Canopus

It's all there in the history books. John Calvin was the mastermind behind Protestant economics and the Protestant work ethic. I do not buy TV licences.

As a person opposed to the continuation of the state of Israel, there is much critical stuff I can say about Zionism in relation with Protestantism but unfortunately I am unable to publish it here because the mods will view it as antisemitism.

Liberalism is one of the sacrosanct cornerstones of the British political establishment. The highly controversial Prevent strategy is actually about upholding and enforcing liberalism by creating a police state rather than stopping violent terrorism from occuring. Notice how we didn't have anything like Prevent in the years when the IRA was blowing things up every week!

After a bit of head scratching I concluded that what you are referring to is the Protestant influenced culture created in the 16th century which is the bedrock of modern day culture in the US and much of Europe, and during the 20th century spread out worldwide. There have been many different cultures throughout history in Europe so it's unjustified to claim there is only one white or western culture. The Protestant culture has spawned many other ideologies over the centuries including: Liberalism Socialism / Communism Mass atheism Multiculturalism Zionism Capitalism Materialism Americanism

I'm no expert on American history or Protestantism. The book Banking - The Root Cause of Injustices of Our Time by Diwan Press is not American specific but is a good read about the development of Protestantism and its effects on the economy. I also recommend books by Morris Berman, especially The Twilight of American Culture, who refers to the US as a nation of hustlers. JW are trained to be subservient and respect hierarchy because the religion is one based on hierarchy rather than equality. I have not yet got to the bottom of education and JW but experience points in a direction that they are rarely intuitive people or deep thinkers. They appear to be more into arts and cultural matters like films or music than intellectual pursuits. The JW who converted to Islam claimed that the JW ideology was shallow and lacked spirituality. I have wondered if you take a popular kid and move them to a different school then would they be just as popular? What about a school in a different country with a different language and culture? If popularity is portable then it suggests that it results from an ability to naturally pick up social cues and adjust to the local environs whereas unpopularity can be caused by rigidness either as an inability to pick up social cues or act in order to fit in locally. You might like to read about Jack Welch of General Electric. I'm of the opinion that a significant proportion of bullies are trained to bully by their families or people they associate with. If parents are vindictive themselves - and could be employed in a position where being vindictive is an advantage such as a security guard, Job Centre worker, or mean corporate boss - then they are likely to pass on their vindictive traits to other members of their family.

Bullying at school is not a subject which is well understood but is almost certainly intertwined with the question as to why certain kids are more popular than others. Contrary to what many people think, very popular kids are rarely regular bullies and bullies rarely envy the very popular kids. I have speculated that body language and non-verbal communication plays a large part in bullying but this is rarely even looked at by analysts of bullying. Do those who bully possess advanced powers at being able to read people and those who are bullied have deficiencies in this area? Are there big differences in psychology between those who bully alone and those who bully as part of a group? Do different bullies like to pick on different types of people? I don't buy into the argument that bullies are the result of broken families; or that they are people who feel insecure and lack confidence; or were previously bullied themselves.

Am I correct in saying that the Slavic languages in south eastern Europe are derived from Old Church Slavonic, which was propagated by the Orthodox Church, but are not otherwise native to this area?

I hold a similar opinion in that an education system driven by qualifications has the potential to spoil the enjoyment of a subject. Take history for example. History courses at school and university are all about essay writing and critical analyses rather than learning in an enjoyable way. I hated secondary school history and my brother, who has a history degree, was up all night writing critical essay after essay about wars and other things. Yet at the same time I enjoyed watching history documentaries and visiting places of historic interest. My findings are that parents of kids with AS put vocations well behind school work but often fail to realise that their kid's talents and interests could land them with a good or very interesting job. They think that getting GCSEs are more important although rarely do they even research what subjects are available for GCSE. Popular opinion, majority consensus, and historical tradition are powerful forces in shaping social skills. More NT people do things according to etiquette or convention rather than look at things logically from first principles.

My own theory is that there was once a closely related group of south eastern European languages before the territory was conquered by the Romans then later by the Slavs / Orthodox Church. Albanian is the last surviving remnant of these languages mainly as a result of geographic isolation. How did Romanian survive the onslaught of the Orthodox Church with its Slavic languages?

What was the original language of Romania before it was conquered by the Romans and replaced by Latin? Romanian is the closest national language to Latin and didn't become a distinctly separate language until the 16th century. Was Albanian related to any extinct Romanian languages?

The US is the child of Protestantism. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg then little did he realise that it would result in the creation of a new nation based on his ideologies on the opposite side of the Atlantic. The American economic ideology based on the pragmatic mercantilism of the Dutch Calvinists who founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the 16th century, and the American political ideology results from the English Nonconformists with their small government mindset who emigrated to the US during the 18th century. Although Europe and the US developed along separate lines during the 19th century, the outcome became somewhat recursive after 1945 with American culture diplacing European cultures in Europe. I have been saying this for several years. The JW appeals strongly to a certain personality type and it isn't the way that my brain is wired. It probably does although American JW rarely have guns at home. I have noticed a strong correlation between places in the US that are trigger happy and places populated by Bible bashing types. Texas being a particularly strong example.

Is Albanian related in any way to Greek, Turkish, or Armenian? If it isn't then are there any extinct languages related to Albanian? I'm intrigued to know if it was around when Albania was part of the Roman Empire.

I disagree. Experience tells me that most bullies are assertive people with a high level of confidence and self esteem. This is because the Jehovah's Witnesses are an American religion. A former JW who converted to Islam (and has been disfellowshipped by her own parents) told me that the United States was the only country with the right political, economic, and social climate during the 19th century that would allow a religion like the JW to flourish. Even today it is a very American centric religion where much of what the JW writes about is biased towards the US and American people. American culture is loosely based on 18th century British culture which is why it is so big bold and loud. Almost the opposite culture from the disciplined Victorian England.

These are very unusual languages unrelated to other European languages. Does anybody apart from natives of the countries where they are used learn them?

The O Level French exam papers from 1960 http://www.rgs.saund.co.uk/exams/1960o-french1.html http://www.rgs.saund.co.uk/exams/1960o-french2.html Notice how they only involve reading and writing French. There are no speaking or listening exams. Do you think these exams are easier or harder than the modern French GCSE for kids with AS?

I don't fully agree with this. If the United States was factored out then English today would largely be a language confined to the Commonwealth similar to how French and Portuguese are confined to former colonies of France and Portugal. English would almost certainly be in the top 10 economically important languages but it wouldn't be a global language. Outside of the Commonwealth, far fewer people today would know or be learning English. One factor that has upheld the learning of English in Commonwealth countries is the large number of students who take IGCSE and A Level exams. In many Commonwealth countries no English = no recognised qualifications because national qualifications either do not exist or are not valued by society. Urbanisation and industrialisation irreversibly changes the culture of any nation but at the same time it can create new local identities. The Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Tyneside accents and dialects are largely the products of the industrial revolution. Germany and Japan industrialised but still maintain their own distinct culture, identity, and language. It's also notable that these countries have not endured the wrath of a politically correct liberal elite since the 1960s that England has which has exacerbated the demise of several aspects English culture and identity. The City bankers are equally to blame because they see England as nothing more than a machine to make money from and making money as the only activity of any worth in England. The BBC (once dominated by public school toffs with Home Counties accents) was quite brutal towards local English dialects. They once wouldn't allow a person from Tipton to be a radio presenter because they had too much of a black country accent! ITV companies were once more localised than the BBC was but ITV today is a faceless monolith run from central London and Manchester. Remember TSW? Probably the most localised and homely of all ITV companies in England. In my opinion, education policy makers in England have not taken into account the increasing number of kids of foreign origin who know a language other than English when it comes to generating the MFL curriculum in schools. Very few schools teach the languages that these kids know or allow students to take them for GCSE. At an education meeting it was suggested that evaluations of teaching locally prominent languages and offering them for GCSE in secondary schools should be tried out in a handful of local authorities. The initial proposals were Urdu in Kirklees, Gujurati in Leicester, and Bengali in Tower Hamlets. European languages will still be available in secondary schools for GCSE but will be optional. Some concerns circulated that indigenous British students (and other students who don't know the languages) might struggle more than with a European language as a result of the different alphabet. What do you think of this? You are not the only one. Adults with AS who admire Enoch Powell and his intellect are quite common even though they do not agree with everything that Powell believed in. I think it's a combination of Enoch Powell potentially having AS himself and people with AS having a more questioning mind that doesn't go with the flow of popular opinion and the mainstream media like a high proportion of NT minds do. I have suspected that sections of the radical right have appealed to people with AS whereas liberalism and modern western socialism are difficult for people with AS to comprehend. An admiration of Enoch Powell by people with AS has caused many frictions between them and NT parents of kids with AS who overwhelmingly despise Enoch Powell but rarely make the time and effort to study him in depth.

The 6 figure salaries of senior officials in the NAS is a very sore point. I do not buy into the argument that such salaries are justified in order to attract the best brains because running a charity should be a labour of love and dedication rather than a means to become wealthy. A person who really cares about ASD is one who is willing to sacrifice a 6 figure salary in the City for a salary of no more than £30k. Running a charity should also NOT be a selling point on a CV for someone applying to a corporate senior management position because it creates a potential of using a charity as a springboard into a lucrative corporate career. Independent support groups often provide better services for people with ASD than the NAS does on a shoestring budget by unpaid volunteers if special schools and residential care services are factored out. It's almost beyond dreaming what these same groups run by knowledgeable and dedicated individuals would achieve if they only had 5% of the money the NAS rakes in each year.

The United States is responsible for English becoming the world's default language after 1945. In 1900 English was a language confined to the United States and the British Empire rather than a truly global language. Only a small fraction of the people living in the rest of the world learned English then, and in Europe, Latin and German were more popular as second languages. If the United States had decided on German rather than English as its national language then history would have been much the same during the 19th century but very different after 1914. Most programming languages are based on English. Some even expect dates to be entered in the American rather than the rest of the world formats. The identity of England - both in general and in relation to other European countries - is a subject that I have debated many times in the past. Does standard British English / the Queen's English / the National Curriculum English create an artificial identity? Is American English really as bad as the media and teachers make it out to be despite it being closer to the English of England during the 17th and 18th centuries? Take into account that many countries use Spanish and Arabic but do they each lack local identities? This is very true but it still doesn't answer the question of which languages to learn. Take into account that it is exceptional for people in any country to possess a working knowledge of more than four languages unless they are language geeks or professional linguists. John Enoch Powell knew 12 languages including Latin, Greek, Welsh, Hindi, and Urdu, and even held discussions with his constituents in some of them. I can't help wondering whether he understood people and cultures in a much different way from your average English monoglot 'far right nutjob' resulting in him being a very misunderstood person. Very little teaching and learning of north European languages takes place in England despite historical connections between East Anglia and Holland, and Yorkshire and Tyneside and Scandinavia. To an extent I can appreciate that they are fairly minor languages on a global basis with most native speakers also fluent in English which acts as a disincentive to teaching them in schools.

I have thought about this situation then concluded that the British might be lucky more so than lazy in that hundreds of millions of people worldwide know English either as a first or second language, and that vast quantities of written and audio video material is in English. The result of this is a lack of an incentive for the British to learn another language compared with people from countries where only a small number of people worldwide know their native language and very little in the way of material in their language exists apart from that which is localised. In order for them to study a subject higher than secondary (or even primary) school level; access foreign news; or learn about computers, machinery, wildlife, Asperger Syndrome etc. knowledge of another language becomes essential. For many countries it is quite obvious which second and third languages its citizens should learn. This isn't the case for Britain where the most worthwhile foreign language is very debatable.

Organisations that provide a much better service for people with high functioning ASD than the NAS does already exist but they live in the shadow of the NAS. The problem is that people are attracted to the NAS because of its large size and it's the organisation that the NHS and local authority have as their official ASD service providers. More often than not the NAS turns out to be ineffective or unsuitable but people don't realise until after wasting several years battling with it.

Doesn't that defeat the whole point of an exposition of the NAS as what it really is and really does? The NAS is in effect a big business that sells services to local authorities. I have wondered from time to time whether there was an underlying reason for all the media coverage given to Gary McKinnon. Was it intended to tarnish the reputation of people with AS or create stereotypes? I'm keeping them under wraps for the time being until I have collected sufficient concrete evidence to back them up with.

That's the easy part. There are already plenty of websites and people skilled at web design so you don't have to worry about this side of things. The difficult part is as I described in #13 of avoiding any potential legal battles with the NAS and their smart lawyers out to sue anybody who dares to write bad about the organisation and its senior officials for defamation. The media isn't on our side either. I have suspected that the NAS has friends in the media ready to give them positive vibes and vilify any critics. A few conspiracy theories exist as to why the NAS got involved in AS and other high functioning ASD in the first place. If the NAS just stuck with traditional autism then nobody from the high functioning ASD communities would have anything to criticise them.

We could make a start by publicising the NAS for what it really is and why it is almost impossible to reform. My experience of parents of kids with high functioning ASD is that they fit into 4 categories. 1. Those who don't know much about the NAS but want to go along with it. 2. Those who know how the NAS works and its deficiencies but believe it can be reformed from within. 3. Those who know how the NAS works but have given up with it as they have come to realise the difficulties of reforming it and know that better support is available elsewhere. 4. Those who have had no or very little involvement with the NAS.

I'm not a pessimist at all. I have concluded that change will come from society rather than from central government or the NAS. The lack of clarity what people with high functioning ASD want means that those in power don't even know what to provide. Independent support groups often provide better services to people with high functioning ASD than the NAS does although their services are very localised. This could be argued to be society in action with the potential to provide a template to government organisations.

You can live in hope. I think the mature view is that it is something outside of the scope of central government nowadays. Remember David Cameron' s Big Society?