The Devil Is Innocent. The WWW Is the Father of All Lies, Including Fake News and Other Fictional History!

There was recently a question on Quora about why the US invented most of the technological achievements of the 20th century. One answer listed  a range of key inventions not done by the US, of which one was the invention attributed to the UK, of the WorldWideWeb (WWW) by Lord Tim Berner-Lees.

My ire was raised because my partial involvement with the people whose efforts collectively brought the WWW into operation did not mention Berner-Lees, but instead concentrated on Douglas Engelbart a US computer specialist who postulated groupware, the VDU, the mouse, the light pen, the GUI, hpertext, and the universal resource locator (URL). More importantly, Engelbart lead the teams that actually produced those items individually, but also the Alto desktop computer that embodied them and led to the Macintosh and Windows. 

But all I  have read of Berner-Lees, he gave only a passing reference to Engelbart, and generally lied through his teeth. He was a great computer scientist, but he was also a typical self-centred human.

While he is also best known for inventing the WWW (and nominated by Time as one of the 20th century greats, it is something he never did, but has never denied the honour.

******

The following is the complete comment to the Quora comment I wrote in July 2023, but could not entirely submit due to its length (a comment I could make here about the Quora moderators  I have restrained from inserting). The I entry is (mainly) as follows).

*****

Tim Berners-Lees invented the WWW? 

Only in his dreams.

And it was his dream for many years. But he can be most charitably described as a Henry Ford (or a Stanley, perhaps) of distributed computing that became part of the WWW. He was working at CERN as a computer scientist, when he cobbled together a network system (that we would now describe as an intranet or groupware) that used Nelson’s Xanadu concepts of hypertext and hypermedia, but spread over multiple separate computers.

Nelson's hypertext vision was first proposed in 1963 but never released as a workable product, and was conceptually different in operation to the WWW. Berner-Lees’ initial implementation was a different product to the concept that leaked out of the US in the early 1990s as the WWW, but had no obvious affect on the WWW's evolution.

I would propose Douglas Engelbart as the “Father of the WWW”, even though many other people contributed components and ideas to its evolution over a half-century. But Engelbart's ideas seemed to be a source of them.

I first heard of hypertext (which many consider one of the original idea behind the WWW) in a 1984/5 article published in Macworld, discussing the ideas of Douglas Engelbart (the person behind the VDU, mouse, the GUI, the Alto - forerunner to the Macintosh, and groupware) and Ted Nelson, a sociologist who supposedly coined the terms, hypertext and hypermedia. While the article referred to both concepts as hypertext, they were different: Engelbart’s was based on using text items spread over multiple distant systems, (with different authors at each system) while Nelson’s was concerned with multi-media components stored on a single mainframe system.

(I much later found out that only Engelbart’s ideas had actually been successfully demonstrated in 1968 and 1972.)

In March 1985, a computer and communications consultant from Melbourne, Tony Smith, with a small group of engineers and computer scientists based in Melbourne and Sydney, contacted Douglas Engelbart in Cupertino and asked permission to port his hypertext product to Unix. Engelbart agreed and and provided a number of papers on the issue as well as agreeing to provide support.

I next contacted Smith in 1989 on another matter, and asked about this hypertext project. He simply sad that the information from Engelbart had been distributed to a number of institutions worldwide.

In early 1995, I was introduced to the WWW and Netscape 1;1, as well as the all-important URL (uniform resource locator) that was then attributed to Engelbart.

I managed to track Netscape Navigator back to the University of Kansas' Lynx, a hypertext browser developed in 1992,. Whether it took anything from the Gopher browser invented the previous year is moot, although this was supposed to browse “Gopherspace” within the University that used it. I assumed this might have been related to the dissemination by Smith and friends.

Interestingly the URL term and format is generally attributed as an invention of Berners-Lee in 1994. Even more interesting is that he disliked the format, but offered no reason for is choice.

I think the WWW had hundreds of parents, and no single person could be considered the “father.” But I also consider that the release of Engelbart’s documentation to the university computing facilities worldwide contributed to the current open-source structure of the WWW, in spite of Microsoft’s efforts.

To me, Engelbart is the Father of the WWW, but many spread his seed.

Preachy offence-takers, the wowsers of our time

By Chris Kenny 

"THE AUSTRALIAN"
 June 25, 2016

This was copied into Dallas Beaufort's page in Facebook. I have copied it here because it needs a wider audience, and in a better vehicle than Facebook.

(Copyright News Limited and Chris Kenny, 2016)

Have we ever had so many people telling us what we shouldn’t be saying? We certainly have never had so many avenues available for expressing our opinions.

But the intrusions and lecturing over what views are considered appropriate are stultifying.
Soon, it seems, public figures will need to subedit every joke, workshop every criticism and run a focus group to test every piece of analysis.

Paradoxically, at the same time, in the menagerie of social media, millions of anonymous and not-so-anonymous accounts hurl a limitless and unrestrained array of foul abuse, threats and derision.
Welcome to the best of times and worst of times in the communications age.

This is an era when the rarest commodity is a person who says what they think and thinks about what they say. There is a sense that we are being deafened by a ­cacophony of multimedia noise at the same time we are being crushed into conformity. And it is helping to turn our politics into bland mush.
This week we have heard Labor politicians, ABC presenters and activists argue that the nation shouldn’t hold a plebiscite on same-sex marriage because the debate will be filled with hatred, bigotry and even violence. They are arguing we urgently need a social reform but that we can’t be trusted to debate it. It is self-imposed authoritarianism — auto-totalitarianism.

Politicians and community and ­security leaders have been avoiding mention of the threat of Islamist extremism because they fear offending people in Muslim communities.

The head of our national football competition warned that “words and jokes have incredible power” as he admonished club presidents over a misplaced gibe, and appointed a manager of “inclusion and social policy”.

Activists who have screamed for media access to Nauru studiously ignored a Nine Network report from the Pacific nation because they didn’t concur with its take on the situation — information, information everywhere, but not a point to make.

The election campaign is being covered by an unprecedented array of media organisations and platforms yet the leaders are doing fewer media interviews than they’ve done in the past. There are more pictures, jokes, insults, outrages, memes and angles than ever, but less substance.
The campaign is Facebook wide and Twitter deep.

Strangely, as access to media and information sources in­creases, we are seeing a retreat from plurality. Media is becoming Balkanised. There is less of an appetite for divergent views in public debate — and less tolerance.

Chillingly, just four years ago under a Labor-Greens government — a progressive-left administration — an attempt was made to impose de facto regulation on print media content. The ABC and the journalists union hardly raised a whimper.

The progressive Left still urges preservation of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, even though it saw a commentator sanctioned over published articles and the columns banned from republication. Some activists argue people who express dissenting views on climate change should be sanctioned.

Maverick politicians the world over — from Donald Trump to Pauline Hanson — are winning support for stridently addressing issues that the political/media class finds too difficult to discuss sensibly. We hear much about so-called slacktivism and we have become used to regular bouts of online outrage.

Yet there is something more worrying at play: a powerful attempt, particularly by the green Left, to control public discussion and silence dissent.

These are not new pressures, we know. It was George Orwell who imagined Newspeak as he warned of such sinister authoritarian tendencies in the novel Nineteen Eight-Four.

Thought crimes and doublespeak became part of our lexicon, mainly as alarming markers — things to avoid as we defended freedom during the Cold War. After the wall came down and we saw our liberal democratic model triumph in social, economic and strategic terms, it seemed that liberalism and tolerance would prosper unchallenged. But no — even without authoritarian regimes, the citizens of Western liberal democracies now invite new conformist approaches to public debate upon themselves.

Much of it is driven by political fashion. Some of us seem to want all of us to share the same views. The political fashionistas use politics, public broadcasters, social media and public institutions to further their cause.

You can witness their overbearing hectoring in the sanctimony of progressive politicians, preachiness of the national broadcaster or vile abuse of social media. If you are unlucky enough you’ll find them marching to your door, as happened to me recently after a complaint to the Australian Press Council.
Despite her public megaphone in parliament and limitless platforms though largely unquestioning media appearances, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young sought to undermine my reporting from Nauru last October by lodging a complaint.

Hanson-Young, despite numerous requests over many years, has refused to grant me an interview to discuss border protection issues.

Rather than answer my questions — or ask them of me — she used the APC as a vehicle to try to discredit my efforts at sharing facts and providing transparency on Nauru. Bizarrely, the council decided to investigate the complaint despite chairman David Weisbrot saying: “We are not at all, in this, contesting the accuracy, fairness or balance of the articles — we completely accept those.”
Instead, the council looked into the issue of privacy and found in my favour on that count, too. But consider how the press council allowed itself to be used in a game that is antipathetic to its aims of fostering free and open media.

Hanson-Young, instead of speaking to me, criticising me or debating me, hides from scrutiny and lodges a third-party complaint. It is aimed at silencing me and deterring others. It is weak, to be sure. But it is also insidious.

Two of my colleagues are enduring similarly ridiculous press council inquiries for daring to poke fun at the moral posturing and fashionable causes of the progressive political class. The green Left, which ostensibly would lay claim to supporting free and open debate, is constantly trying to shut it down.
They badger, deny and obfuscate rather than address hard facts and engage in direct debate. Just as Orwell outlined so pointedly in Politics and the English Language, they corrupt language with their thought and could corrupt public thinking with their language. Their language on issues that should be clear-cut is often characterised, as Orwell sum­marised, by “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Hence, instead of recognising the horrible intent and deadly challenge of Islamist extremism, ABC presenter Waleed Aly gave us an indirect and subversive ­response to the Orlando gay nightclub massacre.

“I feel like what we’re witnessing is the tangible pointy expression of all of the fault lines and contradictions that run through modernity,” he said on Radio ­National. “Our world is now one that is an increasingly polarised and polarising contest between new frontiers of cosmopolitanism on the one hand and quite responsive and symbiotically related frontiers of atavism on the other, and within that lie all of the political narratives that have sustained us through the 20th century that simply don’t work any more, narratives like freedom, right, which you know expresses its own contradictions in America every time there is a mass shooting, when you see what freedom and a certain conception of freedom ends up looking like.”

The only possible interpretation of this verbiage is that he was saying — ever so obliquely — that America had it coming. This was a vile case of blame-shifting away from the culprit and his Islamist extremist ideology. Let’s talk about this.

Aldi Australia And 2016

The figures are not posted yet, but it seems that Aldi Australia has nearly doubled its turnover in 2015, compared to 2014. This is in spite of only increasing its shelf space by about 10% over the year, and the number of regular products from 1200 to 1350.

Effectively, Aldi has increased he average size of its customer basket to about 25 items, matching Coles and Woolworths. And to achieve the rise in turnover estimated, about twice the number of customers pass trough the checkouts as did a year ago. "Our New Year's resolution is to provide you with top quality products at the lowest possible prices!"

Since Aldi's prices have not risen in comparison to the competition, some other factor must be involved. The increase in TV advertising is the first clue. Not that this attracted the increase in customers, but it did attract favourable attention by the media, eager for a share of the advertising revenue.

Aldi had been doing a small amount of TV advertising during 2014, highlighted by its "surfing Santa" Christmas campaign. Its approach to the market had been seen as unique, and it tried a number of strategies that indicated its willingness to spend money. The turning point occurred when Choice published a survey that "proved" an Aldi shopping basket was as little as half the price of the equivalent basket from Coles or Woolworths. This was favourably reported by the media prior to the June holiday weekend, thanks to the advertising possibilities. It seemed to legitimize Aldi in the minds of the consumers, and in the long weekend that followed the report, Aldi customer numbers increased dramatically, kept on increasing, and most new customers made Aldi shopping a regular part of their shopping routine.

Coles had spent the previous four years engaged in a number of strategies to compete with Aldi and now other retailers joined the charge, effectively making Aldi the leader of grocery and variety merchandising.

A downside of the sudden shift in market leadership was that all players became confused, and so did the customers. Aldi recognized this by publicizing its 2016 New Year's resolution to maintain product quality while keeping prices as low as possible.

This year should see if Aldi can manage to achieve this.

"Our New Year's resolution is to provide you with top quality products at the lowest possible prices!"

Ineffective Terrorism; 23/11/15

November 23rd, 2015

Public Service Pricks

Been a long time writing. After my heart attack mid-2011, I decided to be more active, to stop my physical decline and combat the stress of my condition (since I could not obtain mild sedatives legally to reduce my acute anxiety state). A few falls later, I slowed down again, but still managed to fall getting up from the toilet and knock myself unconscious for about 30 minutes and open up my scalp. Losing about a litre of blood before I managed to call for help and crawl to the door to let in the medics.

I spent a few days in hospital, in an isolated room because my MRSA infection had still not been officially cleared up (actually, smart, because I have four topical MRSA outbreaks since my original 2007 escape). So I stopped risking my life further by having unnecessary exercise, and increased my smoking instead (which actually increased my stress because of the huge cost of the tobacco tax). My physical condition declined, and in an effort to have HealthNSW offer me remediation, my doctor asked the RMS to not renew my driver's licence unless my case was reviewed by a specialist.

To date, my licence has been cancelled for two months, and I have spent thousands extra surviving and getting a specialist driving instructor report that I have no medical condition that would affect my driving. Still, my licence has not been returned, so tomorrow I appear in court trying to get it returned before I decide to open my throat outside Parliament House in protest.

Just Bloody Fed Up: October 7, 2014

October 7th, 2014

Neville Angove, The Black Swan

Been playing around, trying to get things done. I know that you can pay Google to list you higher in the search results, and that Wikipedia is as reliable as a $100 watch (that's $100 because a $10 watch is damn reliable until it fails comletely). But I do searches now that yield results that bear little resemblance to results I achieved five years ago. And when I try to correct errors in results, I am not allowed or asked to pay money!

For example, Ancestry.com has the wrong derivation for my surname. It insists it was found first mentioned about the 16th century in Cornwall, and says it is derived from "an" (the) and "gov" (smith). This is wrong. But very convenient.

Nope. That is how today's Cornish describe it. But....

It comes from "Ango,", a place name in NE France. The word means "under dispute" in a local Germanic dialect. I first saw the name in an old atlas on display, in a glass case,  in a maritime shipping company, open to a page displaying France. The area I mentioned had the name "Ango" flowing across it, like a mapmaker's warning, "There be dragons here."

The location was the crossing of the major NS trade link from Germany to Marseilles, and the EW link to Normandy. In the late first millennium, my ancestors traveled both south and west, styling themselves as "of Ango" (D'Ango) or just "Ango.) This can be partly traced by current telephone listings. The group's going west were often styled "Angot" with the "t" silent (a common spelling), hence the later confusion about the spelling.

The extended family settled into Normandy and started a seafaring empire, visiting most of the coasts of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The were well enough established and influential in Normandy by 1066 to join with William the Conqueror in invading England (and definitely were involved in the invasion of Ireland in 1067), and by the middle of the 13th century were established in Cornwall as people of influence (and having adopted the name of "Trengove";  one record explained to me by Wendy Angove had one family - six children and two parents - with five different spellings of the name).

I do not know where "Tren" originated. I met a distant relative in Melbourne in 1976, named "Trungove," and he said his forbears had come from Wales. I know that "trun" was found in several central European dialects and vaguely meant "the place,", so I can imagine a forbear and Cornwall, when asked of his name, said he was (say) "Jean Trun Ango" in reply. To a French person, it would mean "Jean from the place of dispute," and easily be written by scribes as "Trenango" and eventually turned into "Ango."

Remember that the pronunciation of "Angove" follows a mix of English, French and German rules. Add general illiteracy and phonetic transcription by scribes, anything is possible. Why people think "gof" is involved is both simple and easy (and knowing how easy names are modified for little reason, definitely easy). "Gof" is often spelled as "Goff," to ensure the vowel is pronounced as short. It is also spelled as "Gough" to stop the vowel from being pronounced as long. If it is pronounced as long (as  in "although") is spelled as "Gof" instead, we are part way there. Remember that "gof" (long vowel) can be spelled as "gov" (using the Germanic pronunciation of "v"), with the "e" added to the end to mimic the French rule for making the preceding vowel long, then we have the accidental evolution of "Trengove" which has a vaguely Cornish ring to it. Illiteracy could have generated "Angove" by the 15th/16th centuries when it appears to have been first written that way (with the name probably pronounced as "Ango" to reflect its origins).

For various reasons the heavy "v" sound became standard. And for a name which has always been so easily misspelled, the "Angove" spelling has always returned (except in Eire and Scotland, where the name is rare in spite of the fact that the census data says that a large number of Angove women  migrated there). If the name was derived from "the smith," why are the names Thesmith, Thebaker, Theplumber, and so on, so rare? The article "the" was always removed. The name "Gove" is fairly common, but it first appeared in the UK in Aberdeen at the time of the French revolution (the reasoning is obvious), and spread south from there. It is not to be found in the west Scottish province of Gowan (pronounced "govvan") from whence it is supposed to have originated.

**********

Rubbery Holocaust Numbers

Go Figure on September 9th, 2014

During the 1960s I read that during WWII, the Allies calculated that the Nazis killed almost 4 million Jews and almost 2 million others during what was later called the "Holocaust."  This approximate figure was repeated often during the next few decades, even by representatives of the Holocaust Museum. So I had no reason to doubt it, and vilified those who denied this barbaric mass murder. I also saw this as undeniable reason for Israel to fight against Muslim attempts to destroy the re-occupied traditional Jewish homeland.

When the TV show, "Band of Brothers," had an episode on the military discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, the epilogue to the episode reported that 6 million Jews and 2 million others had been murdered. I thought this apparent error was typical of TV producers showing their high disregard for accuracy.

Until in a press conference a few weeks later when an Israeli politician, arguing his country's justification for fighting Arab terrorism, repeated the same 6 million figure! I took it as opportunism, since that figure would be known to enough people because of the TV show, and would be treated as factual.

Then last week, an editorial matter in my Sunday newspaper (yes, I read print, and in fact prefer it to the Internet because the author can't sneak in gross changes) mentioned that 5.5 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. I decided that I better check my memory, and found that the various articles on the Internet reported similar figures. Since I have solid, verifiable reasons to definitely distrust the generally unverified and unreliable "facts" reported on the Internet that contradict my experiences, I decided to investigate more deeply. I discovered that my fears were well-founded: all the articles I read, that others would find most easily, carried the same figures. But these were presented them in such a way that their accuracy and reliability were questionable and unverified except through other Internet articles that were equally questionable.

I cannot give a fuller argument in a single blog post to support my reasoning, but I will mention some of the most characteristic of the worrisome figures. I can say though, that the reported length of the Holocaust and the deaths due to it, have doubled since I read about it first fifty years ago. And I find no reason to reject those reports, just how the actual numbers were calculated. I can however argue that the contradictory figures I first mentioned at the start of this post are typically questionable, but in no way reject how poorly they reflect on humans, especially today.

The pages presented by "facts.randomhistory.com/holocaust-facts.html" are a good collection of about 90 paragraphs of information about the  Holocaust. They are also presented in such a way as to be good evidence of why careful editing can make obviously "anecdotal" information appear to be verified fact. The comments are based on information gleaned from other sources, including the Internet, and I haven't checked their accuracy. Please note however, that the sources quoted as references were published between 1998 and 2011. I have no idea what these references used as references, or how reliable they were (given the timescale involved, there would be enough accidental misreporting of misreports of misreports of  references to keep even Sherlock Holmes confused).

"The Holocaust began in January 1933...and ended on May 8th 1945...." The article continues with: "Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews."

I have no verification of these numbers, but since the length of the pogrom was doubled, increasing the number of Jewish murders by 50% to cover the extension of the period seems reasonable. I am disturbed that this is the first mention I have had that the non-Jewish murders being extended by 150% (from about two million) to cover the extended period. I would like an explanation why some people consider non-Jewish deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their sympathisers (especially in eastern Europe) to be less needy of accuracy.

The next comments in this article are interesting, and seemingly ignored by mankind at its peril. "Over 1.1 million children died during the Holocaust. Young children were particularly targeted by the Nazis to be murdered during the Holocaust...." This was published in a primary source on The Holocaust (Hayes, Peter. 1999. Lessons and Legacies: Memory, Memorialisation, and Denial).

The Nazis believed that since young children would parent the next generation of Jews, killing them would stop the next generation. The children were usually executed immediately on arrival at the concentration camps. No information on how many of the children were non-Jews, or what happened to the mothers (no waiting for the children to father the next generation if the mothers were allowed to live). But the positioning of the statement implies that the children were all Jewish.

Given the age distribution of the Jewish population, if it were a viable distribution, then there is a problem. Depending on the average age distribution of parents, their children, and their own parents, you would expect far less than five adults murdered per child murdered (no more than 3.5 per child murdered).

"An estimated 1/3 of all Jewish people alive at that time were murdered in the Holocaust." This was published in The Holocaust Encyclopedia in 2001. It conflicts with Angela Gluck Woods' book published in 2007, "Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People," that argues for 2/3 Jewish deaths out of a total population of nine million (in Europe, for these figures). I can't explain the discrepancy, but the six million/nine million pairing makes more sense (even though this still leave too few Jews after 1945 to rebuild the group).

"More than half of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were women. Most women with small children were immediately sent to the gas chambers...." This is taken from The Holocaust Encyclopedia. One reference quoted by this article (Byers, Ann. 1998: The Holocaust Camps), ascribed over one million deaths to Auschwitz, but at the end of the article, the same book has the number of deaths at this camp increased to two million.

Another "respected" source read for this post says in contradiction that at least half of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were males, with the other half being women and children.  One of them has to be not quite correct. There seems to be no room for the children murdered.

One difficulty in querying the figures provided by the various sources is that each one seems to suggest that anyone who mentions that the figures given contain contradictions is a "Holocaust Denier" and therefore has no valid view.

There are other notions that suggest that writers are ignoring possibilities that should be considered. For example, a person was considered Jewish if just one grandparent was Jewish. Any children that person had fathered were not considered Jewish. It was irrelevant if that person had not practised that faith or did not associate with other Jews or did not considered themself to be Jewish, or was not considered Jewish for purposes of any census. Also, the Nazis often stated they preferred to move all foreign Jews to the concentration camps, to hide the industry of death. So not only was the total number of pre-Holocaust European Jews understated, the number of European Jew victims may have been overstated.

Nothing I have said in any way denies the number of deaths during the Holocaust. I just am arguing that there are many severe inconsistencies in how the figures are calculated and presented. Just one inconsistency casts doubts on the whole thesis, and 75 years have shown that a noisy minority will gleefully cast such doubts. Emotional attacks on anyone who even implies that there are such inconsistencies simply adds strength to the anti-Holocaust attacks.

Religious Terrorism

September 8th, 2014

Thus afternoon, the TV news reported that an auction for Islamic aims was held at the community mosque at Liverpool. The story referred to the auction of a copy of the flag used by the Islamic State religious terrorist group in Syria and Iraq. The flag sold for $2000, the proceeds to be used to support the mosque. But an attendee posted a video of the auction, along with a masked picture of himself and a promise to kill the Syrian president.

What struck me most forcibly was the denial of a spokesman for the mosque (?) that the auction of the flag was in any way to be taken as support for Islamic State, and that the flag was an old Islamic symbol that had be hijacked by Islamic State. This implied that the Islamic moderates who supported this auction were either incredibly stupid, or thought that Australian society as a whole was incredibly stupid.

There is no doubt that non-Muslims have seen this flag or anything similar as supporting Islamic State and its religious terrorism. There is no doubt that any Muslims or Arabic speakers would see this flag as definitely supporting these terrorists, regardless of any devout religious connotations it might have, and thereby showing that the moderate Muslims running the auction overtly supported the terrorists.

And if at least some of the religious moderates who attended the auction did not support the barbarism of Islamic State, how was it that at least one was able to attend the auction, record it, and post the recording and his own message of hate and murder on-line?

If any of those organising the auction were sincere in their protestations against the methods of Islamic State, or in their professed knowledge of the feelings of the bulk of western society about such barbarous behaviour, then they would have shown at least some small diplomacy and not included this flag in the auction. Instead they demonstrated a lack of understanding of the psyche of Australian society (and contrary to the pricks of the Labor Party, our society does not pander to Muslims of any persuasion). They demonstrated a possibility that they lied about not supporting the aims of Islamic State, if not its methods. They demonstrated to other Muslims that the unofficial line of the mosque was to tacitly support Islamic State.

Worst of all, the organisers fostered in the children of Australian Muslims, needing some guidance in a confused world, that murder in the name of religion was acceptable.

In spite of the either insincere or misleading protests by Muslim spokesmen recently, I was disposed to tolerate people who felt it OK to support the destruction of my society (I admit it could do with reform, but nihilism is the name of Allah and proposed by unrepresentative and unelected psychotics, does not promote my tolerance). My view is now that Muslims anywhere are no longer worthy of the benefit of the doubt, and doubt, under any circumstance, and if they object they can are welcome to go to Allah directly and let Him sort it out.

I Have Been Busy

I haven't blogged anything since - more or less- I recovered from my heart attack in the middle of 2011 and deleted several entries I wrote about that time that reflected my emotional turmoil rather than reality. I hope things will be back to normal soon.

Letter to Barry O'Farrel,MP, Premier of NSW

I sent this letter to Mr O'Farrel, and to News Limited publications, hoping for a response. I did. It mentioned nothing about the actions of the public servants. Considering O'Farrel's attacks on the bureaucracy, I expected at least a mention. The response means that he never saw it. As I expected.

Mr Barry O’Farrel, MP
27 Redleaf Ave
Wahroonga NSW 2076
2 May 2011



Dear Sir

In her farewell statement after the March election, Kristina Keneally said that the electorate had not deserted Labor, but Labor had deserted the electorate. She meant something else, but she was ironically so true. A few days earlier, a newspaper columnist had said Labor deserved to lose, since the government had spent the past several years partying instead of governing.

The truth was that since 2009, NSW had been controlled by blackmail, conspiracy, intimidation and incompetence by sections of the Public Service. For example, currently, HealthNSW knows how easily it could have reduced deaths in NSW public hospitals (due to hospital-acquired infections) by about 10,000 per year, since at least 2002, through an improvement in hygiene that would cost very little but save several billions per year in treatment costs. But just make one minister avoid mentioning this, and the blackmail begins.

We saw Della Bosca not prosecuted by the DPP for breaching the Oaths Act over “Iguanagate” in exchange for Rudd not cutting back on the Federal Public Service, then we saw him set up by the Public Service when he announced his 100-day plan to clean up the hospital system. We saw David Campbell set up the day before he planned to reveal which public servants were to blame for the 12-hour F3 fiasco. We saw thousands of dollars of police surveillance thrown away just so Verity Firth’s husband could be caught buying a single ecstasy ill. We have seen a number of politicians hauled before the public servants' own court, the ICAC. We have seen public servants mishandle grossly government projects, such as the BER and building less shoddy public housing in NSW. And we have seen a number of politicians making decisions that would make their post-political lives wealthier.

The US CDC announced a 50% decrease in hospital-acquired infections, for only a 25% increase in handwashing, in a study published in 2001. A few years later, Austin Hospital in Melbourne found that spending $7000 per year on a nurse to oversee hygiene practices saved about $1.2 million annually. Two years ago, HealthNSW did it own study, that showed similar results to the CDC study, but only for non-invasive treatments (and for that reason, decided better hygiene was “too hard” to manage).

In financial terms, by spending less than $10 million hiring retired senior nurses to work part-time to guarantee the following of hygiene protocols and develop new ones for invasive procedures, HealthNSW would have over one billion dollars a year in treatment costs, and require no more hiring of general nurses. As well, enough spare beds would be made so that saved money could slash waiting lists and save 5-10,000 lives annually.

All the bureaucracy needs to control the government is to convince one senior politician to expediently do nothing, and then that politician and his/her power is permanently suborned by fear of criminal sanction.

After being under HealthNSW care for two months (top), and just before.
I was admitted to Liverpool Hospital on January 19th, 2007, in a semicomatose condition. After six hours, during which I suffered lung failure, I was choppered to intensive care at Bankstown Hospital. While the doctors were trying to diagnose me, my heart stopped. Blood tests revealed I had kidney failure, and liver failure, due top severe legionella sepsis that was partly resistant to antibiotics. My kidney failure was so severe that I needed four dialysis sessions to bring my blood back to some semblance of normality.

I spent four weeks in a coma, all on breathing support and dialysis. I was not expected to live to the end of the first week.

Unfortunately, my body weight was underestimated, and this together with the wrong diet and a high fever seemed to have caused some oxygen deprivation, mainly affecting the hindbrain and the lower system. When I was first exercised after regaining consciousness, I was both severely wasted and crippled. The former I survived, but the latter has not improved. The hospital offered no reason for my disability, but said I would return to normal within a three months. A transfer to a physiotherapy hospital was arranged by my sister, but the hospital refused. I later discovered it was because I had contracted MRSA while in the coma, and no other hospital would admit me (but I was not told any of this at the time).
.
When Bankstown refused to discharge me, I forced the issue and it relented on March 22nd. A few weeks later my GP sent me for an NMRI scan that revealed I had neural atrophy that was causing my disability, and it was not curable. I posted my discharge sheet on my blog, and a doctor from the UK NHS said the treatment I had been given was typical for VISA (now known as multi-resistant MRSA).  I began online and other personal research into hospital hygiene, discovered how this might have happened. But both Bankstown Hospital and the HCCC said there was no record of me having MRSA.

I was contacted by an Australian MRSA sufferer (who was infected while having back surgery) who said his doctor would not even order a blood test to see if he still had MRSA, and he could only get medical treatment by presenting himself at the Emergency Departments of different hospitals. In September 2007, my carer assaulted me when Housing refused to even  try to find me accommodation (she had been told I would only be in her care for three months). When I went to Fairfield Hospital to be treated for three cracked ribs and severe internal injuries, I mentioned I might have had MRSA, and the doctor treating me said that it was policy to not allow anyone who might have MRSA to be admitted. A few days later I had to be taken back to Fairfield by ambulance because my internal injuries had become painfully inflamed. I was placed in a single room, and only stayed overnight because the staff could find no one to take me home.

Finally, through the intercession of Ninos Koshaba with the Minister for Housing, the Fairfield Allocation Team was bypassed and a disabled residence suitable for me was built in October 2008, , part of the privately built complex purchased by Housing while under construction. Housing Fairfield did not like this.

In March 2009 I was admitted to Liverpool Hospital for respite (90 minutes home assistance each two weeks was not enough). After five days I was approached by a nurse who asked me if I had been cleared by Bankstown of MRSA. When I replied this had not done, I was moved to an isolated room and the cleaners given special anti-infection instructions to prevent me infecting the ward. No precautions were taken to protect other hospital patients, just some of the nursing staff. It was also at this time I learned that hospital doctors kept separate computer records to those they completed for the hospital.

My discharge papers from Liverpool mentioned neither the degree of my disabilities nor the actions taken to not allow me to spread the MRSA I might still have. Also, no tests of any kind were done to see if I still had MRSA. Three separate assessments argued I needed six free hours of home care each week in order to keep me out of a nursing home, but CatholicCare could only manage to get me 90 minutes a week from HACC.

I received a copy of a reply from the SSWAHS to the HCCC, with a hastily inserted paragraph saying that I had been found to be inexplicably infected with MRSA towards the end of my coma. But the letter did not explain why I was put under such strict infection control procedures for the MRAB I was told I had instead (which in my case was virtually impossible to get in Australia), and did not need strict infection control procedures.

The HCCC did nothing about being lied to, and the last word I received from them was that Bankstown said I should stop whining about being crippled, but be thankful I was alive.

A firm of solicitors approached me about my problems, after my discharge from Liverpool. While they wrote back, they said they could not take action on the basis of my medical records from Bankstown. But I was given a copy of most of the pertinent medical records from Bankstown and Liverpool.

I wrote to the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, but he was not told of my letter. Instead, Joe Tripodi hand-delivered a letter outlining my problems to him. Della Bosca wrote back to me, explaining he had told GILD to see what compensation for being crippled I should get.

I also wrote to Centrelink, asking for a medical assessment. This was refused on the grounds it would invade my privacy. So officially, I am not severely disabled and therefore denied the various types of assistance, including financial help to cover my increased costs. At least NSW Health and Disability is subsidising my 90 minutes per week cleaning help, and the RTA has accepted my doctor’s statement that I am mobility-impaired.

Shortly thereafter, I asked Housing Fairfield to install extra safety rails in the bathroom, as the ones installed by the builder were not adequate. Fairfield asked the SSWAHS to assess my needs, but Health replied to the Housing Campbelltown office, and nothing happened until I made additional representations threee months later. Then the Health assessor visited me twice, to confirm that I had not been crippled before I entered Bankstown Hospital, or that any medication I was on would make me crippled, before permission to install the safety rails was granted. I still do not have any protection from falling of the back porch onto the ground.

On October 20th, 2009, I wrote to Carmel Tebbutt, at her electoral office, outlining my problems and my previous actions. She never saw the letter, nor did her Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Dr Andrew Mc.Donald, who replied on  21st December 2009 to me with nothing but a litany of lies (including the supposed actions of GILD) that could have only been written by a public servant. I waited until September 2010 for action, before complaining that nothing had been done. I never received an answer.


The only good news I have is that I have been lent the old car owned by my nephew, since I can’t afford the taxi subsidy I now must only pay to visit medical people in places I cannot park. In October, I will have to find the money to reregister the car, or suffer imprisonment.

I have been a cripple for more than four years. It took two years of that time to finally get a Housing place where I could live independently. But is costs more to live as a cripple than the government pays. Does it make sense to you that my housing subsidy of $7000 per year would be increased to $7000 per week if I went into a high-dependency nursing home, to be in a virtual prison? In fact, I’d be better off if I had myself gaoled, since then I would have the run of the prison hospital, and a wheelchair I can’t afford to buy.

I am tired of being a cripple, and taking several times longer to do things that I can do. I am tired that I have been thrice assessed as needing six hours per week home help, paid for by the State, since thne State crippled me, and I don’t have the money. I am tired of Bankstown Hospital refusing to recognise my severe disabilities as happening while under its care. I am tired of being refused hospital treatment because I was infected with MRSA at Bankstown and other hospitals do not care to admit patients if they know they have had MRSA.

I am tired of being under continual medical, psychological and financial stress, and having to depend on charity because no one cares to take responsibility for making me a cripple. And the charity seems to have reached its limits. I am tired of having my life recklessly endangered because public servants, such as HealthNSW’s Ian Smyth, believe that a few hundred lives lost to hospital acquired infections is “a minor matter” (on a TV news report late last year).

In your speech after the March election, you said you planned to leave a legacy to NSW. Is this a legacy where politicians obey public servants at the costs of thousands of lives and billions of dollars, or one where politicians work for the benefit of the electorate?

Neville Angove

A Small Misconception

Neville J. Angove

I was watching the TV program, "The Boneyard: Biowaste." In a segment on Tennessee's "The Bodyfarm" I was once again treated to a repetition of a common fallacy by someone who should have known better, but was too ignorant to do some elementary fact checking (similar to a 2010 journalist).

The chap who initiated The Bodyfarm commented that mediaeval knights were actually only small people, about five feet in height or so. This is a common fallacy, and the small suits of armour that have survived from this period, along with the fact that many commoner entrances only had small doorways, is used as evidence to support this misconception.

The average height prior to the 1800's was not much more than about five feet. This was due to poor diet. But poor diet was not a constraint amongst the wealthy. These people could afford suits of armour, for example. They could also afford large doors.
Several decades ago a museum guide commented that the kitchen doors to a mansion were small because of the average height of the users. Might be, except kitchen staff were unlikely to be poorly fed. The guide did not comment on why internal doors were as large as we use today, even those not seen by any visitors.

Small doors were common because of expense and defence. It cost money to make a large door or window, and only the wealthy chose to be ostentatious enough to do so. Of course, the back doors used by staff and hidden from view were only as large as needed. Smaller doors could also be only entered sideways, meaning that any invader had his defenceless back to one side.

It is true that a number of famous warriors were small. Admiral Nelson was small, but he had a commoner origin. Boneapart wasn't as small as we think, but he also had a commoner origin. But nobles were well-fed and were fairly large people. In fact, only oversized men could wear suits of armour and wield mediaeval weapons.

Little armour used in mediaeval times survived to this day. A recent survey of Agincourt could only discover one coin and part of a knight's spur. The rest of the metal was salvaged and recycled. The suits of armour that have survived were generally of two types: 90%-scale suits made by armorers as sales aids; or suits made for the adolescent males of wealthy noble households. None saw battle and so needed no recycling.

Anthropologists who have examined mediaeval noble skeletons and surviving armour and weapons, and historians who have looked at the forced evolution of horses, will correct these misconceptions.

This type of unchecked error passes into common knowledge because its suits the misconceptions of those who should correct them. Perhaps we like the idea of the old nobility being smaller than modern man, because it makes us feel better.

Unfortunately (and here I am on my hobbyhorse again), the Internet is very good at perpetuating fallacies, and destroying electronic evidences of the truth.

Deathly Lies

Lies and Incompetence Were Almost the Dearth of Me (and the Death of Me)!

I was trying to understand why I recorded a blood oxygen saturation levels of 99% after just smoking several cigarettes. This test was done using a finger stall. Carbon monoxide binding should have made my oxygen saturation as low as 70% (but at that level, I would need a higher oxygen flow, hence a higher pulse rate and blood pressure in smokers). The normal long term binding is supposed to be about 10% in heavy smokers, and takes weeks after heavy smoking stops to reduce the CO saturation (the red blood cells have to die).

The problem is multifold.

Arterial blood gas analysis machines measure oxygen saturation by using complex calculations based on a number of separate reactions, creating a selection of products whose concentrations are used to interpret the readings obtained. Specifically, large levels of carbon monoxide can skew the results which then need a different interpretation. But a reading of other results obtained simultaneously will indicate that the oxygen saturation results are unreliable. It is better if the analysis is done with the operator already knowing that the blood sample comes from a smoker.


Pulse oximetry use the frequency of light transmitted by the sample. High carbon monoxide levels can skew the results, since oxygen saturation is actually measured as a result of the combination of different results, both of which are affected by CO saturation.

While I was a patient at Bankstown Hospital early in 2007, no account was taken of any possible skewing of my test results, in spite of knowledge that I had been (I was in a coma, and could not smoke anyway) a heavy smoker. No account was taken of the results provided by the blood gas analysis that cast strong doubts on the reliability of the measured oxygen saturation levels.

No test was done on my CO levels, and no venous blood gas analysis was done.

Basically the medical staff saw what they thought they should see, and not what was actually measured.

They were obviously comforted by the fact that the separate monitoring of my blood oxygen saturation via a finger stall also showed a 95% oxygen saturation. But this is a simpler measurement, easily confused. Blood with carbon monoxide saturation actually comes out a brighter red, and when mixed with oxygen-saturated blood, inflates the measured oxygen saturation levels.

Unfortunately, the correct interpretation of these results is beyond the competence of even the most highly qualified nurses in public hopsitals. The doctors, who believe that since they can occasionally revive patients who are technically dead, and therefore obviously must have some god-like attributes, are actually worse. Talking to a doctor about a medical issue is like being the customer in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch!

It is no wonder why I, but one of many, suffered severe oxygen stress while in a coma. I can be thankful that the attempts to reduce my blood pressure failed, because if it had been reduced, the oxygen stress would have increased my neural atrophy to the point where I would have not revived.

The alternative view is that if I had died permanently, or been so neurologically challenged that I would be in a home, then I wouldn't have to put up with Banktown Hospital's view that I should stop beiong crippled by them and be thankful I am still alive.

YOU CALL THIS LIVING, YOU BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!

The Uncivil Serpents Win Again

Gillard Gushes, Abbott Has No Costello

Julia Gillard has agreed to the demands of a group of three independents, in order to form a government. Tony Abbott, on the other hand, rejected them outright, displaying a nonchalance that tells me he thinks he knows something.

Accept that the Coalition is completely owned by the Public Service. Accept that Labor follows Public Service advice with no question, because it knows it can be ruined and lose power if it upsets its mandarins.

Then it all makes sense.

The promises made to the independents, although the specifics are not revealed yet, pretty much folllow Labor stated policy (except for the mining superprofits tax).

The public servants have shown the ability to only recommend policy they think should be done, and provide cogent arguments against policy they don't like. The same public servants have been very willing to administer government policy in such a way to minimise benefits to the electorate while maximising embarrassment to the government.

Perhaps Abbott has been promised that Labor will be put in such a damaging position by faulty Public Service advice that it will be forced to renege on its promises to the independents. Only one independent MP has to change his side in a crucial vote and we are heading for a new election.

If Gillard is dumped by Labor, as most predict, that could also provide an impetus for instability. The keeping of promises, even if in name only, is tied closely to the power of the leader of the government.

We will be heading for a general election well short of the three years we are guaranteed. That is certain. What are unknown are the twin answers of when and how.

A confusing issue concerns honesty. This concept is ignored by party politicians, not if they want to keep their seats. But independents must keep their electorates happy. The independents' electorates show a preference for their members to side with the Coalition. Abbott might be counting on this. The problem for the independents is that they choose which government is best for their electorate, and this may not be the choice of the electorate (although they did vote for independent representation).

ISPs and Asps

I've Been Filtered!

I had a few problems with this account, taking unnamed people to task for failing to do their jobs, and then they doing disturbing things when they were challenged.

It took five weeks to get my account running. I must have upset people more, since I found that while I could access overseas sites OK, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook overseas servers could not send me anything except bare text. The IMs worked OK, but nothing else. When I found that I could not even update Windows, I complained.

Bigpond's Helpdesk responded incredibly quickly. Incredibly quickly, as if it was waiting for me. It suggested I had corrupted IE's cache, and detailed how I was to fix it. I spent two hours doing this and testing it, and found that clearing the cache actually made things worse. So I complained again about 2am Tuesday morning, commenting that the same problem occurred with Firefox (my default browser), and then quit.

About 9am, I opened up again, but after about three access doing my mail (using Firefox), suddenly I was getting timeout mesages that could have only been caused by my ISP intercepting my requests and blocking my access to these servers by sending a notification back that the connection had timed out.

Basically, a version of the proposed Internet filter, but applied to requests from my account.

I tried IE8, and everything worked (but with a little initial delay on the requests). Even the sites I could not receive from previously talked to me. But despite repeated attempts to use Firefox, it never worked again.

It is now Thursday morning, and Firefox still doesn't work. Repeated communications with Bigpond show that it is not treating the request seriously (or the last person to e-mail me is literally challenged). I was finally advised to pay for help from a third-party service

Basically, in revenge for being a pain in the arse, Bigpond stopped three US sites from sending me information, but in such a way as to suggest the problem was at my end. Before I could hook up another machine to show my hardware was not at fault, Bigpond changed its assault by simply blocking all communication if I used Firefox. The ultimate answer they can give now is that it has to be something in the browser, since IE8 works.

I have tried another laptop on my account, one which worked well on another account for three years. It has the same problem, so the issue is with elements within Bigpond fucking up my account.

And with other elements either refusing to repair it or too incompetent to see that there is a problem. My past history with Bigpond argues that either is likely.

I have followed my son's advice and installed Opera. It works well, so far.

What Farce?

We just had a federal election, and no one won. The electorate lost, but that is nothing unusual.

None of the candidates attempted to blame the Public Service misadministration of government policies for any of the problems raised in very negative campaigns. So nothing has been done, except to show that ALL the politicians are running scared from Public Service displeasure.

I'd rather deregulation and be at the mercy of market forces. At least the financial sector knows that consumers must consume to ensure that the market maintains existence.

My experience shows that it takes only a few low-level types to cause incredible trouble.

I needed to replace my naked DSL service in June. No provider would treat with me, because I had moved to a new residence that did not have a landline installed. I had to pay for one to be installed, even though I would never use it, in order to purchase a service that didn't require a landline.

I finally went with Telstra on July 6th. I applied online from a friend's connection, and was told it might take as long as three weeks, but I would be contacted within a few days.

On the 12th, with no contact, I used a friend's telephone to apply for priority assistance for a connection. I was told I could not get it until I had a connection!!!!!

I e-mailed my local (Federal) member (Jason Clare) and the Federal Minister with my complaint about Telstra's web site offering a Catch-22 solution. I copied my State local member (Joe Tripodi) as a matter of course. On the 15th, my local member's office (Robyn) called me to say my local member was taking up the issue.

On July 21st, Telstra e-mailed me to say my application was stalled because I had not supplied enough ID (a damn lie), and I should apply again. I bet there were staff waiting for my name to appear, so they could show how efficient was Telstra!

Unfortunately, I did not get online to receive this reply until late July 25th. I sent an angry answer (I had earned the nickname "aggro" while in the Federal Public Service), and then applied online to a different marketing section for a relocation of a non-existent service to a new residence (yes, that was an option the web site allowed me).

On the 27th, after three calls from this section (starting with Dale), and in response to my interminable struggle with Telstra, I was given a new telephone number, a broadband account (with equipment for self-installation to be supplied in 6-8 days), and promised a speedy connection for my phone/broadband bundle. I had to delay the telephone connection until the 29th, because I was at my friend's, being taken care of.

On the 28th, though, some Telstra twit vindictively cancelled both my telephone and broadband accounts. The technician who arrived on the morning of the 29th hadn't been told of the cancellation, and connected me to the best of the poor lines available. He found that the number I had been assigned was now naturally unavailable, and gave me a new number.

On the 30th, I was contacted by a more senior Telstra official (Peter Alford(?), from an unhidden Sydney number), replying to a Ministerial request to investigate my complaint. He was surprised I had a telephone connection, and promised to get back to me. He didn't.

On the 6th August, my Federal member's office (Robyn again) called me to say that Telstra's Customer Service (a chap named Max) had replied that my complaint of July 12th had no substance, because I had a telephone connection and had cancelled my broadband connection. I explained how this was untrue.

On August 9th, Max called me to have me reapply for broadband. What he offered was not what I had agreed to on July 27th, and I said so. He agreed to continue with the original offer, including the original broadband account name. On August 10th, I received another call from Telstra (a Melbourne number, again not hidden), referring to the calls made by Peter and Max, offering me the July 27th deal (with a few changes to accommodate re-bundling the bundle). On August 11th, Peter from Telstra called again, confirming the order, but telling me the original broadband user name was not available (of course, it had been cancelled and was therefore reserved for three years LOL), and we agreed to a new user name.

The "modem" arrived early the next morning, and I installed it. I then began to rebuild my system, to use the software upgrades that had occurred in the previous two months.

On August 20th, Peter from Telstra called again, but rung off before I could answer him (I was napping). About 30 minutes later, Robyn from my Federal member's office rang, to see how things were progressing. I explained it seemed to be worked out, and I had sent an e-mail to that effect to the office (on the 18th). Robyn explained how Jason Clare worked tirelessly for his electorate. That afternoon I received a reply to my earlier e-mail, not referring to the telephone conversation.

Interestingly, the header on the August 20th reply indicated that my e-mail of August 18th had automatically been sent to the spam folder. I wonder if my e-mail of the 12th July had been also sent there, and only acted on because Joe Tripodi's office had accidentally sent my copy to it to Jason Clare?

That day I also received a letter from the Ombudsman's Office saying that my complaint had been forwarded by the Federal Minister, and after the election it would be acted on. Fat chance: public servants love to ignore politicians unless it is to their benefit.

This explains a lot of things. Except for e-mails sent to my previous Federal (Chris Bowen) and State (Ninos Koshaba) members, the only political action I ever received was when my local members had sent my e-mails on to other politicians. Maybe that's the way to ensure I don't get treated as a spammer?

The Ombudsman will have a lot to examine. From the time I installed my broadband equipment, and activated my account, I have had problems. Firstly, any page that had a connection to Facebook was slow to load, stalling at the Facebook link. If I attempted to log into Facebook, all I got was a minimal text page. Then my Yahoo home page would not load, and if I tried to load my Yahoo Mail page, again all I got was minimal text.

At least I got that diminished text. When I tried for Live Mail, I didn't even get that!

Someone has attached a filter to my Bigpond account, to stop me getting image downloads from overseas sites run by Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft (at least the Yahoo and Microsoft messenger sites still work, as well as the "ninemsn" home page, since the images are local). Looks like the Telstra twits are at it again. The problem only occurs only with my Bigpond account, and both of my laptops.

I wrote that being censored like this was a possibility of the proposed internet filter. My only pain is not getting updates from Microsoft for Windows 7. I have complained formally to Bigpond. I hope it doesn't get worse before it gets repaired.

Manufactured Ignorance Part 2

For 60 years, we were taught that between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis killed four milion Jews and two million others in the concentration camps. The Holocaust.

In 2009, in his mini-series of the war in Europe, in the penultimate episode, Tom Hanks reported that it was six million Jews and four million others killed in the Nazi concentration camps. This figure was quoted by the Israeli PM in a speach early in 2010, and became the new history (thanks to the Internet and the demise of accurate print reporting).

In the series "The Lost Films," shown here (Australia) in opposition to Hank's "The Pacific", the last episode said the the Nazis killed 14 million people between 1939 and 1945, more than half of them Jews. These figures were quoted while scenes from the concentration camps (more than 1500 claimed) were shown. How long before this figure becomes the new Holocaust figure?

The Nazis killed many civilians outside of the concentration camps: in the occupied countries when caught or during the invasions; in East Europe (courtesy of Nazi sympathisers using the occupation as a chance to settle old scores); the bombing of Britain; and in Russia. This figure could also include the number of soldiers killed on both sides.

But the authors did not bother to say just what they included in these figures. Ignorance of the facts, or an attempt to push an agenda?

Manufactured Ignorance Part 1

Recent advertisements in the press are now touting "manufactured diamonds" instead of "artificial" ones. Seems the old term has too many negative connotations. The sale of mined diaminds is controlled by a world diamond federation controlled by De Beers. Too many diamionds available means prices drop.

The idea of engraving a serial number was introduced to stop the flow of so-called "blood diamonds" and the sale of arms to such countries as Angola. Very commendable. Nothing was said, though, about the working conditions of the African labourers who mine the bulk of "legitimate" diamonds.

A mantra of the diamond trade is the search for the perfect flawless diamond. It is the imperfections in diamonds that make them characteristic, and flawless diamonds are considered most valuable.

Industrial diamonds have been manufactrured for many years, but have been too small for any use except high-grade abrasives. It is no conincidence that the manufacture of larger stones (1/2 carat and larger) occurred at the same time as De Beers demanded that legal diamonds be etched with a serial number. Any diamonds without this number would then be considered to be illegal blood diamonds, or artifical ones.

It is no surprise that manufactured diamonds are indistinct from mined diamonds, except that they are perfect (and lack the diamond merchants' serial number, of course).

How long before a small miner begins salting its leases with manufactured diamonds made to look like mined diamonds?

This notion came back to mind after the Australian miners started their campaign against the super profits resources tax. Surprisingly, the biggest complainer is Exstrata, based in Europe. The tax does not negatively affect a miner's profitability. In fact it increase the manouvering room a miner has in market negotiations. But what the tax does, and no one seems to mention this, is guarantee the entry of small miners into the resources business. Now, this added competition is definitely not in the interests of the established miners, but they can't say that the tax will actually increase competition and reduce prices of manufactured goods (and coal-based power) to consumers.

Australia is the first country to introduce a financial incentive of this nature for competitive resource exploitation. This has international ramifications, and it must be stopped here, hence Exstrata's involvement.

No way, Jose! Let the lies begin, and the public servants manipulate those lies to serve their own ignorant agendas.

***** *****

Newspeak

Doesn't time fly when you are having fun?

In November 2009, I argued with the Assistant Treasurer that if the government was going to fund an economic stimulus, then it should not be giving money to banks. Perhaps it should give pensioners a taste of the increased pension rates instead.

I was surprised when a few weeks later, the government announced the $1200 grant to all pensioners and carers.

It seems I was the only voice calling for an economic stimulus. I could find no other comment calling for one. But I did find calls for the governments of the world to bail out the financial institutions, if they were going to give any stimulus at all.

In Australia, Treasury was calling for increased money for the banks, while Finance was saying that the consumers should be helped first. Of course, the political opposition was also calling for any help to be given direct to the financial institutions.

A few months later, and everyone worldwide was praising the Australian government for its foresight and its success, and its stimulus was being repeated (except in the US, where the financial giants such as IAG were being helped, and the fat cats were getting fatter).

Last night I was watching a repeat of a comedy show from late 2009, which showed that a whole raft of people has supported the Australian government's financial stimulus package. Funny, none of these had supported the government's package a year earlier.

Gil the Armless

A few decades ago, US author Larry Niven wrote a series of stories concerning "Gil the Arm", a detective in a near-future society. This society had so well-perfected transplant techniques that there was a severe shortage of donor organs. The government responded by introducing the death penalty for a broad range of offences, so that the convicted could be harvested for organs. Such heinous crimes included exceeding the speed limit or running a red light.

This science fictional future has now become reality. The Australian government's Organ and Tissue Authority has introduced a system where Australia hospitals can receive up to $A11,400 for each patient they can turn into an organ donor (Sunday Telegraph, February 21, 2010).

All the hospitals have to do is convince patients' families to authorise organ donation consent for critical patients that the hospital claim should not be revived if they should technically die. The patients are then kept alive on life support until their organs can be harvested. Not revived and kept on life support in the hope they can recover (as many do), but kept alive as a source of organ donations for profit.

Doctors seem to have expressed criticism of the scheme, not because it removed the requirement to keep a patient alive at all costs, but because it encourages hospitals to pressure families to allow patients to become organ donors before they are dead. Already, hospitals have the right to deny commencing life support to critical patients (but not turning it off once commenced, since there is a risk that the next-of-kin will sue unless they give permission for cessation of life support).

All that a hospital need to do is convince the next-of-kin that the patient should be allowed to die. Currently, hospitals prefer to keep patients in an ICU because they are paid $10,000 per day for little extra expenditure. If there is no room in the ICU, this is a good way to make extra money (the hospital can be paid $A7,218 for transferring a patient from emergency to the ICU with the intention of harvesting organs, even if such harvesting never occurs; meaning no bed space is required).

This is off interest to me. I decided decades past that I would not consent to organ donation, out of fear that this system would be implemented. In January/February 2007, my fears were partly justified. While I was in a long and serious coma, the hospital told my next-of-kin that my critical condition might deteriorate into death. When I prolonged my agony by refusing to die (and in fact tried to escape from the hospital bed while in a coma), my next-of-kin was told that by keeping me on life support, he was only prolonging my agony in a hopeless case. What would have happened if the hospital could make extra money by declaring me irredeemable?

Ignorance, Well-meaning or Malicious

A few weeks ago, Australian Olympic representatives in Vancouver reported to the media that their "Boxing Kangaroo" flag display had been classed as illegal. They claimed that the AOC had approached them to say that the IOC had complained that the trademarked flag violated its branding regulations.

The IOC said that it was surprised about the claims, since it had not begun examining any branding breaches, and would not object to the flag if the trademark owners did not object. The AOC then announced it had not contacted the Olympic team, so why the false news reports.

The media became very quiet. It would be easy for anyone within the AOC to call Vancouver and quietly tell the Australian team chief that the flag was illegal and would be banned by the IOC. The caller could even tell the team chief to call the AOC and ask for his/her extension, and he/she would confirm the comment.

No names, nothing in writing. Just mischief caused. The caller could have been well-meaning, and trying to stop a problem before it began, or could have just been maliciously attempting to prove his/her power. I doubt it was the trademark owner trying to get some free publicity.

It seems that too many people in official positions are trying to author events without accepting any responsibility.

On a point raised yesterday: the media claimed that the Clean Air Commission (CEC) claimed that the current installation of domestic solar panels was a fire hazard. Today, the CEC said it had not said such a thing. The media outlets who made the original report did report this, but took the story no further. It seems that all you need to gain media attention is a newsworthy statement that offends no one who can fight back. Never mind the truth, just feel the publicity!