Is there anything I can do to help?

The Daily Caller is reporting that Congress has written to several companies to see if they have been asked to give assistance re: the debacle of the Abominablecare website. Two companies, Amazon and Microsoft have indicated that they sent emails offering to help with the site. It is not encouraging to learn that they were more or less knocked back over the offer. Other companies who have been approached regarding the debacle include Oracle, Google, Verizon and Expedia.

Google has the expertise in some areas including web design. I do not know the expertise of Verizon but I assume that they have expertise in setting up websites. What I do know from experience is Oracle.

Oracle is a company that has a lot of expertise in database financial and distribution software. I have briefly explained here about what happened when I was at Dataflow and how the changeover to a new system plus a move from one location to another caused the company to go into liquidation. The changeover software chosen by my colleagues was Oracle’s One World. I have used other database software by Oracle as well as from several other companies including Sun. When I was working I was fast at learning the financial systems, including one that used Microsoft software for its financial and distribution of product.

Basically, what I am saying is that these are companies who have the experts and the experience to study the issues and suggest solutions. However, the current Administration seems to have knocked all of them back. This is ridiculous. They should be glad that these companies were willing to lend their expertise to help with the present issues.

Some of the comments I have been reading about the disaster that is the website that is in crisis has included issues with navigation. All of the above companies have the expertise when it comes to creating software where the operator has to navigate from one location to the other. In particular I point to Oracle as one of the best examples because a lot of commercial companies use their financial packages.

So, why on earth is the Administration knocking back potential assistance from experts in the field of creating financial packages and databases?

One more comment here, Amazon obviously uses their own people to create their databases looking after books, and providing material for the Kindle, so again they have a certain amount of expertise in the creation of databases. Ditto for Google, for they too have expertise in such things as creating search engines. All of this expertise is on standby, so why is it that the Administration is not availing themselves of the best in the business?

In Memorium

This is a very sad one for me because today I got the news that my auntie Doreen passed away.

My auntie Doreen was one of the young women who met the U.S. Marines when they were quartered at the MCG. As a result of meeting my uncle John T. she became engaged, and after the 2nd World War she was one of the Australian brides and fiancees who were taken by ship to the USA.

Auntie Doreen married my uncle John T  and they lived in Lincoln Park Michigan. There were 7 children from the marriage, but two of the boys passed away, Jimmy passed away in the June prior to my father’s death in the November 2003. My sister Maureen passed away 18 months after my father, and my cousin Bobby also passed around the same time.

Spying on one’s “friends” can make enemies

I have not mentioned the antics of Snowden and I do not want to give that man credit for anything. I remain with my current stance with regard to some forms of whistleblowing (I have been an indavertant whistleblower and I am sympathetic to most causes for whistleblowing, but taking secret documents is something that leaves me cold).

The German Chancellor, Angel Merkel has revealed that someone was spying on her cellphone conversations. She is rightfully angry that this had taken place.

Who is to blame? When did it happen? How recent was the last time that someone listened to her conversations?

The fact is that the spying has damaged the credibility of the USA. There can only be one person to blame if the spying was of recent origin.

The USA is denying that it also spied on the French, but is that a credible denial?

The damage done by this present White House Administration to the reputation of the USA in the rest of the world is such that I doubt that such damage can be repaired…. Thanks Barry Soetoro.

Personal conflict – finding a new doctor.

I have arthritis. In fact I have had clinical arthritis for a very long time, probably spanning at least 40 years. This is my story of very personal conflict. It is a story that is in keeping with the heading of my blog “A world at War”.

In reality I could state that my issues began when I was about 9 years old because that is when my skin went all funny, and the dandruff began. Years later this was diagnosed as Sebhorrea Dermatitis by a skin specialist who actually did a biopsy of my skin. There are more skin stories but they are not important to this story.

So where is the beginning of my story? Perhaps it began when a woman from DJ’s who was fitting me for school shoes noticed that my feet were different and we were sent off to see a chiropodist who sold us a pair of steel orthotics. I hated those shoe inserts. They were inflexible. No, I do not think that is the beginning. The real beginning happened a few years later when a girl I would describe as an enemy, not a friend deliberately tripped me up on the stairs at school. Yes I really was a victim of school bullying, not just by students but by a teacher!!  This was the first time that I sprained my ankle. Over the years I have sprained my ankle hundreds of times.  So, this was in fact a part of the beginning of my story and journey to get some answers.

The next part to this story happened when I was roughly 19  years old. By that time, I had experienced a number of weird things with my feet. I would purchase shoes I thought fitted and would find that when walking in them I ended up with bloody stockings at the toes. My toe nails were cutting into the toe, causing the bleeding. In other words as I was walking to and from university for example my feet were swelling. There is no other possible explanation. Yet this is not the ultimate experience at the time that I want to explain. By the age of 19 I was experiencing ankle swelling every time rain was pending. At the time of this story I had taken on a short job with the Commerce Library at the University of Melbourne, and yes I enjoyed that job. On this particular day, my ankle was hurting, and I said to my companions working with me that I could predict when the rain would come.  I came within about half an hour with my prediction, it was not too bad for someone who was bragging to have gotten that close with the prediction. I did use a little help, by looking at the cloud formation :).

Ever since my teenage years my ankles have started playing up when it is about to rain. These days the discomfort is much more extreme than when I was younger and did things like ballroom dancing and walking from Flinders Street Station to Melbourne University.  What I never understood is that this swelling is probably the earliest sympton of my “clinical” arthritis.

The next instalment of my story comes at the age of 22. when I slipped on some stairs, and discovered that synthetic  carpets and leather-soled shoes do not mix. Well, that slip on the stairs caused more than a sprained ankle this time. Four months later I discovered that the cause of my growing discomfort was a fractured and displaced coccyx.  This was before having any children. The discomfort was extreme. It was hard to sit, it was hard to stand still, and walking killed. It was even worse when trying to get to sleep. This went on for a very long time. However, I did get some respite after I gave birth to my first son.

After this came the car accident where I had a whiplash injury. I am not complaining because the seat belt restrained my body sufficiently so that I did not go through the window. The injury is a small price to pay, even though it has lasted all these years.  The injury itself was a torn neck muscle and stretched ligaments. Ouch.

There were other injuries to my left calf muscle and once again to my shoulders. It was the new shoulder injuries that first caused investigations to begin. I had some blood tests and one indicator came back weakly positive. I was sent to a rheumatologist, had some further tests and he came to the conclusion that it was fibromyalgia and that I needed to go exercise and good-bye. He put me on what I describe as Zombie medication. I ceased taking that stuff not long after I began using it. At the same time I had no intention of going back to see him. In the meantime I continued with the physiotherapy which was very intensive. This was done under Worker’s Compensation laws. Then we moved to Townsville for a year. It was a year off work. However, Townsville is very humid in the wet season. Needless to say I had a lot of discomfort, and could barely put clothing on the clothesline… yes it really was that bad in the wet season. I fared better in the dry season, but this was helped by seeing a Rheumatologist by the name of Dr. Keary. He was the one who said I had clinical artritis because he observed my symptoms. However, at that stage the serological tests were not giving a real picture of what was happening.

After Townsville, it was back to Canberra, and I ended up with very sore shoulders once again. I was sent to the partner of the same doctor I had already seen with the request to inject my shoulders. (Dr. Keary had given me an injection in my shoulders that had helped me during those dry months in Townsville). This doctor took one look at my file and he refused to give the injection. He told me I had fibromyalgia, go exercise and threw me out the door. Actually I was exercising under a physiotherapist at the time. I can assure you I had a very dim view of Canberra doctors as a result of that treatment.

My years in Castle Hill were also eventful, but they were the years where my body began a series of changes. I had troubles with my hands and fingers. I continued to have issues with my feet. I was using orthotics by this time and changed Podiatrists a few times.  The first doctor to recognize that my symptoms could be Rheumatoid Arthritis was Dr. Sue Kiang. She is a brilliant doctor who is able to pick up on people’s symptoms to offer a diagnosis. I went to her because I had a very sore left little finger. I thought I might have jammed it in a car door, but of course there was no crack from such an incident. Instead she had noticed arthritic changes in my little finger, thus she was prepared to call it RA.  with a question mark. My other doctor from that era was also very good. He ordered some bone scans that indicated if anything that the level of inflammation since my first bone scan had significantly increased.

The first Rheumatologist that I saw in Sydney was a doctor Lim. I liked him. He thought that the inflammation indicated generalized osteoarthritis. I began a program of exercises under his care, and was seeing an exercise physiologist. He introduced me to taking Glucosamine because other patients were using this product and claimed some good results. I was sent to another doctor for a second opinion. More conflict because fibromyalgia was back on the table… but he also put me in the clinical arthritis category.

In the meantime some other things happened. These included a new round of plantar fasciitis. When this strikes it also hits into my hips. At this stage I was having hydrotherapy and treatment of the condition was a part of my hydrotherapy exercises. Then within months of this development I injured my coccyx for the second time. I had already developed an allergy to wooden seats that required I used a cushion to sit on the church pews, but now I needed a bit more in the way of padding. The injury happened in 2007 and I am still have problems. They are similar to the first time that I had this injury. For this reason I recommend that people should be very careful about trying to check the water temperature in a swimming pool because hitting one’s butt against the wall of the pool leads to lots of extreme discomfort!!

Our move to Canberra happened around this time, and once again I was in the hunt for a rheumatologist. My GP was very quick to pack me off to see a rheumatologist for my symptoms. This time I was very lucky to end up with a doctor who was very thorough in coming to a diagnosis. It meant a lot of tests, blood tests, bone scans, x-rays etc. but the end result happened to be that Chandi is by far the most thorough of all of the professionals that I have seen. I was diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease. He knew that I had a low opinion of any fibromyalgia diagnosis, and he thought that MCTD was a nothing diagnosis but for me it was an end of a long journery of struggle because of those symptoms. About 2 years later my diagnosis changed because I was moving towards RA as a primary diagnosis. The most obvious symptoms are in my feet.  Chandi was good and I do like Dr. Tymms who was responsible for bringing Chandi to Canberra.

Last year, in 2012 we moved from Canberra to the Central Coast. I had to find a new rheumatologist and I was sent to one in Gosford. I got so angry with that man, I was calling him a prick, and continue to refer to him in that way.  However, yesterday I behaved and did not refer to him in such a derogatory way when I went to visit another rheumatologist. This prick in the first consultation stated that he thought Chandi was wrong with his diagnosis and that fibromyalgia was my primary condition. He then proceeded to reduce my dosage of Methotrexate, and by the next appointment he took me off the Plaquenil. He barked at me with his questions. I gave some wrong answers because of the actual questions. Even in the letters he wrote to my doctor he had errors regarding the actual consultation. He paid no heed to the actual blood test results. As a result of the way he behaved, one indicator which had been reducing as a result of the treatment with Methotrexate and Plaquenil started to rise again. I only knew this when I read what I was taking to the new person.  After the last consultation he decided to review me in 12 months, BUT I have no intention of remaining as his patient. When my GP called me in for a consultation regarding the letter he had received from this man, I hit the roof over what had been stated. There were errors again over what was discussed, this made me furious. I had shown him the bone scan reports and he seemed to be mollified. I told him that I was not continuing with the Zombie medication (I fought with him about that stuff) and he had in fact abused me because I had not increased the dosage of that crap. So, I did not hold it in when this doctor had conceded to my GP that Lyrica was also used for fibromyalgia. I had used Lyrica in the past but it was expensive medication and I had to stop because the price was too much to pay.  However, Lyrica is now on the free list which means I pay a lower amount for a prescription, and the price has in fact fallen significantly because it is approved to be used for neuropathic pain which is the reason that I use the medication. During the consultation with my GP I did in fact call the man a prick, yes, I actually said that.

My GP gave me a referral to another man and I saw him yesterday. I have asked this man to be my Specialist Rheumatologist. I am once again changing my medication dosages, and we will see what happens 6 months from now.  In the meantime I am happy with him.

One more thing about Chandi, he was the one who first sent me for a sleep study because he knew of a possible link between sleep apnea and fibromyalgia. It is all about the need for restorative sleep in order for the body to heal. To cut a long story short, my GP sent me to a doctor who is a specialist in lung and sleep disorders. I did another study and this time the diagnosis had gone from mild to moderate sleep apnea. I am grateful to Chandi because of his persistence in the first place. Yesterday, this new doctor with a twinkle in his eye described the treatment for sleep apnea as unromantic… he made me laugh as I explained that both of us are now on machines. Yes it is very unromantic!!

As you can see, this is indeed a story about personal conflict and working through what has been ailing me for a very long time. I was surprised that this doctor pointed out the obvious about my long journey, even though I would add maybe another 20 years with regard to symptoms. At least in those early years there were no inflammatory indicators.

This is a personal journey for me, and there are some extra things I have not added, especially about the extra falls and the bruising that I have experienced, though most of it does not match the bruise I got on my butt after that second incident. I guess that bruising is an indication that some nerves in the region were indeed affected by the accident. The other good thing about yesterday is that this man recognized that I am an intelligent woman. It makes a big difference. So now I am ready to move forward as I seek to cooperate with this particular doctor.

The Left is about class warfare, not those economically disadvantaged

It is a myth to state that those on the Left side of politics are all for the people who are economically disadvantage. There are many reasons as to why I consider it to be a myth. However, my purpose here is to write about Australian politics because I think that the last 6 years have exposed once and for all they myth that the Left are the only ones who have regard for those who are economically disadvantaged.

There is no better example of an area where people who are on relatively upper low incomes than that of the Penrith area and its surrounds in NSW. The Central Coast of NSW also fits into this category because a lot of people who lived in the West of Sydney have in fact moved to the Central Coast for lifestyle and retirement reasons. These people are what I happily call the workers, and yes they do work hard, but they do not have the income of the lawyers and others who get good income.

Left wing people brag that they are for the workers, but even unions these days are all about the union leaders and not for those who are struggling to make ends meet.  In Australia the myth was exploded when the ALP government introduced a carbon tax that ripped even more money out of the pockets of people struggling to pay off a mortgage. We went into the election knowing that we were going to punish a number of the MPS. There was one surprise seat, that of Reid, and there was another that fell which has a very small margin. However, there was one seat where the incumbent fell by quite a large margin,

The issues surrounding the Australian election were numerous but the things that stood out happened to be the attitudes of the leaders. Julia Gillard is a Marxist. She pretended that she had no association with the Communist Party and she covered up her role in the group known as the Socialist Forum, where in fact she was a key member of the group. The Socialist Forum members were in the Communist Party before it disbanded. Kevin Rudd is in fact a closet Marxist. He is more subtle than Gillard. Wayne Swan said many things that proved that he is a Marxist… I could go on and mention each one that has Marxist leanings but there is no point to doing that and instead I want to outline the difference in the two major parties and why it is that the party that is supposed to be of the right is in fact the party of the little people.

The terms of Right/Left were supposed to be about privilege vs the underdog. The Liberal Party does in fact get donations from wealthy people but then again the ALP and even the Watermelon Party aka the Greens also gets donations from extremely wealthy people. From this aspect there is no different between the two sides and it helps to show why the Righ/Left terminology is a myth.

What is increasingly obvious is the policies of each party and how those policies, when implemented actually help disadvantaged people rather than making them even more disadvantaged. One glaringly obvious example is the way that Tony Abbott reached out to those on lower incomes whilst Julia Gillard in particular remained aloof in her belief that she is a part of the elite. The elitist attitude of the ALP/Greens had become extremely irritating and they were not listening to the people who elected them in the first place.

Tony Abbott is the son of an Englishman who migrated to Australia. In other words he is a ten pound Pom. By profession, his father was an orthodonist, and obviously a wealthy man. Tony went to one of the best Catholic schools in Sydney, Riverwood. He then went to Sydney University where he studied Economics/Law and received First class honours. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship, which is only awarded to the best of all the students in Australia in any given year. (Robert Hawke, also known as Bob Hawke is another Rhodes Scholar). Tony then went to England where he continued his studies in Political Science. He has the education that would make the likes of Gillard and Swan extremely envious.  There is so much one can tell about Tony Abbott, that is he has rescued people from a burning building and also rescued people from the sea. In both cases he did not hesitate to risk his own life in an effort to save others in trouble. Every year Tony Abbott spends a week at an Aboriginal Community in the northern part of Australia where he helps them in a practical way. He is a member of the Australian Lifesaving Clubs and yes he performs lifeguard duties. He is a member of the Rural Fire Service or RFS. In fact he is the Captain of his unit, and this last weekend he participated in the effort to fight bushfires raging in the Sydney area. The more I hear about Tony Abbott, the more I like him as a person.

Tony Abbott in fact embodies the real meaning of Social Justice. This phrase “social justice” is one that has been hijacked by the left wing. They seem to think that they are the only ones who do anything about social justice. In fact what they do nothing positive to help people with their policies. They get people on the government teat and then they take away their benefits, leaving them high and dry. This is what happened to the single mothers whose children are over a certain age. The real problem happens to be that a single mother gets a pension if she is not working. Being on a pension has its extra benefits including lower electricity rates, paying lower doctor bills (only $5 discount I might add), lower payments for medicines, lower public transport costs. When the pension is taken away as it was for single mothers in the last budget, it means that all of the extras are lost and that leads to an economic strain for women trying to raise a family without that extra bread-winner member of the family. In some cases the women are not in a position to return to work for health reasons.

The social welfare system in Australia is at breaking point. It is not the fault of these single mothers that the system is at breaking point, although I would argue that it is the fault of some of the single mothers within a certain ethnic group and ideology. (I am not going there at the moment). The real problem has come because the ALP stopped protecting our borders and allowed thousands of people who are country shoppers into our country. These people have been placed on welfare, thus they have become a burden to the taxpayer. I believe the correct term to use for this situation is Jizyah. The influx of such people has also overloaded our health system and especially our hospitals.  Another aspect of this overload is the fact that Australian women who need emergency shelter are denied that shelter because these economic illegal migrants have been given priority. This is the legacy of the ALP/Greens policies over the last 6 years. It means that even in the lower income brackets people are hurting, a lot. They are stressed to their eyeballs as they seek to find the money to pay their bills and the ever increasing costs associated with gas and electricity supply.

The ALP introduced the absurd carbon tax. The obvious impact has been an increase in both gas and electricity charges. This is despite the fact that carbon dioxide is a necessary component to our life cycle – humans breath out carbon dioxide and plants breathe in carbon dioxide, plants breathe out oxygen and humans breathe in oxygen. Plants are good for the planet. The answer is so simple, plant more trees and plants. However, the ALP/Greens claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and therefore carbon (which an element of carbon-dioxide) must be taxed to allegedly lower our emissions. Of course, it has no impact upon the trace gases in the atmosphere.

The ALP/Greens have been scaremongering about climate change. They totally ignore the historical facts about Australia, Yes we do have bush fires every year. What they ignore is that everything goes in cycles, including rainfall and temperatures. If the real temperatures were plotted, and no predictions from computer models were used, one would have no trouble recognizing the trends, and how these trends have a cycle. From experience, I know that the extremely high temperatures occur about every 15-20 years. For example there were temperatures close to 110F in 1939, 1959, 1983 and 2009. We also had some extremely high temperatures in late 2012 and early 2013. However, that is what happens in an Australian summer. During the 1960s Victoria had a dry spell and that meant water restrictions. Then in the 1970s the summer was cold and wet. The 1980s it was back to hot and dry, and so on it has gone. There are other observable trends too. For example, in years where there has been a lot of rain in the summer months, lower rain in the winter months, we have seen an increase in bushfire activity. This is because the undergrowth has been allowed to get out of control.

The Greens are economic vandals. They care nothing for the environment even though they pretend to be environmentalists. They do a lot of scaremongering, and they are responsible for doing damage to crops that are meant to help people in various ways. They deliberately go around destroying experiments with genetically manipulated crops – some examples of those experiments actually shows that these vandals are doing more harm by what they are doing to the actual crop production. One experiment destroyed by these vandals is working on getting a potato that is impervious to potato blight. What these Green vandals ignore is that we have always had genetically manipulated crops. An example is the wheat produced by William Farrer who worked to find a rust resistant crop. The potato crop is just one example. The experiments on wheat crops these days is an effort to produce a wheat crop without gluten.  The vandals destroy the work of scientists because they are the ones who have no real scientific knowledge.

To be continued.

Left/Right – why this is a wrong classification in politics

As an Australian, it irks me that people of the “Left” in politics get called “Liberals”. The reason that it irks me so much is that in Australia, the Liberal-National Party Coalition are the conservatives of politics. Being conservative does not mean one has what is considered to be “extreme right wing” views. The fact is that calling conservatives “Right wing” is in fact an error. This suggests an association with Nazis and Fascists, yet conservatives do not agree with the politics of either Nazis or Fascists who were and are in fact “of the Left” in their ideology.

I believe that the Wikpedia entry on the political spectrum is in error because it leaves out one very important point, and that is: some of the groups classified as Right wing i.e. the NAZIS and the FASCISTS are in fact Leftist because they are also followers of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, and I might add, they believe in Government control of the lives of the population. For this reason, lumping the Nazis and Fascists in with the conservatives of politics is just plain wrong.  I would suggest at the same time that it is inappropriate to lump dictators such as Pinochet as right-wing is also inappropriate from a modern viewpoint.

However, Wikpedia is a good starting point when it comes to understanding the origin of the “Left/Right” political spectrum. It is unclear as to when this terminology was first used, but according to Wikpedia it occurred in the French Parliament around the time of the French Revolution.  It is all about the seating in the Parliament and that as groups of people identified with each other they sat together, one lot on the right side of the Parliament and the other lot on the left side of the Parliament. In France, the parties that sat on the Right were those who supported the monarchy, whereas those who supported the revolution and Robespierre sat on the left side of the Parliament.  The same seating arrangements also occurred in the British Parliament, where there were Whigs and Tories, prior to the emergence of the British Labour Party in 1906.

The Left/Right spectrum also fails to take into account that there is a wide group of like-minded people who are middle of the road. These are the true conservatives. They are neither left, nor right, but depending upon the policies they can lean either way. Some for example are considered to be socially liberal, but others are economically liberal.

The word liberal is another word that has been taken out of context. Note, in the last paragraph I wrote of socially liberal. I think a better word to describe such people is libertarian or better yet, libertine. By this I mean that they are people who believe that the government should not interfere with their lives behind closed doors. Some of the things that they support include abortion on demand, voluntary euthanasia, easy divorce, living together and yes even homosexual marriage. Their attitudes actually suggest a break down in the morals of society.

An economic liberal is someone who believes that government should not be controlling their economic lives especially when it comes to business. Again, this does not mean that there should not be any government regulation which is the position of the economic libertarian.

I do believe that Left/Right has been falsely defined for probably more than 100 years. For example the Wikpedia definition states that the left are people who usually advance the rights of the economically disadvantaged. However, based upon the Australian experience, this is not true.

To be continued

Fires in NSW

More than 100 homes have been lost due to bushfires in NSW. The majority of the losses have been in the Blue Mountains, with Winmalee bearing the brunt of the losses. Today, the RFS have been working to save St. Columban High School in Springwood. I will point out here that there is more at stake than just the high school because the property also houses the primary school as well as the church and the priest’s residence. The property also served as a seminary in the past but the seminary had to close down because of asbestos in the building. Actually, I do know the property, very well. It is a long story as to how I know the property and you will just have to take my word that I do know it very well.

It is the other fire that is of concern to me personally because it is one that is hard to put out. This is the fire that has been flaring on the Central Coast of NSW. On Thursday one man lost his life when he was attempting to save his property in Munmorah. He had a heart attack.

The reason that this is personal is that Munmorah is very close to where I am currently living. For the moment we remain safe. However, this fire is of concern. It started more than a month ago on what is known as Rutley’s Road. It dies down but it flares again when temperatures are raised. The reason for this occurring is that there is a just below the surface coal seam that is affected. The fire itself has tentacles. So far it has been pushing northward because of the southerly winds. However, if we get a northerly then we could end up in trouble.

So far as I am aware this man is the only one to have died as a result of these bushfires.

Please note, none of these fires are due to the effects of Globull Warming.

Some comment necessary about the Arab Spring

What we know as the Arab Spring is in fact a very complicated subject. In each Middle Eastern and North African country where there was some form of uprising there were many factors involved. The movement got started in Tunisia because one man had enough and torched himself. The end result of that initial reaction was the removal of the Tunisian President… and then it was on to Egypt.

What did Egypt and Tunisia have in common? It was not the Muslim Brotherhood, although that is indeed something they have in common. It was in fact the role of the Left Wing faction in each country. The Egyptian uprising in particular was not the work of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was not the work of an Islamist faction. It was the work of people who had left leaning tendencies in politics coming together with other factions to demand some changes.  The Muslim Brotherhood however saw the opportunity to promote themselves and the rest is history. What you need to understand is that Christians were working with what we understand to be moderate Muslims in order to bring about change. I will go one step further here and dare to point out that U.S. Administrations had for some time been educating Egyptians on things like democracy with the intention of bringing about change. Their plan backfired when Morsi was elected as an interim President.

I have always maintained that the Libyan situation was different. I continue to maintain that what took place in Libya was in fact something that no one had really anticipated. I doubt that the CIA was ever involved, unlike CIA involvement in Egypt. The difference was in fact the impetus of the people who were willing to take up arms against the dictator of their country. The difference is in fact that the people who operated as the link between Libya and the West were majority non-Islamist and they had a different set of values. The real difference is that they had to join forces with the Islamists in order to throw out their own terrorist dictator.  In Libya there were many motivations all leading to people with disparate views coming together to bring about change. Today Libya remains a country with unstable government, but I have not given up hope where that country is concerned.

There are people who continue to draw the long bow with regard to their comments where Libya is concerned. By this I mean that their viewpoint is a distortion of what the truth might be. I am not writing this to intimate that I have the truth where the situation of Libya is concerned, but rather I want to point out that the motivation of Libyans was different from the motivation of Egyptians to get rid of their leader. Gadhafi had outlasted his use by date. In Libya he had a reputation as a bad ass. He was brutal in the way that he put the people’s rebellions against him down. The majority of the people of Libya had no love for Gadhafi.

The Libyan revolution began in much the same way as in Egypt and Tunisia. By this I mean that the revolt started out being low-grade and then it began to gather into a storm as people became incensed over what was taking place. This resulted in one man in Benghazi who had always eschewed jihad to decide to take his own life by using his car as a bomb to breach the walls of the fort in Benghazi. The man had become so angry that he personally got involved. There were others who became involved in getting the message out there. They faced certain death from the pro-Gadhafi sector in Benghazi and at least one person who had been brave in broadcasting lost his life thanks to a sniper.  He did not have a gun, he did not preach Islamism. Instead he had a message of freedom, but a sniper did in fact cut him down.  Most of the people who took up arms in Benghazi had no idea as to how to use those arms, and the same was true in other cities.  The Libyan revolution was really about freedom from tyranny.  The move against Gadhafi had been a long time coming, but the movement had existed for years, and it took the savagery of Gadhafi against his own people in places like Misrata for the rest to take up arms. This is also true with regards to what happened in Tripoli. Normal people risked their lives and took up arms because they were sick of the way that they were being treated. On top of that they moved against Gadhafi because women and children had been his victims during those early days of the revolution. Many Libyans who were living abroad returned to help get rid of Gadhafi.

The Libyan opposition (now the government) were adamant with regard to foreign boots on the ground. They were adamant because they did not want to see Libya invaded by Al Qaeda. You could say that they were aware of the dangers because they had to work with the pro- Al Qaeda elements, and they had to make sure that they, not Al Qaeda controlled the country after the downfall of Gadhafi. I think overall they have been successful, BUT they are so weak that they have not been able to overcome those same Al Qaeda elements in order to bring about full stability.

Syria is a very different kettle of fish. Whilst it was possible to identify those who opposed Gadhafi, it has not been possible to fully identify those opposed to Assad in Syria. Prime Minister Tony Abbott summed up the situation as “baddies vs. baddies”; in other words one lot of baddies was only marginally better than the other baddies. The problem in Syria is that by ignoring the civil war that was happening when it was relatively young, the West allowed Al Qaeda get in with a very strong foothold.  In those early days I was prepared to speak against Assad because of the level of killings of innocent bystanders. There were villages where Assad’s team moved in and randomly killed everyone. The villagers fled across the border into Turkey. Today the Syrian Civil War continues to draw in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.  What is barely discussed though, is the involvement of Iran in Syria. It is not a very healthy situation at all.

The purpose here is to remind people that sometimes speculation and the blame game can get out of hand. I do not believe that Obama wanted to get involved in Libya. In fact Barry fought against involvement initially. Barry had almost nothing to do wtih the NATO forces and their actions in Libya because he did draw back. If anything this made Barry look very small on the national stage because if anything drawing back at a critical time during the civil war actually helped to prolong the life of the whole war. It was very bad timing and it showed to the rest of the world that Barry is clueless.

One thing I want to dispel is the notion that Gadhafi was paid to help keep the African immigrants out of Europe. I have not seen any evidence that this was the case. Until I see some definite proof that this actually happened, then I would say that this is just a silly rumour that is being used to continue the anger against Barry’s short-lived involvement in the whole affair.

First Came Australia, Now Comes France, Yes FRANCE – Conservative FN Party Surging and French Media Astounded….

I am reblogging this because there are some very obvious errors in thinking.
The French extreme right headed by Marine Le Pen has nothing in common with the Australian Liberal Party. They are not even on the same page. The issues surrounding the Australian election are a far cry from those of the French election, except perhaps the issue of illegal entrants.
The major issue that decided the Australian election was not immigration. It was in fact the carbon tax and of course the lunacy of the Greens.

However, I do not want to undervalue the fact that many of us also were upset with the constant flow of illegal entrants who were heading to Australia by boat via Indonesia. This is an issue that needs further exposition because the result post election is intriguing to say the least.
I should point out that the real world-wide issue is people smuggling and human trafficking. Until this issue is fully tackled by other governments then the illegals will keep trying to reach those other countries where they think that the grass is greener.

So, no.. it was not first Australia, it was in fact first came Spain.

A common problem – INCOMPETENCE

Australia and the USA have many things in common. In recent years I have made a lot of comments on the commonality that exists, especially when a Marxist was in charge of our Australian government.  There are, of course, many differences, but for this essay, I am only concerned with the failures of the previous Australian government and how those failures do in fact have a lot in common with the roll out of Abominablecare in the USA. That commonality is in fact the incompetence of the people put in charge of the project. It is also an incompetence that one sees when government is in charge of such large projects.

In Australia, during the KRUDD and Gillard years there were many failures and failed projects. The BER program, which is the building education revolution was in fact a massive waste of money, mostly because the projects were being handled by government and they were content to pay more for a building project than was absolutely necessary. Most of these projects ended up as very small buildings such as a canteen, a small library, the extension of a shady outdoor area etc. etc. None of it was spent on building a new school room or anything like that.  Then there was the NBN rollout. Both projects were nothing more than a balls up… but I will come back to the issues soon. I want to divert for a moment because of something I remembered from my school years.

I attended 3 schools over time. My memory is hazy on the matter, but I am sure that St.Agnes, the primary school that I attended up to year 6 had a building program. During the time that I was at the school one class used to be held in the hall area that was behind the church.  We used to hold concerts in the building and the altar was simply closed off so that we could all fit into the area. On the Fridays though, the class that occupied the back of the building would have to stack up their desks and these were removed so that seats could take their place for Mass on Sundays.  Eventually, the parish built a new church off-site from the school. In the back of my mind, I kind of remember that there might have been a school building project to add a classroom. There was certainly plenty of room to add to the buildings as necessary. I add here that the school had a shelter shed where we ate lunch and there was another building where we used to go, especially in summer months to do our exercises.  The next school was Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Bentleigh. This was the convent where the nuns had their quarters and they used to get a taxi to the primary schools each day, except for when the assistant parish priest would go fetch them and load them up in his small vehicle (ah, the amusing memories!!).  In the two years that I was there, a building project was commenced and new classrooms were added. The school managed the chaos, and yes it was noisy and chaotic when the building was taking place. However, it was completed in a relatively short period of time and within a year we were using the new classrooms.  This was probably when building projects of this size were completed on time. My third school (the one I loved) was Presentation Convent Windsor. It was a school that went from grade preps through to Year 12 or Form 6 which was how it was named when I was at school. At the time it was a boarding school, as well as being a nunnery. I cannot remember if there had been a building project, but the senior classrooms were new.  Again any building that was completed was done on time.  These are just examples of how a project on a large but small scale can be completed on budget and on time… but that was in the 1960s.

I diverted for a reason. It suddenly hit me that school projects are better handled in a micro environment, that is everything is outsourced by the school or by a committee associated with a school. I can give another couple of examples, being renovations to the church at St. Bernadette’s Castle Hill, the building of a Church for St. Michael’s Kaleen etc. In each case the building was completed on time and within budget. However, at St. Bernadette’s when extra work was required for renovations to a school building that was to increase the capacity of a small meeting room, well it took forever (and that was after the year 200).

Between the 1960s and the year 2000 something had happened to the building industry in Australia. Something worse seemed to have happened after that time, because small projects suddenly cost millions of dollars and a lot of time to be completed.  This brings me to the B.E.R. and the NBN rollout.

I think that the something is in fact the rise in the power of the unions, especially their political power and influence. Whenever the ALP takes power in government all sorts of crazy projects are undertaken. On the State level it was the de-salination plants built at an enormous cost, and then they were put into mothballs or de-commissioned. This happened in Victoria at Wonthaggi, NSW at Kurnell, Queensland and in South Australia. In one of these examples the size of the plant was unnecessarily increased in capacity. The plant in South Australia was necessary but the increase in capacity was not necessary, plus the increase in capacity ended up as a blow out in the cost budget.

The issue, as I see it, is the incompetence of the managers chosen to oversee the projects in the first place. This kind of incompetence is related to the fact that they do not have experience to handle such projects in the first place.

Prior to the 1990s the Australian government had a department that was responsible for maintaining married quarters for the Defence Force, plus for Federal government buildings. The department became a part of the Department of Administrative Services. In that period the work force was wound down via voluntary rendundancies. When John Howard became Prime Minister the “business” was sold off. By that stage this sub-department had converted to the use of accrual accounting and it was reasonably professional.  Although I was not a part of that sub-branch of the Department of Administrative Services, I was a part of the main Department and was a part of the move towards accrual accounting.  I took a redundancy in 1996 because I had moved to Sydney and could not get other Public Service work. It was not for any other reason such as incompetence. For that reason I do not know if the Public Service had continued down the road of accrual accounting or if that was stopped when DAS was disbanded under the new government of John Howard, or if it was discontinued when KRUDD came to power.

I do suspect that accrual accounting was abandoned by KRUDD if it had not been discontinued by the Howard government. Accrual Accounting in government was a novelty. It also meant that government departments were held accountable for their spending on major projects. Without accrual accounting projects such as the NBN did not show up in the books. This is a whole area of contention and I would need to do a lot of research to try and discover what accounting methods were put in place to try and hide the cost blowouts of the NBN project.

The people handling the NBN rollout were incompetent. The work was not on time, and there were many pitfalls. It has been reported that there had been a failure to pay some sub-contractors. This is on top of all sorts of incompetence at the top of the NBN company tree. The incompetence lays at the hands of Senator Stephen Conroy and Kevin Rudd who had the thought bubble that led to this project being implemented without putting in place any kind of project goals or business plan. When challenged, the challenge was shrugged off. When criticized, well Stephen Conroy simply went ballistic.  We will learn soon enough the actual level of this incompetence. If the project is to continue, then sweeping changes are needed from the top down. What is most important though, is to find someone with the competence to be a good project manager who can make the necessary changes so that the rollout can continue within budget.  My view here is that an accounting system also needs to be designed so that everything becomes transparent and that government is held accountable for the expenditure on the project. That accounting system needs to be accrual, and not the usual government accounting model.

What has this got to do with Abominablecare? If you have not guessed where I am heading, then you need to read up on the balls-up that has occurred relating to the government website. The whole project should be put on hold until the problems are fixed. I have one question – why was this a balls-up in the first place? Personally, I would point the finger at Sebelius because ultimately she is in charge of implementation and she does not have the competence to put all of the pieces together. The IT implementation has been an absolute balls-up and people do suspect that no testing was done before it went live… well, I have another story to tell….

The company name was DATAFLOW, and it was a software and hardware distribution company. My view of the company is that it relied too much on one retailer and it gave into the demands of this one retailer which ultimately meant that the company was being screwed. However, there were other issues because during my time in the company, it was decided that they had to upgrade their computer software, not just the distribution side, but the accounting side as well. People were chosen to help make the choice between products. The owner of the company wanted to go with one particular product but the team chose software that was largely an untested product with industry. In hindsight and only because I got to work with the other package, I think that the owner’s instincts were correct and that the team who chose the other product were wrong.  The product went live and the distribution side of the business fell over immediately. This was on top of a move from one location to another. Within months of moving to the new system and to a new location because the business had been growing, the company went into liquidation.  The lesson here is that the product itself was largely untested in the open market and this was a major cause for the failure of the company. On the other hand I do suspect that the reliance of business from this large retailer also had a major impact that the owner had failed to address when he allowed all the discounts etc. to be given, which only led to further demands.  In the end it was the incompetence of those who were implementing a new system that led to the ulitmate failure of the company. There were probably other reasons for the company failure, but having worked in the company, this is how I see the lead up to the ultimate ending of liquidation.