Re: Taking a Stand in the War on General-Purpose Computing

Is it like when people are referring to "The United States of America" but just say "America?? ;-P

Not exactly, although closer.

Remember that Russia is part of 'europe' but for example Turkey, is not altogether...half of it is.. The assumptive close practised by those who favour the EU is to say 'Europe' when they mean the EU. as in 'Britain is leaving Europe' .

Of course it isn't.

And it is not even correct to say that the EU represents the citizens of the 27 countries that still are in it. It doesn't. It represents a narrow cadre of elitists, and some people who fund it to pass laws favouring their (EU made) products.

Its currency is a shambles and has plunged its southern states into poverty and debt, it has no army, it cannot police its borders as millions of middle eastern immigrants flood in, and it is now in a state of abject energy crisis because of it reliance on toy windmills and solar panels.

Of course all politicians are see you next Tuesdays, BUT the dominant feature of a democracy is that if enough people get seriously pissed off, you can sack the bar stewards.

Britain sacked David Cameron, It sacked Theresa May and is now about to sack Boris Johnson, because where he is going isn't where the people who put him in power - rank and file voters - want to go.

And if his backbenchers know that they wont get elected as long as he is there, they will turn on him like piranhas.

Ultimately British democracy is a delicate balance between looking after an elite who fund the party, and an electorate who have to be convinced it is working in their best interests.

That balance does not exist in the EU. And because the nations have signed away their sovereignty, national elections make little difference.

Although there are signs that the ex sovbloc nations of Poland and Hungary, used to dealing with the Kremlin, are resisting the Brussels politburo.

The Baltic states of Lithuania Latvia and estonia, are openly talking about Russian control - after all there seems to be little difference between Brussels and the Kremlin.

Ultimately you have to ask whether a 19th century top down colonial bureaucracy designed by an Italian communist is an appropriate way to run a continent.

Time will tell.

oh yes, who knows about the European Round Table? And the products are now mostly made in China (I stopped buying "german" products), cause they are not german anymore. It is getting very hard to find something not made in China.

absolutely correct

ahm - these states are the worst human right abusers in Europe and are the worst puppets to their NATO master. The regimes there are not better than what was before 1989. Basically after 1989 the masters from the east were replaced with masters from the west and under pretext of democracy the social structures were destroyed and the people were robbed again, while the former communists became entrepreneurs and live even better than before most of the population there is worth nothing compared to migrants.

It is very complex topic when you go to the geo-political level, but it is also clearly simple what is going on.

To me the biggest danger is coming from the incompetence of so called politicians. The idiots could easily sparkle a nuclear war.

Stop lying about the EU, I'm going to keep posting these links until you stop speaking out of your arse:

Our currency fell on the Brexit vote and has never recovered since, so if the EU's currency is a shambles, ours must be even worse.

It doesn't need one, and any sensible person would think that's a good thing.

I thought the general complaint was the immigrants were flooding into the UK, not Europe? Otherwise why are they risking drowning crossing the Channel in unsuitable craft.

Bollocks, where is your *EVIDENCE* for this claim?

A top down colonial bureaucracy is exactly how the UK is run, even though we don't really have colonies any more.

But, either way, you'll still be lying your arse off.

I presume you refer to the UK when you say Britain (if you're going to be careful about EU and Europe ...) - although AFAICT almost all the sovereignty in the UK resides in England the other nations have very little. Which is not too surprising since in principle all power resides in the crown, which is represented by the reigning monarch, but the power is wielded by the government in the name of the crown by permission of the crown, which AIUI was not granted enthusiastically and can, at least in principle, be revoked. This arrangement leads to oddities like UK law not applying within the boundaries Cambridge colleges while it does apply to the legal entities that operate their finances.

Others have pointed you to the democratic underpinnings of the EU, but it is fair to say that it has even less impact on daily life than national government and people are even less well informed or interested - but at least it isn't treated like football support - "Who do you support United or City ?".

The EU as an institution fundamentally exists as a mechanism for the nations of Europe to relinquish sovereign rights together in the interests of the people of Europe (admittedly that sometimes means the people with fat wallets) - the initial sovereign right that started the process was the right to wage war on each other (translation the right to order mass murder of each other's people and theft of their property), these days that extends to the right to control the movement of their people, the right to control the movement of their people's money, the right to control the movement of goods across their borders, the right to manipulate their currency ... and people benefit every time the nations give up a little more of their sovereign rights.

Ultimately the sovereign rights of nations need to become as obsolete as the rights of feudal lords, which they are the remnant of. The world is too small for nations, they do stupid things like fighting wars and squabbling over resources. Look at the way the United States is constantly in need of an enemy, whenever one goes away they have to find a new one.

The EU is the only organisation in the world working in that direction as such it has my approval warts and all - nothing is perfect but it's a lot better than nationalism.

A thought - did anyone ever ask to join the UK or the British Empire ?

Spot on. Having just read David Abulafia's "The Great Sea" (its about Mediterranean history from the Ionian era to the present) the fact that the USA had a naval force in the Mediterranean fighting corsairs even before its 25th anniversary really me sit up. I didn't know anything about that and I bet not many US citizens do either.

Thise completely provces my point. Have ytou actually READ them?

Not really, we dont havce te unemployment te EU hgas.

They are flooding into the UK VIA the EU. Idiot,.

Well look at this

No, it isnt. You are more ignorant about UK politics than the EUs.

No, you are, but I will excuse that on the grounds that you are simply to stupid to realise it. As is typical for fanatical EU supporters. All emotion, no reason, they are right everyone else is wrong,. misled, stupid, etc etc.

In reality its you elitists that drank the EU Koolaid, not people who spent years considering their options before deciding to leave a corrupt mafia style self-legalising protection racket.

Are you positing this to be a bad thing? Perhaps you're unaware that the Barbary Coast of North Africa (present-day Tunisia/Morocco) was a hotbed of piracy back then. These pirates raided southern France, Malta, even as far as England and Ireland, and those they captured were taken back and sold into slavery. This is not even to mention the arabs of the middle-east, who raided down much of the east coast of Africa, again with a view to capturing the inhabitants to be sold as slaves.

Of course it's not PC to mention this, since we all know that slavery is all the fault of whitey.

Bless!

There is also a theory, that the reason why Europe arise to dominance in the middle ages is precisely because it comprised tens of little principalities always at war with each other and looking for 'Lebensraum'.

The massive pace of technological development between 1935 and 2000 was the direct result of pouring resources into warcraft, and the massive spinoff of high tech that ensued .

Since then the direction has been all anti-technical , anti- science irrational emotional kindergarten stuff.

This seems like a very reasonable theory - and Europeans exploded across the world because attacking the neighbours was becoming too difficult/dangerous.

For sure, and that has directly resulted in the world becoming too small and fragile compared to our destructive capabilities for us to indulge in hobbies like war - it is not been safe to pack a picnic and go and watch the lads fight for a while now. These days it's best to watch from a different continent by TV but it'll get dodgy sharing the same planet if the more enthusiastic lads ever get their way.

Yes, they prove that you're talking out out of your arse as usual.

What has unemployment to do with the currency? Attempt to move the goalposts noted.

Because it happens to lie between source and destination, idiot.

Usual hypocrisy, previously you and other have praised France for using nuclear power, but the prices in France are the highest there; similarly in the UK nuclear is the most expensive generating option, approximately double the next most expensive, offshore wind.

Same public school boys, from public schools created to provide the Empire with its administration staff.

Usual bigoted opinions stated as if they were fact. Read the links above to understand how EU democracy actually operates and stop lying.

After all, war is mankind's #1 source of entertainment.

In one of David Lagercrantz's follow-ons to Stieg Larsson's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series, one of the characters describes the United States as "a country that's never missed a war."

I'm very well, aware of that, thanks, because I paid attention while reading Abulafia's book.

I was just using that example to point out that America's tendency to meddle in other people's back yards has a very long history indeed.

Indeed, but slavery seems to have been an integral part of Mediterranean cultures since well before the Sacking of Troy and other famous exploits of the Ancient Greeks. Its just that more recently whitey dominated the slave trade. The timing of that dominance has a lot to do with the development of bigger, better and faster ships along with firearms and cannon and that in turn was aided and abetted by the Atlantic trade triangle:

- New Englanders sold Salt Cod to feed Caribbean slaves and got molasses in return, from which they made rum, sold back to the Caribbean and to Britain.

- Britain sold manufactured stuff to New England and bought timber and rum.

- Britain also sold guns and cloth, etc to the Caribbean and bought rum and sugar

It you want to know more about that largely neglected driver for slavery, get hold of Mark Churlansky's book "Cod".

But all this conveniently ignores the role of those Africans and Arabs who provided the slaves who ended up in the Caribbean and 'The Deep South' of America. There seems to be remarkably little difference between the mental capacity and attitudes of the ruling classes to their subjects, regardless of whether those were called serfs, slaves, millhands, labourers or zero-hour contractors and whether the rulers were called Alexander The Great, Julius Cesar, King Henry VIII, Beneto Mussolini, Comrade Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Robert Mugabe, Donald Trump or Alexander Lukashenko .

Well you aren't as deep a student of warcraft as you should be. War is not carried out by other means than the massive hammer blow of a megaton nuclear strike.

Even Desert Storm is a bit outdated. What you do now is precision strikes on opposition leaders, or cyber war, or propaganda and AgitProp.

If you examine the social dynamics of hierarchical societies, you will note that they survive because at some level they work.

Take the industrialization of Britain, which led ultimately to what we call the Left - Champions (allegedly) of those who worked the machines against those who owned them.

Why on earth would anyone leave an idyllic pastoral existence for a two up tow down outside toileted terrace in a grim coal fired industrial town?

Well read Flora Thompson's 'Larks Rise to Candleford' and get an inkling.

Population increased ten fold under the virtual enslavement of the 'working classes' by the 'capitalists' and if it was bad in the towns, it was better than on the farms.

The fact is that huge numbers of people are quite happy to be told what to think, what to say, what to wear, how to behave by people who regard them as pitiable inferiors, provided they are comfortable and warm. And told how clever and deserving they really are.

Examine the myth of 'equality'. Mediaeval society realised that literacy and numeracy were pointless in and unaffordable by the labouring classes. Basically you could have a few educated people, or no educated people.

They decided on the former, and society prospered

Today we have the latter, and society is collapsing

What works, is what works. Today's progressive 'full Marx for everyone' society will either succeed in creating willing slaves of us all, or it will collapse due to lack of anybody with any specialist skills. Or in fact both.

And someone who hits on a nasty repressive illiberal and totally fascist solution will come in and take over.

Take your pick between Islam and the CCP. They know what to do with LBGT and dissidents in an overpopulated world....

The Liberal Left are all romantic hand wavey ideologues focussing on what their simple minds conceive the world *ought* to be.

Whilst completely ignoring the hard inescapable reality of what it actually *is*. Outside of their 'safe space' kindergartens.

Well if it lasts, I will be surprised. Its not nearly as stable as a police state.

Of course, that's only been done once, ever since then the hammer has been held behind the back, but it's still there.

Have you seen Gaza recently ? Some folks are behind the times, and some of them have nuclear toys. Also the combination of cyber war and automated weapons is not a pretty one to contemplate.

Those African kings and Chieftains who raided their neighbours and took prisoners for slavery, you mean? Who'd been doing that for years and who were quite happy to sell them on to slave traders when that opportunity arose. Well of course that's something else that's not to be mentioned in polite, oops, PC society.

Well those with nuclear toys are being quietly taken apart by cyber wars, and automated weapons.

What is a war for, really? its to gain someone else's territory and assets and enslave their populations, in which case nuclear war is not great as it destroys both, or its to stop someone else doing it to you. So all it is is a deterrent. And by and large an effective one.

The only other possible strategic use is genocide on a massive scale. To get rid of someone you don't like and dont want in the world. So one might consider nuking china with a pre-emptive strike to basically get rid of a few billion chinese, and send the rest back to the stone age.

Trouble is, they can dish it out as well.

The face of the enemy on the other side of the asymmetry is ExtinctionRebellion, Black LivesMatter, Greenpeace...etc etc. All good AgitProp teams ready to create as much dissension within a culture as possible. Mind f*ck versus hi tech.

And all in the best possible (moral) taste, as Kenny Everett used to say.