The Adventure of English

 

A dictionary can provide endless hours of fun for anyone interested in the history of words. And what a history it has been! I have just bought Melvyn Bragg's book and DVD "The Adventure of English".

Fascinating stuff!

 

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English is what happens when Vikings learn Latin and use it to shout at Germans.

 

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Is the other shoe dropping?

Global stock markets fell overnight after one of Dubai’s state-owned holding firms shocked the financial world with a debt default request.

Dubai World, saddled with a $59 billion debt, on Wednesday asked creditors to defer payments for six months. Its subsidiaries include Nakheel, the construction firm famous for making country-shaped islands, and DP World, owners of five port terminals in India.

The Financial Times called it a “bombshell”. London and Frankfurt stocks fell 1.86 and 1.80 per cent, in the Asian markets’ footsteps. European banks hold $40 billion worth of Dubai World debt. The US markets were closed yesterday thanks to the world's biggest turkey-slaughter (aka Thanksgiving) and we'll have to wait for Wall Street's reaction until tonight.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said Dubai World’s announced plans to restructure its debt “may be considered a default”. The default and tighter Chinese lending contributed to the fall. “But Dubai is bigger,” said David Morrison of financial risk firm GFT.

Dubai World’s woes raised concerns about the economic state of Dubai, the Persian Gulf’s financial and trading centre. Dubai would take a decade to recover from the loss of investor confidence, said analysts. Dubai World lost heavily when real estate prices crashed last year.

Turning oil money into indoor ski slopes in the desert is proving to be a bit of a disaster! A case of post-Lehman jitters? You bet! The GFC isn't over yet!

And which is the other shoe? Well, it may be a Chinese sandal! Many commentators are voicing their concerns about China being the world's biggest bubble. Jim Chanos, the billionaire hedge fund manager, believes China is heading for a crash, and is calling it "Dubai times a thousand, if not times a million".

We live in (terrifyingly) interesting times!

Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency.

President Obama has brazenly violated Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution by seating himself at the head of United Nations' Security Council, thus becoming the first US president to chair the world body.

A scientific dictatorship is in its final stages of completion, and laws protecting basic human rights are being abolished worldwide; an iron curtain of high-tech tyranny is now descending over the planet.

A worldwide regime controlled by an unelected corporate elite is implementing a planetary carbon tax system that will dominate all human activity and establish a system of neo-feudal slavery.

The imagemakers have carefully packaged Obama as the world's saviour; he is the Trojan Horse manufactured to pacify the people just long enough for the globalists to complete their master plan.

This film reveals the architecture of the New World Order and what the power elite have in store for humanity. More importantly it communicates how We The People can retake control of our government, turn the criminal tide and bring the tyrants to justice.

Go to www.falloftherepublic.com or you can buy a copy at ebay - I did!

You make up your own mind!

In a 1988 Dirty Harry classic, the belligerent Detective Callahan tells a colleague “opinions are like assholes, everybody has one”. Heaven knows what Callahan would say of Australia’s ETS debate. No angle is unrepresented. No player unheard. And many completely contradict one another.

Part 1

Part 2

If you ask me, I think it's the modern-day equivalent of selling Indulgences. Remember your history lesson about Indulgences? Or did you go to a 'good' Catholic school where those things were conveniently forgotten? In the Middle Ages - and until a German friend of mine, Martin Luther, protested against it and started the Reformation - the Catholic Church sold Indulgences in order to raise cash and to get even richer. Such an Indulgence would expiate the purchaser from any sin he was yet to commit. Let's say you wanted to commit a nice little murder. Buy yourself an Indulgence before the dirty deed and you could do it with impunity! As the Church in those days was akin to today's judicial system, it was a bit like bribing the judge - even before the offense! If you believed in the concept of sin, well, buying an Indulgence didn't do away with the sin, it just made you feel better committing one. Same with carbon-trading: it doesn't do away with carbon emission; it doesn't even reduce it! It just makes you feel better spewing out more and more dirt into the atmosphere, and the ones who are selling you the carbon credits (aka Indulgences) get filthy rich - literally!

Of course, all this global warming is said to be due to anthropogenic activities - or in a language that both you and I can understand, human activities. So why is there no mention of population control? The world's population now stands at 6.8 BILLION - give or take a few hundred million - and rapidly rising. If 6.8 billion people can have such catastrophic effects, what will 10 billion, 15 billion people do to the planet? Population control? You've gotta be kidding!

Isn't it a wonderful world we live in?

Let me see if I understand this:

IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET TWELVE YEARS' HARD LABOUR.

IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.

IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.

IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU WILL BE JAILED.

IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.

IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.

IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.

IF YOU CROSS THE AUSTRALIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET A JOB, A DRIVER'S LICENCE, PENSION CARD, WELFARE, SUBSIDISED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION AND FREE HEALTH CARE.

WHAT A JOKE !!!!!

Inspirational stuff from New Zealand

Two Cambridge mates say they may turn their unusual method of trimming hedges into a business, after they suspended a ride-on mower from a crane to do the job.

"This is how the Waikato boys mow a hedge," the ride-on mower operator told the Waikato Times.

The operator, who did not want to be named, is now nursing a broken hand, but said it wasn't a fall from the mower that caused the injury but one off the crane.

He admitted it was not the safest method of trimming the hedge, but said it was all done as a bit of a joke.

They wanted to film the stunt, put it on the internet and see how many hits it got, but in the end had no video camera.

"We just thought it would be a bit of a joke – a bit of a laugh," he said.

The man had expected a real hedge trimmer to turn up on Sunday to mow the hedge, but when he didn't his mate arrived with his crane and a ride-on mower.

The next thing he knew he was being hoisted up on top of the two-metre high hedge.

"We were supposed to get all dressed up in our Mooloo gear and show people that this is how the Waikato boys mow their hedges."

The unusual sight bemused passing motorists. One passer-by, Bart Dinger, said it was a classic case of Kiwi ingenuity.

"A kiwi classic – jandals and all," he said.

The mower operator's wife burst out laughing when she drove home to see her husband on the hedge.

"I saw the crane first and thought 'great, the hedge is getting trimmed', but I didn't realise this was what they were planning," she said.

Her husband spent about 20 minutes mowing the hedge which had "got out of hand over winter".

"The mower was doing an all-right job, but I reckon it would work better on a hedge that's not so spiky." He said there was nothing in the instructions to say the mower couldn't be used on hedges and joked that they should go into the contracting business.

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