A Place to Stand

  I have just been reading a book King Arthur The true story by Phillips and Keatman. Graham Philips  Arthurian website is here.They conclude that Arthur was a real person who fought his major battle in raising the siege of a hill fort at Badon Hill [ Badon then being pronounced Bathon and being the site of the only warm water volcanic springs in Britain ie Bath} around 518.

    This fits such historic records as we have which are clear about the battle, though the earliest ones don't say who was in charge but do agree it was very decisive. Later ones say Arther killed 960 Saxons personally [ancient records often claim to have killed or beaten about 10 times what modern scholars think]. The archaeological record also shows that the Saxon kingdom of Sussex was essentially destroyed then, not being reformed for nearly a century. Looking at a map you will see that had they controlled Badon/Bath they would have been within a few miles of the Severn and isolated the remaining British tribes between Cornwall and Wales.

   There is no archaeological evidence of the battle site, not unexpected, but everything fits there. This is from the book's timeline:

460 AD - Ambrosius becomes leader of the British forces British defences are reorganised. There is an imperialist revival in Britain


470 A British contingent fights for Emperor Anthemius in northern France.


476 Odovacer defeats Emperor Romulus Augustubulus and proclaims himself king of Italy. The final collapse of the Western Roman empire occurs.


480 There is a military stalemate between the Britons and the Saxons in the south of England. The Angles Suffer defeat in the nothr. Cunorix is buried in Virconium.


485 Aelle defeats the British at Mearcredesburna.


485-8 Arthur fights for Ambrosius against the Angles.


488 Hengist dies and is succeeded by Octha. Arthur succeeds Ambrosius.


488-93 The Arthurian campaigns.


491 Aelle beseiges the fort at Anderida (Pevensey) and establishes the kingdom of Susse.


493 Arthur defeats Aelle and Octha at the Battle of Badon. The Anglo-Saxons retreat into south-east England.


495 Cerdic [Saxon} lands in Hampshire, possibly as a mercenary.


508 Cerdic achieves victory over a [local] British king named Natanleod, and establishes control over an area roughly the size of modern |Hampshire. An alliance is made between Cerdic and Cunomorus [Cunomourus is certainly also called Mark and there is evidence that Mark was the historical Modred - the alliance includes Cerdic marrying a Briton, assumed to be Modred's daughter].


519 The battle of Certicesford [safely identified as modern Charford near Salisbury].The Battle of Camlann {Arthur's final battle and presumably they are the same battle]. The death of Arthur [this being the book's position, assuming Arthur was a Briton king - I am assuming he was either wounded or that after 34 years and the British alliance falling apart as Britons and Saxons intermarried, decided to go home].


520 Virconium is abandoned [the book takes Virconium in Powys as Arthur's Camelot



    The book names Arthur as an alternate name for a Welsh king of Powys and Gwynedd recorded as Owain Ddantgwyn, whose capital was probably Viroconium, dismissing the alternative that he was a Brito-Roman named Artorius and assuming that the name derives from the celtic word for Bear used as a title {in the same way that Pendragon is certainly a title meaning chief dragon", the dragon being the symbol of Gwynedd which they had taken from the Romans).

     I like Artorius and want to put what I think is a credible variant.

    There is evidence that though the Romans had left Britain in the 470s the British tribes sent some auxiliaries to help the Roman army. Considering they were being exterminated by the Saxon invaders at the time this either indicates an enormous degree of loyalty to the Rome that had deserted them or that they wanted some Roman help in return. With the Empire being officially dissolved in 476 this is quite a good time for some remaining elements of the Roman army to leave for Britain as loyal Romans carrying Roman traditions into exile/The Roman army honourably sending aid to loyal savages begging for help/unemployed soldiers taking a job as mercenaries, according to taste. There are quite a few such examples in history.

      The British chiefs wanted a Roman general, tactically more sophisticated than them, and some elite troops (cavalry or trained and armoured infantry of which  both Britons and Saxons were short).

        A young officer called Artorius and a unit of auxiliary cavalry drawn from the Sarmatian tribes go, at the invitation of the British king Ambrosius to help stop the Saxon advance. [The Sarmatian horsemen, of whom the Ossetians are the descendants, definitely had the concept of drawing a sword from the ground as their symbol of leadership. They also had a particular story of a dying warrior who demands that his best friend destroy his sword by throwing it in the water, but the friend, not wishing to destroy a beautiful weapon, twice, doesn't but the friend twigs and on the 3rd occasion the sword is caught by a woman's hand]  Now here is what I believe is an original connection - "Artorius" is not merely a Roman name it is an ancient Etruscan one and there is a reference to Arthur, in a scene carved on the Cathedral of Modena in Italy which slightly predates the medieval knowledge of the character. Modena is nowhere close to Britain but it is in Etruscan territory. Just as somebody called Neil, living in the UK, is more likely than not to be Scots, or Northern Irish even though we have been part of Britain for centuries it is more than likely that a man named Artorius was a local of the Etruscan lands, of which Modena is the heart.

ARTUS for Modena cathedral

    So Artorius landed in Britain in 485 in command of a cohort of Sarmatian auxiliaries. Rome's army could spare them particularly since the Britons would be paying and nobody else was paying Romans. It would not be the first time an Empire sent a tribe whose loyalty was not primarily to Rome well away from where they might meet some fellow tribesmen.

     Arthur is recorded as having fought 11 victorious battles. These battles were all across the country as far away as Scotland which fits with commanding a cavalry force in combination with whatever local tribal leaders/kings could raise [One telling argument against him being a Celtic king is that, despite the title given him later, the early records quite specifically refer to him not as a King but as the "war leader" of "the British kings" not even "other British kings". One can see why the British "kings" would vote to accept a Roman officer, tactically far more sophisticated than them and in command of cavalry forces that could put more fear into the Saxons at least as happily as they would accept a "king" who was another tribal leader. Just as the Phillipinos accepted MacArthur as their leader in WW2.

     King Arthur's Round Table, enters the written record shortly after Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his book, in a follow up written by a poet called Wace. However his writing was done near Cornwall, at a time we know the common people there still revered Arthur, so it is credible that he did not invent this but took a local legend. That doesn't necessarily mean to me that there was a physical Round Table but that there was a consensus that there was no order of precedence in the war council, not even for Arthur. That suggests Arthur as "dux bellorum" (literally war leader) was not the most powerful king and, at least until he won, considered almost a hired hand.

     History is replete with national heroes who actually come from an adjoining culture, usually a more sophisticated one and unite the nation they are founders, but not members of . Moses is an Egyptian name; Napoleon was Corsican; Hitler - Austrian; Stalin - Georgian; Alexander - Macedonian rather than true Greek; El Cid at least part Islamic; Herman from a family that had served the Romans; Che - Argentinian not Cuban;  Skanderbeg - Serb not Albanian; Bruce - as Norman as Scots. For Arthur to have been been just the most powerful British king is historically less likely.

     The other thing all the early records agree on is that they don't know where Arthur was buried. It is a major part of his mythic status. Arthur, having established a golden age of peace after decades of Saxon massacres, is, we are often told, going to return when the country needs him. The burial location of a king is an important thing at the time in the opposite way. It adds to the status of his successors, being able to provide physical proof of their right to rule as lawful descendants of such a king. Surely if Arthur had been Owain his descendants would made a big thing of where he was buried?

       The book suggests that Camlann, Arthur's final battle credibly placed in 519 and something close to a draw, was against an alliance of new Saxon invaders in Wessex in marriage coalition with Modred the king of Devon/Cornwall and a genuine historic figure. I suppose that he was wounded then and decided it was time to retire, back to Modena. In which case he did indeed depart with the Britons hoping for a return. Shortly thereafter archaeology suggests the British chiefs did fall to fighting each other. 70 years later the "Anglo Saxons" did renew their advance but the history of the Wessex Saxons family whose leader Cerdic was followed by a son whose name was part Saxon, part Briton and a grandson with a wholly Briton name suggests it was a melding rather than the genocide it had been.

      Though there is a lack of historical record of him there is a lack of historical record of  EVERYBODY at the beginning of the British Dark Ages. However there is record of a number of different British kings calling their children Arthur - a name previously unknown.  This means there must have been a real Arthur.

      I am not certain on this but it appears these subsequent Arthurs appear in several different royal families which, in another point I have not seen suggested elsewhere, suggests the original Arthur was not the king of any local dynasty, with whom each of the others were competing. That means not a dominant Briton tribal king. There is no question that the time Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote of him and he entered literary recognition Arthur was still a popular heroic figure to the entire population not just, or even particularly, of the people of Powys.

      Is all of this correct - unlikely. However I would stand by most of it being and certainly of arthur being a genuine historical figure and I think every single fact here is more likely than anmy single alternative.

       A cocktail party theory I would not stand by is of Camelot not being Viroconium but Colchester in Essex. The big thing in favour of it is that in the Roman era its name was Camulodunum which would clrearly have been spoken commonly as Camelot. The big thing against is that its location is in Essex, the heart of the main apparently undefeated Saxon kingdom, which I grant is a big "against". However if we assume Badon was such a great victory that the Arthurian forces did indeed defeat and occupy all the Saxon lands then Colchester would have been a good place for a Roman Arthur to set up his military headquarters, though if he was king of Powys then such a relocation becomes unlikely. Certainly Arthur's court has more the feel of a military order than a civil capital city. Some support for this is given by the fact that, despite Camelot now being the magnificent capital city out of myth it was not Arthur's capital in the original story by Geoffrey of Monmouth. "The castle is mentioned for the first time in Chrétien de Troyes' poem Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, dating to the 1170s ...Nothing in Chrétien's poem suggests the level of importance Camelot would have in later romances. For Chrétien, Arthur's chief court was in Caerleon in Wales; this was the king's primary base in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and subsequent literature." Geoffrey was native to Caerleon so his identification of it as Camelot looks more like local pride than reality but nonetheless for anywhere other than Camelot to have been seen as the capital is at least consistent with it being a forward military base.
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     I once visited Tintagel Castle [according to legend Arthur's birthplace, his father being "both" the king of Devon/Cornwall and Uther Pendragon king of Gwyned/Powys. Possibly both kings, or rather their successors, had agreed to "adopt" him as their sons, a practise common with Roman Emperors too]. The castle ruins there were medieval and put there so that the local lord could bask in the association. But there are late Roman remains and it is defensible. And on the highest rock there is the carved image of a foot - a common Celtic symbol that the true king's foot will fit that footprint. {there is one on Dumbarton Rock capital of ancient Strathclyde in Scotland too and the idea of the Stone of destiny is clearly a development of that].

    So Arthur did, in a few short years bring a last, post Roman, golden age of peace, did decisively win a battle which, if lost would have put the Britons beyond hope of recovery and ensured that the country that eventually  developed was a culture of mixtures rather than extermination.

    I hope Arthur got back to the sunshine and grape juice of Modena. The fact that 6 centuries later he was recorded, in a frieze in Modena Cathedral and nowhere else so remote strongly suggests that he, or at least his friends did and the story became famous there. I have no idea what if the records there, if any, compare with those of Britain of the time, but it might be a fruitful area of research.

Solsbury/Badon Hill - overlooking Bath/Bathon/Badon and site of an iron age fort

  Last Saturday I wrote of a book discussing why we Scots, at least in Scotland though expatriates are quite the opposite, tend to back off form trying to achieve things. I must admit getting to new chapters at the end of the book I find the author wittering about how we can feel good without economic growth, living in harmony with the planet and maintaining enforced equality which suggests she has gone native. However the worth of a thought does not necessarily determine the worth of the thinker.

   As Pournelle says "free people aren't equal, equal people aren't free" which is self evidently true. Economic growth does not itself guarantee happiness but being better off certainly helps, though the law of diminishing returns applies. However economic success, personal achievement and happiness all have personal freedom as a major cause. Growth is so obviously popular that every politician claims to have it as their first priority, even those who have no slightest intention of doing so. Thus any government that doesn't achieve growth is, by definition, either opposed to the people's wishes or incompetent (or both) and unworthy of trust in any other objective.

    So anyway here is a list of some ideas (many offered here previously as ways of improving the economy) of increasing Scotland's self confidence, entrpreneurialism and achievement.:

1. Cut Income Tax by 3p as allowed under devolution. (other proposals originally on this link)
2. Add vitamin D to staple foods sold here.
3. Fire everybody in BBC Scotland. Their attitude of politically correct miserabilism rots our collective (or individual) souls.
4. Run TV series about the achievements of great successful Scots across history. What better way is there of making people both feel good about their country and that they personally can contribute? The amount of money needed to pay for a TV series in nothing in a national budget.
5. A space X-Prise. Even something as simple as the asteroid landing prise would produce a sense of achievement.
6. Require any Scottish X-Prise competition vehicle to carry a saltiire prominently.
7. Propose knighthoods and other such titles to people who have actually achieved something not just  parasitic civil servants, union leaders, retiring politicos and party donors.
8. Get rid of destructive, jobsworth civil servants.
9. Give prises to pupils (and to teachers) when they produce good results.
10. Put a couple of white lasers in Glasgow and Edinburgh with their beams crossing overhead, visible across much of the central belt - just to show we can.
11. Sponsor an annual Road From the Isles hovercraft race. (#28)
12. Make a DVD of Scotland's history & post it to Scots, or those with Scots names, over the world. Include links encouraging Scottish tourism.
13. A schools voucher system would improve personal freedom.
14. No new politically correct vindictive bans. The smoking ban was NOT in manifestos at the last election.
15. Introduce a right to referendums on motions that would not increase government power as UKIP have called for.
16. The smoking ban is an illiberal restriction on individual freedom. End it.
17. End fuel poverty. France produces 80% nuclear at 2p a unit. We can do the same or indeed better.
18. Reform planning regulations so that people can build houses when and how they want rather than spending more time and money on sucking up to "civil servants" than actually building.
19. Build the Scottish Tunnel Project. Being able to travel freely around your own country is a blessing.
20. Fire any social worker kidnapping children or otherwise increasing human misery to build their empires.

   “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” — Kurt Lewin

   The corollary of this must be that there is nothing so damaging as a false theory, about something vital to civilisation, which is generally accepted and enforced by government worldwide.

   That is why I have been so persistent in disputing the Linear No Threshold theory of radiation damage. There is not and never has been any actual evidence for it. This fact is not disputed even by supporters, they have merely said that, for low level radiation it is so statistically difficult to provide certain evidence against it that it is an unfalsifiable theory and thus must be accepted.

   This is not a scientific attitude since it is axiomatic that a theory which cannot be falsified cannot be scientific. But it does have the advantage of being enforced and accepted. I have previously said I doubt  any theory is wholly unfalsifiable it merely that there are some whose proponents will not recognise any.

    The entire anti-nuclear movement depends on being able to scare people that tiny amounts of radiation, at virtually homoeopathic levels can still kill because there is "no threshold" level at which it is safe.Without that radiation releases at a very low level would not be a fear. Without that the Dalgety Bay fraud would have nothing to work with. Without that the alleged fear that it could be dangerous to store radioactive "waste" (most of it is actually highly valuable) deep underground because it might, in infinitesimal quantities, leak thousands of feet upwards would be a matter of no importance.

   Without that "unfalsifiable" claim the hysteria against nuclear power and its suppression could not have been justified. It has left humanity with no more than 40% of the electricity and therefore wealth we would have had  if the trend before suppression had continued.


   However science goes on and even the most "unfalsifiable" ignorance based claims fall victim to scientific progress from a new direction.

   Which is why this, while the result is in now way unexpected to believers in science, is such a game changer it ought to be headlined worldwide. (OK I know it won't but it would if the media were uncorrupt) -

Imaging of a cell’s DNA damage response to radiation shows that 1.5 minutes after irradiation, the sizes and intensities of radiation induced foci (RIF) are small and weak, but 30 minutes later damage sites have clustered into larger and brighter RIF, probably reflecting DNA repair centers.
“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

     The LNT theory was always political rather than scientific. The theory absolutely requires that there be no repair mechanism for radiation damage which, is contrary to experience with almost all other injuries to living systems. This looks like conclusive proof LNT is wrong. This does not prove hormesis, that low level stimulation to the system is beneficial, correct but is certainly consistent with it. Particularly the evidence that long term exposure is less troubling than a burst exposure, which was always intuitively reasonable.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A friend of a friend and his daughter were driving along a lonely country road at night and happened upon a female hitchhiker. The woman asked for a ride to her home just a few miles up the road. The travellers obliged and continued on with the woman riding silently in the backseat. As they approached their destination, the driver turned to inform the passenger they were arriving, only to discover she had vanished from the backseat without a trace! Thoroughly spooked, the travellers inquired at the house and learned that a woman matching the description of the hitchhiker had indeed once lived there, but died several years earlier in an automobile accident. Her ghost, they were told, was sometimes seen wandering beside the highway...
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    So how old is the story. Hitchhiking requires cars so one might expect it to be about the 1920s/30s when cars became widespread and the collected stories do seem to start around then. But there are earlier versions from the time of carts and..
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Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognising him.


17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 “What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
                            Luke 24:13-32 On the Road to Emmaus
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  That is the Vanishing Hitchhiker story in all essentials - Meeting a traveller. Gives mysterious prophecy. Disappears, in this case literally before their eyes, Turns out to have been dead all along. It is even part of a subgenre where the traveller is a local godlike figure.

  The story is also told in much less detail in Mark 16; 12-13

  Snopes also reports a section of Acts which they regard as another variant on the hitchhiker story - Acts 8; 27-39 . This involves a disciple meeting a high Ethiopian official, hitching a ride on his chariot and converting and baptising him. Personally, despite the use of a vehicle to hitch on I don't regard this as a true VH story since both parties are identified and living so there is no inherent mystery.

  I don't know don't know enough mythology to tell if there are any other such. Is there a section in the Epic of Gilgamesh where he looks down and finds an unnoticed Hook or dragon's claw in his chariot wheel. Wouldn't be surprised.

  Some time ago I wrote about how to solve the Korea problem, following an article by the not then late Colonel Gadaffi. This was my plan 

My opinion is that it depends on making sure nobody in power in the North has greatly fear union.
The South should offer to pay the salaries of every Northern government official for life, so long as they aren't earning more elsewhere. They also guarantee an amnesty for any NK official who may be chargeable with "war crimes". China would also guarantee this and to provide residence for any NK official who wanted to leave and who would still receive salary from the South. These guarantees have to be formidable and credible precisely because various western promises, from those to Pinochet to Karadzic have proven false. It may not be abstract justice that some leaders may get away with things we don't like. though abstract justice would certainly not be served by a "prosecution" influenced by NATO states whose own leaders are certainly guilty of war crimes, genocide and organlegging. However as an alternative to starvation for the northern people and possible nuclear war for everybody it seems preferable.

In return for paying salaries they get a gradual loosening of the Northern dictatorship. A veto on promotions and new appointments. Taxes could be drastically reduced since they were being already paid.. Road, rail and telecommunication links between the 2 (I suspect the South even more than the North would fear free movement of peoples since 10s of millions of refugees would be unwelcome). Trade between the 2 be made free. The right of Northerners to take up free market jobs and the right of such jobs to exist without government regulation. The desired end result would be a zero tax, minimal regulation zone governed, through leaders appointed by the South to which many southern and indeed international companies would outsource much of their production and which would grow faster than the South could. It would probably take decades for the North to reach Southern levels of affluence and political sophistication, after all it took the South decades in the first place, but it would be done without deaths, refugees and war.
The cost to the South would be less than they presently spend on defence. Paying the full salaries of everybody would cost no more than $9 billion assuming the NK currency is valued correctly.

  It depended then and depends now on the NK leadership accepting it. However, in Kim III's seat it looks increasingly attractive. Despite having a nuclear bomb or 2 NK is going nowhere in a continent where everybody else's economy is growing at 10%

   It says a lot about the power of modern states that they have been able to hold the dam so long - that the people are not killing their masters. A recent news report said that the relatively few escapees overwhelmingly come from the border regions where they can see wealthier neighbours which suggests most of the population really don't know how the world has changed. Even the BBC don't aspire to that sort of control*. However communication devices are getting smaller and more pervasive and the dam is inevitably going to come under ever more pressure. Then there is Kim IIIrd himself - he was educated in Switzerland and personally knows how backward his country is.

    Also, assuming his father's death was as reported and I think it was, he died of a heart attack at 69. That is not, even nowadays, an incredibly young age but I very much doubt if many leaders, or even middle ranking functionaries, of a wealthy country, able to fly across the world for the very best health care isn't going to live longer. Longevity is as ultimate a benefit of modern technology as there is.

    So, even as absolute dictator of his own country, the life of a multimillionaire in Shanghai must look pretty attractive. The moreso the further down the ranks one goes. Give him, or them access to something like the Ibrahim Prize and there could be a deal.

    Kim III has one advantage over his father - he hasn't been long in power and would not credibly by chargeable with crimes against humanity. I wouldn't take this very far since such charges bear little relation to the culpability of the chargee - Milosevic was so clearly innocent he had to be poisoned; Vojilsav Seselj", who was an opposition politician in Yugoslavia during the wars, rather than being in government, was indicted 2 weeks before he was plainly going to win a democratic election and whose trial was stopped purely because there was no evidence against him is, after 8 1/2 years, still imprisoned; whereas Snake Thaci (our Kosovo President and clearly guilty of genocide, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and dissecting living human beings) hasn't been arrested; neither; neither has Bill Clinton (guilty of planning aggressive war and using his command authority to appoint Thaci as his policeman and send him to commit genocide); and almost all western politicians who supported that war and who are thus personally complicit in war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and such cannibalism, albeit at a lower level).

  As a matter of law there is no evidence whatsoever against Kim IIIrd of any crime 100oth as criminal as what Obama, Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and co are certainly guilty of. However International Law is not enforced and is instead used simply as an excuse for atrocities by the big countries.

   Fortunately for Kim China is now one of the big countries. He would be unwise to and I am certain will not, under any circumstances relinquish power if there is any doubt of  China's willingness and ability to permanently uphold promises of his security in face of NATO/"International Criminal Court" criminality.

   One other point worth making is that though NK has a nuke there are new military technologies developing. Curently there is being developed a remotely pilioted military aircraft the size of a hummingbird. In fact it is, visulally, a hummingbird. It currently has a short range and no weapons but that is bound to change and I can think of no defence the NK government could produce that would stop such an assassination weapon being used, in a few years, against them.

* Perhaps I underestimated the degree of control the BBC operates. Checking out Seselj's case I find that, over nearly a decade the BBC have managed to censor any single mention of his arrest, "trial" , innocnece and continued imprisonment.

  The purpose of government programmes is to pat government employees and their friends. The nominal purpose is, at best, secondary.  - Pournelle's Iron Law.

  I have written of this many many times, mainly in the economic sphere for that is where I feel spectacular progress is most obviously easy. However Christopher Booker has long been writing not just on the subject of warming alarmism but also a scandal which should, if our MSM were in any way whatsoever interested in journalism rather than censorship, have the public crying in the aisles.

    Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children are being taken from caring, loving competent parents and sentenced, without due process, to the living hell of "social work carers". Twenty-three percent of the adult prison population has spent time in care yet to an ever increasing extent the child abusing "caring professions" are ensuring that it is ever more difficult for them to reach the limited escape of foster homes. The only possible reasons for doing do is so that the obscene subhuman filth who make their living as "the caring professions" (A) get off on torturing children and their parents & (B)  its a living and indeed a better one than being a guard at Auschwitz.

   It may be argued that there most be some decent people in social work (or indeed Auschwitz) . However does anybody know of a social worker, or indeed judge, ever dobbing in a fellow worker for kidnapping a child or perjuring themselves in testimony on the reason for it. Any social worker involved in such actions has vitiated any legal document "allowing" them to kidnap and is as guilty of the crime as any ki8dnapper without a warrant signed by a judge - and should be punished accordingly. Moreover any judge who signs such a "warrant" without properly satisfying themselves personally that it is justified and immediately afterwards talking to the kid to verify it is also personally guilty of kidnapping children.

   And any judge who deliberately threatens any journalist or member of the public to keep such a crime secret (a very common practice as Booker has pointed out, on a demi monde where habeus corpus is unknown) is themself an accomplice to kidnapping and also guilty of perverting the course of justice.

   Every last one of these obscene child abusers should be locked up for decades. Give the nonces somebody to look down on.

how many months Booker has been beating this drum, and no one could now deny that there is a case to answer by social services, the police, the court system and the legal profession – to say nothing of the politicians.
Most of all though, there is an issue here about the media. This is the industry which professes to be concerned with people's rights and in freedoms yet not a single newspaper has followed up on Booker's work and developed a campaign – which is what is desperately needed.
It is thus left to Booker to plod on, in his own little ghetto, becoming the last repository for desperate parents, who are increasingly directed to him as the only journalist prepared to listen to their stories.

Booker's Articles
Foreigners are an easy target

Behind a wall of secrecy, parents who lost their children are now in jail


Our family courts repeat the error that jailed Dreyfus


Couple denied legal help while lawyers make £1m removing their children  Iron Law - this would not  happened if we weren't paying the child abusers £3.5 billion for their pleasure.

How a mother who fled to Ireland to save her baby was caught on her return.


And so on and on

For legal reason comments are not allowed by the Telegraph there but perhaps there is somebody in the childcare community who would like either to justify such actions (or the Orkney "satanic" case or others in Scotland) or alternately apologise for abusing children and their parents this way. Perhaps pigs may fly too.

The Space Settlement FAQ - a useful roundup of terms
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China celebrates first docking of its space station modules. Not widely reported here, or indeed almost at all, but a necessary achievement on the way to a permanent foothold in space.
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the recent nuclear thermal rocket variants are described. They are estimated to require 5 years of technological development and could have launch costs of $85-150/kg for a single stage to orbit vehicle.  These are launch from Earth's surface vehicles but involve superheated water etc as exhaust not radioactive material.
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An Awful lot of asteroids out there for us to mine.

So far, the mission has observed more than 60,000 asteroids, both Main Belt and near-Earth objects. Most were known before, but more than 11,000 are new.
"Our data pipeline is bursting with asteroids," said WISE Principal Investigator Ned Wright of UCLA. "We are discovering about a hundred a day, mostly in the Main Belt."

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  Interview on the Mach Effect reactionless drive. 

Question "I saw the prediction of a 15-25 year development timeline."
At the rate we are going, 15-to-25 years may be optimistic now, for we have been able to generate zero outside support for this M-E effort at DARPA and NASA. The idea of extracting energy and momentum from the gravinertial field for power and propulsion is just too new, foreign & quackish to most folks who control the R&D coins

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 Discussion of light sails
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Wikipedia history of Project Orion atomic bomb powered spacecraft.
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NYT "Interview" with Presidential; front runner Newt Gingrich. Actually what he says barely gets mentioned
and the author spends her time trying to make fun of him having some vision and supporting space development, and in my opinion merely making herself look small. Almost the only sentence of his given in full is praise of Jerry Pournelle.