Before even getting to this, I’m forced to speak of accents. The presenter below is from the Texas panhandle, a native, and yet the accent is nothing like the Texan drawl … it’s sharp, northern, maybe midwest, not sure what that sounds like and it is not a speaking circuit or presentation accent. It is sharp, high, difficult to handle in high doses, plus the slurring of words is distinct.

Another like that was that girl Julia James who was on about elegance, which she described as byu-dee. There are some excellent northern accents … I heard a northern US academic once and the cadence was perfect. Same over here … some accents are easy on the ears, some are wearing.

Here’s one girl from here, living in Canada … well you decide on her manner and accent. Not RP, with “gonna”, but southern, with a bit of estuary glottal stop … I find her pleasant, apart from the horrible nose stud.

The thing with Grady below is he does his HW well, even airline people like what he did … he’s an excellent presenter … thus I’m forced, according to the Unherdables charter, to present him.

A bit more on accents … I myself have a mix of southern, a touch of RP, a definite twang but also the ability to counter insomnia … let’s call it that lullaby delivery … and there’ve been many unfortunates sent into deep slumber when I prattle on. Sometimes deliberately.

(0813)(0835)

 

The Peace Initiatives

First Nixon’s strategy, via Toodles:

Now this Trump initiative:

My comments:

• Nixon may well have had that as his ideal but he had a monster beside him in Kissinger.
• That X posting had CBS, PBS and the WEF as sources. To slightly tweak (we, not I) the words of Nero Wolfe … “Once we knew that (they’d) lied on that point, then anything else they said (had to be taken as) quite unreliable.”

It’s as Andy had presented in good faith … Sky News UK. The UK bit is vital with Sky as it is Uniparty “safe conservatism” of the Farage type in this country, whereas Sky Oz positions itself more like GB News here … they do allow “far right” noises now and then, but still with the sharp edges MSMed off.

Sky News UK positions itself as the working man’s conservative voice, in a Boris Johnson way before he went full WEF. With that Chagos report, they ran with the Chagos people being “removed”, a fair angle, but playing down what Starmer is doing … the very thing the country’s pundits are on about.

And in saying the US should not be there … then who would be there? Britain? Nope, it’s the Chinese, innit, as in London.

This is the challenging task for pundits … we ourselves must note all these snippets and side-anomalies, but there’s no obligation on readers to pick up on the messy fragments as a whole.

Give you an example. There was a local cabby, good chap, on about the bad players as we are, was down on Momentum taking over all preselections in our area, whilst his mate was all for Corbyn whom he thought was “at least for the working man”.

Wot, in Islington?

……

Side note:

I can’t really run “short” youtubes here at HQ because as you see, they take massive column space with no chance of reducing size under normal circumstances. Same with “longs” but at least longs are in proportion for shape. I ran the Nixon one now just to illustrate how one youtube short can dominate an entire column due to youtube configuration.

Similar situation in the evening. Running a youtube slap bang in the middle of all the screenshots looks awful, it’s jarring, it dominates It’s not the fault of the sender, bless his or her heart … it’s youtube itself. If I do it, e.g. Agadoo, it had to be as a separate post where full width is appropriate as a “feature”, e.g. with our baroque offerings. There’s one coming up on runway engineering … it needs to be full width.

An example where it really should not be full width is an opinion piece where the presenter himself is dominating the entire window. By way of contrast, look at the 1267:7 … loud, garish thumbnail but to the presenter’s credit, in the actual presentation, he reduces himself to the right lower side.

I tend to put those loud youtubes at NOWP in comments, which constricts the size somewhat, then signpost from here. Again, it’s not to downgrade our boys but to stop youtube’s maximum sensation game.

Techies reading this will say James, that’s bollox … youtube just use a tweaked iframe. Yes they do and yes, I can write my own lil ole iframe from templates kept on stick here … yes I can do that but look at all that extra time required doing it, time I should be spending, as pundit, on the topic we’re on at that time. Game’s not worth the candle … I have to use my time to cover all contingencies.

(0726) Overslept, which these days is a blessed relief … morning all. (0746)

 

5. Do not let these bstds in

4. The Beckhams

3. Steve at 1269

• The Logic Behind Trump’s Push for US Control of Greenland
• DOJ Issues Subpoenas to Walz, Frey and Other Far-Left Minnesota Officials Amid Federal Investigation Into Their Role Impeding ICE Operations – Frey Responds
• Norway Notifies Citizens Their Homes and Vehicles May Be Seized in Case of War Against Russia
• Trump Humiliates Starmer Macron; Again Demands Greenland; Russia Destroys Kiev AD Ahead Of Offensive
• Hearing for High Court case to compel New Zealand government to release the Pfizer Covid vaccine contract schedule for Jun
• Holy Land patriarchs denounce ‘Christian Zionism’ as a ‘damaging ideology’  (JH: I’m going to read this one first)
• Much more.

2. As one usually does

1. DAD at 1269

a) France: A Budget at Last? After months of fierce debate, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has decided to go back on his promise and push through the 2026 budget using Article 49.3, which allows him to override opposition from MPs.

b) UK. A High Court ruling has cleared the way for Reform to challenge the cancellation of local elections in May. Mr Justice Chamberlain presiding today…

c) Is this the end for Geert Wilders? Is the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, heading for the abyss or merely suffering a temporary dip?

d) The Bulgarian President resigns: he is expected to form New Party. Sofia may align more closely with Orbán, Fico, and Babiš if former president Rumen Radev wins the spring parliamentary elections.

e) French automobile maker Renault is reportedly starting production of long-range drones for military use at two of its plants in France.

(1515) Afternoon all and good morning just in case. Good evening too!

 

15. Steve corner

Iran:

Did Iran use toxic chemicals against the protesters? https://albawaba.com/news/did-iran-use-toxic-chemicals-against-1620507 Newsweek reported that the Iranian regime may have used toxic chemicals to suppress the protests that have swept the country in recent weeks, according to a former British official. […] Ramil noted that this information has not been independently verified, but stressed that if proven true, it would represent an “extraordinary escalation” in Tehran’s tactics against its citizens, warning of serious legal and political repercussions, especially since Iran is a signatory to the #ChemicalWeaponsConvention.

War Room at 1269:

• Noor Bin Ladin On Larry Fink And The World Economic Forum’s Davos Annual Meeting

• Raymond Ibrahim On The Dangers Of Islam In The West: It’s Time For People To Actually Be Cognizant Now Than Later Or You’re Gonna End Up Like Europe And That’s Not a Good Place To Be

• Joann Fleming On The Islamic Invasion Of Texas: As I’m Interviewing Candidates For The March Republican Primary Ballot They Tell Me As They’re Going Door To Door That This Has Become The Number 1

• Raymond Ibrahim: It’s Always Better To Nip It In The Bud Early Before It’s A Problem . Places Like The UK, Germany, And France Have Like 10-15% Muslim Populations. So Even If They End Immigration Right Now This Is Something They Have To Live With

14. Chagossians arise

13. When one believes, one does it alone

12. Alberta’s not small and weak … honest

11. Don the armour

 

… with almost no redeeming features except the pineapple girl:

 

“A precursor to the Thin Man series, starring William Powell as a detective (but without the very supplementary Myrna Loy). And this is directed by none other than Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca” and “Mildred Pierce”), and you can often tell, scenes characteristically complex with lots of people and foreground/background. As a whole the movie races along, to the point that the huge cast (all introduced with visual vignettes at the start) is confusing. But hang in there. because a third of the way through Powell kicks in full time.

There are few actors like William Powell in the history of American film. He is peculiar in charming ways, and makes no bones about it. He lacks any sense of what we might think of as cool or hardness–there’s no Bogart in him, no Cary Grant of course, nothing but what a character actor might have. And he made it a virtue, visible even here. The rest of the cast is good or very good, with a few other recognizable faces, and it gels increasingly as you go until a series of dramatic whodunnit style conclusions wraps it all up.

Powell’s detective, Philo Vance, was a snobby socialite, and the plots have a quality of private detective vs. police (which gets used in a lot of these kinds of series, of course). There are four movies with Powell playing the part (and many others with other actors in the role. This is the fourth, and best of them, the first going back to the dawn of sound, 1929. It’s not as slick or warm (or sophisticated) as “The Thin Man” series, which is a high water mark of the effete detective, but it’s terrific in its own way, and really well constructed. I’d not miss it.”

(0945)(0955)

 

10. Moosh corner

9. In one

8. Unaffordable medical attention

7. Yes

6. Steve put this on the 19th, about Xs from the 18th and 17th

Make of that what you will.

 

(0911) So I can get some brekky, come back and do Tue [6 to 10], plus the OoL post. Overseas incoming came earlier, took me out of things awhile.

Remember the driving drone type of genre I love … here’s a band who sometimes did it to perfection … I prefer reactors who have some soul in their bodies:

(0426)

 

5. The black robe regiment

… and the role of Christians in donning the armour and fighting to preserve Christendom:

4. Steve at 1268

• DOJ to Charge Don Lemon Under the ‘KKK Act’ for Inciting Church Raid
• Psychologist Explains the Left’s ICE Derangement Syndrome
• Ayatollah Announces Death Toll, Blames Deaths on President Trump for ‘Encouraging Unrest’
• Denmark Will Not Attend World Economic Forum in Davos, as ‘Hurricane Trump’ Expected To Dominate Event With Largest US Delegation Ever
• Native Greenlanders Reveal Horrors Under Danish Rule Including Years of Forced Sterilization and Removal of Children
• Nobel linked to Greenland. Starmer & Merz tap out. Medvedev mocks EU. Putin invited to Peace Board
• From Blackouts To Breakthroughs: Russia Intensifies Offensive As Kyiv’s Grid Collapses (JH: Get it done, take Kiev, impose peace, stop the killing)
• Experts reveal how to transform your daily walk into a powerful fat-burning workout (JH: Plus strengthen muscles in arms, calves, neck, core … probably needs a post)
• The EU has made a huge U-turn on Russia – have you noticed?
• Much more.

3. If the law supposes that, then the law is an ass

… and I’m a banana:

2. DAD at 1268

a) Businesses, which will partially bear the cost of the concessions granted by Sébastien Lecornu to the Socialist Party (PS) to avoid the budget’s censure, say they are exasperated by the government’s U-turns concerning them and worried about the country’s economic future. (JH: Longer post later)

b) Greenlanders speak out against Danish rule after decades of forced sterilization, poor living conditions: ‘They stole our future’.

c) Farmers vs Factories: the Trade Deal tearing Europe’s biggest party apart. Spain and Germany are pulling in opposite directions, exposing how fragile the EPP’s claim to represent both workers and exporters has become.

d) The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released last December, was chock-full of terms and phrases which made waves across the world. Europe, and European media, were particularly incensed with the section dedicated to America’s relationship with the continent….

e) This driver refused to stop for a traffic stop last week in Montmagny (Paris) and then tried to run and evade the pursuing police. He was apprehended in the vegetation on Butte Pinçon.

(0501) You’ll have noticed, sharp-eyed reader, that DAD opened at 0426, there was a pause and this opened at 0501. What’s time anyway in the context of this opening post? Cup of coffee and teacake at the ready.

 

Past, present and future

1. Awakening this morning, it crossed my mind from the flood of X posts concerning the Don Lemon attack on the Minnesota Church yesterday that people are at sixes and sevens … widespread confusion, false prophets everywhere but also good people, ignorant of so much, and yet self-assured that they’re unerringly correct on all aspects of past, present and future, esp. for this construction called the West.

2. That last lot include us. In taking a random sermon or lecture by Pastor Arnold Murray, now deceased, just the first ten minutes, say … now extrapolate that to include his entire adult life studying the entire bible, both parts, not just the NT … a man who can instantly refer to Ephesians, cut back to Ezekiel to the exact verses in each case, throw in Isaiah, jump to Revelation, back to Daniel … that is an amazingly well read man … of the bible.

3. Gaze over at a friend of mine if I might be so bold … unread in those things beyond what most of us know … maybe the cherrypicked 2% of the entire combined scriptures but learn’ed in Spinoza, the classical philosophers, the Kants, Hegels etc., with a somewhat bemused eye, perhaps, looking at the previous paragraph.

4. Now gaze at another friend, steeped in the ways of the opening bracket in coding, the including of all contingencies the programme needs to include, concluding with the reverse code in exactly the correct sequence … just think of that mindset, then look back at the previous two paragraphs.

5. I myself, a dabbler in the many arts, a generalist of some knowledge of each, not a lot, but with a scholastic background, not unlike Sherlock Holmes and a rejection of the “camps” mode of learning, the adversarial, parliamentary or legal mode of learning, of gaining knowledge … in favour of laying what we have on the table in a big room … but overawed by the vast range of knowledge required to see the overview with as little a priori prejudice as is possible in one mortal man.

6. Gaze over at Hywel Bennett in The Consultant, 1983, peer of the chap in Para 4, but with an added character flaw … greed. As one reviewer put it: “If you had ‘any’ knowledge at all about a system, and the process used by a firm (and ‘physical’ access to boot) the opportunity to manipulate the system for profit was not difficult.” Precisely as Para 2 man pointed out from the vastness of his reading of past, present and future.

7. Which comes out in 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Para 4 man points out about AI (actually machine learning, only ever as good as its input), therefore limited by someone else’s shaping of reality, it’s further limited by many traits in the Fauci or Mengele, the conscienceless scientist, quite able to torture beagles to death, just to observe what happens. Do you entrust your fate to Para 2 man or this Para 7 man or to Hal 9000 itself, to its tender mercies?

8. There was an interesting argument that Hal’s flaw was that it had within it two contradictory prime directives … one seeing the human, Azimov like, as sacrosanct, as opposed to the secret prime directive concerning Jupiter and the monolith and to hell with any humans.

9. Maybe “to hell” is too loaded. It presupposes (see Para 2 man again) that the antiChrist of the end days is no man at all, that there is no rapture, that the Kingdom continues on a cleaned and scoured earth, renovated. At the 6th trump comes the antiChrist and the entourage of false prophets, inc. the plague of locusts; and then at the 7th trump comes the Messiah.

10. Then comes the notion from Para 5 man which he put in his long book, (possibly 3:21:III onwards might work), begun in Russia but concluded in Albion, in which time was seen, not as linear, except on this earth … rather, it was a coming together of the required circumstances, all the required elements, in order for things to happen, for an event to happen. Predestination and free will are both possible in that model … such things appear in the latter chapters of the book.

Let’s leave this post openended. Am I, personally, more for one or the other Para man? Well certainly more for the learned Para 2 man than Para 5 and 10.

……

Just a note for any who do venture to read the latter chapters of the long book. To play fair, the last chapter and a bit won’t mean much if you haven’t read the rest of the book … it keeps revisiting those places and you’d need to know the characters.

What does make at least some sense, cold, is to start at 3:21:III and then stop, maybe, near the end of 3:22, the part which reads:

“The first and most logical place was the Lodge and thus they were now on what had once been the front porch. Though they’d lost their sensory apparatus, they knew the air would be acrid and yet, all sorts of mites still infested the air, eating tree bark and gnawing at anything gnawable.

Down the street was what looked like sewage and blood, ankle deep.

It was a crime against nature what had happened here.”

Charming, eh? Just trying to make the passage readable, cold, for curious cats. Oh and yes, I included this excerpt because it does relate, imho, to our current situation on Jan 20, 2025.

Maybe.