Facebook - when someone is using your email for their account

As a blogger, I maintain multiple email accounts. Some accounts I allow to "know" each other, and other accounts I like to keep separate. As a bit of a computer geek, this is just something I do automatically, so that if an account gets hijacked, the damage is limited to only those accounts in the circle of knowledge.

Most software subscriptions allow you to confirm that you are the actual email owner upon initial contact. If you do not confirm, then your email account is left alone. Not so Facebook. It seems to be irrelevant to Facebook whether or not the email given really belongs to the person trying to use it.

No, their "solution" to people accidentally or on purpose using other email accounts is to force their users to register all their email accounts to their Facebook account. From a data gathering point of view it certainly makes sense, except of course, if an email account is linked by someone who doesn't have access to it, then not so much. It seems that FaceBook is more interested in forcing their users to register all their email accounts than it is in keeping them secure.

This thread is full of people including myself, asking FaceBook to help them with their email accounts that have been used by other FaceBook users, shows that FaceBook is not really interested. The reply from the FaceBook person was just to add the email to the FaceBook account, even though doing so is impossible if it's already being used by another FaceBooker.

On another thread on the very same topic, the FaceBook person tells the disgruntled users that the signup process for FaceBook is not complete until the email sent as confirmation is verified.  However, a recent comment shows that what the Face Book Help Team person said is not true - that there is no way to get an email address back once another person has used it on FaceBook, whether it is confirmed or not.

I have just become interested in this whole thing again because one of my email accounts has had 30 or so emails sent to it from FaceBook (in Portugese) on behalf of a person who has used it as their main email address.  They have also easily added numerous friends and posted a number of updates without ever having to confirm their email address, the email which I still have in my Inbox as proof that the confirmation email from FaceBook does absolutely nothing in preventing email hijacking.

I was at first very frustrated, and after reading the original thread of annoyed FaceBook users, I came across a person suggesting that you search for your email account on FaceBook and report the user.  So I searched and I found the offending person, and sent them a message.  I didn't know you could search for people by their email account on FaceBook.

Anyway, I then realised I had their email account and what that meant - that I had the entry key into their  Facebook user account. All I had to do was tell FaceBook through the log in screen that I had forgotten my password for that account, and I would get the reset password email sent to me.  Once I had it, I could change the password and log on. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before - I suppose I just don't think like a hacker.

John Key on Colin Craig's suing of Russel Norman

Pete George pointed out the following article from stuff yesterday, over what John Key said about Colin Craig's potential legal action over what Russel Norman said about him at the Big Gay Out:

Prime Minister John Key is firmly in the Green Party camp over political free speech and threatened legal action by Conservative Party leader Colin Craig.

Key this morning told told Breakfast that Greens co-leader Russel Norman should not apologise for comments made about Craig at Auckland's Big Gay Out.

"I don't know the ins and outs of all the comments, but essentially this is politics - it's a rough and tumble," Key said.

"The last week we had Winston Peters saying apparently, I had something to do with Huka Lodge, all of which was not true, but if I spent my life trying to sue people who said things I don't like about me I'd be in the courts every single day.

"It's just the nature of the business, you need to harden up a bit and just accept it."

He was talking after Craig threatened to sue Norman over comments Norman made a fortnight ago suggesting Craig thought a woman's place was in the kitchen and a gay man's place was in the closet.

Norman has not backed down from the comments and said he found Craig's views offensive.

Well, I was all set to write a post on what John Key should have said about this whole issue, as I was not impressed that he was siding with Russel Norman here. Except, re-reading the article for a direct quote about what Mr Key actually said, I can see there is no direct quote. With no direct quote, I cannot see how he is, in the words of the article, "firmly in the Green Party camp over political free speech."  Nor can I see how he is saying that Norman should not apologise, as it looks like that part of the article is inferred from what John Key actually said, nothing of which he said that I can find fault with.

Had John Key straight out said that Russel Norman should not apologise, then he would be endorsing the view that politicians should be able to lie about their political opponents without consequence, and that is just a type of free speech that we should all get used to. Thankfully, without a direct quote, I'm happy to assume that our Prime Minister is being mis-represented in this Stuff article. A bit of an irony, given the subject at hand.

However, at the end of the Stuff article, there is this little clanger about what Colin Craig is likely to do with regards to the potential legal action that I cannot see how it could be inferred at all, therefore it must be true:

Craig indicated court action might be dropped if the cost cut too heavily into campaign funds.

"We have to make decisions between ultimately funding election campaigns or litigation," he said.

However Craig also said the legal action could be expanded to include further comments Norman made about him over the course of a number of interviews throughout the past week.

Seriously? Colin Craig wants to dig a deeper hole than the one he is already in, to justify himself? Argghhhh!!!! The old code of pistols at dawn would have better that this!!

Down the Rabbit hole or why Kiev will not be a good place for Gay Pride Parades any time soon

In between watching your reality shows and checking out your face book page, have you noticed that the democratically elected Government of Ukraine has taken a tumble?

Its one of those "spring" things, you know like the "Arab spring" when peace and harmony was going to break out all over the Arab world because, to paraphrase an immortal line from "Full Metal Jacket, "inside every raghead there is an American just trying to get out".

In any case Ukraine is bankrupt and to keep going they needed to borrow money - and the EU came up with a package with some very unpalatable IMF mandated strings attached but VVP, never one to miss a trick offered a better deal, more money and cheaper gas. Well what is a poor beleaguered President of a bankrupt Nation supposed to do?

He went with VVPs deal.

And a great wailing and gnashing of teeth was heard in Western Capitals.

But while not happy to invest in infrastructure in Ukraine Western Governments are happy to pour money into undermining its Government, this being their concept of "promoting democracy" which we all know is a fundamental right.

And all this "democracy promotion" is done by shadowy NGOs and TV Stations situated in Poland.

Anyway nice photogenic, educated, middle class Ukrainians were encouraged to protest their Governments actions, stirred along by visiting high profile Western Politicians
but alas things got out of hand from there.....

Because the nice photogenic types who could talk the talk and utter the buzzwords like "democracy" and "Freedom" in coherent Ukrainian accented English sentences before the cameras, were joined by the disaffected who exist in large numbers in bankrupt nations who came looking for a bit of bovver. From there it was all downhill.

But take it as read that some of the factions, even some mentioned in the more reputable analysis of these events as key players are people who would make any self respecting Liberal Democrat's hair stand on end.

Gotta go my reality cooking show is about to start.

Norweigan mass murderer Anders Breivik is neo-Nazi by his own admission

Breivik's Nazi salute that the media wrote off as a "fascist fantasy"

A few weeks back, JihadWatch writer Robert Spencer wrote a post about what Anders Breivik has admitted to recently - that he isn't a counter-jihadist, that he just pretended to be one. When Breivik's manifesto become available, I and some others at the time did not believe what he said about being a Templar or even a Christian - it just didn't make sense to me. Now this story where he has admitted it was all an act has been picked up by The Daily Beast.  From Nordic Terrorist Makes Bombshell Claim — and the Media Missed It, by Benjamin Weingarten:

Remember Anders Breivik, the Norwegian man who carried out terror attacks including the bombing of an Oslo government building and mass shooting at a Workers’ Youth League camp, killing 77 people and injuring 319 more in July 2011?

The most recent significant press on Breivik dealt with the fact that he threatened a hunger strike from his comfortable prison cell, demanding, among other things, a Playstation 3.

Much more important, and universally overlooked, was the news that came to light last month: Breivik released a letter to the international media indicating that he had intentionally portrayed himself as a counterjihadist and Zionist in order to trick the media into attacking these very people and to cover up his true allegiance to “nordicists” and “ethnocentric nationalists” (i.e. neo-Nazis).

In contrast with the heavily covered Playstation 3 letter, this prior one received little to no coverage in the American press beyond a Wall Street Journal article focusing on Breivik’s allegations of inhumane prison conditions. The Journal’s only mention at all of information even tangentially related to Breivik’s true motives came in the last line of their report: ”Mr. Breivik in his letter said the manifesto shouldn’t be taken seriously because it was “a cut and paste job” from other authors and didn’t necessarily reflect his intentions.”

The proprietors of the blog Gates of Vienna did the yeoman’s work to actually translate Breivik’s prior letter, leading to the aforementioned astounding but ignored revelations. Brevik stated:

“When dealing with media psychopaths, a good way to counter their tactics is to use double-psychology, or at least so I thought. The compendium [i.e. Breivik's manifesto] was, among other things, of a calculated and quite cynical gateway-design (the 2+?+?=6-approach), created to strengthen the ethnocentrist wing in the contra-jihad movement, by pinning the whole thing on the anti-ethnocentrist wing (many of the leaders are pro-multiculti social democrats or liberalists), while at the same time protecting and strengthening the ethnocentrist-factions. The idea was to manipulate the MSM and others so that they would launch a witchhunt and send their media-rape-squads against our opponents. It worked quite well.” [emphasis added and formatting fixed]

The key to manipulating the media into covering his story, according to Breivik, was to explicitly disavow his ties to Nazis:

“I could have easily avoided excessive pathologisation by keeping the message short and by clinging to the already established ideological cliff of national socialism (its important to remember that this was at a time when all right wing radicals were labeled as nazis), but if they had been allowed to label me as a nazi, the ideological considerations and discussions would be over, and my court-speeches and propaganda performance would never be broadcasted world wide, during the trial.” [emphasis added]

Read more: The Blaze: Media obligated to report on Breivik’s claim he wanted to destroy counter-jihad movement ~ JihadWatch

Pope Francis' Desire For Unity In The Churches

A video message by Pope Francis, recently shown at a Pentecostal conference in the U.S, where he gives voice to his desire for unity between the Catholic and Protestant churches, asking them to pray for him, and saying he will pray for them.

Canadian tourists who died in a landslide - why? [UPDATE]

Why did no one say to the Canadian tourists who died in a landslide to stay in their town until the road was safe to travel on? Why?

The young couple had arrived in New Zealand two weeks before radiographer Ms Lam was due to start new job at Nelson Hospital on September 15.

They decided to do some travelling before then, and had rented a white VW campervan from a Nelson rental company on September 9.

The next day they enjoyed a guided walk on Fox Glacier before arriving at Haast River Top 10 Holiday Park about 4.45pm.

Manager Norma Dougan told Ms Lam the camp was closed due to the bad weather, and that the next town was Wanaka - a two-hour drive.

Ms Lam asked to use the camp's computer or her phone to contact work and family but Ms Dougan advised the internet connection could not be guaranteed due to the stormy weather. There was strong north-west winds and gale force wind warnings in place.

They ate at the local Haast pub before leaving about 5.35pm - that was the last time they were seen alive.

It took six days before they were reported missing.

I found the sentence that I highlighted above to be absolutely chilling.

Why is there no mention of a recommendation being made for the couple to stay at the town until the storm passed? Surely a local would know about the state of the road and consider it prudent to warn the tourists not to drive in the bad weather that closed the holiday park? That they stopped at a holiday would indicate they didn't want to continue onto Wanaka, and yet there is nothing said about where they could stay rather than having to drive on.

I had my car trapped on the other side of a landslide at Otaki Forks last year, on a part of the road aptly named, "Devil's Elbow". The day was fine, but it had been raining heavily in the days beforehand, and the road was a real goat track. The bank that had collapsed, even a week later after all the dirt and that had been cleared, still looked pretty much almost vertical. My car had gone through before the slip, probably within half an hour of it all coming down. If my car had been in the slip's path, I would have lost both my husband and my younger son in one hit.

I suppose, therefore that I am very much sensitive as to how abysmal our roads here in NZ are. Are we just so used to goat tracks that we think it'll be alright, even if people are sent onto such roads during full on storms?

I don't know what my point is here, beyond just thinking that those two Canadian tourists didn't have to die, if they'd just had somewhere to park until it was safe to drive again.

Related link: Landslide victims tried to turn back, inquest hears ~ NZ Herald

UPDATE [Friday 21 Feb]: Apparently, the couple were warned about how dangerous the road could be by the holiday camp manager, according to Radio NZ.

Child euthanasia in Belgium - a Catholic country gone terribly wrong

From What's wrong with Belgium, Tracey Rowland writes of the lack of authentic Catholic culture there:

I first visited Belgium in 2004 to attend a theology conference in Leuven. The conference Mass was the most bizarre liturgical experience of my life. It did not take place in any of the many churches in Leuven but in the conference room itself. Part of the ritual took the form of watching a video of the September 11 attack on the twin towers while listening to mood music. One of the participants from Holland was dressed in a folk costume and looked like a member of the band The Village People. There was also a Nigerian priest who was treated like an idiot because he expressed respect for Cardinal Arinze. I took some flak for being critical of the culture of modernity and one polite person apologized to me by saying, “you see, around here people think of you as an ally of Joseph Ratzinger”!

My overall impression was that Leuven was like a town that had been hit by a neutron bomb—the kind of bomb that kills people but leaves buildings intact. All the Gothic buildings remained—the outward symbols of a once vibrant Catholic culture were still on view as tourist attractions—but the people who worked within the buildings seemed not to be the original inhabitants, but another people who had moved in after some terrible cataclysm and were ill at ease with what had gone before. Our Lady, the Seat of Wisdom, and Patroness of Leuven, appeared marginalized.

And more of the "soul" of Belgium, archetyped by that country's entry in the Eurovision song contest, which was fear that love leads to death:

Last year one of the worst songs in the entire Eurovision contest was the entry from Belgium. It was called “Love Kills.” The refrain of the song was:

Waiting for the bitter pill
Give me something I can feel
‘Cause love kills over and over
Love kills over and over

Whatever this means exactly it’s a radical inversion of the normal juxtaposition of love with life and generativity. Other countries offered the usual assortment of Eurovision styles, some heavy metal, some punk, a few soft ballads, but the Belgian entry stood out as something very dark and creepy, a culture of death pop song.

Could New Zealand follow in yet another attempt to mandate the killing of people by their doctors? Brendan Malone thinks so in his post The circle of death is now almost complete in Belgium, and NZ could be next.

Russell Norman and His Message

I see Lucia has done a post on this as well, but I had to write something after just having seen this afternoon's One News and Russell Norman's statement that,

"[Colin Craig] says he's Christian, well, Jesus Christ - if he believed in anything, he believed in love, tolerance and inclusion, not the politics of hatred that Colin Craig is promoting [...] Colin Craig should apologize to all new Zealanders for his disgusting and offensive comments. Let's live in a society of tolerance and inclusion - and love. That, surely, is what the Christian message, interpreted the best way, is all about"

This angered me - a lefty socialist spouting off about what he thinks Jesus believed, when the Bible - God's own word - clearly points to homosexual conduct being wrong, in both the Old and New Testaments. When Norman talks about the Christian message, "interpreted the best way", he means interpreted the progressive, liberal way - Norman's way.

Liberals seem to have this idea that if everything is done under the umbrella of "love" then it's OK. They have their own definition of what exactly this "love" is though; ignoring God's rules and making their own. They keep on adding more letters to it as well (at the moment it is LBGT, and Q). Those are the liberal definitions of love we have to all be 'tolerant' of - for the moment at least.

They then have the temerity (as in Norman's case) to use the Bible to make their case? Really? Show me Russell where it says in the Bible that God supports homosexual activity, and I will show you where it is condemned (including Romans 1, 26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9).

This is not to say that God hates or dislikes gays. Jesus loves everyone but that doesn't mean He approves of all our actions, especially those that the Bible (His law) condemns as being wrong. When He forgave the woman caught committing adultery, He told her, 'go, and sin no more'. God is our Father and we are His children. As earthly parents we love our kids but don't agree with every action they do, either.

Even Norman would have to agree that certain kinds of 'love' (a relationship between a man and an underage girl,  polygamy, bestiality etc) are illegal - those are the types of love we don't have to be tolerant of - yet.

I'm not sure I agree with Colin Craig suing Norman over his previous comments, but I am sick to death of hearing the total rubbish coming from liberals like Norman.

Conservative Colin Craig vs Green Russel Norman

Hmmmm, not sure that lawyering up everytime opponents mischaracterise you is a good idea.

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig has set his lawyers on Green co-leader Russel Norman, demanding an apology and retraction of comments Dr Norman made at the Big Gay Out.

Mr Craig has asked Dr Norman for a public apology, claiming the statements were defamatory.

The letter from Chapman Tripp says the offending statement by Dr Norman which screened on the television news related to how Dr Norman perceived Mr Craig's views on woman and gays.

Mr Craig has previously claimed women in New Zealand were promiscuous, and he opposed the gay marriage bill. [Not sure why the article stuck this in and missed out Russel Norman's actual comments ~ Lucia]

Mr Craig said he had taken the step of getting his lawyers to assess the claim and seek a retraction and apology because he believed the comments were inaccurate and were widely broadcast.

He said Dr Norman's comments did not reflect his views.

"I can't believe he would think [I believed] a woman's place is in the kitchen. If you look at our party policy and the way I've lived my life it's pretty clear our policy is that a woman should have choice. If they want to be in the home - and I would not limit that to the kitchen for a moment - they should have that option. If they want to be in the paid workforce they should have that option. It couldn't be more wrong.

Many commenters on KiwiBlog were right behind Colin Craig's legal action, seeing it as a good opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of the Greens.

While I defended Colin Craig's right to legal action last year when he was satirised by The Civilian, I have to say that a direct attack on what Norman said, made in a humourous way, would have been a better way of handling this situation.  I'm sure ZenTiger can help in that regard.

Personally, by lawyering up, especially if it continues to be a trend for Craig, is going to make him look weak.  Or as co-blogger Andrei said yesterday on KiwiBlog:

... I would be of his core constituency but no way would I vote for a man who goes crying to mummy the courts every time somebody offends him with schoolyard taunts

Andrei's crossed out, "crying to mummy" phrase was picked up by NewsTalkZB's Larry Williams yesterday, indicating either an incredible coincidence, or a monitoring of political threads by media commentators.  I'm guessing the latter.

Further reading the NZ Herald article, I see this is a trend for Craig.  Oh dear.

Mr Craig is renowned for calling in his lawyers over comments made about him - satirist Ben Uffindel was a previous target after a blog post written about Mr Craig. Mr Craig said he had so far sent about six letters relating to defamatory statements and about two complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. He said he had received apologies for each of them.

This is my advice to Colin Craig:

Related link: Colin Craig sets lawyers on Green co-leader ~ NZ Herald

Environmentalists and their power over land use, even if it's not theirs.

Property rights should trump lava flow (a destructive effect of nature), yet a land owner has been fined for improving his property:

The "damaged" lava flow (source NZ Herald)

Damaging a historic lava flow has cost an Epsom homeowner more than $15,000.

He was successfully prosecuted by Auckland Council after removing trees, plants and some of the historic lava flow from his property, which is part of the Almorah lava forest, an area of ecological significance protected under the Auckland District Plan.

The forest is on Maungawhau, or Mt Eden, and comprises tracts of native bush.

The fine followed a complaint from a member of the public, which prompted enforcement staff from Auckland council's resource consent team to visit the site near Mt Eden.

This is just a sign of the growing pantheism of the environmental movement, that holds "Nature" as sacred, and disallows anything that interferes with what "Nature" does.

In England, this pantheist environmentalism is being blamed for the recent devastating floods, whereby rivers that should be dredged have been left to fill with silt, despite the danger to properties nearby:

The present crisis has exposed how parts of the agency, working in league with the European Union, have not only attached greater importance to wildlife than to humans, but have actually encouraged flooding through their belief in theories dreamt up by zealous environmentalists.

For centuries, it was common knowledge that land below sea level — like the farms and villages in the Somerset Levels — had to be managed through networks of drains, pumping stations and ditches, all of them regularly cleaned and maintained.

But that wisdom was overturned by these environmentalists, who wanted to see land returned to its primordial state to promote ‘biodiversity’.

Idiotic. But more fool those who can't see this sort of environmentalism as a resurgent pagan religion that will gain more and more power as Christianity retreats in the Western world.

Related link: $15,000 fine for damaging historic lava flow ~ New Zealand Herald
LEO MCKINSTRY: Awash with cash, fanatically PC. The infuriating truth about the useless floods quango ~ The Daily Mail, UK

The War On Sugar

Judge Dredd © 2000AD, 1981 Sci-Fi Special

More in the NZ Herald today regarding the proposed taxing (and eventual banning) of fizzy drinks. They say that Otago and Auckland Universities have done a study, and that putting a 20% tax on fizzy drinks will "save 67 lives a year". How they know this, it is hard to tell. According to an earlier article, this particular group of scientists also want to have fizzy drinks banned by the year 2025.

That reminded me of a Judge Dredd story (click image to enlarge select panels), where sugar is banned in the future (1999, as the story goes, but it was written in 1981).

I wonder what they will try and ban after that? Hamburgers? Lollies? Biscuits? Or will everything be pumped full of artificial sweetener?

Facebook's New Liberal 'Gender' Options

According to a new story from the Associated Press, Facebook has bowed to pressure from liberal 'lobby groups' and is updating their service to allow a choice of 50 different "genders" which users can choose from that best suits their sexual identity.

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) -- You don't have to be just male or female on Facebook anymore. The social media giant is adding a customizable option with about 50 different terms people can use to identify their gender as well as three preferred pronoun choices: him, her or them.

Facebook said the changes, shared with The Associated Press before the launch on Thursday, initially cover the company's 159 million monthly users in the U.S. and are aimed at giving people more choices in how they describe themselves, such as androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid or transsexual.

As a spokesman from Focus On The Family points out, there are only two genders; the rest is wishful thinking and imaginary gender self assignment.

"Of course Facebook is entitled to manage its wildly popular site as it sees fit, but here is the bottom line: It's impossible to deny the biological reality that humanity is divided into two halves - male and female," said Jeff Johnston, an issues analyst for Focus on the Family, an influential national religious organization based in Denver. "Those petitioning for the change insist that there are an infinite number of genders, but just saying it doesn't make it so. That said, we have a great deal of compassion for those who reject their biological sex and believe they are the opposite sex."

I am reminded of when Pope Benedict gave an address to the Roman Curia, and he spoke a little on this. I think he knocks the nail right on the head.

These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature.

This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

Communist hammer and sickle at opening of Olympic Games

I wonder what this means? Nostalgia?  Or something else? ...

Communist Sickle at opening of Olympic Games in Sochi

Source: Bruce Arthur - Twitter

Communist Hammer at opening of Olympic Games in Sochi

Source: Rachael Bachman - Twitter


Related link: ‘Big salute to communism’: Hammer & sickle appear at Sochi opening ceremony [pics] ~ Twitchy

Should we boycott the Olympic Games?

I thought about it, and the opportunity was missed at Beijing in 2008.

So, Boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics? No, I think not.

The Gay Lobby deserves a gold medal though for flexing it's powerful muscles and making the western world put aside its deeper concerns of serious human rights abuses around the world to focus on the right to move the age of consent from 17 to age 11 when it comes to older people talking sex and sexuality to pre-teens. It has made even the recent draconian and disturbing law changes criminalizing homosexuality in several countries fade into apparent insignificance.  One can only admire the political power they wield over the western media, world leaders, and ultimately, the locker room conversations to set the agenda so.

The modern moral crusader is a very different beast to 10 years ago when we were chanting "no drugs", and 30 years ago when we were chanting "bring down the wall" and 40 years ago when we were chanting "no more wars", all the way back to Roman times when we were chanting "throw the Christians to the lions". Well, at least some things never change.

Should we be worried about security at the Olympics though? Muslim fundamental extremists (the combination of fundamentalism and extremism being a code phrase for "terrorist") have threatened violence, and such threats need to be taken seriously. Fair chance therefore that there may be trouble. With the surplus of Russian forces loitering in the streets and probably under white blankets on the slopes, that after any such terrorist acts, the suspects will be too dead to be brought to trial. Even so, that wouldn't mean the damage can be undone, and competitors and spectators alike, all a mix of gay, straight, eastern and western, northern and southern but probably not from the middlern, could all be blown apart, and that, unfortunately might underscore pressing concerns we might best have focused our attention on.

Although maybe the danger is simply the landscape. This link discusses the dangers of the fast and treacherous downhill run: Sochi course could kill. Good luck to all the competitors. I'm glad the boycott has not gone ahead and all that training you've done is not wasted. Enjoy the experience no matter the outcome. Good luck!

Progressive's daughter gets lesson in progressive's important life skills

The most important thing a young progressive has learn about living life as a progressive is that if the world does not conform to the way you want it to be then you must whine about it and keep on whining until you have ground everybody down and you get what you want.

And like any toddler who gets what they want by whining once given it they don't want it any more and move onto the next thing to whine about.

Whining is the greatest life skill that any progressive needs.

So it is heartening to see a letter from a seven year old girl whining about lego

Seven year-old Charlotte Benjamin is sick to death of playing with the girl Lego. In a strongly worded letter to the company, Lego fan Benjamin set out her list of complaints.

"I am 7 years old and I love legos but I don't like that there are more Lego boy people and barely any Lego girls," she writes.

Benjamin is also bored of having to play with pink lego and all the dull things that the girl Lego are left to do.

Of course any kid in a non progressive household with a half decent imagination will press any other toy or even things like cloths pegs into their game for service as the missing component - my kids did this all the time, of course.

But this is not the way the progressive mind works, people must be made to jump through hoops to give you what you want NOW!