Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.
But in terms of style and presentation, which I presume this is about, rather to my surprise Romney is coming over the better. He is glib whereas Obama is stuttering a lot; they are both achingly dull, but Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head. Neither of them shows any evidence whatsoever of charisma.
Four years ago Obama was talking with apparent belief about the need for change and inspiring people to follow him. He may even at the time have believed much of what he promised, but given the speed of abandonment of principle in office, I doubt it. Now Obama is just trying to present as a more managerially competent neo-con; a managerially competent neo-con competition is about the only one Romney can actually perform in.
I don’t really care who wins – debate or election.
Sad day, Ttya. I thought it was entirely on-topic. Thanks for trying.
@Clark, don’t be despondent! Ttya’s assistance has been very useful, and the hosts will take a look at it.
@Ttya – thanks for your digging. Hopefully the hosts will learn both from the cock-up and from your kind suggestions. Our backup is very much in place, but we will see if it can be improved further.
Jon, Ttya, I could post instructions on my web space for users to edit their own hosts files. Are there problems associated with doing this, beyond remembering to revert it later?
Jon, thanks for dropping in. Ttya is right, there should be some sort of explanation on the front page, which is where most visitors are arriving.
O/T – DNS
Clark, 2:45 pm
“Ttya,
I’ll check out the whois info soon… (e-mail, e-mail…)”
For such a small request, I thought soon meant more like 5-15 mins. Please post the result on this and the related company questions, and maintain my soon to wear thin goodwill.
“I have a steady flow of e-mails about the site being down…”
They will certainly keep coming, I may well not keep checking in.
Do you have a known other web page where you can put up a message that people (and search engines) will find?
Cleanup – ok how about we mark as O/T – DNS. Now what is left is confusing people too. Please keep the most recent few exchanges up and don’t delete your own until I’ve indicated I have read them. ok?
Clark, on editing host files – you could do so. But this material is already all over the web, and people coming to Craig’s won’t know to look at your website (or similar info) to fix the problem.
In my view there’s no value in putting a note on the front page now, since the site is effectively down for most folks. People will find out that it was not downed maliciously when the DNS is fixed tomorrow.
@ttya – I’m not the boss here, but imo discussion about the host that is not in the public domain is probably not ideal. As I say, your helpful points about DNS arrangements – not something I know much about – have been sent to the host.
Craig usually doesn’t read down past the first hundred or so comments, but I am sure he would express his appreciation if he did! 🙂
Confused by [Black vs Blue!] Clark at 4:42pm vs 4:17pmm. Did I miss something? (no time ref).
Have just sent another post that is not yet up, or are you hinding them all. Whatever…
ttya (lower case of course…)
Jon, Ttya is asking me to post public information.
Ttya, the link on my name leads to my contact details. The gmx address is easier for me to reply on.
Yes, WordPress capitalises it. I’ll use lower case from now on. Your latest comment probably got queued for containing links, even if you posted plain text.
O/T – DNS
Clark 5:53 pm,
Oops we are back on page 2.
I did say before:
“Sorry I don’t want to give out an email or start getting drawn into admin here… Maybe the occasional handwaving to suggest if you set tack to certain climes you may find good sailing and avoid a few reefs… :-)”
Look when it is back up you can scrub all this dns chatter and just post a summary etc.
When is it Monday morning in CA? Almost another whole day still. So down at least to then most likely, unless you are lucky and it is awaiting NL/UK.
Jon, I was asking public info on “ns1.expathos.eu” from a whois hidden by a javascript/google/captcha, or to know if e.g. you are only dealing with c2j.nl or if you have your dns registration with a separate company which is apparently Fasthosts Ltd. from the public whois.
When the dns is up its ip will show where it is located.
Anyway, I value your sceptical concern.
Clark 5:34 pm,
IMHO:
Don’t you have 1000’s of readers?
Main point is to get a notice up which will get found to manage the “public relations” side of your “public” at large not knowing what has broken, or if you have been taken down by TPTB etc., and then to provide updates on expectations on when you may be up.
Be sure to include words likely to be used by your average user wondering why this site (name variations) is down or broken etc., so that google finds it – so is your page checked often by googlebot? Else get a copy of this note up somewhere that is.
Provide the IP number for those who know, and leave it up to them to mess with their hosts file if they are competent.
ttya, For what it’s worth, I’ve put a notice here:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/home.html
Sorry I left the link off my name earlier.
Jon at 5:45 pm:
Clark and Jon,
If your hosting provider don’t know this then they should pay me for that info as consulting advice!
You are both leaving me feel rather disrespected, if you are asking for explanations not for the purpose of getting back to me on my questions, but just leading me on. Even my question about the destination of the contact page remains unanswered.
I was making the effort to inform and educate you two and Craig, and and first was looking for the problem. A few simple pieces of info would have then let me make a more complete appraisal for Craig to consider his priorities. You hardly seem to care about bringing that to his attention or availing yourself of my experience.
What you said “the host has sorted that out, and now, apparently, were just waiting for the DNS record to work its way back into the system.”, that mislead me that it is a technical matter of propogating DNS records, which should have taken hours unless the SOA’s were bad.
As far as I can tell, there is still no new DNS record in the system. One should have been told, “the host is waiting for the payment and administrative requests to be processed, until it clears in a CA company, so that they then enter a new correct DNS record into their system (taking around 48 hours), which will then start propagating to the DNS server caches”.
Quite a difference!
[Mod/Clark: Edited, hopefully as requested by ttya at 9 Oct, 6:31 am.]
@ttya: I haven’t asked any questions afaicr, but I’m pretty sure Clark does so in order to learn in a general sense, rather than to deal with the situation at hand. The host says a fix is forthcoming, and since I have no control over their servers or processes, I will leave it in their hands.
Their service has been fantastic over the years, so a little hiccup like this is minor. Craig is too busy writing a book, and talking to conferences, to be blogging at the moment anyway! 🙂
DNS records – you are right, the new one may not have been entered. It may be that the host needs to make a payment tomorrow in order for that to happen, but ultimately we hope the lights go back on tomorrow. The contact form should go to one of Craig’s email addresses.
Jobless with big families could lose benefits: Osborne vows to slash £10bn from welfare bill.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2214315/Jobless-big-families-lose-benefits-Osborne-vows-slash-10bn-welfare-bill.html
Unemployment among Britain’s youngest workers has continued, according to the ONS. The number of 16-to-24 year olds out of work hit 1.04 million, taking Britain’s youth unemployment rate to 22.5%, the highest since records began in 1992.
More than 420,000 thousand public sector staff in education, NHS and Social Security have lost their jobs as the government’s austerity measures increase. Most if not all of these people have paid into health and social security as National Insurance contributions. Currently the percentage of earnings going to NI is 12% on average with only a 2% increase for high earners. This brings about £100 billion into the government purse
Since the government coalition was formed in 2010 it has relentlessly created a ‘them and us’ culture when it comes to the ‘social insurance scheme’ we all pay into called ‘welfare benefit’- originally designed as a buffer system whereby the government undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, esp. those in financial or social need because of illness, catastrophe or unemployment.
It is clear this coalition government is dismantling the contributory principle and projecting through the MSM that the social welfare system is a form of charity thus encouraging a public resentment in order to save a great deal of money that is needed to bail out financial mistakes, world conflict and protection of British interests abroad.
Shortly after the formation of the Coalition Government in May 2010, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, laid the foundations for one of the most radical programmes of reform to the welfare benefits system since its
creation. Since this time, the Government has initiated £18 billion* worth of cuts to the benefits system, with a further £10 billion before 2016. At the same time, it has reduced funding settlements for local authorities across the country. The fallout of these cuts is becoming more evident as councils look to raise eligibility criteria for social care, increase charges for services and in many cases even close them down. As the Coalition’s programme of spending cuts and welfare reforms have become clearer and more defined; so too has the impact on disadvantaged and incapacitated people and their families.
Let’s not forget Labour started this, introduced ESA; put bankers in charge with no experience whatsoever of social security or public service; changed the re-assesment procedures for IB claimants and by mid-2008 had moved many chronically ill under-50s to JSA and ESA by underhand methods. The Tories have continued unchecked in these vile ideological and hate driven policies with a nod and a wink from Labour benches. It can only be hoped that the empty shell that is London Labour will, like its now defunct Scottish branch office, soon blow away.
Deep research and connecting the dots may have exposed a connection between war, havoc, conflict, world government, banks and Wikileaks.
http://www.puppet99.com/?p=1
Is this a skeleton in the closet of Julian Assange?
Mark, the 1991 arrest and “deal” that saved him from years in prison is interesting. A perfect circumstance to recruit him as an intelligence asset. The rest is history as the say.
Glad the site is back up and running, thought it was under somekind of attack!.
“Osborne’s claim that the deficit is down by a quarter is just plain wrong”
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/10/08/osbornes-claim-that-the-deficit-is-down-by-a-quarter-is-just-plain-wrong/
“George’s new “we’ll pay for the right to fire you with useless shares scheme””
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/10/08/georges-new-well-pay-for-the-right-to-fire-you-with-useless-shares-scheme/
Does nobody other than Craig have access to the twitter account? A quick tweet with the ip address would have been nice. Even just a tweet from someone else with @craigmurrayorg would have done. People were complaining with no response.
Yes I could see it was a DNS problem related to expathos but the owner was also staying silent on his own twitter account ( Richard Kastelein @expathos ) about the problem.
~~~~~Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.~~~~~
That’s because Heinrich Bruning had the last laugh. He may have lost office in 1932 but he’s been in power ever since.
Clark,
kindly edit the above post – ttya (7 Oct, 8:48 pm) – since the colon prefacing the quote of Jon is too similar to a comma used when adressing someone. It was intended for you both, as was expressed further down: “You are both ..”
Also, why the selective deletions of posts like this one – Clark (6 Oct, 11:13 pm) – which was not full of the dig records that someone complained about? Might it be restored?
thanks.
How about starting it as:
———–
Dear Clark and Jon,
In contrast to what Clark said, (now removed), Jon wrote 5:45 pm:
“As I say, … “
Clark,
would you at the very least be so kind as to post for my personal edification simply the whois DATE information from the eurid.eu for expathos.eu which you retreived prior to this being fixed, and the current DATE record information after it was fixed. By that I am referring to lines which will look like the following whois lines (omitting all the public contact details and emails it has):
Domain Name: expathos.com
Record last updated at 2011-11-16 08:01:21
Record created on 11/26/2003
Record expired on 11/26/2012
Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.expathos.eu ns2.expathos.eu
…
Registration Service Provider:
name: Digitalus Webhosting B.V.
web:www.digitalus.nl
Hooray. Back. The absence made the heart grow fonder and gave a deeper appreciation of how valuable this site is for informing us and to keep in touch with each other.
The fascists’ output from Birmingham is becoming more and more extreme. Today it’s a free for all on burglars. Yesterday it was more pain from Gideon interspersed with the arrival of Boris and odd snatches of Agent Cameron. All worthy of a Third Reich rally. I saw Gove standing cheering and clapping Hammond and many many young men in the audience in raptures. V scary.
I thought that these articles were interesting and worth passing on.
A Rotten Fusion of Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism
Which Africans Will Obama Whack Next?
by PATRICK BOND
Durban, South Africa.
Would Barack Obama’s re-election advance African democracy and prosperity? Evidence suggests not, though the alternative in the November 6 election would probably be worse.
Obama’s most important important policy speech on Africa, in Ghana in 2009, contained the famous line, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”
According to a recent puff piece in South Africa’s leading ezine, Daily Maverick, Obama’s top Africa official, Johnnie Carson, last month claimed that “the US wants to work with African nations to strengthen democratic institutions, good governance and efforts to stamp out corruption [and] to spur economic growth through market-driven, free trade principles.”
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/05/which-africans-will-obama-whack-next/
America’s Mr Africa
{http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-21-americas-mr-africa}
12,000 SA striking miners have been sacked by the world’s largest platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum.
{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19848915}
My God, I thought the main source of real news had gone. So pleased to see the blog back up and running. What was the theme, oh yes, US elections. Yawn! Whoever gets in they are going to wage war on Iran at the behest of their Zionist funders.
Meanwhile five British citizens are languishing in US penal institutions.
Well, hello again. My DNS seems to be resolving you normally now – bit of a weird moment there.
Mary, I think you’re being unfair to Boris (Gawd bless ‘im, the peoples’ friend) And Dave, come to that, if we’re talking Third Reich. Some of Dave’s best friends are Jewish, and if Boris is a little bit like the ebullient and popular Hermann Goering, at least he isn’t running the RAF…
Clark Is your new gravatar a sunspot?