enlarged her own band of bewitched sycophants and acolytes who are now leading the charge to have her enthroned as Queen. During the campaign to get her included on the final list, she has used her witchcraft to very good effect and has ensured that her sycophants and fellow witches have eliminated all opposition. The Witch Abedin and the Witch Brazile have been particularly adept at ensnaring gullible and perverted men to their cause and made sure that the aged but Honourable Bensanders, who tried to challenge for her place on the Final List, was discredited and humiliated. Many men were also bewitched and ensnared to the cause of Witch Hills. In any event Witch Hills of Little Rock won her place on the Final List to be considered by the people for monarch. King Bho – who was himself the first ever monarch of mixed blood – now supports, though somewhat reluctantly, the elevation of Witch Hills to become the first ever Queen of the Once Great Country.
The second contender on the Final List is a professional buffoon but an, apparently, very rich buffoon. Clown de Trump has had a raucous and an eventful journey on his way onto the Final List. He was opposed by many dull and sober men (and even a dull and sober woman), of little talent, along the way. But they were all – unexpectedly – laughed away by a disillusioned audience. All the spectators who were expecting a sober play were blown away by the farce which developed. The slapstick nature of the competition meant that Clown de Trump dominated the proceedings and his sober opponents could not keep up. They all fell, one after another, by the wayside, extinguished by the roustabout and their own lack of talent. Finally, only Clown de Trump was left standing to take his place in the Final List. He promised the people that he would Make the Country Great Again, which was very uplifting but nobody – not even Clown de Trump – had any idea of how he would achieve that. He promised to bring Law and Order back to the Once Great Country and that struck a nerve.
With just a week to go before the Great Convention of November 8th, the war of words between Witch Hills of Little Rock and Clown de Trump is now reaching a crescendo. Most people are expecting Witch Hills to win and be crowned Queen. But the buffoon is still in the lists and is refusing to go quietly. A witch or a buffoon? The people shall decide what they themselves deserve.
The world watches, bemused and bewildered. Is this truly what this Once Great Country been reduced to? A witch or a buffoon?
State of the species: globally there are as many abortions as there are deaths per year
October 31, 2016Getting some perspective.
How Clinton/Abedin “laundered” and leaked confidential information?
October 30, 2016The Hillary Clinton/Huma Abedin relationship may have hidden depths beyond just the great tolerance shown to perverted and erring partners. However the combination was a very badly leaking sieve. I don’t doubt that the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis and the Japanese and maybe even the Saudis (but probably not the British) have copies of everything Hillary and Huma sent to each other and themselves. It seems the main reason that Huma Abedin sent encrypted, unprintable messages to herself on 3rd party email addresses was essentially for “confidentiality laundering” so that they could be printed (and passed on in unencrypted form).
On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.
“She (Abedin) routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office.
Even if without any malign purposes (which itself is not very credible) it is remarkably irresponsible for a Secretary of State and almost certainly a felony. The convolutions involved in laundering away the confidentiality suggest that the intentions were not entirely benign.
Hillary leaking
Humagate: As with Nixon, FBI comes too late and Hillary Clinton could be next “criminal” US President
October 29, 2016Deja Vu.
Huma Mahmood Abedin is to Hillary Clinton as H R “Bob” Haldeman was to Richard Nixon. Part Svengali and part monster. Humagate now and Watergate then. Huma Abedin was not even born then. The Hillary Clinton connections with Saudi Arabian money facilitated by Huma Abedin are probably the skeleton in the closet being inadvertently exposed by the “careless” use of a personal server.
Wa Po October 10th 1972
On October 10th 1972, the Washington Post ran with the story of the conspiracy – established by the FBI – behind the Watergate cover up. Yet Richard Nixon won reelection – by a landslide – on 11th November 1972.
Now on October 28th 2016 it seems that the FBI have found enough to have to announce that the investigation of Clinton’s emails has been reopened. The announcement is so unusual, with just 10 days left before the election, that criminal activity by Clinton is almost certain. Yet it comes too late, I think, to bring Clinton down. The world is much more “instant” now than it was in 1972. But the astounding reopening of Hillary Clinton’s (and of Huma Abedin’s) emails may take some time to penetrate the US electoral psyche. The alternative being a buffoon increases the resistance to the absorption of the revelations.
It took almost 2 years till August 1974 for Nixon to finally bite the bullet and resign.
- October 10, 1972: FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, The Post reports.
- November 11, 1972: Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
- ………
- August 8, 1974: Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country’s highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case.
My expectation now is that Hillary Clinton will win and become the next President of the United States. And some two years hence she will probably be impeached and resign for her past criminal activities.
Diwali 2016
October 29, 2016Little Diwali in South India today and the main celebrations tomorrow.
Western backed rebels/terrorists in East Aleppo are holding civilians hostage just as ISIS is doing in Mosul
October 26, 2016The rebels and terrorists in East Aleppo are largely financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the US and the EU. They are holding civilians hostage and as “human shields” against Assad’s forces supported by Russian air power just as ISIS is preventing civilians from leaving Mosul. The media rhetoric about ISIS and Mosul is equally applicable to East Aleppo, but the difference which changes the media narrative is that the loss of Aleppo by the Western-supported rebels would be a very visible confirmation of the failure of the US/EU strategy of fomenting regime change in Syria.
Virginia Senator Richard Black
The Russian view of things in this interview with Virginia Senator Richard Black makes interesting reading. Even discounting the propaganda factor, the regime-change objectives in Syria have demonstrated the shallowness and wishful thinking that has dominated the US/EU strategies.
RT:The US and its allies could order their terrorist proxies in Aleppo to allow civilians to leave, but instead use them as hostages to escalate anti-Russia rhetoric in a bid to prevent the fall of the rebel stronghold, Virginia Senator Richard Black told RT.
…… The fact is when he (John Kerry) gave that speech, he was sitting next to Saudi Foreign Minister al-Jubeir, and Saudi Arabia has funded ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Al-Nusra – which is Al-Qaeda in Syria, a coordinating group within the Aleppo pocket in East Aleppo.
They have forbidden the civilians from leaving, using the civilians as a human shield, because they know that it forces Syria and Russia to be much more cautious with the bombing. You know, the hyperbolic language used by Secretary Kerry is really outrageous, because the United Nations Office of Human Affairs announced that in the two weeks between September 23 and October 8, there have been about 406 civilians killed.
No one wants any civilians killed, but I’ve got to tell you, if you compare that to the American casualty figures during our invasion of Iraq, during that first year period, we killed approximately 100,000 civilians. So you’re talking about 406 versus 100,000. Frankly, I don’t know whether they taught arithmetic at Yale University, but Secretary Kerry, his rhetoric is terribly overblown.
There’s no doubt that the civilians are being killed in the east, there are significant numbers being killed in the west, and the civilians killed in the west are being deliberately killed and deliberately targeted as civilians. Whereas those in the east are simply being killed because they happen to be on the battlefield.
The combatants who are holding out in east Aleppo are financed and controlled by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United States. These powers have the ability to pressure the rebels to, say, get the civilians off the battlefield. Syria has allowed seven exit points, and made it very clear that they will care for, give medical attention, food, housing to all civilians who leave. It is what I call the axis power, the axis of evil – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. These are the people who are holding the civilians as human hostages, so that they can force Syria and Russia to take additional casualties as they conquer this final pocket of rebels within Aleppo. …….
……… The heart and soul of the Army of Conquest is Al-Nusra, which is Al-Qaeda in Syria. The Army of Conquest was set up by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they have joint command headquarters in Idlib, Syria, and they command the whole operation in east Aleppo. If Saudi Arabia and Turkey gave order that the civilians were to leave, then the civilians would be allowed to leave, they would be welcomed by the Syrian government and be cared for. …..,
The k2p blog 