Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Four

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=58kMK0XeGgQ

:-)

Spins....that is AWESOME! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Thank you!!!!!

;-)

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Good day, Coolers,

Sunny and a warm 25F today, as opposed to the 17F of yesterday. As always enjoying Jeff's food pictures and Mysty's and Spins' funny postings. Not planning anything special for today... just chill out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=58kMK0XeGgQ :-)

YES! YES!! Totally wild and funny. Wonderful way to start the Sunday afternoon "work cycle". Great sharing by Spins. But, it is a little "X-Rated" with Chippy's words.

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

Enjoyed a 14-day, Jan. 20-Feb. 3, 2014, Sydney to Auckland adventure, getting a big sampling for the wonders of "down under” before and after this cruise. Go to:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1974139

for more info and many pictures of these amazing sights in this great part of the world. Now at 190,787 views for this posting.

On a totally different subject, I was looking for a weekend break and I saw this .... it could be a very long weekend!

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Hope I didn't offend most delicate ears.

Of course one could always delete or turn it off.

It was from Jimmy Kimmel.

His aunt chippy.

And words bleeped out.

Spins...it was great!!!! No arm-twisting happened. :)

J...your meal looks yum, yum, yum!

Cam...enjoy the slightly warmer temps.

Mike....the whiskey collection sounds amazing! What a lovely place to doddle!

MBP&O2/O,

I've never wanted to do a British isles cruise (too port intensive)... until now. I wonder how long you would have to stay to sample every one?

:-)

Good Morning Coolers,

Some may have been interested in the on-going saga to bring some ex-Ministers to court with respect to the invasion of Iraq which was crowd-funded in the UK. They have now reached the conclusion that whilst offences amy have been committed there is efectively no court in which an action can be brought. This is the opinion and will be of no interest to anyone not interested in that original issue:

The detailed conclusion (112 pages plus) is at

https://view.publitas.com/iraq-war-families-campaign-group/legal-opinion-re-iraq-inquiry-report/page/1?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Update125onCHILCOTINQUIRY-ANSWERFORIRAQDecember182017&utm_medium=email

The summary is:

Update on CHILCOT INQUIRY - ANSWER FOR IRAQ

Dear Friends and Supporters,

 

You may have seen yesterday the news reported in the Mail on Sunday that, despite our and our legal team's very best efforts, we will not be able to commence civil proceedings against those state officials criticised by the Iraq Inquiry Report.

 

If so, it was not our intention for you to learn this news from the media. Regrettably, its publication yesterday was unexpected and premature. We had hoped to be able to tell you in advance.

 

It has taken a very long time to reach this point in our quest to see if any legal action can be taken against those responsible for sending our loved ones to fight and die in an unjust and unnecessary war.

 

After a long and arduous process, our legal team have now completed their work. Regrettably, they have been obliged to conclude that the combination of the UK's underlying constitutional arrangements, and recent significant judgments of the higher courts, have closed off any possibility of civil proceedings being commenced.

 

In short, for reasons set out below, our legal team have reached the following conclusions:

In reaching the decision to commit the UK to the invasion of Iraq, the Inquiry Report's findings show that various state officials arguably breached Constitutional conventions.

 

 

 

 

• The Report contains sufficient evidence on which a court could find that Mr. Blair, and other state officials acted with reckless indifference to the legality of their actions. It would be legitimate to argue that they deliberately and consciously closed their minds to that risk.
  
• Nonetheless, recent significant judgments of the Higher Courts have closed off any possibility of making these arguments before the courts.
  
• Prior to R (Miller) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the EU [2017] it might have been arguable that breaches of Constitutional conventions could be the subject of court proceedings. However, in Miller, the Supreme Court settled the issue in holding that these are political not legal matters, over which Parliament, not the courts, have sanctioning power.
  
• In the same month as Miller, in Rahmatullah (No 2) v Ministry of Defence, the Supreme Court explicitly and definitively updated a line of previous authority which means that (in the absence of legislative authority to do so) the English courts will not pass judgment on the decision to go to war in Iraq.
  
• It was recently affirmed by the Administrative Court in R (Al Rabbat) v. Westminster Magistrate's Court [2017] that the English courts may not adjudicate upon the use of prerogative powers concerning foreign policy and the deployment of military forces.
  
• As a result, the current state of English law is that, even if state officials knew they were acting in violation of their constitutional duties and were therefore reckless as to the damage that would cause and regardless of the level of damage ultimately inflicted, such breaches are not actionable in a court of law and can only be punished by Parliament.
  
• As regards the Inquiry's conclusion that the legality of the war “can only be resolved by a properly constituted and internationally recognised Court”, the question of whether an English court could pass judgment was definitively settled by the Supreme Court in Rahmatullah (No.2), which held that the decision to invade Iraq could not be adjudicated on by the English courts. This is despite there now being both a significant body of evidence and eminent opinion that supports the conclusion that the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was unlawful.
  

In October 2002, five months before the invasion of Iraq, Sir Michael Wood, the FCO's most Senior Legal Adviser, warned state officials that such action might amount to a breach of constitutional conventions and risk possible civil litigation, as well as the launching of a private prosecution for the crime of aggression.

 

As you know, following publication of the Inquiry's Report, there was much speculation whether such action could and would be taken. We instructed our legal team to advise whether any such actions could and should be pursued because we needed to rest in the knowledge that no stone was left unturned in pursuit of justice on behalf of our loved ones.

 

Quite rightly, given the importance of this matter, not only to us but to the country, we were advised not to proceed until a rigorous assessment had been carried out. Our legal team has spent the last year conducting a forensic review of the law and the Report's 2.6 million words to determine what opportunities are available.

 

We could not have done this without your support and generosity and we are eternally grateful to you. Without your support and the donations you have made it would not have been possible to do what has been done and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being on our side.

 

Should you wish to do so, the definitive legal Opinion produced by some of the country's foremost experts can be read and downloaded here: https://view.publitas.com/iraq-war-families-campaign-group/legal-opinion-re-iraq-inquiry-report/

 

In short, the current state of English law is that, even if state officials were recklessly indifferent as to whether they were acting in violation of their constitutional duties, and regardless of their consequences, such breaches are not actionable in a court of law, and can only be punished by Parliament.

 

We are grateful to our legal team for their diligence and tirelessness, but most of all we are grateful to you for your incredible support in our long search for the truth. However, It would seem that our journey is finally at an end.

 

While we are, of course, disappointed that, as the law stands, those responsible for the wrongdoing that led to an unlawful war and the deaths of their loved ones will not face a tribunal, we know that, thanks to you, we have done all we can in their memories.

 

We hope now that the Opinion may not only serve to promote a greater understanding of the Inquiry's momentous examination of the failures of UK executive conduct, but also perhaps that Britain, as a country, may now seek to examine and challenge the fact that the decision whether to punish such breaches of our constitution by our Government, even those that result in the most dire and tragic of consequences for the British people, is left solely to Parliament. Can the British people trust the very politicians responsible to police themselves?

 

Responsibility for what we believe is much need constitutional review and reform now lies with Parliament.

 

We are forever grateful to you.

 

Roger Bacon and Reg Keys, on behalf of the Iraq War Families Campaign Group

 

Greetings Coolers! It's snowing again!

J...your post outlining the decision to not pursue the civil case must be heart-breaking. It seems the valiant efforts will not result in closure. But efforts were made nonetheless.

Not to be disrespectful to the above post.....I found some new music by Shakey Graves that may have Coolers bopping in their seats.

Seeing All Red :

Roll The Bones:

Have a great day all!

Good Morning All .....

Very quiet here ..... but that is proably the sign of many busy people preparing for the Christmas festivities. I have a feeling that Sophia is going to stay where she is as she is currently thoroughly enjoying herself drinking beer and cocktails and her piccies look great fun.

Finally gave up on the uncertainty of my Surface Pro and it's noises and ordered a new machine. JP, I did as you suggested and used a UK "build your own" pricer which goes out and sources all the bits you would choose and gives you the lowest found prices and rather to my suprise Dell is selling pretty much the perfect box I'd specifiy at a much lower price than I could build.

In summary plus all the odds and sods - I'll probably add another 16gb if it seems to need it.

8th Generation Intel® Core i7-8700 6-Core Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz) Intel Core i7 Processor Kabylake-R Label 1 SR

16GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2666MHz (2X8GB)

1 SR400-AWBE 256GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD

4TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive 1 SR

429-AAJV Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD) 1 SR

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory

all in a medium tower and has a few freebies thrown in.

Jeff, enjoyed reading your interstellar language and I'm glad you can communicate with the aliens residing in the intestines of our computers. I still remember the yellow, 32-column spreadsheets I would use in one of my first jobs at Citibank PR where I would enter sectorial economic data to rack my brains into possible strategies for corporate banking. When I got my first PC I decided to be blind to its inner workings and just focused on its practical functionality. That meant I was considered a pest by the IT department!!

Not bad. More memory is always good. Is the HDD a hybrid SSD plus regular disk? I built Chris her current computer and did a small SSD for the OS and other programs, and I used a second HDD (regular disk) for storage.

The only knock on Dell and other preassembled stuff is that it comes with tons of software that you probably don't need and will slow the machine down. The first think I ever do with a new laptop is wipe the drive, and do a clean OS install.

Off to work.

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Hi Cams,

I know it's old stories but I remember the celebration when they upgraded the main memory in the 370 from 8k to 16k. The machine was plumbed in to water to keep it cool. And when they added a 10mb drive the the PCG and none of us could work out what any sane person could find to store that would take up 10mb. And then they increased it to 20mb! What a shocker. :D

JP - yes two drives one SSD and one HD. I also have loads of offline drives and a NAS, but since I uploaded all piccies and all my MP3 music to Amazon Cloud, I have added Fire TV to all TV's and it really has changed things. The Amazon GUI isn't particularly friendly but I'm sure it will improve. Perhaps a secondary business of people providing better interfaces to this stuff will start. No keeping duplicate music across two homes and travel PC/Ipad. I have been a slow Cloud adopter.

The Dell PC hasn't been positioned as a gaming machine because (I suspect) they don't want to detract attention from their labelled gaming machines but the H/W is clearly a decent gaming machine spec. It comes with a free VR reality set which I didn't need but I guess will ocupy me. I always take off the bloatware but it only comes with trial office which I'll remove because I use open office which I love because of it's traditional appearance. I try to keep the machine lean. I may add a larger SSD and use the internal HD simply for routine backups and anicialary data files. Also I'll download Norton and some other stuff I use. I will also use two or three screens as I have three reasonably decent matching Samsung screens.

I ordered it at 8pm last night and if I understand the tracking it may actually be out for delivery. The machine has been noisy today.:)

Dear Cooler Bar friends, I am so proud and elated that I'm going to risk bragging and share this with you. My DH was awarded the most prominent prize for compositions by a living composer in Spain or Hispanic America. Most announcements have been in Spanish, but Cornell University made it in English:

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/12/composer-roberto-sierra-wins-top-spanish-prize

Like Roberto commented, this is our best Christmas gift ever!!!

Congrats! I can't read the link on my phone but I'm looking forward to reading it when I get home. Sounds like an amazing honor! And yes, Merry Christmas.

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C ....... what extraordinary news. You must both be elated and proud. I so admire Roberto and his skill. To be honest this is something I hope you really celebrate in exceptional style.

I know Roberto isn't a populist and as the article says he simply wants people to listen to his music, so I hope this award will bring his unique work to a,wider audience and he gets more of the recognition and audience he richly deserves.

Please pass our congrats, admiration and best wishes to him and to yourself for all the depths of support you must provide him.

:)

WOW! What an awesome award for your husband Cam! Congratulations to him on his accomplishments! Your Cooler friends are very excited for you both!

Have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanks, dear friends; Roberto is very thankful for your kind words. On to the Holidays!!

Outstanding, Cam. Much kudos.

Thanks, TTS!!

WOW.

Roberto you truly do rock.

I have listened to some of your music.

It's amazing.