Australia and Iraq

seems to me:

Perth man Junaid Thorne investigated over alleged support for terrorist organisation ISIS

(1: copied this date in full below)


has some interesting issues

check for example Wikipedia on ISIL and on List of organisations outlawed in Australia for terrorism

and Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005

i really can't find the place that says that a person may not exercise free speech about things they believe - even to the point of writing or saying things in support of a foreign group involved in activities in their own countries

would not that be essentially the same as an Australian supporting in words the actions of America, Britain and Australia when they execute activities that many people find thoroughly objectionable on moral and ethical grounds?


correct me where i err or direct me to exact paragraphs in statute

if i'm right did not a minister lie?

p

1

Perth man Junaid Thorne investigated over alleged support for terrorist organisation ISIS

By Rebecca Trigger

Updated Sat 28 Jun 2014, 7:05pm AEST

PHOTO: Perth man and Islamic preacher Junaid Thorne is under investigation.

MAP: WA

The Federal Government has confirmed it is investigating a Perth man who apparently supports a militant group believed responsible for mass killings in Iraq.

Junaid Thorne, an Australian citizen, was deported from Saudi Arabia last year after protesting his brother's imprisonment.

His brother was jailed for terrorism offences in the Islamic state but was released earlier this year.

The ABC is not aware of any charges laid against Mr Thorne. He has been been contacted for comment.

Mr Thorne is involved with a group called Millatu Ibrahim Perth.

A Facebook page that states it is managed by Mr Thorne and his students has a series of posts that praises the taking Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The militant group have created chaos in Iraq in recent weeks as they attempt to overrun the government in Baghdad.

"Our brothers in the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham liberate the town of Al Mawssil, and take over the Prison of Tasfeeraat rescuing 600 people from there," he said.

"May Allah reward them for such a heroic and glorious act. Congratulations to our Ummah this victory and liberation."

Another post criticises a statement from the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) defending itself from comments it is not doing enough to stop young Australian men from joining armed conflict in Syria.

ANIC issued a statement saying senior members of the Muslim community were working to prevent Australians becoming involved in the conflict, following perceived criticism from NSW counter terrorism squad assistant commissioner Peter Dein.

The Facebook post brands it a "statement of embarrassment".

"The cries and calls for help from our suffering brothers and sisters seem to fall on the deaf ears of our so-called 'Imams' as they continue to abandon their religious duties, replacing it with betrayal and loyalty to their masters from the Kuffar [non-believers]," it says.

Mr Thorne also appears in videos of sermons he delivers to small groups on his interpretation of Islam.

Government looking into online posts

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop today confirmed matters relating to Mr Thorne's online posts were under investigation.

"Any promotion or support for terrorism is against the law in our country," she said.

"And [ISIS] is a proscribed terrorist organisation."

Explained: What is ISIS?

International correspondent Mark Corcoran takes a look at the feared insurgent group currently poised to march on Baghdad.

Promoting or engaging with terrorist organisations can be punishable by severe penalties, including up to 25 years imprisonment, she said.

Ms Bishop said the Government had earlier raised concerns about young Australians who were attracted to the conflict in Syria and Iraq.

"We have estimated there are about 150 Australians who have engaged directly in supporting terrorist organisations in Syria, in Iraq or also remaining here in Australia," she said.

"We are taking a range of measures to address what we see as a considerable security risk."

Mr Thorne, an Australian who spent many years living in Saudi Arabia, had his passport taken by Saudi authorities after being detained for protesting against the ongoing detention of his brother, Shayden, in 2011.

Mr Thorne has always maintained his brother's confessions to the crimes were extracted as a result of torture.

Mr Thorne went into hiding in Saudi Arabia after his passport was confiscated, but he eventually turned himself in to authorities and the deportation process began.

challenge

for such courses as CELTA held in Thailand

you have to redraft the course to allow you to teach Thais just the phonetics of all the troublesome phonemes - any grammar you teach is just as a vehicle for the phonetics*

you also have to design in some sessions of one on one (ideally on selected and student-targeted phonemes - note you can use the students who get it right early to help you teach - has a snowball effect)

for the extra keen:

The one on one sessions would ideally be in front of an already accepted video camera so that you can capture perfect examples from students so that they can see themselves with perfect delivery

that can take time but the right video app will make it easier - you choose - there are many now (just have to allow you to mark a clip with a score on the fly - eg a star

(one day an app will use video and sound to recognise phonemes and tell you what they think you intended

soon probably)

)

pop

*the reason for this is that Thais get a LOT of grammar and vocabulary instruction - so the course could focus on what your devout students really need and what will benefit all others enormously

Australian Broadcasting Corporation now stooge to Darwinian forces.

to me, with my now finely tuned suspicious mind, the article at:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-27/isis-committing-mass-executions-in-iraq-hrw-says/5556612

looks like one of those propaganda publications produced as a prelude to what is now the new modern war - new war.

I looked at every single picture published on the ISIL twitter feed and it was impossible for me to assert that it was witness to  murder.

I really looked but every scene had holes in it - it was not enough evidence to allow us to say that these massacres are truth.

Remember the news reports for Iraq in the first war - the murdered incubator babies turned out to be an inhumane hoax of every worst kind.

We need more evidence than this you scum-bags and the phrasing of your headline and the facts of your story are at terribly violent odds.

Dear Tony, you child of Satan.


p




below - copied in full from source, this date

Iraq crisis: 'Strong evidence' ISIS committing mass executions, war crimes, Human Rights Watch says

Updated 2 hours 19 minutes ago

PHOTO: Human Rights Watch says between 160 and 190 men were executed over four days. (AFP: Welayat Salahuddin)

RELATED STORY: ISIS insurgents publish photos of alleged mass execution in Iraq

MAP: Iraq

Satellite imagery strongly suggests the extremist Sunni group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has conducted mass executions in Iraq, lobby group Human Rights Watch says.

ISIS, radical Islamists who want to re-create a mediaeval-style caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, has stormed largely unopposed across much of northern Iraq, taking cities including Mosul and Tikrit, seizing border posts with Syria and advancing to within some 100 km of the capital Baghdad

In mid June, ISIS posted pictures on Twitter that appeared to show the massacre of 1,700 Iraqi soldiers after the fall of the city of Tikrit.

However there has been no independent verification.

Images show horrifying final moments

ISIS militants publish images appearing to show the massacre of Iraqi servicemen in Tikrit (WARNING: Graphic images).

New York-based Human Rights Watch said that between 160 and 190 men were killed in at least two locations in and around Tikrit - the hometown of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - between June 11 and 14.

It said that the death toll could be much higher, but the difficulty of locating bodies and getting to the area had prevented a full investigation.

"The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation," Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert said in a statement.

"They and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching."

It was not immediately possible to get comment from ISIS.

1,000 killed in fighting: UN

The United Nations said on Tuesday that at least 1,000 people, mainly civilians, had been killed and roughly the same number injured in fighting and other violence in Iraq in June as ISIS swept through the north.

Victims included a number of confirmed summary executions committed by ISIS as well as prisoners killed by retreating Iraqi forces.

HRW counted the bodies visible in the available ISIS photographs and estimated that ISIS killed between 90 and 110 men in one trench and between 35 and 40 men in the second.

Explained: What is ISIS?

International correspondent Mark Corcoran takes a look at the feared insurgent group currently poised to march on Baghdad.

A further photograph shows a large trench with between 35 and 40 prisoners shot but Human Rights Watch said it had not been able to pinpoint the site.

A UN human rights spokesman said on Tuesday that ISIS had broadcast dozens of videos showing cruel treatment, beheadings and shootings of captured soldiers, police officers and people apparently targeted because of their religion or ethnicity, including Shi'ites and minorities such as Christians.

Northern units of Iraq's million-strong army, trained and equipped by the US, largely evaporated after Sunni Islamist fighters led by the ISIS launched their assault.

In Tikrit on Friday, Iraqi army helicopters fired on a university campus in an effort to dislodge ISIL fighters, a day after launching an airborne assault on the city.

PHOTO: ISIS has stormed largely unopposed across much of northern Iraq, taking cities including Mosul and Tikrit.(Reuters: Wissm al-Okili)

Look at this and see the end of days

lots of guns on a drone to control riots at those South African mines that are such a problem

here's the cunt firm: http://www.desert-wolf.com

and here's where this info came from:

http://www.desert-wolf.com/dw/products/unmanned-aerial-systems/skunk-riot-control-copter.html

here's their assume-everyone-else-is-as-infantile text in full, low life cunts

The Skunk is equipped with 4 high-capacity paint ball barrels releasing at up to 20 paint balls per second each, with 80 Pepper balls per second stopping any crowd in its tracks.

The current hopper capacity of 4000 balls and with a High Pressure Carbon Fiber Air system it allows for real stopping power. Bright strobe lights, blinding Lasers and with on-board speakers enables communication and warnings to the crowd.

Equipped with a FLIR Thermal camera, full HD video colour camera, on board recording, full telemetry data link and long range control link, this unit is unique.

The powerful Octa copters can also be operated in formation by a single operator. The Desert Wolf Pangolin ground control station is used for system management. What makes the Pangolin unique is the operator and his team are also under full video and audio surveillance. Every move, every decision, every command is recorded.

The lifting capability of the Skunk is 45 Kg due to the eight powerful electric motors with 16 Inch props.

The operator has full control over each marker. He can select the RED paint marker and mark the protester who carries dangerous weapons, he can select the BLUE marker to mark the vandalising protestors and if needed the Pepper balls to stop the advancing crowd before they get into a "Life threatening situation" 

He can also set the releasing frequency of each marker from as low as 1 ball per second up to 20 balls per second. If all markers releases at maximum rate, the you disperse 80 balls per second. This high frequency will only be used in an extreme "Life threatening situation".

The system also has a number of safety systems and features. Desert Wolf will continue to improve the design and ensure a safe and reliable product. Our aim is to assist in preventing another Marikana, we were there and it should never happen again.

False righteousness or simply conditioning?

i had recently read a book about research in honesty when i saw it again in a blog post by a post doctoral researcher.

Something didn't feel right.

These all seem to confuse honesty with custom (no matter the claim that it was assessing how people deal with issues of honesty).

That's not honesty.

Honesty is seeing the thing for what it is.

Not pointing at behavior and trying use it to define an imaginary cultural line with some absolute truth.

I wonder what sort of automaton or apparatchik mind would happily put their name to such a document.

p

a dragon tale

Riding about Nakhon on a 200cc Chinese bike is really lovely.

Here's a taste of Ai Khiao. You'll have to see the falls for yourself.

on flicker here.

p

Hard Drive Magnets: mount a Cree 30W LED spotlight on a dirt bike

I bought one of these Cree 30W LEDs

note i've attached a Hard Drive Magnet to a rubber doorstop and bolted the Cree to that

fits in my hand (see the magnet?)

I mounted a frame on my bike - made from a small folding stool frame, a piece of wood and some convenient iron based attachments - note the pipe clamps near the sunglasses. Note also the yellow stretchy holds the frame down against the faring - YMMV

after i place the spot on the frame i just clip on my power cord

I have so much wire because it doubles as a workshop or emergency light if i have a breakdown at night

then i just plug it in to the 12V socket i previously installed

those rare earth magnets - they are versatile and, for now, cheap because there are a lot of hard disks out there that are dead or dying

p

Thai coup 2014

not much out there in the MSM has any value on this issue or anything much else about Thailand

but I've found a couple of things interesting

this one:



and the Economist:

[...] In late November the king signed a decree mandating that all decisions by the powerful defence council were subject to veto by the crown prince. The council includes the service heads and the permanent defence secretary. The heir apparent is now, in effect, their boss [...]

Al Jaseera:

If Thailand’s royalist elite can learn to live with democracy, the country may be able to move forward. The alternative is that Thailand’s crisis is settled with violence and bloodshed rather than compromise and negotiation

The Diplomat:

The fear of losing hard-won privileges to the rural masses is a very real one for the royalist elites, sections of the military and many middle-class Bangkokians


i'm interested in this organisation: The Thai Crown Property Bureau

this was a quick (few hours) assessment of this material:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Property_Bureau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirayu_Isarangkul
http://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmontlake/2012/01/20/in-thailand-a-rare-peek-at-his-majestys-balance-sheet/
http://politicalprisonersofthailand.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/thai-monarchy-a-factor-in-dispute/
http://robinlea.com/pub/JCA-Thailand-the_good_coup/08-The_crown_property_bureau_and_the_crisis_of_1997.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maha_Vajiralongkorn

please correct any errors and notify me of corrections

pop

Wanted: Thai Architect

Here's a house in Nakhon Si Thammarat that was started but never finished - perhaps because the owners were wiped out by the Asian crisis of 97/98.

note the 4 large car-ports on the road.

note how thin the floors are though the framing seems ok

if i could figure out how to complete the house, and how much that might cost, I might be interested in trying to do it.

Anybody out there?

p

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs

I heard a conversation which went something like this...

Grandson: "Grandfather, first you have to set the page properties"

Grandfather: "No, first the font. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs"

Grandson: "Don't teach your grandson to implement an app that sucks 100 million eggs at once"


p

ps

great recipe for noodles

put on the kettle

get a biggish noodle bowl

crack a country fresh egg or two in the bottom - living in Thailand makes this easier and cheap

open one of those not to cheapo instant noodle packets

empty the flavour sachets into the bowl and deposit the noodles on top

sprinkle in a handful of frozen veggies and slice in a couple of nice hot Thai chilies

add just enough water (any temp) to cover the eggs and zap it in the microwave til the eggs are cooked - like 2 minutes top

pour in boiling water and cover for a few minutes

tease out the noodles, mixing in everything

cover or eat when ready

yum

p

I just love Nakon Si Thammarat

I just love Nakon Si Thammarat

see how young these kids are - primary school kids riding a motorcycle

May, Not far from Pak Nakhon

p

Salon on Rice

Salon, Elias Isquith, on Condoleezza Rice

[...]what I’m arguing is that our mainstream political debate is so saturated with unstated assumptions about our inherent goodness, our natural righteousness, and our basic decency that serious war crimes, when committed by American politicians, are sanitized as matters of differing opinion. (And in Rice’s case, it’s not as if we can pretend that she was somehow only tangentially related to the administration’s worst crimes — here she is, back in 2009, defending torture with the Nixonian logic that nothing a president commands in service of national security can possibly be illegal.)

As if to make my point for me, the New York Times recently ran an Op-Ed from Timothy Eganin which Rice’s failures and mistakes — which, remember, cost perhaps as many as 500,000 human lives while wrecking millions more — are dismissed with a chilling breeziness. “Near as I can tell, the forces of intolerance objected to her role in the Iraq war,” Egan writes (apparently unaware that the magic of Google allows him to find the protesters explaining their objections in their own words). “The foreign policy that Rice guided for George W. Bush,” Egan continues, “was clearly a debacle …

I lived it, many did

she was an evil creature from an evil group of animals, thoroughly evil - shame on the world for not demanding she and her Bush administration conspirators be tried in criminal courts and then locked away

p

cat saves boy from dog attack

amazing and wonderful

who cares what the cat's motive was - the effect is cool



story via ABC

p

Climate change proved wrong, false, etc

Climate change? Are you nuts?




p

awesome model of the universe

check it out




(i got it from Ethan Siegel here, but he got it from here)

p

why google sucks

google ranking is now so hideously bad that when you search for a location in google maps you are flooded with commercial results to the extent that the actual true information does not even appear


commercialisation has ruined google search

it's a pity because it was overly early commercialisation of search that screwed most of google's competitors

now we are left with little choice - bing is as bad because it tries to emulate google

the rest are trivially weak in results

ho hum

p

ps, someone else thinks google sucks - let's face it, google is now just another vampire squid sucking the life out of us

the evil of "House of Cards"

been watching a couple of series of House of Cards

what really irks me is that it leads the viewer to believe that evil in the US system is due to a small number of sociopaths

fact is - the whole lot of them are evil - in every way, as evil as you could possibly experience in your most frightening nightmare

evil

self serving

deluded

but utterly evil

scum

slime

antithesis of anything and everything good

p

silent but deadly...

i just love motorcycles

i sold my pig - VT750 Honda in Sydney and replaced it here in Thailand with a 200cc dirt bike which i totally love - it's no pig, it's light and agile and it's fun to ride

but every once in a while i see a bike that i'd just love to have - earlier today it was a KTM 690 Enduro but then i saw this:

read about it here

p

And yet too many people shrug or sleep when they should seethe

copied in full from M

If you grow up in the U.S., you hear from every direction — from the press, in school, from your neighbors and friends— that the U.S. is a model of democracy. It’s the world’s No. 1 democracy, furthering freedom around the world. It’s a nation where politics come down to one person, one vote, where there’s one rule of law for black and white, for rich and poor alike. Democracy and government held in check by public opinion is what sets the U.S. apart. Right?

Sadly, this is more illusion than it is truth. And recent evidence suggests that we’re moving further away from true democracy, not closer. And quickly. Listen, for example, to political scientist Larry Bartels describe research examining who actually has a voice in democracy in the U.S. Do the views of the rich and poor get heard more or less equally? Or, do the views of the rich instead find their way into actual policies much more easily? The evidence points very much to the latter:

Everyone thinks they know that money is important in American politics. But how important? The Supreme Court’s Gilded Age reasoning inMcCutcheon v. FEC has inspired a flurry of commentary regarding the potential corrosive influence of campaign contributions; but that commentary largely ignores the broader question of how economic power shapes American politics and policy. For decades, most political scientists have sidestepped that question, because it has not seemed amenable to rigorous (meaning quantitative) scientific investigation. Qualitative studies of the political role of economic elites have mostly been relegated to the margins of the field. But now, political scientists are belatedly turning more systematic attention to the political impact of wealth, and their findings should reshape how we think about American democracy.

A forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics by (my former colleague) Martin Gilens and (my sometime collaborator) Benjamin Page marks a notable step in that process. Drawing on the same extensive evidence employed by Gilens in his landmark book “Affluence and Influence,” Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process? This must be an overstatement of Gilens’s and Page’s findings, no?

Alas, no. In their primary statistical analysis, the collective preferences of ordinary citizens had only a negligible estimated effect on policy outcomes, while the collective preferences of “economic elites” (roughly proxied by citizens at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) were 15 times as important. “Mass-based interest groups” mattered, too, but only about half as much as business interest groups — and the preferences of those public interest groups were only weakly correlated (.12) with the preferences of the public as measured in opinion surveys.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise, if one just looks at the amount of money and efforts spent on lobbying public officials by corporations and wealthy individuals. These are business investments pure and simple. Money talks. But the political science profession has, Bartel’s notes, been very loathe to absorb this fairly obvious, if depressing conclusion: effectively, the U.S. is a democracy in name only.
The training of most graduate students in political science and public policy, Bartel’s points out, has historically been couched mostly in a theory of American politics which can be referred to as “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy,” emphasizing the broad importance of public opinion, elections and representation as the drivers of policy. Gilens’s and Page’s work makes this look like a naive perspective based mostly on wishful thinking. Our democracy would more correctly be called “Economic Elite Domination.”

Of course, this dynamic is strongly furthered by the vast increase in economic inequality seen over the past few decades. I strongly recommend Paul Krugman’s brilliant new review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, which documents these changes in great detail and sets them in a historical context. We’re so accustomed to the idea of equality and democracy, and a wide range of sources feed us these ideas in such a steady rhythm, that most of us fail to see just how radically our society has changed. The most important conclusion of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is, as Krugman notes, that rising economic inequality is leading us back to “patrimonial capitalism,” where the talent and intelligence of individuals counts for little compared to the power of family dynasties. This is happening before our eyes.

Yet where is the protest? Where is the public organization among the increasingly powerless to take back democracy? Sadly, this too is lacking, and in part because of the ability of the wealthy to control the public discussion and to frame debate in their own preferred terms. Writing in the New York Times, columnist Charles Blow has it just about right:

The greatest trick up the sleeves of the moneyed and powerful is their diabolical ability to render themselves invisible and undetectable, to recede and operate behind a front, one relatable and common. Our politics are overrun with characters acting at the behest of shadows.

These are the politicians to whom we have become accustomed — too much polish, and too much beam — which is precisely the reason they should warrant our suspicion and not our trust, the way one cannot trust a cook with pots too pretty and not burned black on the bottoms.

And yet too many people shrug or sleep when they should seethe.

Why I moved to Thailand

I haven't.


I'm using it as a base for a long overdue holiday where i can travel to and try to understand the region of the world i am from.

Pumpkins

Noot's husband had left her as soon as he had drunk all the money they had borrowed against the small piece of land her mother had left her. It's a common story in Thailand where no system exists to care for penniless single mothers or to ensure fathers contribute to the care of their children. He had left her with a small child and nothing to live on save what she could grow on her land. What little she could sell was never enough to cover her mortgage payments and it would not be long before she lost her land to the bank. When that happened she would probably have to move to Bangkok to find work and the generations of family history that ended with her and her son would be swallowed up in the dirt and noise and heat of the city.

She's a fighter though. She often tells herself that she's not trash like the girls from the north and north east who try to escape their poverty in the sex industry of the tourist towns like Phuket. She does think sometimes of how much better her life might be if she had a "farang" man like the daughter of the local shop owner who married a man from Australia and now has a new house and a new car and her two children at a good school. But that lady can speak English and use a computer. It makes so much difference.

The local shop owner has let her run up a tab for basics like rice but without some income that can only last as long as the shop owner's family can tolerate their own financial woes. The local community is suffering from a terrible drought that is destroying the rice crops and what rice does survive to harvest will fetch far less income than years past because of the Thai governments rice subsidy policy has collapsed leaving everyone in debt and the country sitting on top of a mountain of over-priced rice that is likely to end up rotting away leaving the country even more in debt.

Recently she had nothing to feed her and her boy but a little rice at a time when he was suffering from dengue fever. One night a few weeks ago, in desperation, she crept behind one of the small farms in the village to steal a few pumpkins. In years past pumpkins had always been expensive because they were not a traditional mainstay of the Thai diet but this year has seen many impoverished rice farmers turn to growing them. It's become a typical boom-bust situation. Where not so long ago a farmer could sell them for 20 baht a kilo (about 65 cents American) they are now lucky to get 5 baht and usually it's 3 baht (about 9c US). There are farms in the district that have many tons of them sitting by the roadside unsold - waiting in hope that a local supermarket will come buy them all.

The pumpkins she stole that night were probably worth about 2 US dollars. They lasted her a week and her son's health improved.

She decided that she might try stealing more so that she might sell some on the rode-side outsider her house. Nobody would know that she had not grown them because many local people grew them.

One night she and her son who is ten years old took her old motor cycle and side car out again. The side car bikes in Thailand are basically a step-through scooter with a welded frame and 3rd wheel attached. They are very commonly used here because they are cheap and they are easy to maintain though they are slow and dangerous. Her bike was so under-maintained that the tires where worn to the tubes and held together with masking tape and old cloths. They pushed the trike the last few meters then they quietly gathered pumpkins until the side-car was as full as the poor old motor of the bike could manage. Then they struggled and struggled to push it away far enough to start it without being heard.

She sold the pumpkins for 5 baht per kilo on her road-side stand. 5 baht is wholesale price so she sold them easily and she ended up with 1,500 baht. Riches. It was enough to pay off some of her debt to the local shop owner and to pay a little off her mortgage. She had not earned such an amount of money ever.

The poor farmer she had stolen the pumpkins from had not missed that he had been robbed and though they were worth barely more than the money he had spent to grow them he was very angry. Every baht is important when you are poor and stealing from the poor is a terrible crime. His wife growled at him it was because he did not have a dog but he did not like to have dogs because he had been badly bitten as a child and did not want his own children to be bitten. His only option then was to sleep out by the pumkins and try to catch the thief.

A few nights later when there was only a sliver of a moon Noot and her son set out to repeat their crime. Everything went fine until they were carrying their first load of pumpkins to the bike. Suddenly a large shadow emerged from the darkness screaming and shouting and the next thing Noot knew she was lying on the ground after having been hit by a heavy length of wood. She heard her son cry out as he was also struck and fell. Then she was dragged by one arm to where her son lay and a torch was turned on.

The pumpkin grower looked down at the skinny woman and frail boy that lay at his feet in the pool of light from his torch. His anger evaporated. He knew them of course - everybody knew everybody in the village. He wanted to hate them for what they had done but he could not. How could he? They were so much poorer even than he. And now they lay crying pitifully in the dirt. Her with a nasty bump on her head and the boy in pain from the whack on his back.

He knelt down and helped them to their feet apologizing for his stupidity and cruelty.

The village talked about it for a day or two before moving on to talk about other events.

It's tough here.

pop

Terrified passengers of MH370 have hours to ponder their inevitable death

Having read this theory about a simple electrical fire and considering where we now suspect the aircraft to have crashed one can not avoid thinking that for many hours the passengers knew that they were all going to die.

The flight crew were unconscious or dead behind a locked door that the passengers had no way to breach.

They would have become increasingly desperate as it became absolutely obvious that they were not going to escape their plight.

There was nothing in the passenger section they could use to open the door.

The post 9/11 security is now so good that even if there had have been a fully qualified pilot among the passengers he or she would not have been able to do anything.

Think about it.

236 people knowing they were going to eventually crash into the sea and die.

236 people exhausting their cell phone batteries as they desperately tried over and over again to call for help.

236 people who suffered cruel and prolonged torture of the worst imaginable kind.

It's a terrible story and the only story more horrible is the certainty that someone will make a movie of it.

A movie to profit from the horror of the last hours of the passengers of MH370.

pop

I see "experts" including Prof Middleton have read my tweet/blog or thought of it also, here too.

Why bitcoin is doomed and dangerous

As it is now, though beautiful beyond belief, bitcoin is doomed

the reason is nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with human nature

humans, contrary to what some might claim, are basically dishonest

"opportunity makes a thief"

bitcoin is too much like cash to trust to anyone other than maybe your matress

Mark Karpeles stole everybody's bitcoins quite simply because he could, he knew he could, he knew he could and get away with it and he knew he could even start a new MtGox and do it all over again.

bitcoin's flaw is that both price discovery and currency exchange must go through what is essentially a completely unregulated bank - a private bank owned by anyone who can operate that bank until it has so much digital gold that the temptation to steal it and hide the theft behind the mathematical complexity of the currency becomes too much to resist

unless bitcoin price discovery and exchange with other currencies is totally decentralised there is no future for bitcoin other than as a tool for the rich and a means for unscrupulous people to fleece others

the blockchain tracks the movement of bitcoin but it does not incorporate what the bitcoin was consideration for - ie what it was exchanged for - without this price discovery does not exist and the only way to know what bitcoins are worth is by having exchanges and those will always be places that crooks can steal your money from

bitcoin - beautiful but doomed

doomed by the fact that it is far too easy to steal

pop

Mt Gox withholding transfers to recoup its losses

Mt Gox Bitcoin exchange is withholding bitcoin transfers so that it can force down the bitcoin price on it's own exchange.

It is doing this so that it can buy bitcoin at a below market price and escape the losses it would otherwise incur as a consequence of its shoddy accounting system.

There's no doubt about it - this is a form of theft.

Mt Gox already has solved the "tech" problem it had but because its owners were off driving around in their Maseratis instead of managing their business while they were fleeced of most of their funds they are now trying to save themselves from serious litigation by buying cheap to pay back the BTC they allowed to be stolen.

They say they have their clients BTC in safe wallets but it's a lie.


pop

Eye-Fi card and wrong geo-tagging

This post is now obsolete because support for these cards has been dropped - but who cares!

See my superior solution for doing the same thing here.

Eye-Fi: a bunch of assholes.

___________________________________________________________________

Just because someone else might suffer a similar problem

So, I discovered the wonders of the Eye-Fi card

My beautiful Pentax K5 DSLR

 suddenly becomes so much more powerful.

With my trusty Galaxy SIII

and a substantial home network of linux and windows boxes all my pictures are automagically stored on my home storage and are uploaded to flickr and then with ifttt copied to tumblr, facebook etc

Fantastic.

I never have to plug in my camera and muck around with files and uploads ever again.

The only problem was geo-tagging.

You see, if I used the camera out and about I'd get perfect geo-tagging (via the S3) but if I used it at home the pictures would all be geo-tagged as being in Sydney near where we used to live there.

I just could not figure it out.

In the end I discovered that it was one of my wireless routers - somehow it had been added to the skyhook network when we used it in Sydney. When the eye-fi card starts to send new photographs it looks for and locates all nearby wireless MAC addresses and bundles that list up with the data it uploads to the eye-fi servers. There the MAC addresses are submitted to the skyhook system and the first successful response triggers eye-fi to geo-tag the photo with that data.

So i've now submitted the mac addresses of all local wireless routers to the skyhook system (here) and all is well again.

have fun

pop

i will never ever want to have a city wife

I've been going through my late mother's documents - organising them, scanning them to make them available for family.

She collected all of my poems - even ones that i had never kept a copy of.

Here's one from August 2002 - i guess i did not like it enough to keep it

the scanning is way too difficult, even for me (ie i have to reread too many lines)

I went to an air show

We live right next door to an army base.

On occasion that means we have to put up with explosions and gunfire and loud aircraft noises.

For a few days we watched as parachutes opened up above us and a Saab Griffin rocketed back and forth.

It was all in account of "army day" which is a Thai event similar to 'children's day" which is like mother's day. Kindof.

So i jumped on my trusty steed:

and sauntered off to the base to see what would happen.

I took my beloved Pentax K5 and a decent set of lenses and snapped a few pics like this one of a kid who caught a lizard:

Eventually i was snapping shots of skydivers:

When this guy (on the left):

called me over and from then on i was immersed in all things Military Thai (God bless them every one):

such a wonderful experience and such lovely people

you can see all of the pics i took (and my friend who took pics for me) here

pop

The police are your friends? I think not.

Sad story of brutality

My brother suffered schizophrenia. He was terrified of policemen. I get it Allan. So sorry to have doubted you.



story here and here.

pop

ps NSA? fuck you, slimy, dishonest, abusive, lowlife, servants of the American Dream

Singer sewing machine: built for a lifetime

In 1954 my father bought my mother a new Singer sewing machine.

Mum used it to make all our clothes:

Of course that changed once Australian clothes manufacturing got off the ground:

She still used it time to time but it was not used much until I was in my teens and decided making my own clothes was the only way i was going to be able to dress like a real hippie.

That's when mum taught me how to use the Singer though i never thought to ask her how to maintain it properly.

Years later, when i had children of my own, I begged her to let me have it so i could make clothes for them and do repairs and alterations.

I used it for years though i often cursed that it did not have a "free arm" so i could take up jeans and such.

The Singer was lugged from house to house as over the years we moved to where the work was. That meant that it moved from Melbourne to Sydney and then to New Zealand where it moved from town to town until returning to Sydney, back to NZ, back to Sydney and eventually to Thailand where it's been sitting at the farm of my wife's family for a while.

My mum died in November 2013.

The day she died my mother in law reported that the Singer had stopped working.

I've spent hours trying to fix it but it just refuses to operate properly:

It's survived the lifetime of my mother but seems as though it misses her as much as i do.

Update! October 2015.

Now we have a "new" one - a Singer special zig-zag 498:

what's really nice is that we have the User Manual.