“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
-- George Orwell

More gullible is more “democratic”

Japan is lowering the voting age to 18 from 20, giving no other explanation then “it is appropriate”.

As we know, the word and the practice of “democracy” comes from ancient Greek. The Greek established that the decisions could be taken by a vote between a number of distinguished members of society that were called the “demos”. The number of people who had the right to vote and were called “demos” was limited and those were supposedly the most clever and responsible members of the society.

Those restrictions could be traced nearly to modern times with “demos” being gradually extended to all those grown up men who were given the right to vote, assuming that they were mature enough to have the best interests of the society as a whole at heart. Unfortunately, with the widening of the voting “demos” the quality of decisions deteriorated accordingly.

Now we include nearly the whole society in the “demos” and we seem to expect the 18 year old boys and girls to be mature enough to have the best interests of the society at heart. That is definitely a perversion of the original philosophy and practice, isn’t it?

The young can be easily manipulated. They do not have the experience, the maturity, the cunning of the elder to see through the manipulations and clearly understand what is best for the country. They do not possess long-term views or wide perspectives. What kind of decisions can we expect from them? We can expect that they will go with whomever gives them the most convincing story, that is not the most truthful, not the most practical, nor the most needed, but simply the most attractively told.

Well, that’s easy to see now. That’s where the marketing comes in. This move to include younger people into the voting “demos” is nothing else than a trick to make the “demos” more gullible and easy to manipulate. Welcome to “democracy”.

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Nobel Committee Asks Obama To Return Peace Prize

Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, said today that President Obama “really ought to consider” returning his Nobel Peace Prize Medal immediately, including the “really nice” case it came in.

Jagland, flanked by the other four members of the Committee, said they’d never before asked for the return of a Peace Prize, “even from a damnable war-criminal like Kissinger,” but that the 10% drawdown in US troops in Afghanistan the President announced last week capped a period of “non-Peace-Prize-winner-type behavior” in 2011. “Guantanamo’s still open. There’s bombing Libya. There’s blowing bin Laden away rather than putting him on trial. Now a few US troops go home, but the US will be occupying Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond. Don’t even get me started on Yemen!”

The Committee awarded Obama the coveted prize in 2009 after he made a series of speeches in the first months of his presidency, which convinced the Peace Prize Committee that he was: “creating a new climate of…multilateral diplomacy…an emphasis on the role of the United Nations…of dialogue and negotiations as instruments for resolving international conflicts…and a vision of world free of nuclear arms.”

“Boy oh boy!” added Jagland. “Did we regret that press release!”

Thorbjorn Jagland and members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee
celebrate Norway’s annual aquavit tasting festival.

But, he revealed the committee members were all “legless drunk” the day they voted, as it was the start of Norway’s annual aquavit-tasting festival. The “totally toasted” members listened over and over to replays of Obama’s Cairo speech, tearing up and drinking shots to the glorious future: a black man leading America and the world into a new era of peace, hope and goodwill. “For a few hours we were all 18 year-old students again at the beautiful, occasionally sunny University of Bergen! Oh, how we cried for joy!”

The chairman said the committee weren’t “going to be pills” about getting the Prize back because they still “basically really liked” Mr. Obama and that sending it back in a plain package by regular mail would be fine if it would save him the embarrassment of a public return. But added Jagland, “things could get nasty” if the committee didn’t see it by the time they announce the new Peace Prize winner in the fall. He and the committee then excused themselves to resume their celebration of Norway’s annual aquavit-tasting festival.

The White House had no comment. It later announced an aggressive new covert CIA initiative to identify and apprehend Al Qaeda operatives in Scandinavia.

Hilarious, I wish it was true :)
Source: Nobel Committee Asks Obama “Nicely” To Return Peace Prize
And there is more:

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has twice asked President Obama through diplomatic channels to return his Peace Prize. Now they’re asking “one last time” and there’s nothing diplomatic about it.

Nobel Committee Chairman ThorBjorn Jagland addressed an overflow press conference this morning in Oslo. The normally urbane Chairman referred several times to the President as “Obomber”, compared his “re-invasion” of Iraq to that of “the sniveling war-criminal Dick Cheney” and demanded that his Peace Prize be returned to the Committee forthwith together with the “beautiful box” it came in.

Two years ago after the bombing of Libya, the assassination of Osama bin Laden and Guantanamo remaining open, the Committee quietly asked the President to consider returning his Peace Prize, in a brown paper package by regular mail if he preferred so as to avoid embarrassment. They heard nothing from the White House.

In 2013 as US drone attacks increased dramatically the Committee tried again to get Obama’s medal back adding that he could keep the very expensive box it came in. They even offered him a Consolation Nobel Peace Prize. Still nothing.

Now according to Chairman Jagland it’s “No more Mr Nice Guy” Unless the Peace Prize is returned immediately, he announced total cut-off of all Scandinavian exports to the US. “Not a single Volvo or SAAB or attractive wool cap with fake wool pigtails will find its way to American ports! Not one Swedish meatball will ever again pass American lips!”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest responded to the threat: “Actually the President doesn’t remember winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But if he did, he thinks he might have given it to Hillary.”

Source: Nobel Committee Nicely Asks Obama To Return Peace Prize… Again

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We don’t know shit about climate and German engineers are worthless

I just came across a yet another stunning realization: we don’t know shit about our climate and its changes … and German engineers are worthless. These two are connected. Allow me to explain.

I can see the lot of renovation of not-so-old houses across Europe. There seems to be no street in Germany, for example, where a house would not be renovated to insulate it from the cold. That’s what they do everywhere: they put heat insulation around the houses, all of them. The houses will be all smugly wrapped in colorful warm blankets of insulation soon.

What does it tell us, really? Well, it tells us that the houses built in the last century were not properly isolated from the cold. But this is Germany, right? German engineers are supposed to be the brightest in the world, aren’t they? Why did they not think of the cold winters then?

What could have happened? One, the climate may have changed drastically and they did not adapt the construction to the cold winters. That means they are really worthless as engineers as it seems that change of the climate happened a fair bit of time ago. My grandma did not tell me stories of anything resembling tropical or even Mediterranean weather. Still, the houses had thin walls, single glass windows and no heating installations except largely decorative and useless open fireplaces. Those construction workers must have been idiots, as well as must have been idiots the house owners who bought those houses.

On the other hand, they could have noticed the weather but there were no materials like we have now to allow them proper insulation. So they would not be able to do anything then, would they? Well, if you have ever been in Russia, you would have noticed that they built double-walled, double-glazed houses with proper heating all through the last century. Apparently, those engineers had the materials and instruments to build proper warm houses. Were German engineers so stupid that they could not even copy the designs?

Well, there we are. The German engineers kept using the designs for a much warmer climate throughout the last century despite the obvious fact that they are not suitable for the much colder climate than Southern Italy. Russians at the same time were building proper houses suitable for the cold winters and well heated. What else can we conclude but that (1) the climate has seriously changed not so long ago and (2) German engineers are worthless?

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My first hate mail!

I am on the Internet since circa 1995, I have been into many arguments, circles and groups in the meantime. But, today is a special day. I received my first ever hate mail! Hooray! Look at this:

От: DR <dmanukr@gmail.com>
Тема: Russian terror supporter and killer

Сообщение:
Fuck you

Bona fide hate mail. Accept no substitutes. I am so proud. Break out the bubbly, I must be doing something right!

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Who controls ECB (European Central Bank)?

This is a strange story. We were having a chat after the project meeting finished and somehow the subject of European Central Bank (ECB) came up. I don’t remember why or how but the question was raised: who controls the ECB? Well, I knew that ECB was a company but I did not know details. So I had to have a look. The results are … well, this could have been expected.

Okay, so ECB is a bank, a commercial entity with all European Central Banks as shareholders. No surprises there. So whoever controls the Central Banks of the EU countries – controls the ECB. Now the next question is, of course, who controls the Central Banks?

I did not check them all but I suspect they are all organized the same way: the government (I could not find out how) is the shareholder and owner of the Central Bank. It seems that even where the Central Banks were private, they were nationalized some time ago. So they are all publicly owned. But there is a catch.

You see, the Central Banks have a note on their pages and in the documents that effectively says: “we are not controlled by the government”. I cannot imagine why, but all right, so the Central Banks are not controlled by the government, that’s just the way they are set up. So the owners actually do not control the banks. Who controls them then?

In this case, since there is no other obvious control mechanism, the Board of Directors and, in the first place, the Governor, will be controlling the Central Bank. Again, it seems that all banks in Europe are set up identically. So their management actually controls the Central Banks and therefore controls the ECB. A financial empire, no less. Very well. Who are the management and can we see any clear affiliations there?

And that’s where it got messy. Some countries’ Central Banks do not disclose any information about the governors – those are double suspicious. But all of the others show affiliation with U.S. one way or another. Here is the list of governors and those of their past affiliations that could be easily found.

ECB: Mario Draghi, President – Goldman Sachs, World Bank
Bank of England: Mark Carney, Governor – Goldman Sachs
Bank of France: Christian Noyer, Governor – IMF, World Bank
Deutsche Bundesbank: Jens Weidmann, President – IMF
Bank of Greece: Yannis Stournaras, Governor – IMF
De Nederlandsche Bank: Klaas Knot, president – IMF
Banca d’Italia: Ignazio Visco, governor – OECD
National Bank of Austria: Ewald Nowotny, Governor – EIB; Andreas Ittner, Vice Governor – IMF
Banco de España: Luis M. Linde, Governor – Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)
Riksbank (Sweden Central Bank): Stefan Ingves, Governor – IMF
Norges Bank: Øystein Olsen, Governor – Center for Economic Analysis; Jon Nicolaisen, Deputy Governor – OECD
National Bank of Belgium: Luc Coene, Governor – IMF
Bank of Portugal: Carlos da Silva Costa, governor – EIB
Banque centrale du Luxembourg: Gaston REINESCH, governor – EIB, BNP Paribas
National Bank of Poland: Marek Belka, Head – Columbia University, University of Chicago and London School of Economics, World Bank, JP Morgan
Hungarian National Bank: György Matolcsy, Governor – European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
National Bank of Romania: Mugur Isărescu, Governor – Romanian Embassy in the United States
Bulgarian National Bank: Ivan Iskrov, Governor – US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Czech National Bank: Miroslav Singer, Governor – University of Pittsburgh, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Bank of Estonia: Ardo Hansson, Governor – World Bank, Harvard University
Central Bank of Ireland: Patrick Honohan, Governor – IMF
Bank of Latvia: Ilmars Rimsevics, Governor – St. Lawrence University (USA), Clarkson University (USA)
National Bank of Slovakia: Jozef Makúch, Governor – IMF, World Bank

There is no information about the governors of the Central Banks of Finland, Denmark, Croatia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovenia. What do those have to hide?

Anyhow, it looks like to get to rule the finances of a country you have to follow one of the routes: work at IMF for a while, study and teach in US universities, or work at one of the big US banks or consultancy companies. The research into the control structures of those are left as an exercise for the reader.

So, as far as I can see, the ECB is controlled by U.S. commercial structures. What a surprise.

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IMAP with Maildir gotcha: No such file or directory

An interesting gotcha wasted me quite a bit of time and frustration last evening. After installing OTRS I went to configure the email delivery for tickets. I created a new virtual user, gave it a password and so it was all set. And it did not work when I tried to fetch the mail from OTRS. The message of OTRS itself did not help at all being very generic but the server reported this:

Feb 11 14:19:59 mail imapd-ssl: Connection, ip=[x.x.x.x]
Feb 11 14:19:59 mail imapd-ssl: chdir example.com/otrs/: No such file or directory
Feb 11 14:19:59 mail imapd-ssl: otrs@example.com: No such file or directory

It was hard to imagine a more cryptic message. I could not understand what could be wrong. And why would the server try to chdir into some strange directory. I flushed, changed passwords, tried all sorts of protocols, nothing helped. At a certain point I typed in a wrong password and the message changed to the very familiar “user login failed”. And then the realization hit me.

You just need the directory, you know. Maildir means there must be a directory for the IMAP server to look into. That’s what it tells me! IMAP says that it cannot find the directory where the messages should be. And sure enough, the Maildir directory is not there. Who would create it? Silly me.

And, of course, after the fact you remember it all: always send a welcome message to the new IMAP users so that the mailbox or Maildir is created for them… Hard to remember though when you don’t create new mail users so often.

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Fall in love in 36 questions

Here is the set of questions that was used by Dr. Arthur Aron and colleagues in their study of “generating interpersonal closeness”. In a word, if you follow the instructions and go through this procedure, there is a high chance you fall in love. Wanna test?

Oh, and the original publication is called “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings” in case you want to look it up…

The exercise is performed by two people together. As soon as you both finish reading these instructions, you should begin with the questions. One of you should read aloud the first question and then BOTH do what it asks, starting with the person who read the question aloud. When you are both done, go on to the next question – one of you reading it aloud and both doing what it asks. And so forth.

As you go through the questions, one at a time, please don’t skip any – do each in order. If it asks you a question, share your answer with your partner. Then let him or her share their answer to the same question with you. If it is a task, do it first, then let your partner do it. Alternate who reads aloud (and thus goes first) with each new question. Take plenty of time with each question, doing what it asks thoroughly and thoughtfully.

Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
Would you like to be famous? In what way?
Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
What do you value most in a friendship?
What is your most treasured memory?
What is your most terrible memory?
If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
What does friendship mean to you?
What roles do love and affection play in your life?
Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling … “
Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share …“
If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Now stare into each others eyes for four minutes. You are done.

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Free Software Foundation – 30 years of propelling freedom

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users. Read more: Free Software Foundation.

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Russian Defense Ministry has decided to put an end to the debate about the liberators of Auschwitz

Auschwitz. Photo by AFP

Russian Defense Ministry has posted on its website 15 unique, including secret, historical documents from World War II, concerning, in particular, the liberation of Auschwitz. This was reported on the ministry’s website.

“Publication of documents for the release of prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp and the occupied territories of Poland by the Red Army is a continuing effort of the military history department, aimed at the preservation and protection of historical truth, prevention of tampering with the history and attempts to revise the results of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World Wars,” – Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Materials, revealing the course of military operations and the liberation of Poland in January 1945, include combat reports from the command of formations and units of the 1st Ukrainian Front, including the Journal of hostilities of the 472 th Infantry Regiment, as well as reports of chiefs of the political departments of the 100 th Infantry Division and of the 60th Army – directly involved the release of prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp.

Issued is also a report on the socio-demographic characteristics of the troops of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. It contains information about the soldiers of the Red Army, a total of 39 nationalities – Russian, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Armenians, Ossetians, Georgians and others.

Photo by press-service of the Ministry of Defence of Russia

Some of the documents were previously in a secret storage and were only available to a limited number of historians.

“In recent years there is a lot of speculation around the historical events in the West propagated by various political interests; there appear statements questioning the decisive contribution of the Red Army in the liberation of prisoners of concentration camps, attempts to erase the memory of people of the atrocities committed by the Nazis at Auschwitz and at the same time desecrate the cherished memory of the millions of human lives and fates of dozens of countries milled on the fascist conveyor of death, “- said the Ministry of Defense.

On January 21st, Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said that Auschwitz was liberated by Ukrainian military. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the statement blasphemous.

Auschwitz concentration camp (German name Auschwitz-Birkenau) lasted from 1940 to 1945. During this time, according to official figures, there were killed 1.4 million people, of whom about 1.1 million – Jews. Auschwitz prisoners were released on January 27, 1945 by soldiers of the Red Army. In the liberation forces took part the 1st Ukrainian Front (was formed by renaming the Voronezh Front) and the 4th Ukrainian Front (created on the basis of the Southern Front). During the Great Patriotic War fronts names were assigned to the area of their activity and not by nationality of those who served as soldiers.

Today the museum on the site of the former concentration camp hosts events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

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Who contributed most to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945?

A survey conducted in May 1945 on the whole French territory now released (confirming a survey in September 1944 with Parisians) showed that interviewees appear well aware of the power relations and the role of allies in the war, despite the censorship and the difficulty to access reliable information under enemy’s occupation.

A clear majority (57%) believed that the USSR is the nation that has contributed most to the defeat of Germany while the United States and England will gather respectively 20% and 12%.

But what is truly astonishing is that this vision of public opinion was reversed very dramatically with time, as shown by two surveys conducted in 1994 and 2004. In 2004, 58% of the population were convinced that USA played the biggest role in the Second World War and only 20% were aware of the leading role of USSR in defeating the Nazi.

This is a very clear example of how the propaganda adjusted the whole nation’s perception of history, the evaluation of the fundamental contribution to the allied victory in the World War II.

Source: http://www.les-crises.fr/la-fabrique-du-cretin-defaite-nazis/

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