From: (Nick)
Date: 22/08/03 04:18 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:

-remove- (Mhoulsby) wrote in message
...
From: Briarroot
Date: 22/07/03 21:43 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:
Houlsby (Nick's Lickspittle) can't tell you. Just as he can't
tell you where Nick hails from. He will continue *pretending*
that he can though, and he'll continue to use the term "smart
six-year old" to indicate anyone who can't divine his fantasies.
So don't ask him for proof, he hasn't got any! ;-)

See what I mean, Timothy? It's your call...
Are you a Disraeli or a Gladstone? Surely you're not Neville Chamberlain?

'The man who enters public life has to choose between political infidelity
and a destructive creed.'
--Benjamin Disraeli (Coningsby)

Dear Mr. Houlsby,

Tim Hanke (evidently, alias 'M.T. Scriboman', alias 'Doctor Alekhine')
seems more like an ersatz Oswald Mosley.


Er, yes, contrary to Hanke's misinterpretation of my motives in writing, in my
reply to Sam Sloan, he

http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2D812BA5

"Hanke is the nearest to a Disraeli that the USCF can muster."

....I intended merely to point out that he was the USCF EB candidate who was
apparently the least *unlike* Disraeli, who was hardly admirable, and barely
notable, but for his having recognised that to popularise politics it should be
"dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator.

I happen to believe:

a) that Hanke is *nothing like* Disraeli.

b) that the fact that Hanke both assumed that I was comparing him *directly* to
Disraeli and, worse, that Hanke believed this to be a *compliment* merely
provides further compelling evidence that, *by his own admission*, Hanke is
possessed of "less intelligence than a smart six-year-old" (my phrase, to which
he adhered)....

As you might recall, Tim Hanke once described me as an 'effete Brit' or
perhaps
he was describing all British people as 'effete'. I don't know to what
extent
the members of the SAS and the SBS would be amused to be considered 'effete'.
Indeed, I really don't know what Hanke considers 'effete', perhaps that I am
am a Francophone or perhaps that I don't belong to a neo-Fascist militia.

"The chances are that a man cannot get into Congress now without resorting to
arts and means that should render him unfit to go there."
--Mark Twain (The Gilded Age)

Americans such as Tim Hanke, Stan Booz, and "Briarroot" seem to assume that
everyone else naturally must be flag-waving jingoists like themselves. But
many people, including some Americans, feel quite differently about what
their
'homeland' means to them.

"We are born, so to speak, provisionally, it does not matter where; it is
only
gradually that we compose, within ourselves, our true place of origin, so
that
we may be born there retrospectively."
--Rainer Maria Rilke


"Better a street-sweeper in Mexico than a filmmaker in Germany!"

--Rainer Werner Fassbinder

I might be an admiral in the Swiss Navy,

My Dad is an admiral in the Iowa Navy.
'Tis true.

snip

Mark

-remove- (Mhoulsby) wrote in message ...
From: (Nick)
Message-id:
'The man who enters public life has to choose between political infidelity
and a destructive creed.'
--Benjamin Disraeli (Coningsby)

Tim Hanke (evidently, alias 'M.T. Scriboman', alias 'Doctor Alekhine')
seems more like an ersatz Oswald Mosley.

Er, yes, contrary to Hanke's misinterpretation of my motives in writing,
in my reply to Sam Sloan, he
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2D812BA5

"Hanke is the nearest to a Disraeli that the USCF can muster."

I intended merely to point out that he was the USCF EB candidate who was
apparently the least *unlike* Disraeli, who was hardly admirable, and barely
notable, but for his having recognised that to popularise politics it should
be "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator.

'I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow where I shall
find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense
to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.'
--Elizabeth Bennet (from 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen)

Dear Mr Houlsby,

I thought that the mission of most schools in the United States is
to "'dumb down' to the lowest common denominator". :-)

I happen to believe:
a) that Hanke is *nothing like* Disraeli.

Are you certain that Tim Hanke did not marry a wealthy widow? :-)

b) that the fact that Hanke both assumed that I was comparing him *directly*
to Disraeli and, worse, that Hanke believed this to be a *compliment* merely
provides further compelling evidence that, *by his own admission*, Hanke is
possessed of "less intelligence than a smart six-year-old" (my phrase, to
which he adhered).

'I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.'
--Benjamin Disraeli (1868, on becoming the Prime Minister)

According to history, the most notable leader named 'Hanke' was Karl Hanke
(1903-1945?), a Nazi of the Third Reich. Karl Hanke was a high official in
Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry. In July 1939, Hanke enlisted in the Wehrmacht,
and he took part in the invasions of Poland and France as an officer in the
10th Panzer Division. (A 1940 issue of 'Signal' magazine has a photograph of
Karl Hanke in command of his PzKpfw IV Ausf D tank in France.) After leaving
the Wehrmacht, Karl Hanke became the Gauleiter of Silesia. On 29 April 1945,
Karl Hanke was appointed by Adolf Hitler to succeed Heinrich Himmler as the
last Reichsfuehrer-SS (the leader of the entire SS). Reichsfuehrer-SS Karl
Hanke had succeeded in 'climbing to the top of the greasy pole', but his stay
there would be short-lived, as soon he would be forced to flee for his life.

As a politician, Tim Hanke might have more in common with Silvio Berlusconi,
the extreme right-wing Prime Minister of Italy, than with the late Karl Hanke.

Here's an excerpt from 'The Italian Poisoner' by Martin Jacques in
'The Guardian' (5 July 2003):

"In seeking to constrain the power of institutions that are independent of him,
Berlusconi has been pursuing a policy of creeping totalitarianism. His own
style of political attack graphically illustrates the point. Just as he sought
to damn Martin Schultz as a Nazi, so he is constantly seeking to denigrate,
undermine and condemn opponents in the most extreme of terms....

This kind of political style is a direct descendant of fascism, where the
opposition is branded in the most lurid and extreme language, accorded no
respect, and dismissed as outside the parameters of respectable and civilised
society. Berlusconi has poisoned Italian politics and this week did the same
to European politics. It was no gaffe: this is how Berlusconi customarily
treats political opponents."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...991976,00.html

That kind of abusive political rhetoric and personal invective also has
become widely accepted and even much admired in the United States.

According to 'An Appalling Magic' by Jonathan Freedland in 'The Guardian'
(17 May 2003), "Bush isn't an aberration and (Ann) Coulter expresses what
many Americans think."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/st...956452,00.html

"The chances are that a man cannot get into Congress now without resorting
to arts and means that should render him unfit to go there."
--Mark Twain (The Gilded Age)

Americans such as Tim Hanke, Stan Booz, and "Briarroot" seem to assume that
everyone else naturally must be flag-waving jingoists like themselves. But
many people, including some Americans, feel quite differently about what
their 'homeland' means to them.

"We are born, so to speak, provisionally, it does not matter where; it is
only gradually that we compose, within ourselves, our true place of origin,
so that we may be born there retrospectively."
--Rainer Maria Rilke

"...a comparison of the attitudes of English and French primary schoolchildren
which appeared in the 'Times Educational Supplement' (23 May 1997) under the
banner 'English--and not very proud of it'. This was the headline-writer's
characteristically gloomy way of encapsulating the results of a study of
850 ten- and eleven-year-olds who had been asked how they felt about their
countries. More precisely, they had been asked to say whether they endorsed
statements like 'I feel very proud of being French'. Fifty-seven per cent of
French children strongly agreed with the sentence, against a mere 35 per cent
of English children posed a similar question about England. When required to
amplify their feelings about their country, the English children cast around
for reasons to be glad they were English and said things like 'It's not too hot
or cold, we have clean food and water...Manchester United come from England'
and so so on. The French children, by contrast, talked about 'notre beau pays'
(our beautiful country), 'parce qu'on est libre' (because one is free), or said
things like 'nous sommes tous egaux' (we are all equal). One even wrote 'car
la France est un pays magnifique et democratique et accueillant' (because
France is a magnificent, democratic and welcoming country). The difference is
interesting, although not necessarily for the reasons the headline-writer
supposed. By the age of eleven, the English children had developed the
pragmatic, question-answering skills which characterise the English intellectual
tradition, while their French counterparts were reciting a lot of hand-me-down
slogans. A more sceptical person might ask why an absence of jingoism is held
to be a bad thing, why the French authorities have found it necessary to
brainwash their young children about the glory of France, and whether a
country was more sure of itself because it needed to make that effort."
--Jeremy Paxman (The English: a Portrait of a People, p. 16)

As I recall, comparative international studies have found that American
children tend to be much more nationalistic (or jingoistic) than even French
children. Undoubtedly, nearly all American ten- and eleven-year olds are
able to recite the "Pledge of Allegiance" to their national flag and other
patriotic slogans. But when, if ever, do they grow up and learn how to
think for themselves?

"After a few months I was able to identify the quality that I found strange
and attractive in the American students. They lacked the tragic sense of life
which was deeply ingrained in every European of my generation. They had never
lived with tragedy and had no feeling for it. Having no sense of tragedy, they
also had no sense of guilt. They seemed very young and innocent although most
of them were older than I was."
--Freeman Dyson (Disturbing the Universe, p. 53)

When I first had some discussions with some supposedly highly educated American
university students, I noticed their general lack of intellectual curiosity
along with their complacent faith in the eternal innocence and virtue of the
United States. Those American students tended to confuse their popular
ignorance with enlightened common sense. Their political 'thinking' consisted
mostly of reiterating the patriotic slogans of their childhood textbooks or of
political fashion. For instance, when I asked them if they could explain what
was meant by a democratic government, they answered that it meant simply the
unquestioned rule of the majority. I asked them if they cared to qualify that
answer, and they did not. I asked them if they could make a distinction at
all between majority rule in the case of a democratic government and that of a
lynch mob. Some students said that a lynch mob was the purest expression of
democracy in action. I asked them if they could think of any criteria by
which to judge whether or not the United States government was becoming more
or less undemocratic. They seemed unable to understand that question; to
those American students, *any* government of the United States--whatever it
could be--must be, by a self-evident axiom, perfectly democratic, if not quite
above all criticism.

'Never think. It does no good. It simply means doubting, and doubt always
leads to error. The safest way in the world is to do nothing.'
--Anthony Trollope (Phineas Finn)

My Dad is an admiral in the Iowa Navy. 'Tis true.

Has he any connection to the United States Navy's Iowa class (BB-61 to BB-64)
of battleships?

"'Oh! You know I am English.'

'I perceive your tongue is', returned madame, 'and what the tongue is,
I suppose the man is'.

He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it,
and turned it off with a laugh."

--Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

--Nick