Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-R: Is this not a work of art?

I’m afraid my old TZ7 (which replaced my earlier TZ5 due to my clumsiness) has now had to be replaced with the new TZ30. The reason?  At some unknown moment, my usual dollard-ish clumsiness put a scratch on the lens…..  the whole recent trip to Australia is marred (to my eyes at least) by a fuzzy mark off-centre at 2 o’clock.

I wanted the red one as it’s a beautiful thing indeed.  In fact, I hunted to get one at a good price within a reasonable time-scale, but have settled for the black one for cost and because I can get it now!..  (The Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-K).

Gratuitous photo of Iggy Pop from October 25, 1977 at the State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s now on the way so watch this space for my opinions and results later!!.  I’m extremely hopeful due to the reviews I’ve read.

I’ve waited and have passed over the TZ20 and other incarnations due to unfavourable comments and lack of substantial change in their features.  Now, the TZ30 has tipped the balance for me.  The GPS feature introduced with the TZ10 hasn’t had much interest to me, but maybe this’ll change all that!

Specification Highlights for me are:

• The 20x optical zoom (naturally) in a body that’s less obtrusive than my current TZ7.
• Better ISO performance – reputed to be very good at low light down to ISO800.
• Better burst mode shooting.  It’s supposed to be 10 fps whereas my TZ7 only does about three….  I have some stop-action movie ideas that I started with my old Fuji FinePix F30 that I’d like to continue and expand upon.  The F30 did reasonable frames per second whereas the TZ7 is just too slow for the effects I want.
• Semi-automatic panorama shooting.  Much better than the old manual stitch mode….
• Rapid autofocus (AF) – reputed to be 1/10 second.  Combine this with burst mode and nature and sport shots should be great with at least one being on the button.

The info on the Panasonic site is here, though what it doesn’t mention is that the TZ30 battery is also used in the TZ7, which is a bonus for me!  I even have a spare already!  WaHaY!

Specification Gotchas:

The only one I’ve spotted that directly affects my expectations is that in burst mode, the auto-focus is fixed once the burst starts, at 10fps.  However, to counter this the feature is more variable than I’m used to in that with burst mode set to 5fps autofocus and zoom work concurrently!  This definitely needs playing with!

My Standard Expectations:

• Minimal blue/purple casts or fringing at high contrast edges.
• Wonderful summer shots with vibrant colour.
• Much better focus changing in video zooming.

My Quantum Leap Hopes:

• The same or better sound quality that the F30 and TZ7 delivered.  Both produced full non-clipped audio sound at rock concerts!  The TZ7 does it in stereo.  (see my Iggy Pop video below, discussed in this post, Iggy at Hammersmith).
• Much, much faster autofocus and burst shooting than I’m used to.  This includes the continuous autofocus & zoom at 5fps mentioned earlier.
• Much better auto-focus on video zoom especially and pictures generally.  I’m hoping the intelligence of the thing has been re-jigged……    To explain…….

The tendency on my TZ7 is to focus on the near-field whether it’s bright or dark. Yet I want it to focus on what the human eye drifts to, i.e., bright objects.  On the TZ7 I’ve had to use human intervention to override the camera expectations….
The video below shows this.

For me the prime purpose of a compact camera is to get the best shot possible as fast as possible.

At the Stooges concert at Hammersmith below, I’d waited for ages and then suddenly the band came on and kicked off immediately! There was no time to prime the focus because I knew I’d miss some performance, so I had to make allowances for the camera deficiencies by pulling back zoom and trying to get autofocus on the bright areas by field drifting.
Ideally, I should have asked Mr Pop to restart his concert so that I could stop the video, auto-focussing on maximum zoom to distance and then restarting the video before he kicked off again.  ;-)  Obviously that wasn’t going to happen so I did the best I could without missing any of the performance of my historic bête noire idol.
As it was, my guess was right, even to continuing filming without a break, because against all rumours and knowledge that the Raw Power album was to be played in order, it wasn’t!              Search & Destroy immediately followed Raw Power.
 

Related articles

• New camera, whee! (lifeasacynic.blogspot.com)
• Panasonic TZ30 (pocket-lint.com)
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7/TZ10 Review (digital-photography-school.com)
• Hands On: Panasonic Lumix TZ30, HX-WA2 Camcorder (gizmodo.com.au)
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 (blitzreview.com)

McCord Letter To Bill Driscoll re:Paul Myhill 2005

One of Protandim‘s creators has this past hour published a letter which reveals certain facts that Lifevantage wish to smokescreen.

58 minutes ago, Paul Myhill said, as a way of admission, his future is in the hands of god….

For those that haven’t heard of it, Protandim is a plant based tablet that has unproven effects, but for which the MLM company Lifevantage make innuendo-based fantastic claims.

LazyMan and Money has a fantastic take on the whole scam.

My reputation, integrity, credibility and character - All are in God's hands. - Myhill

In short, it’s snake oil, and a scam, just like many others from that cesspit of free market capitalism, Utah.

• We’ve seen Google Treasure Chest for which Pacific Webworks and their promoters have been doubly hammered by Google and the FTC.
• We’ve Canadian seen Jesse Willms who has been hammered by Google, Oprah and the FTC yet ran many affiliates through Utah.
• We’ve seen near neighbours Monavie.  Same crap, just waiting to get the FTC knock on the door.  This is LazyMan’s take on them.  It’s scary stuff.

Roll on the FTC.  They’ve got to weigh in on these sharks soon.

Paul Myhill's Open Letter On Facebook

Update on 24 April 2012

Rather than a comment, (which isn’t so taggable and relevant within search engines), here’s Myhill’s open letter (open – geddit?  – in the fullest meaning of the word).  Text follows below.

OPEN LETTER TO MY DEAR LIFEVANTAGE FAMILY

 

Needless to say, the company and I are not on good terms right now. Quite frankly, Doug Robinson’s email to the LifeVantage distributors is fraught with error and misrepresentation. In fact, he gave very little attention to me personally on this matter, hardly exchanging a word with me concerning it. He simply didn’t have the time for me.

 

It is very well documented that the company was founded on a pledge to give shares, and a percentage of profits, to the charitable cause that it helped to start – rescuing orphaned and abandoned children from being abused, exploited, trafficked and enslaved. This was my “Why?” for joining Bill Driscoll in starting LifeVantage in the first place . . . and it is a cause that he graciously took on as his own and championed also. I’m sure he’s getting many hugs in Heaven as a result of the 15,000 children who are free from slavery today because of our work together.

 

I will be more-than-willing to make public all that documentation, especially since it was all public information to begin with. This charitable pledge was also the basis for which I assigned my invention (not Dr. McCord’s invention!) to LifeVantage. As soon as Bill and I assigned the patent to LifeVantage the pledge was sadly taken out of company materials, almost immediately. I naturally felt quite betrayed. Again, I can provide full documentation supporting this and it can be easily verified in the public record – through company press releases, investor presentation materials, SEC filings, etc. My resignation letter was also a matter of public record and alludes to the fact that this pledge – which was foundational to the company and my very involvement in it – needed to be kept, otherwise it would represent a promise broken to the original founders and all of LifeVantage’s stakeholders. The erasing of the pledge from company materials was the main reason for my departure, which the original Board and transition management team can certainly attest to. I was quite the thorn in their sides, constantly verbalizing the need to keep the pledge. As such, there is no disputing the existence of the original commitment. It’s simply undeniable.

 

I have been quite clear in my communications with LifeVantage management that the company still owes the charity now known as Traffic Jam 100,000 shares as part of its original pledge to match the Founders’ donation of shares to that same charitable vehicle. This amount was supposed to match Bill Driscoll’s gracious donation of 100,000 shares that came in a couple of months late. I’m sure if he were alive today he’d be greatly disappointed that the company never followed through on that commitment . . . and other commitments. Bill and I had our differences, but I also owe it to him as my brother-in-arms to get his shares matched, as he fully expected would be done when he made his generous gift in the first place. I owe it to his memory and legacy. And I owe it to his family – to see more children rescued because of his gift and defense of the pledge.

 

Despite the implication made in Doug’s letter, I never approached the company to ask anything for myself. In fact, it was David Brown who suggested that I become a “Goodwill Ambassador” for the company with a job role that would give me a greater platform to share the “correct” company history and bring attention to the fine work of the Traffic Jam Campaign. It was through that process that compensation (as with any job) was sought to channel to Traffic Jam. I have quite a few emails that show that this compensation was for the purpose of supporting the work of Traffic Jam. I’m on record multiple times stating that I gave everything away . . . and would give it away again.

 

It is with great sadness that I write this on the eve of my Birthday – not exactly the “gift” I was hoping for . . . or hoping to give. Since 2008, I have been pleading with the company to correct its marketing materials – to reflect that Joe is not the “Inventor” or “Creator” or “Scientist behind” Protandim; that Protandim wasn’t “developed after 40 years of research;” and that it didn’t consist of a “laundry list” of 40 ingredients that Joe whittled down to the current formula. This is all simply untrue. I’m sure the company will try to put some sort of further spin on this now and try to convince people otherwise, but the truth is the truth and will always come out in the end. Darkness can’t hide from the light.

 

The CORE botanical formula I forwarded to Joe included the current five botanicals, plus one additional one – all in the EXACT same proportions/weights as the current formula (all 1/3 of the original to get it into one pill), but with Milk Thistle subsequently bumped up at my suggestion. The other ingredients were part of an “all-in-one” (multi-formula) addition to that CORE botanical formula that I developed. Given such indisputable facts (and that the initial patent was filed one month before we even met Joe), how am I NOT the creator? How is Joe THE creator? The simple email record, and even a letter from Joe himself, clearly show that the current company communications are downright false and misleading . . . and, in the eyes of many, perpetuate an ongoing fraud – one that the SEC and FTC should be made aware of.

 

I initially stated that “nobody lied,” desiring to give this current management team the benefit of the doubt and chalking it to human error and the discontinuity of company management in general. But then, month after month went by with the same erroneous materials still being widely distributed by the company, despite their own admission to me that Joe isn’t the creator. These same materials are on the company website TODAY. I just don’t get how a company can keep doing that, with full knowledge that the materials are sending the wrong message to current and new distributors. Many times I wrote emails (which I’d be happy to share with you) and each time nothing was done to take down the offending materials.

 

I’ll be glad to once again share that whole “Protandim Development History” with you, which is backed up by meticulous documentation, the full email record, plus personal notes and commentaries. It spanned over 20 blog entries. I’m an “open book.” I had nothing to hide. I shared it all.

 

I’m sure, though, that if I were to re-post Protandim’s development history, the company would claim that I was then “giving away company secrets” and would once again try to silence the true history of the product’s creation – MY creation of Protandim – that occurred for almost ten months before I even met Joe. The reality is that the company misrepresentations have gone on for so long now that they have no choice but to try to silence the truth. Just you wait and see. I can almost hear the “cease and desist” letter being typed up right now. And I can almost picture the new “watered-down” version of the history that the company will now come up with.

 

Doug mentioned in his letter that I found the company response unacceptable. Well, one of those unacceptable conditions was that I sign a new set of releases (to silence me telling the true Protandim story again) and that I pull down my “LifeVantage / Protandim Founder’s Page” on Facebook which, of course, would be in addition to my blog that was already pulled down. Do you see the common theme here? Silence. Silence. And more Silence. I’m a high-justice person who stands for truth and integrity and, despite the company trying to buy that silence by offering for Traffic Jam to be featured at convention, I told them that I couldn’t in good conscience do that. I’m not signing away my voice. My “Founder’s Page” stays. My voice stays. And my appeal to get the company to meet its commitments . . . stays.

 

Do you want a company of integrity? Well, then, don’t let them silence the truth any more. Protandim wasn’t an “idea” that Bill and I took to Joe. It was a full formula that even Joe stated in a letter was almost at its “final embodiment.” And the company’s charitable pledges to Traffic Jam wasn’t an “idea” that I just came up with. It was represented in multiple press releases and SEC filings and collateral materials. If you don’t believe me, go to EDGAR and check yourself for at least the SEC part of it.

 

Ever wonder why the company took down all the archived press releases? Because it backs up what I’m saying and what I’ve been asking, not for myself, but on behalf of trafficked and enslaved children.

 

Given the erroneous wording in Doug’s email, I can only assume now that the company has chosen the issue of the 100,000 shares to try to discredit me – making it sound like I’ve been making selfish and unreasonable demands of the company – while at the same time trying to discredit the true history of Protandim’s development. Doug, of course, fails to mention in his email that the “great deal of material” that I posted on the Internet concerning “my view” of that development was 1.) Taken down by me as a sign of “good faith” and 2.) Was only posted in the first place after I reached out to the company multiple times beforehand – with no response.

 

I’m not sure how Doug can call it “my view” of Protandim’s development anyway, considering that it included hundreds of emails (that were copied or sent to dozens upon dozens of people) as well as a number of other source documents that were widely circulated. It’s not just “my view,” as demonstrated by the substantiated, well-documented evidence. Of course, if the company has its way, you probably won’t see any of that document and you’ll just have to accept Doug’s words that it was simply “my view” of events. Where was Doug during the development of Protandim? Who is he to challenge the clear evidence? Can he not see the patent was initially filed a full month before Joe even came into the picture? Does he not see whose name is on the patent?

 

For months, I’ve taken steps of “good faith” and have expected the company to do the same – to act in “good faith” to take down the erroneous marketing materials that were propagating that Joe was the inventor/creator of Protandim. Sadly, the company never reciprocated. The 100,000 share issue, unfortunately, has now become the easy point of contention that allows LifeVantage to not have to give credit to me for my invention. By making it so public and contentious, LifeVantage now has a convenient excuse to not have to include Bill and me in our rightful place in the company history. Something that should have been celebrated can now be easily swept under the rug because I’m the “bad guy” with “unreasonable” expectations who asked the company to honor its commitments. It now allows them to feel better about themselves somehow – for so long being negligent in getting the real story about Protandim’s development out there; for so long casting me in a “false light” by commission and omission; for so long keeping up the erroneous materials to the point of malice and great hurt.

 

Company of integrity, Doug says? How about keeping its original promises to match the founders’ shares to rescue children? How about keeping its original promises to give 10% of pre-tax net profits away for children and related humanitarian causes? How about filing an 8-K correction notice with the SEC every time the erroneous message of Joe being the “creator” went out? How about the promise to correct the development history while at the same time keeping up the offending materials that lead people to believe Joe was the inventor? How about David’s promise to “make it happen” for me to have a “Goodwill Ambassador” role with the company, to help further the purposes of Traffic Jam? How about the company’s constant encouragement for distributors to use the copyrighted material of ABC News for commercial purposes? How about all those big distributors who came over with down-lines allegedly “stolen” from Zrii? How about ALL the mentions of diseases when it’s clearly not permitted in the marketing of a supplement?

 

Integrity? Company of integrity? Actions speak louder than words.

 

This is a very sad day for me folks. The “petition” that Doug mentioned in his letter was merely me throwing up my arms in bewilderment and wondering why on earth the Board wasn’t fulfilling the matching pledge with a measly 100,000 shares when the evidence was so clear that 100,000 shares were missing (Believe me, I was asking for these shares long before the recent run-up in price). Even a math flunkey could see that the numbers didn’t add up and 100,000 shares were still owed. Instead of bringing the match to completion, with an amount of shares that pales in comparison to the fat stock options the executives are getting, they chose to make this big issue out of it. It could have been a cause for celebration. Instead, the company has chosen to create yet another public relations nightmare. I didn’t ask for that. They did it. And I’m baffled by it.

 

I started off with 5 million shares. Why on earth would I make all this fuss about 100,000 shares if it were not true? I’m a man of principle and the principle-of-the-matter is the shares are still owed. Gosh, by their reaction, you’d think I asked for the moon.

 

I merely responded by saying that I would put out the public information and ask distributors to let their voices be heard – for integrity and common sense. But somehow that’s now something portrayed as me being devious and destructive. Hello? Why would I try to destroy the stock of the company I’m trying to get shares from? Hello?

 

Conversely, I don’t believe the LifeVantage Board has acted in its fiduciary duty in this matter. I believe they are acting in a destructive manner. Why on earth would they bring about such a disruptive episode in the midst of such growth and promise? The missing shares are soooooooo obvious that they are missing from the match. I gave 200,000 shares. Bill gave 100,000 shares. the company gave 200,000 (matching mine) and, hello again, Bill’s shares didn’t get matched. 100,000 shares missing. You don’t need a mathematics degree to figure that one out. Why would the Board put so much at risk – the airing out of this laundry – instead of just issuing the shares to help rescue kids?! And celebrating it!

 

. . . Unless, of course, they were needing something to make me look “bad” or “unreasonable” so they don’t feel so bad about the incorrect company communications about who invented the product. And to release themselves from an obligation to correct that history in a way that celebrates Bill’s and my involvement.

 

. . . Now they can just quietly remove the “creator” tag from Joe and hope that nobody notices. Just like they did when they removed the “inventor” tag from him.

 

Doug’s letter concludes by asking distributors to not get involved in anything that “disparages” the company. Wow. I asked the company to honor its commitment with a measly 100,000 shares to stop 11 year-olds from getting raped 20 times per day; to stop 7 year-olds from having to shoot their parents before being forcibly conscripted into a child militia. Now, if any distributor goes along with supporting what is clearly in the public record, and honoring their own conscience to see the pledge fulfilled for children such as these, they are in violation of their distributor’s agreement. Seriously?

 

Looks like the strong arm of silence rearing up again.

 

My apologies for rambling on in this open letter. Obviously I’m a passionate person – the same passion that brought Protandim into being in the first place. And, obviously, I’m quite upset right now – not just by these events, but how they’ve now been represented in Doug’s email.

 

Unfortunately, it’s the distributors and the children who lose out because of the Board’s baffling conclusion and Doug’s irrational choice to send out his email. Quite wreckless, if you ask me. Certainly not acting in the best interests of the shareholders. They turned a public relations celebration into a public relations nightmare.

 

I apologize to all of you that it has come to this. It certainly wasn’t my intention.

 

I want you all to know that I love you all and do indeed wish you the best. I will STILL use my “Founder’s Page” on Facebook as a place of encouragement and, given this recent turn of events, as a place of clarity and truth.

 

Blessings,

Paul

So there you have it.  Since this time, Myhill has been sat on by Lifevantage (as it turns out a kind of double-blackmail) and then stated that the shares were the thing to buy.  Following this, Lifevantage have made public pronouncements about their charitable donations to Myhill’s charitable organisation(s) and there’s now, apparently,  a kind of Machiavellian sweetness and light between them.

But whatever:   the business is still a snake-oil pyramid scheme founded on flawed and discredited “science” and promoted by MLM-hopping get-rich-quick wide-boys.  For more on these recent developments and a fuller history of investigations into the topic, see a few of LazyMan’s postings here:

• Paul Myhill: LifeVantage’s Communications are Downright False and Misleading, Perpetuate an Ongoing Fraud
• LifeVantage Bribes Paul Myhill To Hide the Truth About Protandim
• LifeVantage Used Company Insiders and Investors in Only Human Protandim Study
• LifeVantage Lies to SEC, Investors, Consumers about “Harvard” Study
• LifeVantage and Dr. Joe McCord Lied about the Creation of Protandim!

…….I won’t steal any more of Lazyman’s thunder and there much, much more on his site.  But from top to bottom, the volunteers and employees of all the charities financed by Myhill and/or Lifevantage should examine their hearts and ask themselves;

What value is there to a charity when it’s financed from deception?

So what if Myhill has had his photo taken with Elton John or whoever.

So what if Myhill plugs;

Paul Myhill Entertainer Plugs

“Meetings getting scheduled with Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Slash, Myles Kennedy, and many more. The TRAFFIC JAM Campaign (Stop Child Trafficking & Slavery) will be rocking this summer!”

Our Prime Ministers and Presidents are often photographed with the pariahs of the world.  Elton is one of the world’s biggest self-publicists and spend-thrifts.  So is Gaga.  So, so what?  There is no validation there.

It’s still a charity founded on deception.  It may have good aims.  It may be correctly financed and regulated -  though Vogel has shed great doubts over this (See here, here, here, here and here).  But it is financed by a pyramid scheme based MLM using a product with no proven benefit as the bait on the hook.

When the PR folk at Lady Gaga, Timberlake’s et al label’s get wind of the deceptions surrounding Myhill, will the charity campaign still be a-rockin’?  Will all of Zoe Hamilton’s (a loyal Myhill fan/worker/volunteer?) networking work be for naught?  Let’s see.

 Related articles

• LifeVantage Has Record Quarter (mlmblog.net)
• Brief Update: Protandim (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
• An open letter to People Who Write Open Letters (thepunch.com.au)

Embarrassing Smiles Cover Up Secrets and Lies

Tony Blair and Jack Straw

Jack Straw may have been “embarrassed” when he abolished his plans to abolish secret inquests which would have covered up his and Blair’s secret dealings over the euphemistically named extraordinary renditions (a.k.a. kidnappings and torture) that he initially claimed not to have done.

He may have been embarrassed about his son getting done in a tabloid sting for dope selling although his continued usage of the substance seems to have passed him by.

He may also have been embarrassed about being caught out for hiding the truth about using fake reasons to start the illegal war in Iraq.

Discovery and Personal Guilt

Embarrassment is not it though.  The real reason is our discovery of Straw & Blair’s hypocritical dealings over wars and torture, kidnap and illegal detention without trial, things that Straw’s government, and now our own coalition one, seek to hide.  That’s a deep guilt.

Was it guilt over the knowledge that as he was the head of an unaccountable web of spies, they were doing everything that any free democratic nation would naturally think abhorrent?

Or was it guilt over authorising these abhorrences to civilised behaviour?  Perhaps he knew that in 2005 the US was training already designated terrorists, in terrorism, on their own soil?

Extraordinary rendition, U.S. (and U.K!!) style

That’s the special relationship for ya!   Straw brought in the US-UK one-sided extradition agreement in 2003.  The following yearhe and Blair were found out to have started the war in Iraq on false pretences.  There then followed the endless investigations that dragged on for so long that folks forgot what they were about.

A collusion between the military, the law and politics from the establishment, designed to legally obfuscate by the dreary analysis of the minutiae of the webs of illegality they’d hatched?

We now find out, in the same year, 2004, that Straw and Blair were (supposedly) in government, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj were captured, bound in gaffa tape (her eyelid bound open for 17 hours during this process), kidnapped and transported to a foreign power (Libya) where they were tortured and imprisoned for seven years.

Straw said he knew nothing, so what exactly was he paid for?  Was he a stooge, a calm reassuring personae, quietly acquiescing to misdeeds on the grandest of scales in exchange for lifelong protection and a nice pension?

Abdel is now in the ruling government of Libya, having fought and beaten Gaddhafi, with The West’s help, let’s not forget….

See: Special report: Rendition ordeal that raises new questions about secret trials.  This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government.  It’s all there.  Detailed.  How Straw and Blair either instigated or permitted this to happen.

Cover Up Illegal Government Work by Invoking Secret Trials, “in the national interest”!

Killer Drone Aircraft

It’s all true.  Our own (and the US) secret services kidnapped and transported innocents from our own and foreign soils to foreign powers.  This was all done without the intervention of a judge, without court orders and in many cases (those in Guantanamo Bay for instance), without any immediate or subsequent trial.  They’re still doing it!

Bush, Cheney, Obama, Blair - their handiwork - it is estimated that >3ooo civilians have been killed by drones

The only difference between the recent actions of Jack Straw, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Blunket, Teresa May, Ken Clarke & David Cameron, and the historical actions of Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao and Adolf Hitler are that in the former, there’s been no trial and the people are still alive, and in the latter there were usually show or peremptory trials usually followed by immediate execution.

Stalins Handiwork

Though life is precious, today’s innocents (innocent unless proven guilty, remember) may have at times wished they were dead.

One man’s been locked up since just after Jack Straw brought in the extradition deal with the US…! He’s now destined for transport to the USA and has been in solitary confinement here, without trial, for 8 years!  Murderers get less than that!  His crime was to host an anti-American website using a US-based host.

Killer Drone Pilots

This is a bit like me.

• I hate much of what the USA & UK does in the name of freedom, because plainly, it’s not.
• I hate the undemocratic, illegal processes that the US and UK have done in the past (and now it appears are continuing to do) with a passion.
• This website is hosted in the USA (Dallas, Texas, to be exact).

Can I expect a knock on the door and to be gaffa-taped off to solitary soon?  Probably not, because I don’t promote war, in fact, it’s an abhorrence.

Meanwhile, thousands of civilians die in US drone attacks while a lawyer for the victims is mysteriously prevented from gaining a visa because of “technical difficulties”!

Terrorist Distractions

Haditha Killings - US marines get away with murder

Let’s not get distracted by today’s news that the European Court of Human Rights has allowed the extradition of a few “terror suspects” to be extradited to the USA though.

The targets have no chance to surrender, and the Afghan government has raised concerns. The drone strikes are dubbed ''Kill TV'' or ''Taliban TV'' because soldiers watch live video feeds of bombs and missiles detonating, with one source admitting it is uncomfortable viewing: ''You can see everything.''

Because the real devilish forces, whereby a supposedly civilised country like the United Kingdom can kidnap and torture with impunity, still exist.  Pregnant Fatima Bouchar was not a terrorist and nor was her husband.  Their terrifying ordeal at the hands of our secret service stands testament to that.

The Real Targets - our own freedoms

Even worse, our own dear whiter-than-white freedom-loving governments have now been found to have colluded in the kidnap, lied about having knowledge of the kidnap, and now seek to cover up any further public knowledge of this and other kidnaps (and worse, perhaps?) under the guise of “national security”.

These are the real devils in our midst.  They are the real terrorists.  Under false pretexts they continue to bomb civilians with drones and kidnap and torture those they can’t kill.  Though from different political persuasions, successive governments draft laws cover up the previous one’s actions.

What an evil nasty bunch they are.     Cameron and his crowing cohorts are just the latest in a long line.

Meanwhile,

• MPs and judges can retire to fully indexed-linked pensions,   unlike the rest of the public sector workers who have been recently brutalised and scape-goated in the press for the thieving behaviour of gambling banker-politicians.
• MPs and judges are protected from harm by the very secret services they’ve steered and governed while the rest of us are made

•  to feel fear at home, where none exists
• to feel loathed abroad, when we have done nothing

All due to the evil machinations of these few folk.

The Real Reason for Secret Trials and Internet Censorship

At least we can all now see the real reason for last week’s push for secret trials by Cameron and the ConDems – to cover up our government’s hypocritical, illegal, criminal, actions.

In future, all reporting of these actions will naturally be curtailed when the internet is thoroughly locked down and all we’ll be able to see will be tits, bums and football interspersed with Simon Cowell same-songs and holiday-home recipes of the day.  Everything will be like the front page of the Daily Mail website.  Some freedom, eh?

Question:  Why Pictures of Drones and Dead Innocents, Yet not many Kidnaps?

A. Simple.    It’s the same mentality of person that sends in the drones to kill innocents as kidnaps innocents.  In fact, it’s the same people.  They stand there smiling on our TVs, in suits, with the appropriate amount of gravitas dependant on the situation.

The real devils in our midst.  The real terrorists.

Related articles

• Special report: Documentary proof that Britain initiated ‘extraordinary rendition!’ (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
• Special report: the documents that prove Britain initiated rendition (guardian.co.uk)
• Coincidence, or the Power of Politicised Fiction? (spinelessliberal.wordpress.com)
• A tale of the ‘Palpably Absurd’: The (dis)trusting Tony Blair, Iraq, WMDs and the ‘Deal in the Desert’ (politicsontoast.com)
• The Wonderful World of Tony Blair (seeker401.wordpress.com)
• Johann Hari: Oil, blood money, and Blair’s last scandal (independent.co.uk)
• Police to question Jack Straw over torture in Libya (independent.co.uk)
• Rendition (infinitepirate.wordpress.com)
• Jack Straw asked to appear before US Senate committee over Lockerbie bomber release (telegraph.co.uk)
• Papers Prove UK Initiated Rendition (the2012scenario.com)
• Clause exposes MI6 not clean on dirty tricks (thehindu.com)
• Kim Sengupta: Yard may shed light on Blair’s role in Libya (independent.co.uk)
• Leading article: Britain’s reputation is in the dock over rendition (independent.co.uk)
• Straw to Face the Law (order-order.com)

Cars Queue Needlessly for Fuel

In the spirit of the recent government diktat from dorky Francis Maude  for all motorists to get into their cars, then queue for hours to buy up all available petrol, I’ve decided to jump the gun on the water shortage!

I’ve now run round the house turning all the taps on and put the lawn sprinklers on full blast because I’m just outside the hosepipe ban area.

Hosepipe Ban

Five Baths!

My partner plans to have five baths today as well.

This will ensure that all the water is gone before the ban starts!

That's the way to do it!

That’s the way to do it!

Related articles

• Hosepipe ban is essential, officials say – The Guardian (guardian.co.uk)
• Hosepipe ban begins for 20m – but water companies admit ‘no inspectors’ – Metro (metro.co.uk)
• UK News: Water firms defend hosepipe bans (walesonline.co.uk)
• Hosepipe ban ‘will last all summer’ (itv.com)
• Hosepipe ban looms for drought hit Britain (itv.com)
• Diktats of the drought police: Not just a hosepipe ban, but ELEVEN tough restrictions on water use (dailymail.co.uk)
• UK News: Hosepipe bans in seven water areas (walesonline.co.uk)
• Hosepipe bans to hit 20 million people across south and east of England (itv.com)
• Hosepipe bans: How will it affect you? (itv.com)
• Hosepipe bans to hit 20 million (itv.com)

The End of Freedom -  Here is the News

Today, dozy Brits sleepwalked into a slightly-uncomfortable oblivion.  No-one blinked.

Monument stone at the site of the birth of Adolf Hitler reads: For peace freedom / and democracy / never again fascism / millions of dead remind us. The stone is from the quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Following on from yesterday’s news that everything any of us does will be recorded, anything and everything, it’s now the end of justice as we know it and a sharp veer to the Nazi/Soviet/Zimbabwe model of total surveillance, secret police and secret trials.

The BBC said, David Cameron defends secret courts and web monitoring plans, and the comments are cascading in fast.

Can no-one see this?  Where is the common sense that we British are reputed to have, or is that just a sham like our justice as well?  Something to brag about when criticising Little Johnnie Foreigner but not something we do at home?

As long as the lights still work and the Proles can drive to the burger shop they’ll all be happy.  Is that what the powers-that-be think?

It certainly looks like it.

Men in Suits

David Cameron (Photo credit: Nick Atkins Photography)

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (left) of Bahrain responds to a reporter's question during joint press availability with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (right) outside the Pentagon on Feb. 4, 2003 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hitler and Mussolini

Mugabe

Stalin

Who Are What?

Now, instead of medallioned shouty people brandishing fists, swords and tanks like Hitler or Stalin, we find our freedoms are removed by men in suits.  Men like Cameron, Clegg, Brown and Blunkett.  Men like bankers and offshore tax advisors.  Men on hidden committees and quangos.  Men on secretly funded so-called “focus groups” that are nothing but sham cover-ups for the men in suits.

Other men taking away “other people’s freedoms” they slag off as bad, bad, bad.  Actually, most of them are!  People like Mugabe are obvious.  Less obvious is the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa or the King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.  They wear their own sort of suit.

But like Hitler (say) before,  they all remove power from the people and misuse their army, their courts and laws as a disservice to the common man.

Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan

They all wear suits and they’re all bad people.  Cameron finally reveals his spots.  Obama, the false hope is just the same.  Chanting loud the voice of nationalism and national security, in actual fact they are the public face of non-accountable multi-national powers of huge influence.  They all had a chance to “change” things, but have been sucked into the greater, totalitarian void that multi-national capitalism is.

They are Borg.

Resistance is futile.

Smile as your freedom goes.  At least you’ve got a job, mate!

We are Borg.

We Are The Borg Unicomplex

Related articles

• Are we still willing to play along with David Cameron’s pain game? – Telegraph Blogs (dralfoldman.wordpress.com)
• David Cameron proves too expensive for the Labour Party’s political broadcast (telegraph.co.uk)
• David Cameron revives right-to-buy policy: £75k discounts offered to council … – Daily Mail (dailymail.co.uk)
• Tory MPs round on David Cameron and George Osborne (telegraph.co.uk)
• Could David Cameron protect drivers from soaring costs? (blogs.confused.com)
• MP faces charges over Nazi stag night (independent.co.uk)
• Obama tucks Cameron into bed after long day (time4sleep.co.uk)
• On Democracy, Plutocracy and Realpolitik (notnumber.wordpress.com)
• The Chilling Nightmares of Auschwitz (sabinianabalagtasbaliba.com)
• Is Obama ‘Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism?’ (johnmalcolm.me)
• UK: Queen invites Bahraini king to Jubilee banquet (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• What Obama And Hitler Have In Common (myvoice2012.wordpress.com)
• Embarrassment or Dirty Dealing Discovery – the Real Reason for Secret Trials (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Nazi Cameron Shows His Satanic Colours (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Cameron Reveals the Second Totalitarian Democracy (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Why Didn’t Hitler Invade Switzerland? (schwingeninswitzerland.wordpress.com)
• Dave’s Off On A Photo Shoot With Aung San Suu Kyi. To Talk About Democracy A Lot. (stirringtrouble.wordpress.com)
• Totalitarianism\Power\Public Education (broeder10.wordpress.com)
• Totalitarianism at Our Door (Open Thread) (wtpotus.wordpress.com)

Yet again I’m forced to side with the grinning David Davis.  This doesn’t happen often and is embarrassing to admit!.

ConDem Coalition Pledges Broken!

It’s all about the government plans to allow full-scale unauthorised real-time monitoring of every person in the UK’s internet activity!  It’s so 1984.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” – (George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
.

Orwell must be turning in his grave in despair that what he predicted as a warning about what not to do, now looks like coming to fruition.

Remarkably, since wangling themselves into government, the conservative-libdem coalition government is now actually dropping a key part of their manifesto which they laboriously agreed two years ago.  This can still be found on the government website, page 11 to be exact (pdf) .  Here’s what they said:

• The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian…. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power – FAIL
• …reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion – FAIL
• … introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation – FAIL
• …end the storage of internet and email records without good reason – FAIL
• …a British Bill of Rights that … protects and extends British liberties – FAIL

(Actually, the whole Con-Dem pledge list makes good reading to see just how far removed from it our evil diktat of quangos has become.)

So what to do – use TOR.

ID Cards

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Photo credit: andreasmarx)

Not so long ago I was haranguing the former Labour government about their plans for ID Cards, their laws over CCTV and photographing in public places, the reduction  in privacy for individuals and the removal of our civil rights over detention without trial, due cause and 3rd party notification for first 90 days and them 42 days.

I left the Labour Party because of it and have not rejoined.

Huge Vocal Resentment Against UK Government Secret Citizen Monitoring Plans.

Use TOR!

The new news (I thought it was an April Fool joke initially!) is that Email and web use is ‘to be monitored’ under new laws proposed by this nasty, nasty government.  Happily, there is now a huge and vociferous resentment against this from the general public who can see this evil act for what it is.  Top among them is David Davis!  See this link and the thousands of comments for instance; Backlash over email and web monitoring plan.

Clueless

Now, the tories and their liberal stooges have been shown to be both serially evil in their pronouncements and plans, and also serially incompetent of managing almost anything.

Their pathetic management of a minor industrial dispute (the fuel shortage) which did nothing except invoke almost universal resentment of the coalition and reawaken a general awareness of their ineffectiveness comes on top of stripping the very foundations away from one of UK society’s greatest inventions of the Industrial Age, our National Health Service (NHS).

Top this behavioural abomination with that of the revolving door policy between banking and politics which they continue to promote with zero penalties for failure while the population-at-large have to prop up the whole system with their taxes means only two things to me.

1. The government must do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
2. They will do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.

Astute folk will see this as my prediction for government actions over the next 3 years.

Tories: Keep Friends Happy

Meanwhile, hundreds of extra Tory donors will soon be available to bankroll the “all is good” story.  They will arrive as beneficiaries of the windfall provided as the “former NHS” contracts are handed out to friends, much like Michael Ashcroft benefited from the first round of NHS privatisation during the Thatcher era.  This article on Powerbase and this one (sourced from a now defunct article in The Scotsman) show quite clearly that 1/3 of cleaning contracts went to Ashcroft’s businesses during this time, saying;

MICHAEL Ashcroft, (…) bankrolled an “independent” publicity campaign that allowed his multi-million-pound contract cleaning empire to prosper and led to a change in the law. The campaign was run from the London office of the former Conservative Scottish secretary, Michael Forsyth. A spokesman for Mr Ashcroft confirmed last night that he had contributed to the Public and Local Service Efficiency Campaign (PULSE), which was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services such as cleaning and catering. The campaign had been disbanded by the end of the 1980s after the Conservative government passed the 1988 Local Government Act .  Mr Ashcroft’s Hawley Services Group, a contract cleaning firm later known as ADT, flourished under the new regime, with ADT, winning a third of NHS contracts between 1983 and 1988.

For further information into the depths that the Tories will go to enable all public money to be fed straight to their business friends, see this article which pulls apart the dealings of Ashcroft, discredited Dame Shirley Porter, NIMBY Nicholas Ridley, Chris Chope (the dog turd of Christchurch) and current (dodgy expenses, remember) minister Eric Pickles.

THE PICKLES PAPERS

By Tony Grogan
First published by 1 IN 12 PUBLICATIONS 1989
21 – 23 Albion St. Bradford 1.
Copyright 1 IN 12 Publications 1989
ISBN 0 948994 04 5

Once read, apply the same logic to our dear NHS, and weep again.  The same modus operandi is being used;

1. discredit the current, imply alternatives are better;
2. farm out internal monies to external Tory benefactors.

It’s just more sleaze just like under Thatcher before, backed up with warlike rhetoric.  Remember, only 10 days ago we had the news of billionaire Tory donors at Cameron’s dinner table, and Cameron trying to defend the cash-for-access news that made Labour’s cash-for-questions scandal appear like a sweetshop-ish wheeze in comparison.  See 

Tory Party chairman Lord Feldman was one of the key figures in the ‘cash for access’ scandal which erupted after Tory party treasurer Peter Cruddas was caught offering a private dinner with David Cameron to undercover reporters who posed as wealthy party donors.  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2123692/Tory-cash-access-row-David-Cameron-crony-pal-cash-questions.html

as well.

Related articles

• Tory MP David Davis criticises the Government’s surveillance plans (itv.com)
• “Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws” The BBC /finally/ spot that #CCDP is a story (dropsafe.crypticide.com)
• Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws. Wait till the Irish government bring’s in some horse shite like this as well, monkey see monkey do. (teddyoshea.wordpress.com)
• Campaigners criticise email and web monitoring plan – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
• Ministers to monitor calls, emails, texts and websites (ffeirio.wordpress.com)
• ‘Class attacks on David Cameron are equivalent to John Major’s sleaze scandal’, says David Davis (telegraph.co.uk)
• Brian Monteith: Scot-free Tories wouldn’t rule England for ever (scotsman.com)
• Clegg must speak up against web snooping (newstatesman.com)
• Anger At Coalition Plans To Snoop On Emails (news.sky.com)
• Dave And George Take Flak (oyiabrown.wordpress.com)
• Tory MPs turn on Cameron and Osborne (newstatesman.com)
• Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (victimsofatoscorruption.wordpress.com)
• Why are Libdems so silent about this bill? (liberalconspiracy.org)
• Taxpayers must foot £200 million bill to have their emails snooped on (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cameron pays price for dining toff mates – Morning Star Online (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (guardian.co.uk)

Honeycomb of Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) with eggs and larvae. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Register reports on what seems to be a pretty good study from some guys at Stirling and Lancaster Universities in the UK.  The “boffin-years” worked (as The Register puts it) by them and another French team now have very good proof that it’s a group of pesticides, very lethal to insects but no-so-bad for mammals (like us) that are the cause of:

• 85% reduction in queen (and thus new hive) production
• 10% smaller hives
• Disorientated bees – the bees can’t find their hive and die…

US migratory beekeepers loading tractor-trailer load of bees for transport from South Carolina to Maine to pollinate blueberries. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) means for us, as humans, can be found in this information on bee economics which details a few major crops recently hit by declining bee numbers.  Further, this is a list of essential plants which are bee pollinated.  The ones which are marked as “Essential – can’t do without bees” are these highly important cash crops:

• Squash (plant), Pumpkin, Gourd, Marrow, Zuchini Cucurbita spp. Honey bees, Squash bees, Bumblebees, Solitary bees
• Cantaloupe, Melon Cucumis melo L. Honey bees, Squash bees, Bumblebees, Solitary bees (Ceratina spp.)
• American Pawpaw Asimina triloba Carrion Flies, Dung Flies
• Brazil nut Bertholletia excelsa Bumblebees, Orchid bees (Euglossini), Carpenter bees
• Kiwifruit Actinidia deliciosa Honey bees, Bumblebees, Solitary bees
• Atemoya, Cherimoya, Custard apple Annona squamosa Nitidulid Beetles
• Watermelon Citrullus lanatus Honey bees, Bumblebees, Solitary bees
• Passion fruit. Maracuja Passiflora edulis Carpenter bees, Solitary bees, Bumblebees,
• Macadamia Macadamia ternifolia Honey bees, Stingless bees (Trigona carbonaria), Solitary bees (Homalictus spp.), Wasps,Butterflies
• Sapodilla Manikara zapotilla Thrips
• Cocoa Theobroma cacao Midges
• Rowanberry Sorbus aucuparia Honey bees, Solitary bees, Bumblebees, Hover flies
• Vanilla Vanilla planifolia, Vanilla pompona Solitary bees

Reasons, Nazis and Jews – What are Neonicotinoid Pesticides?

IG Farben (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are many candidates for CCD and pesticides are just one possible or contributory factor.  Things like bee predators, mites, electromagnetic radiation, loss of habitat…. it’s quite a long list.

However, the two studies above seem to be pretty secure controlled studies that looked at one factor (the neonicotinoid pesticides), examining the bees in isolation both with and without the expected non-lethal local dosage of the chemicals so as to eliminate the other possible causes.

Wikipedia lists the major neonicotinoid pesticides, and below I match them to their inventor and/or current manufacturer:

• Acetamiprid – Aventis (French conglomerate inc. Rhône-Poulenc, Hoechst and others)
• Clothianidin – Bayer, Takeda
• Dinotefuran – Mitsui
• Imidacloprid (the most widely used insecticide in the world) – Bayer
• Nitenpyram – Novartis (formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)
• Thiacloprid – Bayer
• Thiamethoxam- Bayer, Syngenta (another entity formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)

Fritz ter Meer (1884-1967) at the Nuremberg Trials. Ter Meer was I.G. Farben official, member of NSDAP. This photograph of ter Meer (probably as a defendant) was taken by US Army photographers on behalf of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (OUSCCPAC, May 1945 - Oct. 1946) or its successor organization, the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC, Oct. 1946 - June 1949). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bayer

What’s interesting from this list is how often Bayer pops up in the neonicotinoid (a neuro-toxin) story.

It famously made Zyklon B, which made a poison gas and was one of the main methods of murdering Jews and others by the Nazis during WW2.  It did this under the conglomerate business name of IG Farben which was broken up post war by the allies into the original business entities, Bayer being one, and it’s still around now!

A Bayer (IG Farben) boss, Fritz ter Meer, served 7 years post WW2 for his crimes and then was immediately made supervisory board chairman of Bayer.  His crimes included designing a satellite concentration camp to Auschwitz.  Some Nazi industrialists & businessmen were executed, like Bruno Tesch.  Several other convicted Nazi War Criminals got high-powered jobs following their release, just like ter Meer.

Karmic Retribution

What I see as a reason for the bee decline ultimately relates to our overall karma.

It is not retribution against individuals directly.  The bad karma affects us all, now, because we have continued to allow processes to continue which harm ourselves and our environment.  The disappearing bees are just one manifestation of this.

Ter Meer got his nice job back at Bayer, probably because he was the best person to do it, especially at this critical period of rebuilding Germany.  We could say that he continued his life’s work of creating death by chemicals (which I’ve cunningly yet disingenuously alluded to in order to attract your attention!), but it must be remembered that alongside Zyklon B, the same businesses created many products which are essential to our productive farms and lifestyles.  Aspirin, for instance.  Fertilisers as another.

In fact, Fritz Haber, whose academic work was enthusiastically taken up at IG Farben and others, demonstrates the dichotomy of human nature by inventing chemical warfare while simultaneously inventing a process to fix nitrogen from the air to make fertiliser (or explosive, since it’s the same thing).  One gives life benefit, one removes it completely.  As it says on Wikipedia,

“The food base of half of the current world population is based on the Haber-Bosch process”

Haber’s karmic retribution was swift and fast.  Whether he knew or felt it is beside the point. It happened.

• His wife shot herself because of her guilt over his personal supervision at the 1st gas release on the Western Front.
• Their son who found her, was so appalled by this and his father’s actions, that he committed suicide in 1946 (like survivor guilt, I suppose.).
• Haber was Jewish, rewarded by the Nazis who used his gas Zyklon A, developed into Zyklon B to murder Jews and others during the holocaust.
• Many members of Haber’s extended family were killed in the Holocaust.

Direct Karmic Attention

A honeybee on an apiary, spreading feromones to 'call back' her collegues, showing her nassanoff-gland. Location: Tübingen-Hagelloch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But now we can easily see, that by continuing the bad processes, by continuing the bad ideas, by continuing the bad attitudes of the past, the actions of the past have started to hit us all full in the face.

Bees are just part of it.

Our disjointed energy & food policies of “live today, pay tomorrow” are just larger examples of the wider issue.

To fully understand how we should proceed in our lives and how we interact with others and our environment, we need look no further than some key Buddhist principles, laid out before us a very long time ago by Siddhārtha Gautama.  He said:

1. right view,
2. right intention,
3. right speech,
4. right action,
5. right livelihood,
6. right effort,
7. right mindfulness,
8. right concentration.

This is called The Noble Eightfold Path, and if we all paid attention to it and acted sincerely with it, then we’d all be a lot better off.

Related articles

• Common Pesticides Harm Bees, Studies Show (huffingtonpost.com)
• New pesticides linked to bee population collapse – The Independent (independent.co.uk)
• Pesticides linked to honeybee decline (thebeerevelation.wordpress.com)
• More evidence links a family of insecticides to bee colony collapse (arstechnica.com)
• Are bees threatened by insecticide use? New studies say yes. (+video) (csmonitor.com)
• Pesticides can have devastating impact on bees: studies (vancouversun.com)
• Bees harmed by low levels of common pesticides (cbc.ca)

Jeff and myself hardly spoke for over 20 years yet I find I miss his presence on the planet more than I’d have thought possible.

I think that at the root of it all is the unrequited wish by myself that somehow things would be alright between us, that in the end, maybe we’d collaborate again, but of course, there’s no chance of that, certainly in this lifetime.

All that I can say, on this day (is it really two years), is that I hope that wherever your spirit is, it fares well.

In Buddhism, there’s a saying that Buddhas meet time and again, lifetime after lifetime, which I hope (although I believe ) that this is so.

Jeff’s interests, when I knew him and when we lived in each other’s boots, were wide, and included pure physics, astrophysics, metaphysics, much research into the paranormal, out of body experiences and the like.  On top of this were ancient civilisations, their habits, myths and religious activities, plus literature & music (e.g. The Crawling Chaos) of which he had broad eclectic tastes, not always, but more often than not,  keyed to my own.

So what’s to be said, what’s to do?  How I wish you were here.

I know!  Play some music where Jeff and myself had some connection.

Related articles

• On the Lifetime chapter of the Lotus Sutra(beliefsbuddhism.wordpress.com)

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Ping.sg web badge (Photo credit: inju)

My Site 5 server has had some trouble (as well as another one from my host I notice), so I’ve temporarily blocked all comments and pings to this site to ease the strain and see what’s causing this…  I don’t think it’s this site, but the bad guys are always inventing new tricks.

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• Site registration(medicine.com.my)

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Appalled

I’ve had a few site problems whereby my host Site 5, said I was using too many resources and crashing their systems.  Naturally, I was appalled.  I traced this to a variety of plugins plus some errors in php files which must have arrived either during the periodic updates or during editing.  These were errors whereby extra text (either blank space or a carriage return to be precise) were added to the end of the php file, which usually makes it fail.  This a is a Google search on the main error I received,

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent …  (  This is then followed by error details; usually error on line xx, repeated several times for a variety of xx)

After battling for some time, I just gave up, exported my database key tables (things like posts, comments, etc but omitting plugin inserted tables and the very large options table which I deemed to be very bloated after over five years of continuous WordPress operation…!) and re-installed WordPress as a fresh installation on my server.

Weird Permalink Problem Following Clean Install of WordPress

This is where the weird problem arose….

SP Permalink Settings

When one installs WordPress for the first time, permalinks are set to the default – so this current post would be:

 http://strangelyperfect.tv/?p=11622

For SEO reasons and for many years I’ve used the format shown in the screenshot from my site shown left.  This current post will thus appear as:

http://strangelyperfect.tv/11622/wordpress-permalinks-generated-but-not-redirected

It’s a “Custom Structure” and the .htaccess file is updated automatically by WordPress when you set it.  You’ll see it’s set to:

/%post_id%/%postname%/

Now, on firing up a post, say this one,

http://strangelyperfect.tv/11428/victory-or-is-it-victory-jesse-willms-surrenders-all-to-ftc-onslaught/ ,

the actual web address I was taken to was:

http://strangelyperfect.tv/%post_id%/victory-or-is-it-victory-jesse-willms-surrenders-all-to-ftc-onslaught/  (error shown in bold)

…which redirected to the homepage of the site, http://strangelyperfect.tv/   This was not what I was expecting!  So I played with the slashes, went back to original simple permalink structure, tried some of the suggested structures – and they all worked!

A custom structure of /%postname%/ worked as well, but not the one I wanted and have used for years.

Weird.   So naturally, I tried Google.

Permalink Redirection Problem Solved.

There’s a lot on the web about this.  Most is about getting .htaccess right with permissions and the code.  But mine was okay, as were all the other suggestions to try.

A real key to resolving my problem was here, Custom Permalinks Generated But Not Redirected in the WordPress forums.  Specifically, it comes from the user, James, a Happiness Engineer!

He suggested adding index.php between the domain name and permalink structure.  So my custom structure changed to:

index.php/%post_id%/%postname%/

WordPress added a leading slash on the save and the website worked!  WAHAY!

However, the best is yet to come….

I thought that the URL was now not pretty, in fact, it was pretty ugly.  The URLs were now being shown like:

http://strangelyperfect.tv/index.php/11428/victory-or-is-it-victory-jesse-willms-surrenders-all-to-ftc-onslaught/

So I removed the index.php and reset the custom structure to what I wanted – /%post_id%/%postname%/

It worked!  WAHAY!  All posts’ URLs redirecting  how I wanted!

Conclusion

I’ve no idea, actually.  I’m suspecting some caching, somewhere down the great inter-tubes in the sky, but apart from that…………..?

• Was it my server?  Dunno.
• Was it DNS caching?  Dunno.
• Was it ISP caching? Dunno

All I know is that it’s working now, and the Happiness Engineer’s suggestion sent me on my way, happy.

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