Barbara Ntumy and Jack Buckby

In the past week, there was a notorious Channel 4 News debate featuring right wing activist Jack Buckby and Momentum member,Farage confronter and student activist Barbara Ntumy.  It was notorious because Buckby pulled out a sheet of paper and asked Ntumy whether she would fill it in and accept refugees into her home.  He then followed up with the comment 'I hope you don't get raped' which made him come out looking rather bad even though he had a reasoned argument in that piece.  To her credit Ntumy did say that she accept refugees into her home if she had the means.

During the discussion, Ntumy said that Buckby objected to her existence several times and which he denied strenuosly.  What Buckby objected to were those who were a drain on society which in closer analysis is actually a reasonable point.  He also said he hated Ntumy's politics rather than Ntumy personally, in particular her faux outrage when IS are committing atrocities. Ntumy then brings up the British colonialism that happened in her birth country - Ghana.  Its strange Arab colonialism is ignored and black on black colonialism is also ignored.  It is clear that Buckby cannot be defined as a racist in this instance.  Instead he is making very reasonable points about immigration and also cultural differences between the hosts and newcomers.  Time and again the left has failed to deal with this and any discussion of this is set within narrow limits lest one is accused of being a racist.

On a later Youtube video, Ntumy supports the idea of 'no platforming' whereby those whose views are not acceptable to Guardian readers are not allowed to speak in public. In the age of social media, the no platform is being rendered obsolete.

Empire Total War - 2017-02-12

I've have been rather quiet on the ETW over the past weeks due to the Chinese New Year and various other family commitments.  I have moved on to 1824 on my game calendar and the conquest of Poland-Lithuania and the Maratha Confederacy is in full steam.  The Marathas should capitulate in a few more turns and one of its regions(Punjab) has already rebelled against its rule.  However I have lost a region, Wurtenburg, to a rebellion but I shall get that back in due course.  Once Poland-Lithuania has fallen I am considering a campaign against Russia.

Simon Singh:the code book - review

As I posted earlier, I have been reading Simon Singh's 'The Code Book' and I have now finished it, in fact I have re-read some of the more interesting chapters again.

This is a brilliant book charting the history of cryptography and its opposite number cryptoanalysis.  It is no wonder that some computing degree courses use this book as a course text book.  It gives a thorough explanation of how the Nazi Enigma codes were broken and the brilliant work done by the Bletchley Park experts in achieving that.  It also goes into the deciphering of ancient scripts of extinct languages such as the Linear B tablets of Bronze Age Greece.