News worth reading
1) Firstly, anyone know this agitator? Seen at the March this weekend he felt “threatened” by 29 year-old Iranian Reza Moradi holding a poster of the Danish cartoons. Some say he looks familiar. Moradi is apparently now being summoned? Wtf?
2) Simon Barrow has written an excellent article on the release of Norman Kember and other CPT members and unfair accusations by the media and bloggers.
3) Sharif points this poll in Ha’aretz showing most Israeli Jews don’t want Arab neighbours. He asks: ‘Is such racism the result of the conflict, or is the conflict the result of such racism?’
4) Anvar Khan, who got Greg Dyke to admit the BBC was ‘hideously white’, admits she’s become a rent-a-quote race pundit because white writers are too scared to say what they think. Same goes for Yasmin Alibahi-Brown I’d say. [Cheers Kesara].
5) Every week we find another example of the government’s despicable behaviour towards civil rights. This weekend the police arrested anti-war protestor Brian Haw for no particular reason. [via Europhobia]
6) Thousands of women in Pakistan continue to be victims of discriminatory laws, Daily Times reports. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s report on the state of women there paints a very sorry picture. [Hat tip Spaceboy].
7) Last week Rohin blogged about missing Chinese blogger and filmmaker Hao Wu. Now the mainstream media has caught up.
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Filed in: Civil liberties, Media, The World
You also seem to have missed out Charlie Sheen on CNN saying that 911 was an inside job. The tide is turning.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/240306pollshows.htm
Lunatics of a feather/Flock together
Typical straw man response, want to challenge him on the evidence?
No, because I’ve given up visiting lunatic asylums for Lent
the case for CD – http://www.911revisited.com/video.html
Miami Herald awakes from its slumber –
• How did a fire fed by jet fuel, which at most burns at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, cause the collapse of the Twin Towers, built of steel that melts at 2,800 degrees? (Most experts agree that the impact of airliners, made mostly of lightweight aluminum, should not have been enough alone to cause structural failure.) How could a single planeload of burning jet fuel — most of which flared off in the initial fireball — cause the South World Trade Center tower to collapse in just 56 minutes?
• Why did building WTC-7 fall, though no aircraft struck it? Fire alone had never before caused a steel skyscraper to collapse.
• Why did all three buildings collapse largely into their own footprints — in the style of a controlled demolition?
• Why did no U.S. military jet intercept the wayward aircraft?
• Why has there been no investigation of BBC reports that five of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were alive and accounted for after the event?
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/13760721.htm
Whoever he is, he looks like smug little snitch.
All very interesting questions, V. Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to answer most of them. However, I do have a theory about the question of the 9/11 hijackers being ‘alive and accounted for’ after the event.
As 9/11 was clearly an example of God’s work against the Zionazi Great Satan, isn’t it at least possible that they were resurrected after death?
Have you seen this:
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
no dimwit, have you seen this?
CNN POLL 83% of people out of 40, 000 say 911 an inside job.
It’s time the dolts proved some mad mullah in a cave was responsible for making the US air force stand down for over an hour and causing THREE sky scrapers to IMPLODE.
http://www.911blogger.com/2006/03/fourth-night-of-showbiz-tonights-sheen.html
On the Israeli racism point, the problem of course is that Arab has become synonymous with Muslim.
I can understand if Jews are scared of Muslims living in close proximity. There’s a fine line between valid anxieties and irrational anxieties. If anyone has watched translations of Palestinian Authority TV then, I think to an extend this fear is justified. And certainly there’s a case to answer in thelogical terms with regards to certain Suras and Hadith.
It would be interesting if they had of asked how do you feel about living next to:
1. A Muslim Arab
2. A Christian Arab
3. A Jewish Arab
There’s is certainly widespread discrimination of Arabs in Israeli society, however, can we really condemn then for these feelings of fear, distrust?
I think this comes down to education, they need to be reminded of the statistics of being blown up by a random arab is extremely small. The unconscious mind can play tricks on the conscious.
Yes, imagine a BBC poll that showed two thirds of British Muslims couldn’t stand to be near Jews, it would be news headlines for about 2 months. The hypocrisy is astounding but then again the BBC’s been totally zionised since Greg Dyke was forced out.
Bet you a thousand bucks the BBC don’t touch this –
http://edition.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/23968.exclude.html
US polls tend to show high levels of belief in creationism, guardian angels and alien abduction. So no suprises that Sheen’s ramblings are swallowed whole.
Doesn’t that explain why Google have been (caught out) trying to suppress the links to Sheen on their search results?
V, the BBC may be many things, but pro-israel is not one of them.
“Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man (Arafat) rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry… without warning.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3966139.stm
And 9/11 conpsiracy theories are like, soooo 2002, don’t you think?
WHO CARES? Charlie sheen is the man!
HOT SHOTS PART 1 AND DEUX [should of won oscars]
Wall Street
Platoon
Young Guns
The wraith
The dude rocks….
Lol at Geezer. V, can you please take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. Just because bloody Sheen says so, it must be true? you really are clutching at straws.
“….most Israeli Jews don’t want Arab neighbours.”
Duh. That is supposed to be a shock? No one really wants them — except other Arabs. Would you? For some reason Arabs seem to want to live all over Europe and so are unavoidable, I suspect the same attitude prevails everywhere.
In the same building?
Support for segregation?
I don’t think so, but maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner…
you old pearly queen, you.
There’s a difference between accepting people as neighbors because the law requires it and actually liking yo have them nearby.
The question is whether anyone really _desires_ Arabs as neighbors. The number of white Europeans who move to Arab countries is insignificant. That fact should give you a clue as to how people truly feel.
That’s a superb article by Anvar Khan.
I know what she means, from a similar yet different perspective.
I swear I sometimes itch for someone to call me a racist so that I can lamp ‘em one, metaphorically of course. I’m ready for ‘em, any time any place. I’m not scared of the PC fascists. I know my credentials.
But then I came across a different breed of person, who also moan about their freedom to express his or her own views free from the terror of being labelled politically incorrect and who are nasty, ignorant bigots.
Pussies to the left, wankers to the right, here I am stick in the middle with you.
Anyway, back to work
Oi, Sidney, stop that
ha ha
Hey sunny, why did WTC 7 collapse?
Hey bopper, why did the BBC broadcast footage of dancing Palestinian children on 911 and claim they were celebrating the attacks when really the footage was from a much earlier time period?
They seem to ignore the dancing Israelis however.
Must see. Carl Cameron’s Fox news investigation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAoe26MaTew&search=fox%20news
I agree with V. The BBC won’t touch the CNN internet poll he links to, which stresses that it “reflects the opinions of only those (nutjobs) who have chosen to participate”, and “cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole”.
If this BBC gave any kind of weight to a poll like that I’d want my licence fee back.
Why did the WTC collapse? Sod that – the more important question is how can any of you believe that a metal object weighing several hundred tonnes can fly through the air at 400 miles per hour to hit the WTC in the first place? It simply DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! My computer weighs far less than that, but when I threw it out the window it feel straight onto the patio – there’s no way it would make it across the street, let alone several hundred miles to slam into the side of a skyscraper.
lying and smearing isn’t changing the fact what Charlie says is true, none of these shills can possible refute what he claims so resort to these childish distractions instead.
V for Very Venal Conspiracy Theorist.
You people are crazy. Next you’ll be telling me you believe in stuff like (imagine me doing air quotes here) “THE SUN”, “WATER” or “FRANCE”. Haha, what nonsense.
People believe anything they read these days.
…and that Zacarias Moussaoui must be the worse liar and smearer of them all.
Zacarias Moussaoui or Isaac is Asia Ziom?
That’s right, he’s an Asian zionist named Isaac. LIES! Zionist lies! He is a STOOGE! His name is FALSE!
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1281
Classic demolition
The collapse of the WTC towers looked like a classic controlled demolition, said Mike Taylor of the National Association of Demolition Contractors in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
“If there’s any good thing about this it’s that the towers tended not to weaken to one side,” said Taylor. “They could have tipped onto other buildings or into the river across the West Side highway.”
The collapse of the WTC towers mirrored the strategy used by demolition experts. In controlled demolitions, explosives are placed not just on the lowest three floors but also on several consecutive floors about a third of the way up the building.
The explosions at the higher floors enable the collapse to gain downward momentum as gravity pulls the full weight of unsupported higher floors down into lower floors in a snowballing effect.
Hey bopper, why did the BBC broadcast footage of dancing Palestinian children on 911 and claim they were celebrating the attacks when really the footage was from a much earlier time period?
What, the BBC as well as CNN?!!!!?!!
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm
We’re just joshing with you here, mate.
US millionair Jimmy Waltes is offering anyone a million dollars to prove to him that the WTC was not brought down by explosives. Go cry to him shills.
http://www.reopen911.org/Contest.htm
better collect your $1000000 Rohin
Lol Rohin. I knew that there was something suspicious about him.
Really though, has anyone else noticed that some of these Al Q terrorists have a facial imbalance between left and right. Mohamed Atta had it and so did Richard ‘the Shoe’ Reid. Bearing in mind that the muscles on each side of the face are controlled by different sides of the cortex in the brain, this might point to a serious internal conflict.
Sorry if I’m coming over as a ‘unilateral eyeist’, I’m just telling it how I see it (well, with my good eye anyway).
By the way ‘V’ (if that really is your name).
Those planes are one hell of a detonation device for the explosives. Hats off to them, eh?
fires in the basement of the WTC raged for THREE MONTHS, must have been some high powered explosives to bring it down, molten steel in the basement too…
Ground Zero’s fires still burning
11:20 03 December 2001
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Almost 12 weeks after the terrorist atrocity at New York’s World Trade Center, there is at least one fire still burning in the rubble – it is the longest-burning structural fire in history.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1634
For me, molten steel in the basement of the WTC months later proved it was brought down by some seriously high powered explosives. Shame the US government shipped all the steel to China before it could be analysed.
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-was-there-molten-metal-under.html
V
Have you seen the movie Donnie Darko? Great movie.
Do you happen to have any gigantic talking rabbits in your life at the moment?
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/a/annie-hall-script-screenplay-woody.html
INT. APARTMENT BEDROOM.
Allison and, Alvy are on the bed, kissing. There are books all over the room;
a fireplace, unlit, along one of the walls. Alvy suddenly breaks away and sits
on the edge of the bed. Allison looks at him.
ALVY
H’m, I’m sorry, I can’t go through with
this, because it-I can’t get it off my
mind, Allison … it’s obsessing me!
ALLISON
Well, I’m getting tired of it. I need
your attention.
Alvy gets up from the bed and starts walking restlessly around the room,
gesturing with his hands.
ALVY
It-but it-it … doesn’t make any sense.
He drove past the book depository and the
police said conclusively that it was an
exit wound. So-how is it possible for
Oswald to have fired from two angles at
once? It doesn’t make sense.
ALLISON
Alvy.
Alvy, stopping for a moment at the fireplace mantel, sighs. He then snaps his
fingers and starts walking again.
ALVY
I’ll tell you this! He was not marksman
enough to hit a moving target at that
range. But …
(Clears his throat)
if there was a second assassin … it-
That’s it!
Alvy stops at the music stand with open sheet music on it as Allison gets up
from the bed and retrieves a pack of cigarettes from a bookshelf.
ALLISON
We’ve been through this.
ALVY
If they-they recovered the shells from
that rifle.
ALLISON
(Moving back to the bed and
lighting a cigarette)
Okay. All right, so whatta yuh saying,
now? That e-e-everybody o-o-on the Warren
Commission is in on this conspiracy, right?
ALVY
Well, why not?
ALLISON
Yeah, Earl Warren?
ALVY
(Moving toward the bed)
Hey … honey, I don’t know Earl Warren.
ALLISON
Lyndon Johnson?
ALVY
(Propping one knee on the bed
and gesturing)
L-L-Lyndon Johns Lyndon Johnson is a
politician. You know the ethics those
guys have? It’s like-uh, a notch
underneath child molester.
ALLISON
Then everybody’s in in the conspiracy?
ALVY
(Nodding his head)
Tsch.
ALLISON
The FBI, and the CIA, and J. Edgar
Hoover and oil companies and the
Pentagon and the men’s-room attendant
at the White House?
Alvy touches Allison’s shoulder, then gets up from the bed and starts walking
again.
ALVY
I-I-I-I would leave out the men’s-room
attendant.
ALLISON
You’re using this conspiracy theory as
an excuse to avoid sex with me.
ALVY
Oh, my God!
(Then, to the camera)
She’s right! Why did I turn off Allison
Portchnik? She was-she was beautiful. She
was willing. She was real … intelligent.
(Sighing)
Is it the old Groucho Marx joke? That-that
I-I just don’t wanna belong to any club that
would have someone like me for a member?
Woody Allen used to eat his salt-beef-on-rye most lunch-times in the patio of the World Trade Centre. Not that day though.
*very significantly*
V – you really are wasting our time here with your nutjob antics. Please spare us the bullshit.
Doesn’t anyone know who that guy is on top? He does look familiar. Hmm….
So Woody Allen is in on it too? Why wasnt he eating there on the day the planes crashed in? Unless Mossad warned him….or unless him not being there was the signal for the operation to go ahead? And he was part of the team?
I will have to watch Manhattan again to get a sense of his underlying message. Hmmm…..
Well, my immediate thought was that it was Nick McBride, who is a law fellow at Pembroke College Cambridge…
http://www.pem.cam.ac.uk/fellows/mcbride.html
Could be!
V is for Vegetable.
Woody Allen? Indian!
hahaha
Well, he looked familiar to me at first. But now I think maybe he just reminded me of Harold Bishop out of Neighbours.
Actually – forget about the fat bloke in glasses who complained.
Isn’t Reza Moradi… Peter Sellers in The Millionairess?
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/MoToon%20poster-thumb.jpg
http://www.reel.com/content/boxart/vhs/12083.GIF
Good film that, the Millionairess
Not as good as The Party though
V for Vendetta you go dude. Did you ever watch “V” the mini series? You know the whole thing about alien invaders in the form of lizards which inspired the great David Icke.
*Jai cruises into the party a little late*
=>”WHO CARES? Charlie sheen is the man!”
Damn right. Don’t forget “Two and a Half Men” either. All those brilliant one-liners. Classic.
“You don’t get the virgin to the volcano by telling her you’re gonna push her in.”
“You’re like an Alzheimer’s patient in a {brothel}. You’re constantly surprised you’ve been screwed……And you don’t want to pay for it.”
“A clueless woman is a happy woman.”
Wildly politically-incorrect at times, but hilarious and familiar in a blokey kind of way.
=>”Did you ever watch “V” the mini series?”
Respect to Mike Donovan, the cameraman-turned-revolutionary superhero. Him and those brown driving gloves of his that he always wore.
Diana was a foxy hottie too, the megalomanic brunette minx.
Ah ha! ‘The Millionairess’ is the link with Siddhartha’s “Woody Allen? Indian!” line. I almost missed that. Very clever.
David T, that picture you linked to isn’t Reza, but one of his mates who took over the sign-waving. There’s a picture of Reza on Maryam Namazie’s blog
Ah- he looks like a mate of mine!
Diana was a foxy hottie too, the megalomanic brunette minx. [jai]
Lol I was getting to Diana as well she was one hot lizard bitch. Remember when she was conducting sexual experiments between that human chick and the lizard guy and they produced that child? I bet plenty of dudes had dreams of being Diana’s next play thing.
oh and Charlie Sheen still rocks so what he says about 9/11 is right.
The birth of the reptile-human hybrid baby in ‘V’ was quite scary. Well, I was only 10 years old at the time.
Remember the first time they showed Diana swallowing a rodent whole, like a snake ? I’m sure lots of (male) adolescents had fun imagining the possibilities…….”Ah, dislocatable lower jaws, go for it Diana……”
Okay that’s enough smut, I’m just joking around.
Apparently a remake is in the works too. I wonder if it’ll be a good as the new Battlestar Galactica, and along similar lines. Definitely not for kids.
Charlie Sheen basically just plays himself in 2 1/2 Men, but he’s still great in it though. It’s a very chilled-out show.
Lol@jaws
Oh man I heard about the remake, I hope they do a good job especially with the enhancements in effects and the bigger budgets they work with.
The new battle star is good as well I follow the episodes
Where has Emilio Estevez got to?
You’re right about modern-day special effects, although they did a pretty good job in the original 80s version. Remember those huge motherships ? Impressive stuff. Well okay, it was cutting-edge for the time.
If they do go for a remake let’s hope they go down the ‘BSG’ route rather than ‘Enterprise’. I was initially a little sceptical about the new BSG — especially considering all the changes they made to most of the major characters — but it’s actually really grown on me. It’s turned into quite gripping stuff, and of course it deals with a lot of our present 9/11 issues too. Apparently Time Magazine voted it the number 1 show of 2005 (google it).
No idea about Emilio. Ah, “The Breakfast Club”, I remember it well……
V was very impressive in its day; heck the effects still look great even if you use modern standards as a bench mark.
Yes you are right about the changes, I nearly wrote the series off when I watched the pilot and found out that Lieutenant Apollo is a woman….Anyway I have to say it is picking up well and with the “Pegasus” story line these past few weeks the action has been non stop. I’m just looking forward to their first contacts with earth.
It is nice to converse with fellow Asian Science Fiction fans. I always thought I was strange being so much into Science Fiction which only my white mates loved.
Not meaning to detract from the ribaldry that 9/11 conspiracy theories cannot help but precipitate, there is one thing about the events that has niggled me. Wreckage was so complete, even dental records of aircraft passengers could not be found. Yet there was a nice undamaged passport of the main terrorist (Atta) found somewhere in the carnage of the WTC Plaza. I mean that was a slight WTF moment for me.
I thought they found the passport in one of the cars at one of the airports the planes had left from?
Geezer,
Re: “heck the effects still look great even if you use modern standards as a bench mark.”
*laughing* For a second there I thought you were going to say something like “the effects still look great if you squint, hold one hand up to your face and look at the TV screen through the gap between your fingers”
It’s Starbuck who’s a woman, not (ex-Captain, now-Major, soon-to-be-…..Ah, plot spoiler) Apollo. Starbuck’s character’s grown on me too — for a while I vastly preferred Dirk Benedict’s cigar-chomping rogue, but — now that the series has progressed — I can actually see the new Starbuck as a female, 2006-sensibilities version of the old one. Heck, if the original had had a daughter, she may well have been a lot like the new one.They’ve made her quite a complex character.
Apollo’s obviously a lot more conflicted than the old version although there are flashes of the original’s calm cool-headedness and good nature. Adama is increasingly becoming like the previous Lorne Greene version — increasingly sentimental, emotional and idealistic.
Yes you’re right about the Pegasus arc too, very gritty stuff indeed at times.
=>”I’m just looking forward to their first contacts with earth.”
I doubt that’s going to happen for a very long time indeed, if at all (horrible flashback to “Battlestar Galactica 80). Also, there are still many unresolved questions about whether the new version’s set in the present day or actually in our distant past, or even possibly the far future.
There are quite a few desi sci-fi fans around although I’m not one of those people who jumps at anything sci-fi related (eg. I never watched Firefly, Andromeda, or similar shows). I loved DS9 though, although that had more to do with the convoluted politics and psychological issues it addressed. Apparently one of their major writers is also involved in BSG, hence some of the similarities in the general ‘theme’ of the show (albeit much more adult, of course).
I don’t know if you also visit the American “Sepia Mutiny” blog but there are a hell of a lot of hardcore desi sci-fi fans there, you might want to occasionally check it out if you’re really into this genre. It’s obviously not a sci-fi blog but the topic occasionally comes up.
Geezer — Forgot to mention, the song during the opening titles of BSG is actually the Hindu “Gayatri Mantra”. Apparently there was also a sequence in one of the episodes where the priestess is reading a blessing from their scriptures to the assembed crew, and what she’s saying (singing ? can’t remember) is actually a verse from the Rig Veda — she’s actually speaking Sanskrit. So there is an Asian influence incorporated into the show too, which is quite interesting.
One of the major characters in the impending episodes is also an Asian woman (ethnically).
Battle Star Galactica? Indian.
Crap that is right I got the two confused sorry…. The complexity of the Starbuck character is also a new thing especially since the old Starbuck was just a dashing rouge, but we did get to see the great emotional depth Starbuck had with the episode of him crashing on the lonely planet with only a Cylon for company. Afterwards the pregnant lady appears which they rescue, and she gives birth to the super intelligent Dr Z. It was a great episode and wonderfully blended in the themes of sacrifice and “love thy enemy”.
The old Adama and new one there is nothing much to distinguish them but Edward does carry the role well as the father figure to the fleet. The earth contact like you said my not happen till a few seasons have gone past but I just wonder how technologically advanced they will make the earth? I like the fact they did not get rid of the Pegasus like they did in the original, of course it was left to our imagination what happened to it during its battle with the cylon base stars but it never made another appearance which was sad. Yes you are right the opening song is a mantra and your right about that episode, makes the series even more cool.
My other favorite show is stargate SG9 which I also follow religiously ever since the first episode, are you fan?
Any Godzilla fans here ?
Raz,
Godzilla as in the cartoon ? With that ship “the Calico”, and Godzuki ?
Yeah man, I remember it well
Geezer — Forgot to mention, the song during the opening titles of BSG is actually the Hindu “Gayatri Mantra”
I think the credits sequence of Matrix: Revolutions also features Gayatri Mantra albiet in a barely recognisable western classical form.
Godzilla…. man i hate it as with other Japanese stuff Pokemon, Nintendo crap….. BTW Jay dont you start getting an ideas, its just personal preference.
Geezer,
I remember the Starbuck/Cylon/baby episode you mentioned, apparently it was the only one in Galactica 80 which matched the spirit of the first series.
Adama is becoming very similar to the Lorne Greene version but I don’t think he was originally — from what I understand of the background context to the story, he began to change after he was shot and actually died on the operating table. The experience has supposedly made him much more sensitive and emotional as a person, as he was a bit of a hard-nut when the new BSG started. So it’s basically made him less of an unfeeling military-type but a better all-round human being.
With regards to how advanced Earth will be when (if ?) they find it, as I mentioned in my previous post, it depends on exactly what timeframe the story is set in (past/present/future). It’s not necessarily set in the present day, unlike the original version.
I stumbled across SG1 several years after it started and although I don’t really follow it, I do catch the occasional (repeated) episode now and then, mainly for Jack O’Neill’s sardonic character and his wry one-liners. I do think that show has developed well too, along with Daniel’s character and his interplay with O’Neill which is usually amusing, but the new post-O’Neill version hasn’t really done anything for me.
With regards to the new BSG, here are some websites which you should find interesting reading:
http://www.battlestarwiki.org
http://www.battlestargalactica.com
They also include episode reviews & summaries along with quite a lot of interesting background information on the new show (philosophies, aims & motivations of the show’s creators etc), although be forewarned that they include plot spoilers too.
The current series has some interesting and unexpected developments, including w.r.t Pegasus — stay tuned
It is nice to converse with fellow Asian Science Fiction fans. I always thought I was strange being so much into Science Fiction which only my white mates loved.
Dude, I know loads of brown sci fi fans! They outnumber my white friends who are into geeky pursuits. Example.
We were deciding where to eat one night in Vegas and flicking through a catalogue or guidebook thing. Lots of pictures. Me, another Bengali, a white guy and an Iranian. The Iranian and white guy didn’t even register when one restaurant went by – both Indians instantaneously said “we’re going there”
Where?
Quark’s Bar on the DS9 Promenade. Yeah baby! Oh man we geeked out so hard that night – but the people we met put us to shame. My TNG knowledge is four pip but I fall down when it comes to TOS and ENTERPRISE. I refuse to watch that spunk.
Geeks rule. Man I had a whole conversation with a Borg drone, he never came out of character no matter how hard I tried to make him laugh. I think one line I used was “I bet you’d like to assimilate her ass”
Eek… its all greek to me. Any Tolkein fans here?
Vik, me too. I haven’t the foggiest what anyone is talking about.