Welcome to the Home Office

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/

The Home Office, twinned with Mordor.



Tony Blair continues to eat away at the rights of free born Englishmen. From today I have to apply to the Secretary of State for permission to marry a foreigner, this came as a shock as my fiance and I presented our documents at the registry office today.

Now I can see why the thirteen colonies rebelled against good king George all those years ago.

Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius (1974)

http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/plpk.html

Updated: https://chineseposters.net/posters/g2-14

Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius (1974)


The girl is holding a paper which says ‘Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius most vigorously.’
The title says ‘ Criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius is the most important issue for the Party, the People’s Liberation Army and the whole Chinese people.’

Lin Biao’s death should be the subject of conspiracy sites, I mean, what really happened to him? Unless it happened in the west or concerns secret societies with ‘arcane knowledge’ hardly anybody is interested.

Apart from http://www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/linbiao.html
Which is well worth reading.

I wonder where he’s going to stick that pen?

Stonehenge – Guide for visitors

“Stonehenge is the UK’s Unmissable Wonder”

http://www.stonehenge.org.uk/

Nice commercial site about Stonehenge, complete with a timeline and some good photos.

From the site:

“There is no documented purpose for this monument but it has been referred to as a burial place, a calendar, and a place of worship and sacrifice. While new research has ruled out some earlier theories, there is still no solid confirmation on the original purpose of this monument. One thing is for sure, knowing the time period that this monument was built and the lack of technology puzzles the mind and creates a worldwide fascination. If you have plans to visit England, no visit is complete without a visit to Stonehenge. The construction and purpose of this monument are still unsure by researchers, but when you walk onto this ground, you will experience a step back in the past. Some visitors find the experience majestic, celestial, or spiritual when they first encounter Stonehenge.”

NOVA Online | Nazi Prison Escape | Escaping Colditz

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/naziprison/colditz.html


If you are interested about the History of Colditz as a World War II POW camp then this is a well crafted site with views from both the Allied POWs and the German chief of security Reinhold Eggers.

From the site:

“Colditz Castle, a forbidding medieval edifice near Leipzig, Germany, was supposed to be the Nazis’ most escape-proof prison. Incorrigible Allied officers who had repeatedly escaped from other camps were sent to Colditz, the only German POW camp with more guards than prisoners. Yet English, French, Polish, Dutch, and other inmates managed to sneak out in surprising numbers. “

Make something Unreal competition winner

http://www.redorchestra.clanservers.com/

…and the winner is…

Red Orchestra

This game has a distinctly chilling but yet beautiful aura about it. Stunning graphics, realistic and accurate battlefields set in the harsh and brutal reality that was the Eastern Front in Europe (1941-1945).
I also feel a little uneasy when I think about gamers choosing to fight ‘in the SS’. Remember what happened to Prince Harry. However, if you are interested in historical accuracy then it can be argued that it’s justified.

The video for Red Orchestra is awesome and is a hefty 70 MBytes download.

INDOlink Poetry – Rabindranath Tagore Collection

Rabindranath Tagore, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941

http://www.indolink.com/Poetry/tgorIndx.html

The above link no longer works, so here’s an alternative

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rabindranath-tagore

Nobel Prize winner 1913

The Gift
by Rabindranath Tagore
. (This poem is from ‘The Crescent Moon’ by Tagore)

I want to give you something, my child,
for we are drifting in the stream of the world.
Our lives will be carried apart,
and our love forgotten.
But I am not so foolish as to hope that
I could buy your heart with my gifts.

Young is your life, your path long, and
you drink the love we bring you at one draught
and turn and run away from us.
You have your play and your playmates.
What harm is there if you have no time
or thought for us.

We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age
to count the days that are past,
to cherish in our hearts what our
hands have lost for ever.
The river runs swift with a song,
breaking through all barriers.
But the mountain stays and remembers,
and follows her with his love.

I’m no homophobe: my aunt lived with a horse – The Local

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=626&date=20041116

Update this links works:

https://www.thelocal.se/20041116/626-3/

It’s a funny old world, well Sweden anyway…

“I’m no homophobe: my aunt lived with a horse”

“Since Jens Orback was appointed as Sweden’s equality minister, he’s been accused of all sorts of heinous crimes against political correctness. Feminists have accused him of not taking women’s rights seriously, and in a comment piece in Aftonbladet, gay groups said that he was a `family fundamentalist, colonialist and neoconservative’.

So it was in an attempt to set the record straight that the minister took to the airwaves on Sunday. Denying that he was intolerant of sexual minorities, he told Swedish Radio’s Ekot programme “I had a wonderful aunt who lived in Canada with a horse. I thought it was wonderful. Let people live as they wish.”

Orback’s comments have done nothing to endear him to gay rights campaigners.”

Channel 4 – Religion and Belief, Derren Brown, Messiah

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/believeitornot/derrenbrown.html

Update: now available as an ‘on demand’ show

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-specials/on-demand/38958-001

This show was amazing, Mr Brown is a very clever man.

“Nietzsche made the point well that we equate truth with what we merely want to believe.

Science moves forward by changing its views based on observation. A learning machine, it wants to be shown to be wrong, so that it can dispassionately correct itself and advance. It looks for what’s reliable, what holds up, searches for the bit that makes something work and shakes off unhelpful clutter.”

-Derren Brown

In the footsteps of Joseph Rock 重走洛克路

http://drjosephrock.blogspot.com/



In the footsteps of Joseph Rock is the journey of Sydney blogger Michael, following the footsteps of ‘bad-tempered and imperious’ Joseph Rock, who travelled through western Sichuan and the Tibet borderlands in the 1920s to reach Minya Konka, once thought to be the world’s highest mountain.

The writing is superb but the genius is in the photography, placing side-by-side Rock’s photos with Michael’s own equivalents taken 70 years later.”

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

In memoriam for my dear Mother who died recently…

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

Mail Preference Service

http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

If you live in the UK and want to stop junk mail being posted to your address then this is the site for you. It’s not 100% effective but it’s better than nothing.

“The Mailing Preference Service (MPS) is a free service set up in 1983 and funded by the direct mail industry to enable consumers to have their names and home addresses in the UK removed from lists used by the industry. It is actively supported by the Royal Mail and all directly involved trade associations and fully supported by The Information Commissioners Office (ICO).”

Google Desktop Download

Google Desktop running on Windows Vista

http://desktop.google.com/?promo=rpp-gds-en-uk-5

The idea of Google knowing what’s on my computer, my complete web history and the content of my emails is sinister. They are not offering this service from any altruistic motive, they are a company that makes money. So what will they do with the information they harvest from my computer? Who can have access to it – commercial organisations or governments? MI5 (British Military Intelligence) and other national security agencies must love this. Despite Google’s assertion that they respect privacy I am not convinced. They have already demonstrated that they will co-operate with totalitarian governments to censor and restrict Internet access to further the interests of their shareholders so basically I don’t trust them.

Update: Google desktop ceased to be in September 2011

TPS Registration

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the UK’s only official ‘Do Not Call’ register

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

If you live in the UK register your phone number here and stop those annoying unsolicited phone calls. When you do get one, like I did last night you can get their details and then turn the tables on them by saying that you ARE going to report them. 9 times out of 10 they hang up, only a few are big enough to apologise

“From the site:

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the UK’s only official ‘Do Not Call’ register for landlines and Mobile numbers. It allows people and businesses to opt out of unsolicited live sales and marketing calls.

It’s free and quick to register a telephone number. 

aldozey’s reviews – StumbleUpon

Screenshot of aldozey’s Stumbleupon blog

http://aldozey.stumbleupon.com/

Wayback machine link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050829104133/http://aldozey.stumbleupon.com/

I can’t understand why nobody hasn’t reviewed al before. Plenty of links and his music is well worth listening to.

Visit the Disorder web site at http://www.disordermusic.com and you can download some of their tracks for free. – Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down a new (working) link for this

Stefan Landsbergers Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages

Yu Zhenli, We must grasp revolution and increase production, increase work, increase preparation for struggle, to do an even better job, May 1976

http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/

Site still exists but is no longer updated. There is a new (and improved) site though:

https://chineseposters.net

东方红,太阳升,
中国出了个毛泽东。
他为人民谋幸福,
呼尔海约,他是人民大救星!


The East is red, the sun has risen,
China has made Mao Zedong.
He creates fortune for the people,
Hu er hai yue, he’s the savior of them all!

Hymn to Lucifer

Le génie du mal by Guillaume Geefs, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Liège, Belgium

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a blood-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden’s imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breath life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

Edward Alexander Crowley, (born October 12, 1875, — died December 1, 1947)

#Poetry

Tangshan – The Deadliest Earthquake

Earthquake memorial Tangshan, Hebei, China

http://history1900s.about.com/od/horribledisasters/a/tangshan.htm

Update: Has moved to thoughtco.com but the above links still works which is kinda nice.

When the media tell you that the Asian Tsunami is the dealiest earthquake in living memory they are wrong – my girlfriend nearly died in 1976 when her home was destroyed and over 240,000 people died (some reports put the figure as high as 665,000) in the Tangshan earthquake. Luckily her father snatched her out of her bed just seconds before it was crushed beneath several tonnes of rubble.

The Smallfilms Treasury

http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/

Noggin the Nog,Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss, The Clangers, The Pogles, Pingwings

Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin produced some of the most enduring British children’s animation in the 1960s-1970s. On this site you will find The Clangers, Pogles’ Wood, Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss, and Noggin the Nog with my personal favourite character ‘ Nogbad the Bad’.

TomPaine.com – Laughing Dragon, Dancing Bear

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/laughing_dragon_dancing_bear.php

Wayback machine link:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/laughing_dragon_dancing_bear.php

Laughing Dragon, Dancing Bear
The author, Ray McGovern began his 27-year career with the CIA as the analyst for Soviet relations with China and Southeast Asia.


Developing the significance of Russia and The Peoples Republic of China holding joint miltary exercises on Chinese soil for the first time ever in 2005 McGovern postulates that Russia and the PRC are becoming ever closer along the lines of the dictum ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ he writes…


‘The Russians and Chinese look on the quicksand in which U.S. forces are trying to stay afloat in Iraq with mixed feelings: alarm at what they see as unconstrained, unpredictable U.S. behavior, and Schadenfreude at the fiasco brought about by ineptitude on the part of senior civilian defense officials and careerism among the generals, many of whom know better but have not the spine to tell their superiors that the war in Iraq cannot be won.’ Whilst I agree with the general thrust of McGovern’s argument about the consequences of a Russo-Sino military alliance I think he overplays his hand when he says the war cannot be won. Just because America withdrew from South East Asia does not mean the same will happen in Iraq. The argument that America can’t win because it won’t be able to sustain casulaties has been shot to pieces with over 1,300 dead the resolve of the Bush Administration hasn’t weakened. The USA does have the means and more importantly the will to win in Iraq. Whether it will have been worth the deaths of so many is debateable.

TomPaine.com – The Topic Should Be China

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_topic_should_be_china.php

Wayback machine:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_topic_should_be_china.php

The author,Robert B. Reich was the secretary of labor in the Clinton administration says…
‘As China’s influence grows, America’s wanes.’
‘With China holding more than a half a trillion dollars of United States debt, it also largely determines what happens to the dollar.’
‘In short, China is now a significant player in the American economy and in American politics–even though few American politicians actually dare admit it.’
Strange then, that China barely merited debate during the recent Presidential Elections.