L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree
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  • Francis Turner

Tapped Out: The Manafort Mess Sep 22, 2017

This is a guest post by 'Jason Garik'. I don't particularly disagree with what he writes, and in fact we discussed a draft or two, but it's his work not mine. Take it away Jason... (Update: see the youtube video at the bottom for a similar but swearier take) In the past few days, we’ve seen an uptick in the Trump/Russia story and the Mueller investigation. The latter has zeroed in on Paul Manafort, who for a while was Trump’s campaign manager during the election last year. Manafort’s credited in part with turning Trump’s campaign into a more streamlined and...

By Francis Turner Vote0 4

Internet <3 Censorship? Sep 20, 2017

Update: TimN has a post on the same subject that is well worth reading Way back in the early days of the internet, John Gilmore famously said: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." In 2017 this no longer seems to be the case. And that is, or should be, worrisome. I'm not just talking about repressive regimes like the PRC or Saudi Arabia and their firewalls, I'm talking about countries that we consider to be bastions of freedom of speech such as the USA or Australia. Part of the fall out from the Charlotteville mess was...

By Francis Turner Vote1 6

Germans have no sense of humour Sep 12, 2017

Ha Ha Ha. Actually that is of course well known to be untrue. Many Germans do have a sense of humour, however SJWs and politicians, particularly politicians facing campaigns from populists, generally speaking do not. Hence the way that "all right thinking people" in Germany have piled on the AfD and its various posters in this years federal election campaign. The one at the top of this post is less controversial than some, mocking the recent declarations that diesel cars should be phased out but others, such as this one with a cute little piglet, have caused so much controversy...

By Francis Turner Vote8 3

Qu’ils marchent a l’ecole Sep 12, 2017

Or "Let them walk to school" as Marie Antoinette might have said had she thought to worry about how her peasants educated their children. Recently however in many countries the idea that schoolchildren should walk to school on their own has become controversial. Fortunately many of these schools have also stopped teaching the works of dead white males like William Shakespeare so pupils at them are spared the dangers of encountering these lines: Then the whining School-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And of course it isn't just limited to letting the...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

Google & the Guardian Sep 1, 2017

It could just be me and where I'm blogging from (the South of France), but I've noticed an interesting romance in my search engine. There I was looking for information about Theresa May's visit to Japan as a possible blog post so I did the search of "may abe tokyo trade deal" in Google (because I'm using a Chromebook and Chrome sneakily went back to Google after an upgrade). I got the following Note the way all the news items come from a single source. So I did the same search in Duckduckgo Note that in this case while the...

By Francis Turner Vote2 3

Prediction: Hard Brexit Aug 29, 2017

Note: I have absolutely no internal contacts with the EU, Her Majesty's Government or anyone else involved in the Brexit negotiations so this article is speculation based on public documents and news articles. With that disclaimer out of the way, let me cut to the chase. I'm 99% sure the Brexit negotiations are going to collapse and the UK will thus be entirely separate from the EU. In the medium term that will be a good thing, but in the short term it will cause chaos for the UK, Ireland and probably much of Europe. Why do I think this?...

By Francis Turner Vote8 7

The (White) Girl’s Burden Aug 28, 2017

These days it seems the white girl's burden is to sacrificed on the altar of virtue signaling by the right-on social justice types. Unless the white girl is herself a suitably right-on SJW, she is apparently fair game to be taken advantage of, raped or even killed by those higher up in the victimology hierarchy. Those who take her side and try to get some kind of justice, or to stop similar things happening again, are also to be discredited, demoted, and generally piled on until they recant. Even if, perhaps especially if, they are also female and of a...

By Francis Turner Vote6 1

The Wonderful World of the VA Aug 1, 2017

This post is taken lock stock and barrel from my friend Jonathan LaForce's post on the Book of Faeces. I've added a couple of illustrations (if you like the T shirt you can buy it here), links to relevant news articles and tidied up a couple of typos. Take it away Jon! People keep talking about single payer healthcare, and universal healthcare, as if somehow such systems are spontaneously going to save all of humankind from some sort of dreaded mass bodily failure- “millions will die without this!” and any other number of alarmists claims which have been ranted about...

By Francis Turner Vote9 0

Please Sir, May I Build a House? Jul 8, 2017

I recall many years ago reading about the guy in the Philippines who decided he was personally going to legally import a car following all the rules and regulations. It was, IIRC, some kind of VW, i.e. pretty good but nothing special and cost him a few thousand dollars overseas. He wrote up his experience in the Manila English language newspaper to illustrate the pernicious effects of excessive red tape. I don't precisely recall all the details but I know that the various mandatory inspections duties and the like cost him more than the car cost to buy and ship...

By Francis Turner Vote11 0

This blog is probably moving Jun 19, 2017

When I restarted my blogging, I chose liberty.me as my blog host because it gave me a pretty good wordpress install with decent themes, https, spam blockers etc. as well as being a good match on ideological grounds. It was also priced correctly at the low low price of $FREE. Unfortunately, to some extent you get what you don't pay for and I have discovered that unless liberty.me gets a clue by four pronto my blog will soon be inaccessible to me and to many of my readers. The problem is that the certificate for this site (ombreolivier.liberty.me) is one...

By Francis Turner Vote5 3

Surviving Disasters Jun 14, 2017

The news this morning was taken up by the Grenfell Tower fire. There will undoubtedly be lots of enquiries in to just how this could have happened and I predict that a bunch of "managerial failings" will be identified - Tim Newman wrote a post looking at the leadership of the management company and has a link to a rather prescient post from last year on a blog of a community action group. That, however, is not the subject of this post. The subject of this post is how to ensure that the reader survives natural disasters and fires. This is something...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

May Not Have Been A Good Idea Jun 12, 2017

I wrote a month or so ago about how Theresa May was lucky in her enemies. The actual election result this week shows how incredibly lucky she was because it turned out she very nearly lost the thing completely. I don't know how many seats were saved by people thinking they couldn't really stand Corbyn but I'm sure it was more than a couple, particularly after the terror attacks showed just how much of a terrorist sympathizer he is. The fact that up in Scotland the Tories managed to present themselves as the only credible opposition to the Poison Dwarf...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

Dealing with Terrorism Jun 8, 2017

(This is a long post. You can skip to the Summary at the end if you want) So yet another terror attack on London. And the usual #HashTags of prayingfor, standing together and sympathy and reminders that #NotAllOrcs and #SayNoToOrcophobia. None of the hastags, and very little of the outpourings of politicians and journalists and pundits is anything other that virtue signalling of one sort or another. I’ve seen various people mocking the comment by Sadiq Khan the London Mayor that terrorism is ‘part and parcel of living in a big city’. And others mocking the Met’s Run, Hide, Tell...

By Francis Turner Vote10 2

May is Lucky in her Enemies May 7, 2017

So the French election is happening as I write this. Time to turn our attention north of the English Channel. There, Theresa May seems likely to win the sort of landslide election that politicians have wet dreams over. This, it seems to me, is in large part because she has a set of enemies that combine hubris with incompetence. In fact to a significant extent the enemies are busy attacking each other while Mrs May stands around, watches them and then gathers up the pieces. Domestically enemy number one is Jeremy Corbyn who is the such a far left buffoon...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

C’est l’Heure de Squeaky Bum May 6, 2017

In France we're into the last 36 hours or so before we learn who will be the next president. The polls, which were pretty much bang on in the first round, are still predicting a Macron victory. But... Point one. The gap has been narrowing. I'd be surprised if Macron gets 60% of the vote on Sunday. Given that the second round is the point where you vote for your "least worst choice" and Le Pen has been demonized by the MSM and everyone they can interview - both foreign and domestique - this is really not a sign of strength...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

Le Pen or Macron, which is worse? Apr 27, 2017

The French presidential race has come down to a similar situation to the US one last year. There are two choices and both are looking pretty bad. So if you are a French voter how do you decide which one to not vote for? In the red corner we have Emmanuel "Teacher's Pet" Macron. As I've blogged before, he's a fully paid up member of the French establishment, particularly the left-leaning statist segment of it. Macron is young (39) and if elected would be the youngest French President for a very long time if not ever. Being young and only...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

An April for Engineering? Apr 24, 2017

This weekend was Compost your girlfriend Earth Day and the "Science lovers" took advantage of that day to have a March for Science - I don't understand why it didn't take place during the month of March, but maybe the organizers were worried about their plans being disrupted by a couple of feet of global warming. Anyway, moving on. This was of course a chance for lots of left right-thinking sorts to pontificate about how Trump was waging a "War on Science" and so on. The usual sorts (Bill Nye, Neil de Grasse Tyson) were on hand to bloviate and lots...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

French Elections – The Final Countdown Apr 20, 2017

The first round of voting is this Sunday so we're reaching the final stages of the campaigns to be the next French president, but the politicking will continue until the runoff round of the legislative elections on 18 June. At this point it is probably worth doing a quick recap on what happens next as well as a round up of the state play. Assuming that no single candidate gets over 50% of the votes cast on Sunday there will be a runoff between the top two candidates two weeks later. There are four leading candidates (11 total) and none...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

The Poison Dwarf Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks Apr 18, 2017

The UK will have a general election on June 8, just a couple of weeks short of the first anniversary of the Brexit vote. This is a bit of a surprise given that the Prime Minister had sounded pretty firm about not having one as recently as a few weeks ago, however one assumes she can read the polls as well as anyone else and isn't stupid enough to ignore the fact that they all show her getting a massively increased majority given the disarray of the various opposition parties. What is interesting is that the "Poison Dwarf", Nicola Sturgeon...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

Target the Scammers Apr 18, 2017

A friend of mine's parents were victims of the "Grandparent scam". The scam works by a crook calling the victim and claiming that a grandchild is in trouble with the law. They then claim that they are lawyers who can get bail for the grandchild if money is transferred to them. However there's a catch, the scammers don't want the money wired they want some store gift cards. In my friend's case the scammers used Target gift cards, precisely as described in the second link. She is, unsurprisingly, not impressed with Target since the scam has been well known since...

By Francis Turner Vote5 2

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