Utopia, you are standing in it!

I cannot possibly cover the entirety of King John’s reign in this one post, therefore I will cover more personal issues along with issues regarding the succession.

John (December 24, 1166 – October 19, 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philippe II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John’s reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document sometimes considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.

King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine had five sons: William IX, Count of Poitiers, who died before John’s birth; Henry the Young King; Richard…

We are experiencing a new age of protest, a different type of activist and an intriguing role for media. The issues are evolving and the speed of the activist outreach (via fear and outrage) is accelerating. As the game changes, what will happen to the old generation of game changers?

Greenpeace had always been the game changer but over the decades it has run its business like an empire. In the halcyon days of the 1990s and 2000s, the global NGO could afford to take on governments, buy ships and bully companies. But Greenpeace could not adapt to the shift to social media tribal communities. As the activist game changed, Greenpeace had grown too fat while much more nimble activist upstarts and social media gurus were eating their lunch. It seems now the old lady of environmental NGOs is starting to starve to death.

I looked at the last five…

The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 as a result of the 9/11 attacks. It invaded Iraq in March 2003 in response to the alleged threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

These acts prompted an unprecedented flood of articles in newspapers and magazines, TV documentaries, conferences, seminars, papers and hundreds of books speculating whether America was now, finally, at last revealed to be an ’empire’ with nakedly ‘imperial’ ambitions.

British economic historian Niall Ferguson entered the debate with a Channel 4 TV series and book on the subject – which also neatly complemented the C4 TV series and book he had published in 2003 about the British Empire.

When I bought it I thought, from its subtitle (‘The rise and fall of the American empire’), that it would be a history, maybe a chronological account of the growth of American power.

But it isn’t. Even more so than…

The problem of why civilisations fall is too important to be left to the purveyors of scissors-and-paste history. It is truly a practical problem of our time, and this book is intended to be a woodsman’s guide to it. (Preface p.xxii)

Ferguson doesn’t shy away from the big subjects, in fact he enjoys storming the big subjects – the Origins of the Great War, why the British Empire was a Good Thing, the Future of America, a Complete History of Money, a Complete History of the 20th Century. It is no coincidence that the last four of these books were written to accompany four blockbusting TV series, TV being a medium which favours striking stories and bold statements, contrarian points of view and press release-friendly controversy.

This is Ferguson’s fifth book-of-the-TV-series, created after the crash of 2008 revealed the weakness at the heart of the western financial system and events…

The Anglo-Saxon kings of England used numerous different titles, including “King of the Anglo-Saxons” and “King of the English. Around the mid 880s Is period in which almost all chroniclers agree that the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to Alfred. This was not, however, the point at which Alfred came to be known as King of England; in fact, he would never adopt the title for himself.

Initially Alfred was titled King of Wessex until 886 when in London Alfred received the formal submission of “all the English people that were not under subjection to the Danes”, and thereafter he adopted the title Anglorum Saxonum rex (King of the Anglo-Saxons). While Alfred was not the first king to claim to rule all of the English, his rule represents the start of the first unbroken line of kings to rule the whole of England, the House of Wessex.

Alfred’s son…

It is the final Friday before Shemini Atzeret, also known as Election Day in Canada this year, And what an interesting campaign it has been! The polls have moved quite a lot, especially recently. The New Democrats (NDP) seem to be enjoying a surge. Not on anything like the scale of 2011, but still something notable, as it was not long ago that there was talk about the Greens possibly passing them for third place. The Greens have slipped somewhat, as has been the case in past campaigns. No longer do they look likely to win as many as four seats; two (which is their current number) looks most likely.

The striking thing is that the poll aggregate at CBC (compiled by Éric Grenier) shows both major parties–incumbent seat-majority Liberal and opposition Conservative) barely above 30% of the vote (31.7-30.8 at my latest check). From 1949 to present, the largest party…

Wind industry victim: the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.

Cars, cats and skyscrapers don’t kill Eagles – like the critically endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, but 60m wind turbine blades with their tips travelling at 350Kph routinely smash them out of existence.

The current crop of well-fed and poorly educated teens raging against the evil patriarchy and its grand conspiracy to cook the planet and demanding immediate ‘climate action’ – code for carpeting the planet in windmills and solar panels – either have no idea about the carnage caused by these things, or they couldn’t care less.

Millions of tonnes of beneficial bugs get splattered annually, along with millions of birds and bats, some of them being among the last of their kind.

All, as we’re constantly berated, in the name of ‘saving’ Mother Earth. [Note to Ed: with friends like that, who needs enemies?]

Denial, obfuscation and outright lies…

Expect  the  old  campaigner Winston  Peters to be at  his belligerent  best as he   gears  up for another election.  He’s kept his party alive for 27 years  and  he  shows  no sign  of quitting.

The  omens  may be  bleak—polls  this week  showed  his party below  the  5% threshold– but  Peters  insists   NZ  First’s  own polling puts the party  “comfortably  in the  zone”  to do well.  He told   Radio NZ the  party   is getting  “enormous  support” in the provinces  and  he’ll use  the   conference  to  outline a winning  strategy.

As  for  those  political commentators  who say NZ  First  won’t make it back  into Parliament,  they are   “moronic”.

Yet  even  when  Peters  fires   up,  as  he  did  in  that interview,  the  odds   are stacking up against  NZ  First.    He  can brush off the polls, dismiss  leaks of  sensitive party documents  pointing to questionable  internal administrative issues,  and  assert   his  party …