Martin Meenagh blog

Another useful graph with thanks to www.zerohedge.com

Shocking Hacking and Stolen Information Three years ago, following on a linked but separate German operation, Her Majesty's government acquired cds and other electronic data. This information detailed the names associated with private bank accounts in Liechtenstein . Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs now allows for 'disclosure', even on funds from elsewhere, created after the discovery, at tax-amnesty rates. I for one am shocked at this hacking and use of stolen data. Wherever could they have got the idea from?

Obama's Ship Money; The Fourteenth Amendment 'Solution' and the crisis of 1869-76 David Goldfield has a new and interesting book out, which in the best sense of the word starts from the sort of premise that a bright twenty something who wanted to re-write the field and attract attention would embrace. It is that the American Civil War was essentially a consequence of evangelical protestantism, and of the moral zeal, intolerance of compromise, and dissolving effect of that movement upon politics and society in the decades before the War of 1861-5. By recasting the war as one that was avoidable, and the product of religion, Goldfield (who teaches in North Carolina) breathes life into a modernised 'blundering generation' hypothesis that may appeal to an almost monoculturally fideophobic American intellectual class whilst allowing people to escape the simplistic iterations of slavery guilt that some of the sixty-eighters have traded on for years. However, the thesis doe...

"Democracy is Government by Explanation"--David Cameron I thought that I would replicate a facebook note that I wrote here, as this scandal about the media-political class and their bubble is becoming more interesting. Sicut Erat, et Nunc, et Semper--Until Judgment Tom Watson MP, who knows lots about the hacking scandal, has just asked about elements of the intelligence services working with News International, who in themselves were working with criminal elements. Significantly, the head of the Legal department at NI has just quietly resigned. Big and bad things are moving. This may seem a silly bubble scandal, while the real economy here freezes and the west's economy burns. It is becoming something else. We're getting a glimpse beneath the murk of the political-media class and the financial monsters who live in the deep. Watergate was important not because of Nixon, and Dallas only partly because of JFK--they both exposed the connections that really run a great man...

The Times They Are A-Changing Well,they're about to. I'd adapt Toynbee (Arnold, not Polly, and originally about civilisations, not limited companies); Corporations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet' The media-political class is finding its world alternately freezing with the home economy and burning with the one abroad, and I suppose the cracks are showing. For the record, I used to enjoy the Sun and the News of the World whilst knowing the feeling was wrong, but that's neither a new nor an alien thing for a Catholic. The sociopathic side of me also has a certain healthy respect for that old Monster Murdoch--a sort of Joe Kennedy style predator whom most of his detractors deserved to be eaten by. You have to admire the Tiger, especially when it's about to get shot and is still defiant. It needs to fall in ...

From the Blogs I found the following on The Trader website, via Zero Hedge . It is by one Gordon T Long, and I wanted to put it here as an aide-memoire --but I thought that some of my regulars would like it too. I like diagrams.

DSK: Scurrilous, ill advised or thought provoking? I noticed, around the 3-5 of June, that the following comments were appearing on various websites. At the time, I thought, as I still think, that no one can understand what goes on in a trial without the benefit of reading a very thorough report or being there--and even then, having sat in on several dozen trials, the instincts and conclusions of juries are often very difficult to fathom. Anyone holding forth as an authority on any case is immediately suspect; I have about thirty thousand JFK assassination documents on cd, or on my shelves (including a copy of the Warren Commission report, for instance, which I have read). I've accumulated them over twenty years. You know what? I haven't a clue what happened on 22 November 1963, beyond four people being shot and the Beatles releasing an album. People read the wrong focus into things often; silly little crimes become great affairs of state, and great conspiracies become one-off ...