Dr John Dee

Sorry, Moonie, the year in question is 1948. Those other claimants were making a pretty good fist of asserting their claim at the time, with the endorsement (ever since the Balfour Declaration) and assistance/connivance (depending which side it’s read from) of the British. I don’t know if the Poms were in any position to make offers to the Palestinian Arabs in that year since they’d already announced they were pulling out and there was a war going on between the Arabs and the Jews anyway. Britain had made various offers to do with self-government (or self-administration) before then, all of them contingent on the Palestinian Arabs accepting a shared/divided country. From the Arabs’ point of view they had good reason to refuse any of these, whatever the competing claims to the territory might have been. Biffen’s efforts to construe anything that happened at the time as some sort of sign of or preamble to a ‘failed state’ is only another rehearsal of his prejudices. There never was a Palestinian state that might have failed and nothing the Poms ‘offered’ the Palestinian Arabs was going to lead to any kind of stable state (jolly sporting of them to offer nonetheless, even if they were only supposed to be administering the place … although such, according to Rudyard Biffen, is the unending toil of carrying the white man’s burden). But it fits in nicely with the comic-book version of history retailed in his collection of jaundiced posts above.

I'm guessing you've forgotten about the role of the Banana Company in that book. And that Garcia Marquez was a personal friend of Castro for decades. But no, America's tyrannies don't justify the tyranny of others. They may help to explain, though, but that's a different matter. In that, I'm not sure that attempting to distance Batista from 'America's abominable behaviour' helps very much since part of that behaviour involved propping his dictatorship up for years.

Thanks for the personal perspectives Earl, these count for much more than the cant and clichés that the ideologically driven throw around at times like this. Latin America is far too complex to unthread with catchphrases.

I'm intrigued to know what sort of case you think ASADA might have been able to present to CAS if Whitfield appealed on any ban they tried to impose. Look up the Lizzie Armistead case. Better still, here's a brief version: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-lizzie-armitstead-drug-test-british-cycling-questions-olympics-zac-purchase-geoff-kabush-a7168111.html Of course there was a lot of dissatisfaction from other athletes about it all. But Armistead missed specific visits from inspectors, not hypothetical ones. Is there any evidence that PEDs testing was planned or attempted when Whitfield was hiding under the bed? I haven't seen anything to suggest there was although I haven't read everything about what went on. The problem is that if Armistead is taken as any precedent ASADA would have had all sorts of difficulties even if they drugs inspectors had been knocking on Whitfield's door.

Literary reference: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

All we can do, I suppose, is be grateful we're still around to mark their passing. It's been a bad, bad year, to paraphrase (the late) Gram Parsons.

I thought the Taoist resonances to you last countdown notice were very engaging, Mr Leg.

Already mentioned in the Melbourne Demons (Women's Team) thread, Ralph. But a bit more exposure can't hurt.

Gill is quoted later in the article though: 'Asked if there was a chance ASADA would challenge the bans, McLachlan said: "I wouldn’t be announcing this if I didn’t feel there was agreement with ASADA."' of course 'if I didn't feel' are the sorts of weasel words that allow all sorts of escapes if required later. I'm not sure too many people put them 'on a pedestal' rjay. Most positive comment has been about the kind of job they've been able to do given how substantially underfunded they are and (in the Essendon case) without sufficient powers to obtain the sort of evidence they needed. The latter has been addressed by an amendment to the ASADA Act but the former won't change in a hurry. Without the capacity for a 'cost no object' investigation it's inevitable they'll do deals where it at least allows a guilty finding. They did with Cronulla, entirely pragmatically. And a deal with Essendon would at least have foreclosed on the eternal whining (which Watson continued even as he handed back the medal) about how the players really didn't do anything wrong. However unsatisfactory any resultant penalties might have seemed to many of us, the players (and Essendon) would at least have had to own their misdeeds. But,as you say, along came James.

Surely Biff you don't think so little of your fellow Demonlanders (or at least your fellow habitués of this thread) as to compare them with the TIO? The TIO has just proved in the last few days how much noise it can make about the number of complaints it has received against the nbn. It is somewhat less voluble about the number of complaints it has resolved (presumably the TIO's job, but maybe not). You wouldn't find anyone round here just making a noise for the sake of it, I trust. (My apologies for the lateness of this response btw. It may go without saying that my internet service was, as usual, intermittent most of yesterday. As to the government's part in that I cannot possibly comment without fear of contravening the court order again.) Added: Kudos on the comment on the Goodwin thread btw. Hope it goes well.

Maybe this will help you get through your month wearing that face, Macca:

Thanks Chris, so is your explanation.

Just what is ASADA's responsibility in all this? https://www.asada.gov.au/news/blog-setting-record-straight-asada-and-afl-s-illicit-drugs-policy Added: ASADA enters the picture if Whitfield's test evasions are also regarded as evading PEDs testing under the ASADA code. I presume that falls to ASADA to decide, but has it done so yet?

Damn, can't find the button.

http://www.skynewssport.com.au/afl-news-display/bombers-lose-nearly-10m-over-doping-saga/9016?ref=BP_RSS_sn-sport_3_bombers-lose-nearly--10m-over-doping-saga_151116 Not quite the penalty it should have been, but it's a start.

From a review of a recently published book on the American revolutionary period: By the mid-1790s the political nation was divided between Federalists, led by Washington and Hamilton, and Jeffersonian Republicans. Neither took the high road. Federalists demonised immigrants as a threat to the new republic. In 1798 they pushed through Congress the Alien Act, which sharply increased the waiting period before an immigrant could become a citizen and authorised the president to deport any alien whose presence he believed threatened the nation’s ‘peace and safety’. In the campaign of 1800, Federalists described Jefferson as a dangerous atheist (with a slave paramour to boot), whose election would encourage ‘murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest’. Republicans, led by wealthy Virginia plantation owners, denounced their opponents as elitists and emphasised their own commitment to political equality and economic opportunity for ordinary white men, while at the same time whipping up the electorate’s feelings of superiority to blacks and Indians. It all seems depressingly familiar. (London Review of Books 6 October 2016)

If this thread handed out awards that'd be a five bananas.

Zaharakis's 'needle phobia' has been discussed at several different stages of the Essendon saga.

Suggs says no.

Thanks daisy. They made a lot of noise some months ago about the second satellite going up in October. I haven't heard anything since and I presume as a customer I'll get hear when it comes on stream. The satellite will be ok (albeit with various interruptions and slowdowns) until the wet starts but we can spend weeks under the sort of cloud that denies us any connection. Meanwhile we've hung onto a telstra mobile broadband service (marginal anyway). Between them we get by, but at around $170 a month. It's all a bit mad.

This post got buried in the rush after the whispering fellow put the frighteners on everyone around here but I wanted to add that it's nice to have a professional eye coincide with my far more amateur one, 'bub. I've scratched together a few technical perspectives over time and I wrote to nbn (I'm happy with their use of the lower case; more appropriate to their level of service) with a few questions about the location and capacities of the local fixed wireless tower. Received a page and half from them setting out my 'rights' under the FOI Act and likely schedules of fees etc etc. In another lifetime I used to handle FOI complaints for the Commonwealth Ombudsman so I was tempted to dust off my knowledge and make life miserable for them for a while but I doubt whether it'd achieve anything so I'm handing it all over to the local mp. Will I get anywhere? I doubt it. Even if we get a more reliable service it will only be a more reliable joke, as you say.

Nor did I. What really turned me on to Cohen in the first place wasn't the music but reading Beautiful Losers. Haven't read it since about '69 but there are scenes in that that are still with me. That he was a novelist and a very good (formal) poet in the first place has tended to be buried under all those brilliant songs. The CDs will have to do now. I still find a way to play 'The Traitor' at least once a week. Extraordinary song where the poet and the lyricist are indistinguishable.

No, no, 'bub. I've heard about stories like that ... I'd never fall for such a scam.

Thank you Biff, but I'm sure you can exempt yourself from occasionally publicly censuring me, especially in BBO's absence. I don't mind given your expert command of the sarcastic; and besides there's plenty of cheap 'likes' that'll be available for you from some of the petty revanchists around the place. As far as that lab is concerned I trust you'll be careful. A member of the leather-jacketed fraternity set up a lab in the roof space of a house he rented a few years back just down the road from us. He was sure (perhaps like you) that no one would notice the comings and goings in this far-flung place, on which point he was correct. Nobody noticed the fire, either, until the house was nearly gone.

I'm sure we can arrange some Russian contacts for you to hack the Demonland archive before then, daisy. The two lovely young ladies from Ekaterinburg who have promised to complete my ménage and whose airfares I sent a while ago both have brothers in the computer business, or so they've told me. Of course I haven't heard from them since then but I'm sure I will soon.