Dilbert: "We people are smarter than we look"
Dogbert: "How hard can that be, really?"
COMMENT: "TROLL" THREAD
Nevertheless, amongst the number is a goodly proportion of what could fairly be labelled "trolls", the nature and behaviour of which have been fully characterised, and discussed on a number of blogs, such ashere and here.
The latter piece, headed whimsically, "How to be an Internet troll", starts with probably the most accurate and devastating definition – although there are many more. A troll, it says, is like the scum of the Internet:The purpose of his existence is to challenge the hero and play pest / spoilsport / critic / villain / supervillain by constantly attempting to discredit, rubbish and criticise all of the hero's attempts. To be a troll, you need not have any argument or merit, just a string of abuses targeted towards your object of obsession does the trick, and gets you noticed. All a troll needs is attention. And, you should get it no matter what it takes.
Having tracked the Booker column comments to explore the phenomenon in more detail – and play with ideas for their containment – one notes that there is a particular type of troll emerging – the "political" troll, and for them the key word in the definition is "challenge".
The troll takes as its starting point that the author of the piece to which it is responding is wrong, that the piece should never have been published, and that it is his sacred obligation to address these defects, and warn off all readers who might otherwise be influenced by it. That, in effect, defines the troll – it opposes the premise being offered and has taken it upon itself to correct or negate it.
To achieve these ends, the troll will adopt a number of techniques and characteristics, the most potent of the latter being sheer persistence. It is always there, always ready to post, always ready to challenge unwary supporters, it will normally be able to wear down casual visitors, or frighten them off with the intensity of their peremptory demands.
Some identify in troll behaviour the evidence of Alinsky tactics, which is unsurprising and most trolls appear to be of a left wing or "progressive" demeanour, and have wide experience of these tactics. Others seem to pick up the principle intuitively.In detail, one sees the tactics as primarily those of declamation and challenge. The writer (i.e., Booker or Dellers) will be accused of getting it wrong, of misunderstanding "the science", distorting it (always deliberately) and/or of missing out key details (which the troll deems important). This will invariably be served up in an insolent and offensive manner, and then the battle starts.
Anyone incautious enough to mount a defence gets picked apart. References or "proofs" are demanded, any omission - real or imagined - is challenged, and even the slightest error - again real or imagined - is picked upon mercilessly. But this is a "game" that cannot be won. If the challenge is seen off, with a successful counter-argument, the troll ignores it, waits a while, and then repeats the same challenge or assertion, unchanged, ready to start all over again.
Since several people might join in, some trolls delight in picking up differences and inconsistencies - real or imagined, it matters not - in the arguments, and setting them against each other. Other trolls simply turn the arguments round, adopt them and repeat them back.
As a result, some say that the trolls should be ignored. You can't win - so "don't feed to trolls". Leave them to themselves and they will go away. But the "political" trolls do not. Imbued as they are with almost missionary zeal, they will disrupt a comments thread, dominate it and eventually take it over. That is their aim.
Does that matter, still others ask. I have an open mind on this. I am not sure. Thus, this is a ranging piece, to open a proper discussion and see where we go. But the non-PC picture sets the tone ... you can already see the horror on their faces and the Moonbat scribbling away! We have lost the moral high ground, they will say. But, as Dellers might say, if you can't beat them, the least you can do is annoy them.
That, of course, begs the question of what you achieve by this, but there is obviously some form of "prize" at stake, as the trolls invest a huge amount of time and energy in seeking to dominate comments and forums. They must think it is worth it.
COMMENT THREAD
Further to our report earlier today, the Voice of Russia tells us that the Krasin and Admiral Makarovhave failed to tow the ice-trapped Sodruzhestvo out of thick ice at first go today. According to Fishery Minister Andrei Krainy, the tow ropes broke, so the rescue effort will have to be repeated.
Why are we not surprised?
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
The Daily Mail is running a piece telling us how "millions of hard-pressed families are being further squeezed by punishing rises in fuel bills and food prices".
The tenor of the article is that you must look to the "energy giants" for the reason why fuel prices are increasing, the story lead being focused on E.ON, the "German-owned supplier", which is putting up electricity tariffs by 9 percent and gas by 3 percent. This will add an average of £62 to annual dual fuel bills for 4.3 million customers.
This is where it all gets very difficult. Internationally, the trend for gas prices is downwards, but in the UK, retail customers are being charged more and more. Some of that is undoubtedly due to green taxes, levies and other imposts. An amount is due to the need to build investment capital to expand and renew the production and distribution systems – although costs there are inflated by greenery.
Doubtless, an amount is also due to corporate greed, and the ability of semi-formal cartel status of the energy suppliers which allow them to rig prices, on top of a weak regulator which is happy to see the confusion as a cover for the rising cost of greenery, which it supports.
There are other factors, not least that the foreign-owned companies, which charge less for their supplies on their home market, over-charge British consumers, in this more "liberal" market, in order to recoup losses.
Thus, we end up paying more for energy than virtually any other consumer in Europe (and the developed world). No one knows why, and even the experts disagree. Different sections of the media have different explanations, but all are quite happy to use "corporate greed" to hide the cost of the greenery.
The outcome, therefore, is that we not only get fleeced – we know not precisely who is doing the fleecing and why, and thus know not who specifically to blame. At the top of the dung hill, though, is the government – with that odious creature Huhne nominally in charge. That is as good a place as any to start.
But that alone gets us nowhere. Tomorrow there will be a by-election in Oldham and Saddleworth, to appoint an MP as a replacement for the disgraced Labour MP, who broke the rules. Chances are, the electorate will go for another Labour MPs.
And today also, the Labour MP for Barnsley agreed to resign, after being caught with his hands in the till. In due course, there will be a by-election and, in due course, another MP will be elected. It will be a Labour MP – I can guarantee you that.
Therein is the heart of the problem. We are served by a bunch of crooks, gathered together in a party structure which is long past the sell-by date. Yet, at each election, the sheeple come out – albeit in reducing numbers – to vote them back in.
Yet, these same sheeple will be there amongst the rest of us, complaining about energy bills, and not one will join up the dots. We are the authors of our own decline.
COMMENT THREAD
But, as a reader asks, "Who polices a Police demonstration? Who provides the brutality?" Profound questions indeed ... one supposes they can beat each other up ... and then fine a few more motorists to jack up the income (shucks, the government gets that now ... you can see why the poor plods are confused).
COMMENT: "BOBBIES" THREAD
Yesterday, the Russians were talking about the rescue operation moving into the final, crucial stage, as the combined force of the two biggest icebreakers in the region moved in to try to extract the 32,000-ton Sodruzhestvo (pictured) from ice captivity in the Okhotsk Sea.
The latest report informs us that the icebreakers Krasin and the Admiral Makarov have in fact reached the Sodruzhestvo, now confirmed with 348 crew members on board, and have started to lead her out to free waters. The route has been carefully planned, after extensive reconnaissance by helicopter. The pressure is on for a number of reasons, not least because meteorologists are predicting that the weather will worsen sharply in the next two days. Winds are expected to strengthen and visibility to drop.
Significantly, the ice shelf - which was only about 15 miles deep at the start of the crisis – is now about 100 nautical miles. Distances to safety, therefore, have dramatically increased as the ice field spreads northwards. But, more worryingly, in this shallow part of the sea, the icebreakers are finding that the ice has hit bottom.
Having yesterday "parked" the fish carrier Bereg Nadezhdy (pictured above), with 35 crew on board, the two icebreakers covered 25 nautical miles in 24 hours to reach the Sodruzhestvo, breaking through three big floes in the process. Later, when the two ships are re-united, it is planned to lead them to safety in a single-file convoy of four vessels.
Russia Today talks of temperatures having dropped to -27°C and of a ferocious northerly wind, which is driving the ice into the southern part of the Okhotsk Sea, to the Sakhalin Bay area, where the ships are trapped. Higher winds in particular will intensify the difficulties. Awaiting the ships at the ice edge, we are told is the Magadan icebreaker and a tanker, ready to refuel the Makarov, which is said to be low on fuel.
Meanwhile, as this little local difficulty is sorted out, WUWT reports that nearly 70 percent of the United States is snow covered (and almost all of Canada), with New York City declaring a "snow emergency". The "big freeze" also continues in India and China, in the latter causing considerablecrop losses. But nothing of this contradicts the claim by the British Met Office's Julia Slingo that theworld is getting warmer. These are all local events.
UPDATES: TASS is reporting that the operation to "pilot" the Sodruzhestvo to a loose ice area has started. But, says Tatyana Kulikova, head of the press centre of the Far Eastern sea shipping company, "The operation is proceeding with difficulty: the factory ship has large dimensions: 180 metres long and 20 metres high. It is very difficult to take it in tow."
The procedure described is that the Admiral Makarov "is busy breaking up ice to trench a channel while the higher-powered icebreaker Krasin will pilot the factory ship through it." That is a bit odd, as the two icebreakers are described as sister ships, with identical performance specifications. Meanwhile, the remarkable photograph shows what appears to be a double tow – the two icebreakers together leading out the Bereg Nadezhdy.
Ria Novosti is suggesting that the Sodruzhestvo can be extracted within 12 hours, the Krasin leading it out on "an anchor tow" (i.e., close, but not close-coupled). The vessels are said to have about 12 miles to go before they get to free water, including around three miles of the most treacherous ice. The operation is expected to be completed by Thursday afternoon (presumably Moscow time).
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
COMMENT THREAD: BOBBIES
Bruno has a cracking story, picked up from the Dutch Volkskrant newspaper, although it has been widely trailed in the Dutch press - here for instance (use Google translate).
The story concerns Maarten Engwirda, a former Dutch member of European Court of Auditors for 15 years, who retired 10 days ago. He has alleged that abuse of EU funds was swept under the carpet by the ECA. "There was a practice of watering down if not completely removing criticism," he says.
Siim Kallas, the EU commission vice-president, responsible for anti-fraud measures from 2004 to 2010 (now transport commissioner) is accused of putting "heavy pressure" on investigators to water down findings of abuse.
However, Engwirda, who also describes an endemic "cover-up culture" within the court and wider EU institutions that had prevented the true extent of fraud from being disclosed, also claims that changes made to the system in 2008 meant that procedures were "drastically changed" and the same degree of obstruction is no longer being experienced.
One takes that with not so much a pinch as a shed-load of salt, especially as Engwirda tells us that: "All these abuses never came out into the open because of the Kremlin-style information we provided". The process may be different but the abuse most certainly goes on.
Meanwhile, MPs have overwhelmingly voted against amendments to the EU bill, as we anticipated, defeating them by 39 to 314, and the dismal Cash has rolled over with a promise from the government that it will re-write the explanatory notes to the Bill.
Thus, Cameron escapes with his tawdry, contemptible Bill, and the tawdry, contemptible EU continues to steal our money. Once again, therefore, the question emerges: why do we put up with this? The secondary question is one you can imagine. Its day must surely be coming.
COMMENT THREAD
COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD
Posted originally on the comments to Booker's column, Dellers has picked up a contribution from "Memory Vault" who lives in Queensland and, with increasing concern, is watching the devastation that has so far claimed more than 70 lives.
But the issue here – as it was with the horrendous bush fires in Victoria in 2009, is that the disaster could by and large have been prevented, or the effects reduced, but for Greenie intervention. And two individuals are particularly in the frame, the first being environment minister Peter Garrett, who took it upon himself to block a proposed dam that would have prevented the flooding of the town of Gympie.
But "Memory Vault" particularly condemns a second individual, Tim Flannery, a professor of earth and life sciences at Macquarie University, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, and the 2007 Australian of the Year. It is he, above all, who managed to convince the state government that the predicable cycle of droughts and floods will no longer happen, and that the state, instead of beefing up defences from the last major event 30 years ago in 1974, should prepare for long-term water shortages.
"Growing evidence," declared Flannery, "suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about 'the drought' - which is transient - and start talking about the new climate". It was input such as this that had the state government spending $1.2 billion on desalination plant, instead of flood defences, a plant now mothballed, as the flood waters mount.
This trend was well established four years ago in 2006, when the city of Perth opened the first large desalination scheme at Kwinana (pictured). Visiting the plant on 18 June 2007, Australia's minister for the environment and water resources, Malcolm Turnbull,was telling the world that Perth was the "canary in the climate change coal mine," a city scrambling to find other sources of water for a growing population.
In December 2008, Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia, was telling Discover magazine that Australia was "the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impact of climate change on water resources." He added: "Many people thought there would be adequate time to adapt to less water. The lesson from Australia is that the shift has been very dramatic and has occurred in a very short period".
By 10 July 2010, the New York Times was reporting: "Arid Australia Sips Seawater, but at a Cost". In one of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects in its history, the paper told us, Australia’s five largest cities were spending $13.2 billion on desalination plants. And, with a startling lack of originality, Ross Young was repeating the mantra: "We consider ourselves the canary in the coal mine for climate change-induced changes to water supply systems," he said, describing the $13.2 billion as: "the cost of adapting to climate change".
Needless to say, the Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh is now talking of "exceptional events", and the BBC happily chirps about a "freak of nature" – an attempt to reinforce the subliminal message that nothing could have been done.
But the real story is bizarre, another classic example of the greenies forcing major distortions in policy which cost money we haven't got and eventually kill people. Increasingly we see that the obsession with global warming is not a risk-free option. It costs money we can't afford, and lives. This must stop.
COMMENT THREAD
We are thus confronted with the spectre of the state broadcasting service actually doing something useful ... unless there is an ulterior motive. There has to be an ulterior motive.
COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD
COMMENT THREAD
It is now Tuesday evening in the Okhotsk Sea area, well after the time when the crisis should have been over and all the ships extracted. Instead, the news is virtually the same as it was yesterday .
The Krasin (pictured) and the Admiral Makarov are still attempting to lead the Bereg Nadezhdy fish carrier out of the ice, the sole difference being that they are reported to be half way to freedom. Monitored by an Emergencies Ministry helicopter – which suggests, at least, that the storm conditions might have abated - this is painfully slow progress. But it is at least progress, if we are to believe what we are told.
The Western media are largely ignoring the operation, the latest being a barely informative report from the UPI agency, giving no hint of the underlying drama.
Should the Bereg Nadezhdy be safely extracted – and neither the Russian authorities nor their media now seem keen to speculated when - it will have taken the combined efforts of the region's two largest icebreakers to get a 13,000-ton ship to safety. (The largest, nuclear icebreakers, are of course, over in the West, their precise whereabouts unknown to us.)
The icebreakers on station will then have to plough back into the ice, which at this time of year – and at the prevailing temperatures, as low as -23°C - is expanding faster than a man can walk. They then have to pull out a 32,000-ton giant, in circumstances that have never been tried before, in an attempt to save over 340 crewmen.
If this is not a drama worth reporting, then nothing is, but then there are so many more important things to write about.
UPDATES: The Voice of Russia is reporting that the Bereg Nadezhdy has been towed "to a safe place" and that the rescue operation has "entered the final, most complicated stage" - the extraction of the Sodruzhestvo.
This, according to Novosti, represents a significant change in strategy. The Bereg Nadezhdy has not been towed clear of the ice. Rather she has been moved to a safer place and "parked", saving time for the icebreakers, which can now turn back earlier than they would otherwise have been able, to reach the Sodruzhestvo.
That they are having to do so suggests an element of urgency, which could mean that the bigger ship is at risk of breaking up. The plan now is to re-unite the factory ship with the fish carrier and then the four vessels will move toward clear waters in a single-file convoy. No timescale has been given.
Voice of Russia meantime notes that "it is for the first time in the last few years that the Tatar Strait has frozen to the bottom ... the ice field is continuously enlarging. It was 25 miles wide only recently, while now the field's width makes up 45 miles".
Just another normal winter, it would seem, with global warming rampant.
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
Having abandoned his pledge to give us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Dave "Euroslime" Cameron has decided to give us a faux act of parliament which pretends to limit the further acquisition of powers by the EU, long after it has got most of the powers it needs.
Some of the Tory backbenchers, though, are entering into the spirit of things. Presented with a faux Bill, they are working on having a faux rebellion, led by that faux eurosceptic (who still thinks Britain should be in a "reformed" EU), Bill Cash.
The egregious Cash, whose ability to "bore for England" is reckoned to be able to clear the lobby of MPs faster than a fire alarm or an investigation into personal expenses, has tabled amendments to the Bill. This thereby ensures absolutely minimal support, as most MPs would rather poke their eyes out with blunt screwdrivers than support anything Cash put his weight behind.
This especially applies to Labour MPs. Although it was hoped that some might vote for the Cash amendments, Labour sources have dismissed that idea, saying: "We are not voting with the Tory Right". Instead, they will be voting for their party's own, weak as dishwater amendment, which is almost as meaningless as a Miliband speech.
So it is that Euroslime's Bill will get an easy passage through the House tomorrow. There will be some faux excitement from some faux journalists, and then it will all be over – treble gins all round and book a call to Barroso to tell him it's in the bag.
COMMENT THREAD
COMMENT: RUBBISH PIECE THREAD