Climategate: That's just how science is done

The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.

Bertrand Russell, The Will To Doubt

By CanSpeccy

The Hockey Stick Graph (Source)

Climategate is the alleged scientific misconduct revealed through publication, by a person or persons unknown, of thousands of email communications among leading climate scientists.

These revelations are, says Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell, a catastrophe for science.

What the emails show, says Caldwell, is "that scientists are no less prone to vanity, rivalries and corner-cutting than people in other walks of life."

This, says Caldwell, has "undermined the scientists’ claim to be speaking as scientists rather than as interested parties."

That's the catastrophe?

LOL.

Anyone who thinks that the debate between climate "warmists" and "denialists" falls short of science's tradition of objectivity and fairness should remind themselves of the long-running dispute between Isaac Newton, the founder of modern science, and Gottfried Leibniz, variously described as "the last universal genius" and "the most comprehensive thinker since Aristotle." Terms employed by the chief protagonists or their associates in that debate included "thief," "toady" and "ape."

In comparison, the dispute between Mike Mann and Steve McIntyre over the hockey-stick graph has been conducted with collegial restraint.

The discovery, for those to whom it is a discovery, that scientists are not lobotomized calculating machines programmed solely for the revelation of truth, but self-serving, self-aggrandizing, largely irrational people like the rest of us, provides, surely, an important lesson.

For how, in a democracy, can science be properly managed if the public is imbued with the delusional belief that scientists are mostly saints not sinners?

Scientists can be, as anyone who has studied the history of science knows, furiously competitive to a degree that can, and often does, influence the objectivity of their work.

Scientists, for example, often fiddle their results, less with the intent to deceive than because of an overwhelming conviction of the correctness of their scientific intuition.

But so what? Everything eventually comes out in the wash. Or should do. Mistakes and fakes cannot be concealed for ever in an empirical science where others can repeat your observations and experiments. Science is a competitive enterprise and if you get something important wrong, someone will be happy to point out your error.

More often, though, if someone else's result does not fit their model of the world, an experienced scientist will just ignore it. People who want to find something out, don't waste their time acting as policemen.

And if your hunch is right and you fake results to prove it, what harm is done?

Galileo claimed to have observed more than it was possible to see with his primitive telescope, but his ideas about the solar system proved consistent with later more precise observations.

Gregor Mendel's revolutionary findings on the segregation of genetic components during reproduction are said by statisticians to have been too good to be true. But they are consistent with verified theory.

Arthur Eddington's measurement on May 29, 1919 of the deflection of starlight by the gravitational pull of the sun, which was generally accepted at the time as proof of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, was highly questionable due to measurement error. Nevertheless, subsequent evidence confirmed the result that Eddington claimed.

Newton and Einstein fiddled their results by introducing what later proved to be unnecessary fudge factors.

Newton corrected his calculation of the speed of sound to make it match what proved to be an inaccurate experimental measurement by incorporating a meaningless adjustment for what he called the "crassity of the particles."

Einstein fiddled his cosmological model by introducing the cosmological constant, a fudge factor to explain why gravity doesn't cause everything in the universe to glom together in a heap.

When Hubble showed that the universe was expanding, Einstein described his cosmological constant as "the greatest blunder of my career."

As it happens, the cosmological constant has come back into vogue to account for the fact that the universe is not only expanding but is expanding at an accelerating rate.

So much for the objectivity and irreproachable integrity of scientists.

Thus, when Caldwell says: "The emails were damaging because they undermined the scientists’ claim to be speaking as scientists rather than as interested parties, the damage, surely, can only be to scientific humbugs.

It is the mistaken belief in the saintly, unprejudiced, objectivity of scientists that constitute the real danger to science.

Ignorance of the frailties of scientists means failure to guard against the ever present danger of science being skewed by outside interference: Al Gore, the Green Party, oil, the tobacco industry, big pharma, the UN, all seeking to control the scientific message and the scientific agenda for financial or political reasons.

Enough of such interference and science is corrupted beyond redemption, as was true of genetics in the Soviet Union during the Lysenko era, and in Germany during the Nazi era.

Indeed, the magnitude of current efforts by both government and industry to influence science for financial or political ends is indicative of the unhealthy intellectual times in which we live.

Solving the Debt Crisis: An Ingenious Proposal

By CanSpeccy

Image source: Allen Roland's Blog

Australian economist Steve Keen proposes that instead of governments printing money and giving it to banks that lent money to folks who can't pay it back, they should print money and give it to the folks that can't pay back the money that banks lent -- on the condition that the recipients use the money to pay off their debts.

On the face of it, what Keen proposes is an alternative without a difference. Either way, the banks get back what they irresponsibly or incompetently lent to sub-prime borrowers who, by definition, were unlikely to pay it back. However, two important features distinguish Keen's idea from current mainstream economics thinking.

First, he says that not only should free money be given to debtors unable to repay their loans, but to everyone else too, which sounds fair, if inflationary.

Second, he says that when the banks get back the money they lent, they should not be allowed to lend it again. This seems a reasonable proposition, since the money lent was conjured by the banks out of thin air, so any right they had to lend it in the first place was by virtue of a government-granted license to print money, which evidently was employed irresponsibly, since much if not most of the money lent can't be paid back.

Then, argues Keen, once the unsustainable debt load has been reduced to a reasonable level, banks can be allowed to resume lending only to the extent required to support productive new investment in R and D, production facilities and other things that expand the real economy. This, says Keen, would bring to an end what he calls the Ponzi economy where people borrow to make speculative investments in assets they expect will rise in price because other people are borrowing to make speculative investments in assets they expect will rise in price.

Such restriction to bank activity would slash profits of the financial sector, from about 40% of all US corporate profits, currently, to perhaps five or six percent, which would seem entirely adequate for an industry that does little other than shuffle paper, or just digits, losing trillions in the process for which they expect the taxpayer to reimburse them.

In the course of such a contraction, Keen believes most banks would go broke and in that case, he indicates, their function should be taken over by the Government. That seems reasonable. Governments often manage to run things like railroads, highways, water works and post offices with tolerable efficiency, or at least not absolutely intolerable inefficiency.

Certainly, creating money out of nothing and lending it to people who might be able to pay it back looks like something governments could do at least as well as Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland or any of the multitude of other banks that stupidly lost all the money they had, and even more that they didn't have, while paying their directors phenomenal salaries and bonuses.

The great merit of Steve Keen's scheme, so he maintains, is that it would end the second great depression now, rather than in a decade or two as will otherwise be the case. This claim, however, is not altogether convincing. The private sector cannot pay people more than their labor is worth. Yet minimum wages in the Western world are well above average salaries in China and other low-wage jurisdictions against which, under the GATT agreement, workers in the West must now compete without protection.

Furthermore, automation tends to reduce the global demand for labor. For example, Apple Corporation, embarrassed by a high suicide rate among workers employed by the Chinese contractor that manufacures the i-Pad, have decided to replace the workers with a million robots.

Thus it seems that more is required than Steve Keen's ingenious scheme to unwind the World's burden of debt if everyone who wishes to work has the opportunity to do so at a living wage. Moreover, in discussing his proposal with the BBC's Sarah Montague, Keen does not deal with the problem of unpayable sovereign debt, which is a major factor in the  current economic difficulties of many Western nations.

Nevertheless, the time is surely ripe for new ideas on how to assist homeowners, small business, and others burdened by intolerable debt to deleverage without intensifying the current recession or depression. Steve Keen is one of the few economists with a new idea worth considering.

And, insofar as it is inflationary, Keen's proposal for distributing government-created money would lower real wages, increase labor demand and so reduce unemployment. What's more, by distributing the cash equally to everyone, it would help redress the balance between the 1% and the 99.

See also:
Exporting the economy
The Economist Who Said "The Emperor Has No Clothes"

Can England Be Once More a Green and Pleasant Land?

The New Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear!O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my charriot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

William Blake (1804)

By CanSpeccy

When Blake wrote The New Jerusalem (1804), the industrial revolution in England was well advanced. Energy use per capita was twice that of mainland Europe. Coal was the chief source of energy and was carried by sea from Newcastle to Blake's native London.

With more than a million inhabitants, London was Europe's largest city and largest port, a place of docks and warehouses, of shipyards, foundries and factories, of tanneries and textile mills.

Back-to-back houses, without a yard. Source

In London and other industrial cities, workers lived in tiny houses, usually built back-to-back without yards, close to the factory or mill where they worked, which meant that the first great industrial cities, though hideous, were compact.

Workers' housing: Liverpool, England

Travel was limited. Blacktop had yet to be invented. The best roads were the ancient, deeply rutted Roman highways. Intercity travel by coach was slow, costly and dangerous. Working people lived close to their place of employment, commuting no more than a mile or two. They rarely traveled except by shanks pony. Many never in their lives traveled more than five or ten miles from their place of birth.

Thus, in Blake's day, despite the great "wen" of London and other teeming industrializing cities, the mines, the "dark satanic mills," much in England  was yet both green and pleasant.

With a total population of 8.6 million according to the census of 1801, the average population density was only 65 per square kilometer, or about 3.5 acres per person. But the rural population density was much less, and, as millions migrated to the industrial cities, the countryside became even more sparsely populated.

But first the railway and then the automobile, combined with rising incomes, changed all that.

The Global Debt Crisis: How Things Got This Screwed Up

Total US debt Image source

The global debt crisis is highly complex, yet in its ultimate causes, extremely simple.

Speaking before the Senate of the United States on October 5, 1994, Sir James Goldsmith said:

I believe that GATT... [i]f it is implemented, ... will impoverish and destabilize the industrialized world while at the same time cruelly ravaging the third world.

That is precisely what has come to pass.

Since 1994, wage arbitrage by multinational corporations, the majority of which are controlled by a few dozen financial entities, has destroyed tens of millions of jobs in Western Europe and North America, while driving up many-fold the value of the most successful exponents of off-shoring and outsourcing: companies such as Apple, IBM and Microsoft.

How have Western nations handled the job losses?

By maintaining consumer spending without regard for the loss of high-skills, high-wage, long-term jobs.

How have they done maintained consumer spending? By keeping real interests rates near zero or less, thereby enabling consumers to replace income with debt. Much of the consumer credit went into housing, which being largely a local industry, concealed the loss of long-term manufacturing, design, engineering and other professional jobs.

How have China and other developing nations handled the job gains?

By keeping wages and hence consumer spending low to achieve annihilating export competitiveness with high-wage Western workers, while enabling a tsunami of cheap credit to flow into job-creating investment in manufacturing and export service industries, with much of this money slopping over into real estate, including investment in China's empty cities.

So why isn't everyone happy?

Jesse Ventura: How Corrupt Republicans and Corrupt Democrats Ruined America

Ventura raises the same question we did concerning the fate of Navy SEAL Team 6: US Navy SEALs: Two Helicopters.

Ron Paul Highlights - CNN National Security Debate

How Canadian police handle a non-violent protest

Link source: Toronto G20 Exposed See from 2 minutes 10 seconds ...

And how the RCMP use agents provocateurs to create some action

Globe and Mail, November 22, 2011: In early 2009, two strangers started mingling with the activist communities of Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.

The first was a man. Those who crossed paths with him say he ingratiated himself by chauffeuring people to protests in his white van and buying them pitchers of beer at the bar after. The second, a woman, told people she had fled an abusive relationship ...

Read more

The European Freemasonry of Goldman Sachs

Le Monde's London correspondent, Marc Roche, claims that Goldman Sachs has infiltrated senior positions of power across Europe, including those of the Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy and the new head of the European Central Bank. Source: GRTV

If 55kg of explosive were all it took to bring down this 17-story tower block ....

17- Story Glencairn Tower brought down with 55 kg of unnamed explosive

"This was the spectacular moment a 17-storey concrete tower block was blown to pieces - in a thundering controlled explosion," reports the Daily Mail.

"Glencairn Tower block [in Motherwell, Scotland] was reduced to 12,000 tonnes of rubble by 55kg of explosives ..."

Is the Daily Mail trying to tell us something?

If it took only 55 kg of explosive to bring down a 17-story tower block, would it have taken much more than a couple of hundred kilograms to bring down each of the Twin Towers? And if not, how difficult would it have been for saboteurs dressed as elevator maintenance staff to prep the towers for a controlled demo. without prompting suspicion?

As with the Twin Towers, the video shows there were explosions both at the base of the building and near the top, the entire structure coming down in free fall.

England's Ungreen and Unpleasant Land

Factory Chimneys Outnumber Church Spires on the Skyline at
Preston Lancashire. (Image source)

It's difficult to be green when you're packed in at more than 1000 per square mile. Spread out, that's one person every 50 meters. At that density, you're going to be mostly red-brick- and blacktop-colored.

Still, if folks would spread out as much as they can, there would be advantages. They could stop annoying one another with  stupid cell phone calls: "It's me, I'll be home in three minutes." Instead, you could word-of-mouth it: "Heh Ma, don't stay up, I'm going out with the lads tonight. Pass it on." You could even have person-to-person small parcel delivery: "Mrs. Edith Robertson, 23b Hedgerow Drive, Wigan. No, not that way, idiot, to your left, Wigan's up North!"

But just think about it. There's yer fifty by fifty meter patch where you've got yer car, yer share of the public roadways, yer house, yer holiday cottage in Wales, yer share of the local pub, shops, workplaces, government offices, railways, power plants, power lines, schools, hospitals, the lot. There is very little room left over for anything green. Yet they're still packing 'em in: every four years another million, enough to populate Birmingham, England' second city, with some tens of thousands left over.

Years ago my late friend Postman Patel drove me to a spot on the moors outside the City of Oldham where you could see 79 factory (cotton mill) chimneys -- that's when the view was not obscured by smog. Today, the mills mostly burn oil instead of coal and so have no visible emissions -- the few that have not been converted to multi-family residences -- so visibility is better than it used to be. That means that there's now hardly a viewpoint in the English countryside where you cannot see lines of traffic snaking this way and that across the landscape. No doubt if anyone discovers a traffic-free zone they'll have to build roads and parking lots all over it so people can come and see it.

But the lack of green is not just a matter of numbers. It's largely due to the criminal activity of the construction industry and its enablers all the way from the petty corruptionist on your village council to the Minister of Housing or whoever's influence is required when the latest plan to convert another few hundred acres of productive farm land to a plantation of red brick boxes is impeded by some not totally corrupt local planning committee.

Instant urban blight. (Image source)

British cities are, for the most part, so bloody hideously awful that everyone wants a country castle, mansion, villa, cottage, converted piggery, whatever, and if that's beyond their means, then a semi-det brick box on a 150 square meter plot on one of those meaningless crescents, winding avenues, or closes that engulf square miles of once beautiful countryside around once beautiful market towns and cathedral cities.

The flight to the suburbs and beyond generates traffic, traffic deaths, smog, noise, and an ever expanding zone of traffic-jammed motorways, bypasses, overpasses and underpasses that converts once habitable urban space into a vision of hell beyond the imagination of Hieronymous Bosch: which is the truly beautiful thing about urban development -- it's autocatalytic. It creates its own demand. By defiling the place where people want to be, i.e., the city, it forces them to move to ever more remote and tedious greenfield suburbs, which are the last places on earth where any creature could hope for emotional fulfillment.

Coping with the banality of English life. (Image source)

The sheer banality of English life drives much else that rots the moral fibre and mental capacity of the nation. The ugliness of the landscape, the tedium of the daily commute, the daily pollution of one's immortal soul with cheesy Page-three-pics of tits and bums, war propaganda, gossip and triviality from the multiple orifices of the Murdoch press and its rivals and imitators, the infuriatingly condescending mendacity of the BBC, combine to create an irresistible impulse to escape. However hideous the journey, however crowded or degraded the destination, millions upon millions of Britain's sick, her tired, her huddled masses take regular flight to Mediterranean resorts, notwithstanding the often contemptible  the behaviour of their compatriots.

All of which helps explain why three in four Britons would like to leave Britain for good. It is, presumably, the ethnic Brits and their numerous progeny who, having only just arrived, make up the 25% yet to appreciate the desirability of leaving. (What is it, any how, that causes hundreds and hundreds of thousands to abandon the exquisite beauty of a Caribbean Island for life in Wolverhampton, Glasgow or the London borough of Brixton?)

See also:
Can England Be Once More a Green and Pleasant Land?

Why I don't buy Uri Avnery's "Israel will not attack Iran"

Uri Avnery's article almost convinced me that Israel will not attack Iran.

But not quite, for I believe that anything that could happen could happen.

Or as the Many Worlds theorists would argue, everything that could happen will happen although not in every universe in which an instance of yourself reading this text happens to exist at this very moment.

Consider Hitler, for example, on the brink of a historic victory, ordering his army to halt within a day's drive of Moscow, resulting in a the most pitiless, bloody, long-drawn-out retreat and defeat in the history of total war.

Folks really do the most unaccountable things.

But let's look at Avnery's arguments.

First, he quotes a German proverb:

Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place. Same goes for wars.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it. Except that announcing revolutions, wars and war crimes in advance is, in fact, far from unusual.

The Communist Manifesto, published 69 years before the Russian revolution, comes to mind. Then, there's Mein Kampf, which left little to the imagination concerning Hitler's military objectives. Or to take a more recent example, haven't the NeoCons been calling for the overthrow of every government throughout the Middle-East except Israel's since before 9/11 - and with four down and a dozen or so to go, aren't they still on about it?

So no, there's nothing unusual about announcing one's war aims in advance. Rather, that seems more to be expected than not.

Second, says Avnery:

Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.

Absolutely true. But it ignores Israel's remarkable influence in Washington, where by his own account, the US President has to deal with Israel's Prime Minister Netenyahu every day.

Think about that. The President of the sole superpower, a huge nation that is 97% non-Jewish, has to deal every day with the Prime Minister of a country of six million Jews plus several million of what the leadership apparently regards as untermenschen best exterminated by drowning.

Then Avnery asserts:

When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough.

That, he seems to believe, is why Israel would not dare attack Iran. But, if you think about it, isn't that what some people might consider an incredibly brilliant reason for Israel to attack Iran?

I mean, if you have loaded up on oil futures, $200-a-barrel-plus oil looks cool.

And the broader financial consequences are truly fascinating:

Basically, instant global depression, bankruptcy of virtually all banks, governments, corporations and mortgage holders, all waiting to be picked up for pennies on the dollar by the crisis engineers. Talk about Disaster Capitalism. Oh God. Ecstasy. A handful of oligarchs will own the whole World.

But, says Avnery:

ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.

Well, sorree, but Jews have been treated as expendable before. There are no doubt those who with sufficient incentive would regard Jews as expendable now.

None of this is to say that I believe Israel will attack Iran. But when, as Avnery puts it:

Every day, via all channels, [the government of Israel] shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran,

I'm not inclined to discount altogether the possibility that the Israel may, indeed, be about to attack Iran.

Israel will not attack Iran

By: Uri Avnery*

EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”

Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.

Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.

Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.

“Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against.

A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars.

Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.

Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor's ultimate boss) play their games.

Germany cannot outrun the Chinese bear. But doesn't need to

Source: I don't have to outrun the bear -- just you.

Yesterday, I compared those in the West stunned by the current financial and economic crisis to passengers on the sinking Titanic who thought it safer to stay aboard the supposedly unsinkable ship than to be set adrift in a tiny lifeboat upon the dark and icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Failing to comprehend the nature of their peril, most in the West believe it possible to continue enjoying a higher standard of living than the majority of humanity while sticking without reflection to the failing economic policies of the past.

Meantime, the West sinks into stagnation, depression and horrendous debt, while the economies of China and other developing nations expand with astounding rapidity.

Why?

Labor costs and globalization.

Wages in China are a tenth of what they are in Germany and, in manufacturing, only a twentieth (US$134 per month in China versus $2336 in Germany).

We are experiencing now, what Jimmy Goldsmith warned of when the GATT agreement, which opened the way to unrestricted global movement of goods and capital, was signed on to by the Western nations in 1994.

Speaking before the Senate of the United States, Sir James Goldsmith said:

I believe that GATT and the theories on which it is based are flawed. If it is implemented, it will impoverish and destabilize the industrialized world while at the same time cruelly ravaging the third world.

Sir James, then in the prime of life and embarked on a political crusade against globalization, died very shortly thereafter from a remarkable swift-acting form of cancer.

Today, we see the environmental carnage and ruthless exploitation of labor in the developing World that Goldsmith predicted. In China, Apple Corp.'s contract manufacturer, FoxConn, requires that employees sign an agreement not to commit suicide, several dozen having embarrassed the saintly Steve Jobs by leaping from the roof of FoxConn's highrise factory. The agreement, it appears, is being honored in the breach as workers continue exercising their right to die rather than work six or seven days a week, twelve hours a day assembling the wonderful Apple i-Pad.

And in the West, we see verification of Goldsmith's prediction in real unemployment rates of 20% or more in Britain, the US, Greece, Spain, Slovenia and other countries, and unsustainable growth in national budget deficits, as the design capacities of welfare safety nets are vastly exceeded and government revenues contract.

Meantime, the zombiefication of Western economies continues as the disaffected and the unemployed demand governments: "share the wealth" and the US Government crafts an insurance industry rip-off called "healthcare reform" to further burden the 99%.

But, some might say: Look at Germany. The economy is strong; unemployment there is falling nor rising; all that's needed is for the rest of the West to emulate the Germans.

But that is the mistake made by the guy who said "you can't outrun the bear."

Germany doesn't need to outrun the Chinese bear, they need only outrun the rest of the Eurozone nations. For Germans, this is not hard. Germany's manufacturing industries are better than those in the rest of the Eurozone, which means that they capture a disproportionate share of the Eurozone's export trade. The better Germany's trade balance, the higher the exchange rate for the Euro and the tougher it is for the rest of the Eurozone to to compete internationally. The more poorly the rest of the Eurozone does in international trade, the lower the Euro and the better Germany does in international trade.

Germany's success is contingent on the failure of Greece and the rest of the Eurozone.

The Germans are smart, they work hard, they have wonderful discipline.

The result?

They do extremely well in harness with a bunch of losers.

If the Germans revert to the Deutsche mark, they will not have it so easy, although they will still do well relative to most of the rest of the West because they are harder working, more disciplined and better organized.

While they will continue to dominate in mechanical engineering, they will thrive also by designing and snapping together cheap components outsourced to Asia and low-wage Eastern Europe. But this is a negative sum game that, by definition, not everyone can play.

See also
The Independent: [UK] Jobs market faces 'slow, painful contraction'
The Guardian: Fight for the right to work

Rafeef Ziadah 'We teach life, sir' : A poem about Palestinians and the media

Europe: The Perils of Complacency

Source: The modern typewriter

The UK urgently needs to wean itself off international finance and get back to what it did well 150 years ago, making and selling quality things and services. That will mean an attitudinal revolution in the UK ...

That's a quote from a discussion at the Slog, which prompted some reflection.

One thing the above-quoted remark brought to mind was a cartoon, in the style of the 19th Century Punch Magazine, which seemed to exemplify the thinking of many Europeans during the present moment of financial shock. It portrayed a fat man watching a cricket match on the village green and wearing a look of astonishment at the moment of being struck in the stomach by the ball.

Sadly, I was unable to find the image on the Internet, which raises the interesting though irrelevant question of whether I retain in memory more images than Google has stored on its servers. But Google did provide a link to the image of the sinking Titanic and a note by the Modern Typewriter:

On April 14th, 1912, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm. ... the Captain ordered the lifeboats to start leaving the ship. The passengers were frightened. They thought that leaving such a safe ship into a[n] “unsafe” lifeboat wouldn’t be smart. So they refused to enter the boat[s].

The insistence of some in Europe on clinging to the past, and on assuming that what Europeans did better than the rest of the World 150 years ago they can do better than the rest of the World today with little more than an adjustment in attitude, is reminiscent of the belief of those on the Titanic who apparently thought that if they kept a stiff upper lip and refrained from panic they could stay aboard the warm, comfortable sinking ship indefinitely, without need to brave the cold ocean in a tiny lifeboat.

The question these people need to ask is how can Britons get back to making things, quality or otherwise, when competing with those in Asia and elsewhere who are earning a tenth or less of what UK workers earn?

150 years ago, Britain was the workshop of the world because she had the world’s most advanced industrial technology powered by the World's largest coal industry.

Today, energy is available everywhere and the most advanced technology is moved to wherever labor is cheapest -- and that includes not only factory labor, but much white collar labor including design, software engineering, all kinds of R & D and back office work in financial services, publishing, marketing, etc.

There appear to be only three ways Britain (or any Western nation) can revive its manufacturing sector, these being to: (1) construct a massive tariff wall that excludes cheap products from low wage economies, (2) print massive amounts of money, while keeping a tight lid on nominal wages, thereby driving real wages to the Asian level, or (3) subsidize wages to create a work force that can be employed at internationally competitive rates, i.e., by wealth transfers from the 1% to the 99%.

It seems that the inflationary route (plus mass immigration of third world labor to help drive market wages down) is the route that, without public acknowledgment, has been chosen. To be effective, it will take many years, possibly a decade or two, and it will cause much social conflict in a period during which multinational corporations that can take advantage of opportunities for wage arbitrage continue to reap huge profits by off-shoring production and services.

In the meantime, something like one quarter of the Western world's workforce continue to be treated as so much useless baggage to be kept alive in a demoralized and degraded condition on food stamps or other forms of welfare including residential programmes in prisons and mental hospitals.

Prosperity or Suicide: A tale of two climate policies

By James Corbett

climategate.tv November 7, 2011: A controversial carbon tax is set to pass the Australian Senate this week, even as the Irish government has decided it will put its own climate legislation on the back burner and a new British study finds that after two brutally harsh winters in a row, the Brits are more concerned with heating their homes than meeting their legally-binding emission reduction targets.

Are we witnessing the withering denouement of the whole global warming climate disruption fiasco? If so, it couldn’t have come at a better time; the glitterati of the Hollywood “activist” community are preparing to descend on Durban for COP17, the annual UN self-immolation-fest where carbon eugenicists and Hollywood hypocrites congregate each year to do their thing…and by “their thing” I mean flying thousands of miles in their private jets and driving the few miles from their airport in their stretch limousines to lecture the little people about having the audacity to want to take one flight a year to go on vacation (when they can afford it). Did I mention that the COP conference generates as much as 41,000 tons of carbon “equivalent,” roughly equal to the same amount of emissions produced by a city the size of Manchester in the same period?

The UN climate conference has descended into self-parodying farce and country after country is turning away from economically disastrous climate policies in the name of crackpot science claiming that humans can prevent the global thermostat from going up 2°C. Perhaps the nations of the world have finally realized that all of these numbers, the 350 ppm of carbon dioxide and the 2°C warming and the 50% emission cuts are all completely arbitrary. Or perhaps they realized that climate science increasingly relies on computer models instead of actual science. Maybe it’s because recent studies disprove the carbon dioxide/temperature link at the very heart of the scare? Or it could be that the globe has signally failed to warm over the past decade despite the biggest spikes in carbon emissions yet.

Of course, the warmists will tell you that global warming in fact predicts the bitterly cold winters and record snowfalls across the Northern hemisphere in recent years. But then, they also said that global warming predicted less snowfall. They will also tell you (in peer-reviewed literature, no less) that manmade carbon emissions are behind the speeding up of the Gulf Stream and the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, an increase in malaria and a decrease in malaria, more North Atlantic cyclones and less North Atlantic cyclones, the embiggenning of squids and the ensmallening of squids, less rain in the Sahel and more rain in the Sahel (and even less or more rain in the Sahel) and dozens of other cases in which every possible scenario leads to exactly one culprit: human civilization.

Ever since the breaking of climategate, the public at large has increasingly woken up to the agenda, one that was set out in black and white by the Club of Rome in their 1991 book The First Global Revolution:

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.

And now we have finally arrived at the spot where the politicians are beginning to accept the reality that their long dreamed-of carbon tax power grab is politically viable no more…except in Australia. What Australia hopes to achieve by implementing its own scheme for carbon suicide, a bizarre mish-mash of carbon tax and emissions trading that the majority of Australians are against, is not exactly clear. It has already raised the ire of one chemical company, a methanol producer that would have produced $14 billion in export earnings if it weren’t for the tax, which would cost them $1 billion. Their solution? Move to China, where there is no tax…but emission productions are four times higher.

And so as our brethren down under prepare for the dismantling of their economy in the name of the problem that never was, the otherwise free peoples of the world wish them luck. They’re going to need it. But at least the contrast will be stark and apparent between those countries that have chosen to abandon the climate craziness and those like Australia that continue to pursue this madness right down to their frosty graves.

Recognition at last -- sort of

Only a blogger with the modesty of a saint can refrain from looking, at least occasionally, at his or her usage stats.

Source

A harmless vanity it might be thought, but in reality a dangerously corrupting one. If revelations about the occult practices of the elite out-poll earnest writings about globalization and unemployment in Windsor, Ontario, the natural inclination will be to delve deeper into the mysteries of Skull and Bones or the Kabbalah and to attend a little less to the difficulties of the economically disadvantaged.

 Likewise, if the semi-naked Angelina pulls 'em in, why not follow the lead of Pornographer Poop Murdoch and turn your blog into a really profitable pictorial venture.

But before stooping to that, we rather pathetically indulged our vanity by doing a google search for the first sentence of our piece: The New American World Order: How It Works.

Astonishingly, it came up all over the place, including:

poorrichards blog, with a link back to Canspeccy -- which was very polite -- plus a couple of comments at last count, including one, it must be admitted, by ourself.

sodahead.com, with a link back, not to CanSpeccy, but to poorrichards blog!

Sheesh, when I was a publisher, we worried about copyright violation. Now I'm worrying about identity annihilation. But it was good to see that Sodahead followers had expressed 44 "opinions" as of this AM., including "rats", "locusts" and "scumbags," all views with which I fully concur.

Google Groups, Alt.politics reproduces the piece with the seemingly mandatory link back to PoorRichards blog. But their post induced this remarkable comment:

Yeah but the HIB36 differential would overcapacite the generic intrinsic value of the isomorphic face of the exothermically facilitation palate vastly recharging the meromorphic synthesis!

If we could hypothesize the external equivalent to a non-mestasynthetic principled lower ergonomically biased outstripped metaphysically dominant exterior, the pseunomically result could be achieved!!!

Think about it!!

Wow, thinking about that hurts. But metapseudonomically, it must be true that the generic intrinsic value of the isomorphic face is exothermically facilitated -- It says so in the Star Ship Enterprise operating manual for the dilithium crystal regeneration module.

Liquida also attributes our masterpiece to poorrichards blog.

It's even discussed, sort of, at WhatReallyHappened, with, now as I am compelled to expect, a link back to PoorRichards blog.

Source

But I love this. Here it is. My post translated into Russian!And with comments like, according to Google Translate:

The communism beat Chorus presence? Plen's absurd, Kadafi e beat spike pichovete media presence. In Syria Search string Horatio yes protestirat and nyakak si ce ozovavat zastrelyani, Sigourney goods for Teb pack e absurd pretext, cutting nyakvi there neka B w grmyat. Izobscho otkde nakde integer reaching tazi idea for imerializm?

LOL, or "Plen's absurd," as they say in Russian!

Oops! No it's not Russian, it's Bulgarian. The correct translation should be:

As for flat brains are once more divide the world of capitalists and communists? The facts are clear - the U.S. aggressors and will get his. As happened with the Soviet Union. As happened with Austria-Hungarian Empire. And so it goes back in history ... And to tell you, one of the biggest successes of these where they cut these global plans is that succeeded instilled in people's minds the idea of ​​"equality" in the name of which so much thunder and thunder. I think that from the moment the egg begins to divide, you become different. After all, all people are different in so many things ... Instead of trying to "oednakvim" a reasonable thing is to try to use its unique features to achieve the desired result. But Nooo, "equality for all" blah blah-blah-. Realize, people, the world needs most of all from a totally new, radical ideology, rather than chopleneto an old one, which for the past 100 years has proved to be absurd thousand times ... Enough of these democracies there, memokratsii, communism and tempodobni kretenii, they do not work. History proves it.

Well, nobody's going to disagree with that.

And ephemeral mention seems to have been made in a dozen other places.

Interesting. I'll hold off on the girly pics for now, and concentrate more on dissing the NWO.

Iran: Israel's Last Stand? The price of not learning from history ...

By YaYa Canada

Click image to enlarge

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here to put your minds at rest about the Sarkozy/Obama tête-à-tête regarding Netanyahu (and you think women are catty gossips!). It was careless indeed, but it is "a tale told by an idiot ... signifying nothing". Each of these guys, including Netanyahu and his sidekick Barak, is "a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more".

There is no love lost between Netanyahu and Obama. And it's not as if Obama and Sarkozy are lovers themselves, now is it? Just shaking hands with each other puts their teeth on edge. See the tight set of their jaws? See how Sarkozy grabs Obama's arm instead of his hand? Perhaps he has run out of Monk Wipes. Unfortunately their strings don't allow for a good, honest Punch and Satan show.

Rest assured, everything will continue as usual despite even Abe Foxman's hysteria, which is merely the typical knee-jerk reaction to everything that justifies his existence. The US and France will still back Israel if "attacked" by Iran, because "restructuring" the Middle East (read "taking control of the oil countries") is where it's at, man.
 
Notice there is no comment from the Bibi camp. He's too busy trying to prove Iran is "racing" toward nuclear weaponry. And what could be more careless than threatening war with Iran? Blaming it on a leak from Mossad and Shin Bet just doesn't cut it at this stage:

"Netanyahu portrayed the equation at the beginning of his term as: [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is Hitler; if he is not stopped in time, there will be a Holocaust. There are some who describe Netanyahu's fervour on this subject as an obsession: all his life he's dreamed of being Churchill. Iran gives him the chance."

Gilad Atzmon, popular Israeli jazz saxophonist with degrees in philosophy says (See VIDEO) that the guys running Israel have no sense of history - believe it or not! - and have learned nothing from it; they have gained no understanding of consequences. Only three years after being liberated from Hitler's camps, they tried to annihilate the Palestinians. They lost self-esteem and international sympathy in Lebanon, they lost more of it in Gaza, and they're going to lose completely with their designs on Iran. Netanyahu is leading Israel toward its last stand.

Atzmon accepts the label of "proud, self-hating Jew", and he highly approves of revisionism. History is always revised by the future, he says - we view it differently from the vantage point of our current experiences.

If you can't get hold of or don't have time to read Atzmon's book "The Wandering Who?", the above-linked video provides an excellent gist. A brilliant Atzmon truism: "While in the past an "anti-Semite" was someone who hates Jews, nowadays it is the other way around, an anti-Semite is someone the Jews hate." (Pg. 54)

Are you a far-right-wing extremist, racist, anti-Semite against genocide of your own race and nation?

"The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups."

So says the Guardian in an article headed by a photograph of the psychopathic mass murderer Anders Breivic. In support of its contention the Guardian cites:

Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. ... they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires. ... [the survey] reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men.

See how the Guardian employs intellectual sleight of hand to link the beliefs of a broad section of the population, namely "the young, mainly men," about which the Guardian author offers no information at all, with attitudes expressed only by members of unspecified "parties and street organisations."

As the "parties and street organizations" are unidentified, we really have no idea who the Guardian is talking about.

Are they goose-stepping neo-Nazi groups, skinheads, BNP guys with raised fists, blokes wearing swastika armbands or with "fuck-off" tattooed on their foreheads, with whom the Guardian wishes us to identify all young European males? Or are they just ordinary young people, the sort of folks who might vote for the UK Independence Party?

And what, exactly was this "hardline nationalist sentiment" that was expressed by members of unspecified organizations in unspecified countries?

Well, for one thing, the Guardian tells us, they are "Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU."

Wow, how dreadful. They're probably climate warming skeptics, which as everyone who reads the Guardian knows means they are actually climate denialists, aka holocaust deniers and rabid genocidal anti-Semites. Yeah, we definitely don't want to believe anything they do.

And then there's:

their generalised fear about the future [which] is focused on cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a concern.

Sheesh. What dreadful people. And "fearful of the future." How irrational. We only face WWIII, enslavement by a plutocratic elite that owns all the politicians that count and plans to cull the World population down to 5% of the current number.

As for folks who care about their cultural identity -- "hardline nationalism" in Guardian-speak, obviously they must be a bunch of racially motivated cultural supremacists. I mean, why else would they object to a Muslim politician in Britain, a member of the last government, in fact, calling for the takeover of Parliament by Muslims?

Can you think of anything worse than seeking to preserve your own culture?

If you're a Guardian reader, evidently not.

Then the knock-out punch:

We're at a crossroads in European history

the Guardian quotes Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP

In five years' time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency.

Here we have a central tenet of the Guardian, lib-left, political-correctness-police mentality. If you are not for the destruction of your own race, culture and religious tradition, you're an ultra-nationalist, xenophobe, (xenophobia is illegal in Europe, by the way) Islamophobe and anti-Semite. (But on what evidence is the assertion of anti-Semitism based? None, actually.)

Oh, but here's another zinger in case your struggling to rise from the canvas after that below-the-belt charge of anti-Semitism:

The report comes just over three months after Anders Breivik, a supporter of hard right groups, shot dead 69 people at youth camp near Oslo.

There you are: condemned through association by contemporaneity. (But at least you're clear of the anti-Semitism charge: Breivic is a Zionist.)

Or are we to suppose that most Europeans, over two-thirds of the population, that is, are Zionist nutters and psychopathic killers like Anders Breivik just because they happen to share Breivik's opposition to mass immigration?

Then, taking another shot at linking opposition to the genocide of the European peoples with anti-Semitism -- in case you were'nt suckered by the first shot -- the Guardian quotes Thomas Klau from the European Council on Foreign Relations:

As antisemitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century.

So there: the Guardian has you labelled.

If you oppose genocide by mass immigration and top-down forced multi-culturalism, you must be an Islamophobe, which is just like being an anti-Semite, which means you're no better than a neo-Nazi, goose-stepping, moron, skinhead punk with multiple body piercings.
.
Put shortly, the Guardian is a purveyor of lying bollocks, which is to say, BBC-style state-inspired propaganda, which is not surprising since the Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust which is headed by Liz Forgan, a former Managing Director of BBC Radio.

Clever innit. The state now runs the "radical" press.

Or put another way, the Guardian equates democracy with racism, facism, Nazism, anti-Semitism and hatred of the religion of Islam about which most native Europeans know nothing and care nothing, other than that it not dictate the law of their country or result in the extinction of their own race and culture.

Again conflating democratic opposition to genocide by mass immigration with Islamophobia, the Guardian then states:

... parties touting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic ideas have spread beyond established strongholds in France, Italy and Austria to the traditionally liberal Netherlands and Scandinavia ...

Bloody lying fools.

There ARE too many immigrants in the UK', say seven in 10 Britons (Daily Mail headline August 10, 2011).

Nothing there about Islamophobia. The Brits just don't like being replaced by people from elsewhere as the majority have already been replaced in the City of Leicester, in many London Boroughs and in other large urban communities.

In Birmingham, Britain's second largest city, English children in primary school are not only outnumbered by children of immigrants, they are not even the largest single ethnic group.

That's genocide.

To be quite clear, here's Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide":

... often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary...

And the process of displacement will continue unabated even if immigration were to cease now, because the immigrants are more fertile than the aging British and other European populations.

Appreciative immigrants to the UK (Source)

What's more, Europe's immigrant communities are not free of those with a settler mentality. Some are in no doubt about the possibility of racial, political and religious conquest.

Allowing mass immigration to Europe amounts to a policy of genocide. And according to the Guardian, the liberal left, and the political-correctness-enforcement agencies, opposition to genocide by mass immigration is racism, haulocaust denial and extreme-far-right-wingism. Or as the picture with which the Guardian headed its article is intended to convey, if you are opposed to genocide of your own people, you are a psychopathic nutter like Anders Breivic.

But then the Guardian's seems always to have been soft on genocide, whether perpetrated by the ex-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the new Union of European Socialist Republics.

During the 1930's, Malcolm Muggeridge, the Guardian's correspondent in Russia, submitted eye-witness reports from the Ukraine of state-imposed mass starvation, the Holodermor, which killed six to ten million white Christians, but  as Wikipedia relates, these articles were published only in an expurgated form, without identification of the author.  

Obama on Netanyahu: I deal with him every day

Microphones accidently left on after G20 meeting pick up private conversation between US, French presidents. Sarkozy admits he 'can't stand' Israeli premier. Obama: You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day! YNet News.com

Which makes it clear, for any who may have doubted it, where Obama gets his orders.

The report continues:

The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that reporters present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the subject of the embarrassing comments.

A member of the media confirmed Monday that "there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Which makes it clear, for any who may have doubted it, that keeping you informed is not a mainstream media priority -- unless you're an Israeli, apparently.

Mohammed Din

Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home, little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying. --Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was cleaning for me.

"Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din, deferentially.

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a polo-ball to a khitmatgar?

"By your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself."

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the veranda; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground. Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo-ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the "little son."

He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief.

"This boy," said Imam Din, judicially, "is a budmash--a big budmash. He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior." Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam Din.

"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib is not angry, and take him away." Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had now gathered all his shirt round his neck, stringwise, and the yell subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said Imam Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is Muhammad Din, and he is a budmash." Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round in his father's arms, and said gravely, "It is true that my name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a man!"

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the garden, we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side, and "Salaam, Muhammad Din" from mine. Daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down the grounds. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six shriveled old marigold flowers in a circle round it.

Outside that circle again was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure my garden.

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all hope of mending. Next morning, I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said "Talaam, Tahib," when I came home from office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that, by my singular favor, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls--always alone, and always crooning to himself.

A gaily-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in the dust. It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive, and no "Talaam, Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left Imam Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din.

The story of Mohammed Din was written by Rudyard Kipling at the age of 20. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 8 September, 1886, reprinted in the United Services College Chronicle on 18 December the same year, and collected in Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in successive later editions of that collection.

Some critical comments on this story are gathered here.

Rudyard Kipling, declined most of the honors offered him, including a knighthood, the Poet Laureateship, and the Order of Merit, but in 1907 he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature.