|
|
| Indexes >Time >Alphabet |
| Letters |
|
To find an archived article, simply click on Index and scroll the subject titles, or do a Ctrl-F search |
WELCOME TO THE You can write to me at
blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Average approval over last three months up to #78 : 80.0% (up 2.7%)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Each
post appears simultaneously in the Archive with the permalink |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mark Humphrys' thought-provoking blog is different from others in that it is organized by topic rather than by date. However, he has just incorporated an index of links to his latest posts which helps enormously when you're looking for new stuff. A recent, shocking and exhaustively linked post describes the evils of the Soviet Empire, triggered by the death of its destroyer, Ronald Reagan. Under a series of unremitting despots over the empire's 74 years of evil existence, it deliberately killed between 25 and 60 million people through execution, famine, chemical weapons, gulag and war (it killed even more Soviet citizens - ten million - during World War 2 than the invading Nazis did). It was the most murderous regime that mankind has ever known. Yet there remains a comparable Stalinist totalitarian regime in full
flow right now. Lifelong anti-Communist Vaclev
Havel, philosopher, author, playwright and
the Czech Republic's erstwhile first president wrote an eloquent account
of modern day Led by Kim Jong Il, truly his father's son, the regime has murdered up to five million people by the same means as the Soviets - execution, famine, chemical weapons, gulag and war. Mr Havel draws parallels.
And today, North Korean refugees describe the hell that is life under Kim Jong Il, accounts supported by satellite imagery. At least those refugees do, who have managed to evade neighbouring China's attempts to return them to their homeland to almost certain gulag and/or death. In his impoverished totalitarian state, Kim Jong Il sustains a million-man army, a nuclear weapons programme, other WMD, long-range missile development, arms exports and famine. Meanwhile, most of the world looks politely the other way. While the UN passes but two condemnatory resolutions in six decades, South Korea and other rich, free countries shy from confronting the regime, even as they pour in food aid, without thanks or reciprocation, in the knowledge that most of it goes straight to the armed forces, who already absorb 23% of GDP. China, a perennial supporter of North Korea, is only now getting a little nervous as it realises that a nuclear-armed North Korea on its doorstep poses an unacceptable threat of regional nuclear escalation (including within Taiwan). Mr Havel therefore calls on the world to confront the North Korean regime in a unified manner and to stop making unilateral concessions that only give it comfort and oxygen. The real question is, I think, what would Ronald Reagan do ? George Bush made a good start by including North Korea in his axis of evil two years ago, but that is pretty much the only confrontation that Kim Jong Il has faced. With nuclear weapons able to reach Japan and a huge army poised on South Korea's border, an Iraq-style pre-emptive military invasion of North Korea is not really a realistic option. However, Reagan showed how even the mightiest totalitarian state can be brought to its knees under sustained economic pressure, how a clash of ideologies can be won without firing a shot. That's what's needed. Thus,
A similar formula worked on a more formidable, wealthier and equally malign enemy bristling with nuclear weapons in the 1980s. Why not now ? Anyone got any better ideas ?
Three Irish Peace Missionaries The three Irish peace missionaries, who due to Columbian incompetence and chicanery ended up in jail in Bogota, have just been released after nearly three years of incarceration. The purpose of their trip to Columbia in 2001 had been to make a peace visit to the guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in their jungle stronghold, a no-go area the size of Switzerland. There, while observing the peace process between the FARC and the Columbian Government, they patiently explained the benefits and modalities Northern Ireland's own much vaunted peace process. Oh, and they also partook in a bit of eco-tourism. To do all this it was apparently necessary to travel on, er, false passports. Having taken leave of their FARC hosts, the trio flew back to Bogota, on 11th August 2001. But on arrival, the bumbling Columbian police immediately arrested them for using false papers. PC El-Plod then had the temerity to accuse them of helping the FARC, who were not very good at attacking cities, to build better weapons and improve the quality of their urban warfare.
In April, a single-judge, non-jury, anti-terrorist, Columbian court acquitted the peace missionaries of helping the FARC but convicted them of travelling on false passports and awarded them various prison sentences. However the outraged Attorney General immediately appealed the acquittal. They were therefore granted bail which allows them to leave the jail but they must remain in Columbia pending the appeal. But it took them seven weeks to screw up the courage to leave the jail last week, because they believe they are in more danger outside than inside those high walls. For it seems there are right-wing militias roaming around Bogota with guns and clubs who administer severe punishment, such as death, on those they disapprove of, regardless of legal process. And many of these militias are convinced the Irish peace missionaries did indeed train left-wing FARC guerillas in urban warfare, which in their view certainly merits summary punishment. So the missionaries have gone into hiding. This must be a novel, confusing and ironic experience for them, because back home in Ireland the peace missionaries have their own armed militia with guns and clubs which administers severe punishment on those it disapproves of, regardless of legal process. Moreover, should the peace missionaries be returned to prison to serve their sentences, they believe that the Columbian militias have the means and will to exact punishment even within the confines. It seems therefore that peace missionaries' best hope for their personal survival is to engage the Columbian militias in a peace dialogue. Just as they apparently preached Northern Ireland style peace to the FARC, they can explain to the right wing militias the error of their ways, and convince them to decommission all their weapons and re-enter the political mainstream. Just like back home. Not.
This prompted an angry message (below) to the two leading Irish newspapers from an anonymous “Irish Expat”, which speaks for itself. Let's see whether the respective newspapers publish. Many other leftward media, notably the BBC but also AP, Reuters and AFP, are equally bashful about calling non-white terrorists terrorists. Especially where America or Israel is the terrorist target.
EU Elections Will Enliven the EU The recent elections for the 732 seats in the EU parliament have caused consternation on a number of fronts. Firstly, there's the low turnout - just 45%. Astonishingly, the ten new countries, who you would expect to have been bursting with excitement at the prospect of their first EU election, barely managed 30%. You have to conclude there is a striking and consistent lack of enthusiasm for the EU project amongst the 350 million voters. Secondly, other than in Spain and Greece which have in the last few months already changed out their governments, the EU elections mark an unmistakable rejection of the ruling parties. Whatever it is they've been doing, their respective electorates are distinctly unimpressed. Interestingly, this goes for both right-leaning governments such as Britain's, Italy's and Ireland's as well as for the left-leaners of countries such as France and Germany (I'm talking about their behaviour not their rhetoric). Thirdly, it is not the conventional alternative parties that have benefited from the lacklustre performance of the ruling parties, but extremist, protest and single-issue parties and individuals. Thus
Some may wonder whether these are three unrelated phenomena, but I am inclined to think they are linked as part of a wider picture. Mid-term discontent with the ruling party is common in all democracies, and often expressed by kicking it when what is viewed as an unimportant poll comes up. But for years, most ruling parties have been falling over each other to reach the same central ground in an ideology-free scramble. Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, the precepts of the left have fallen into utter disrepute, although no-one on the left wants to admit it and its soft-focus socialism sounds comforting. Thus,
As a consequence, there is little to choose between the mainstream left-acting-right and right-acting-left parties, so the electorate doesn't really care who governs them. This opens the door to using your vote to express what you really feel strongly about. For some it is supporting their pet extreme or single-issue. But for a huge number it has been protesting at the advancing power of the EU itself. The EU began its life as a free trade organization and later extended this to free movement of goods, capital, services and people. This is where it hit its apogee, where almost everyone gained from the enterprise and it was universally popular. But as its enthusiastic insiders moved the EU towards greater integration and regulation, it gradually left much of the populations behind, who became steadily more disgruntled and apathetic. So what we are seeing is a peasants' revolt, which will likely be manifested in a much livelier EU parliamentary chamber, hosting for the first time some real adversarial, bad-tempered debate. Imagine the uproar when UKIP's newly elected Robert Kilroy Silk uses his maiden speech to announce he wants to wreck the parliament. Debates will become a spectator sport instead of a lullaby. Meantime, there is the small matter of the pernicious EU Constitutional Treaty that ministers have long been haggling over. They could not fail but to have felt a sense of chastisement over the elections, and many perhaps no longer had the stomach to pursue it as avidly as they might have. They knew they would have got more praise back home for not budging than for acquiescing. From all this, my bet and hope (and prognostication of a year ago) were that they would fail to agree. I was not alone. A recent Eurosoc poll put success at just 3%; in fact the poll reckoned that only a Martian presidency would secure agreement. But I was wrong. After two days of angry haggling in Brussels, an agreement was reached but not without leaving President Chirac reportedly grumpy about the inclusion of Britain's successful “red lines” on tax etc. But luckily this success doesn't really matter. In the new climate, and with the need for referendums in at least six countries including highly Eurosceptical Britain (who in a Sky News poll immediately registered 70% rejection), the 300 page tome has, fortunately, not a hope of ratification. Perhaps, after all, this miserable election actually represents a giant leap forward in EU representative democracy. Real debate by real representatives. Followed by eventual outcomes that the 350 million electorate can broadly support.
How Representative Is Your Democracy ? I was interested to read after the recent Indian elections that if Ireland's parliamentary representation were similar to India's it would have only two members of parliament for the whole country. Conversely, if India - with over a billion people the world's largest democracy - were to copy Ireland, it would have to expand its parliament buildings a hundredfold to accommodate over 45,000 MPs. And if it were to copy the “Eurodots” of Andorra/Luxembourg/Monaco/San Marino it would need space for 24.8 million MPs ! Here is a comparison of quite a few prominent democracies in terms of parliamentary representation in the legislative lower (or only) house, ie the number of people that each member of parliament on average represents. The average of all the countries listed is 394,000 people per MP, but this ranges hugely from 3,500 (for the “Eurodots”) to almost two million (India). Data are from the incomparable CIA World Factbook.
You can see that, broadly, the bigger your country, the less you are represented in your legislature. Interestingly, the UK (population 60m) has the biggest parliament (659 members) of anyone (eg India 545, USA 435, Philippines 206), other than the mighty EU (732 MEPs). And the EU is supposed to have a democratic deficit.
Rumours, Truth, Goodness, Usefulness and Socrates Keep this philosophy in
mind the next time you either hear, or are about to repeat a rumour ... “Wait a moment,”
Socrates replied. “Before you tell me, I’d like you to apply a
little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.” “Triple filter?”,
asked the man. “That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before
you talk to me about my student, let’s take a moment to filter what
you’re going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you
made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”
“No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and...”
“All right,” said
Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not”.
“Now let’s try the
second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about
to tell me about my student something good?” “No,
Socrates, on the contrary...” “So,”
Socrates interjected, “you want to tell me something bad about him,
even though you’re not certain it’s true?” The man shrugged, a
little embarrassed. Socrates continued. “You
may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter - the
filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my
student going to be useful to me?” “No, not really.”
“Well,”
concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither True or
Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?” Feeling defeated and
ashamed, the man slunk off. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. It also explains why he never found out that his student Plato was sleeping with his wife.
Who said dentistry wasn't fun ? In Hong Kong school students, under the watchful eye of the HK Dental Association (founder in 1950 a certain Dr Allwright), just earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for tying together the world's longest length of dental floss. After weeks of training and practice, 580 nimble-fingered youngsters co-operated to tie 25-centimetre segments of floss together till they provided a single length of 524.2 metres. What a useful enterprise. The next challenge is to find someone who wants half a kilometer of grubby dental floss.
Quote : “I'm never disappointed in my Secretary of Defence. He's doing a fabulous job, and America's lucky to have him in the position he's in.” President George Bush, Quote : “He has tasted European blood.” An unnamed senior German government figure suggests
that
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Why not tell your friends to click on www.tallrite.com/blog | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Top of Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PRIOR TWO ISSUES FOLLOW | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ISSUE #78 - 13th June 2004 [324] |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain's premier military training college, Sandhurst, trained a great many foreign soldiers who went on to play leading roles in their countries. Some did so constitutionally, such as
Others became head of state by staging coups d'état of one sort or another.
When I lived in Nigeria in the time of Gowan, I heard stories about the Sandhurst training (which, by the way, included instilling a love of rugby - I recall playing against a formidable team comprising his personal bodyguards). In particular, Sandhurst used to teach their foreign students how to defend their newly independent, democratic (sic) homelands. And the lesson that it kept drilling in to them is that you must at all costs defend the radio stations, because these are what give you power over the people. Well, Gowan, Qaboos, Amin, Abacha and company learned their lesson well. Because the first thing they did in staging their own coups back home was to seize the radio stations and start broadcasting how they had liberated the downtrodden masses from the previous guy's tyranny. I was reminded of all this when I heard a fascinating little item on BBC Radio 4 recently about how best to subvert democracy. Whilst those Asian and African coupsters showed they knew how to do it, were they necessarily being as efficient as they might be ? How can you quantify it ? Well, extraordinarily, now we can, thanks to Vladimir Montesinos. When Alberto Fujimori was the elected president of Peru in the 1990s, his friend Montesinos became his secret-police chief and his right-hand man, entrusted to do whatever was necessary to keep his boss in his job. Fujimori was elected for the constitutional maximum of two five-year terms but Montesinos then engineered a third term. For this it was necessary to ensure that
This was done partly by strong-arm tactics (torture, disappearances, death squads), but also by carefully targeted bribing. Montesinos was an able and methodical operator who throughout the Fujimori presidency kept not only meticulous notes, but videos of himself paying bribes. The brave broadcast of one of these “vladivideos” precipitated the sudden collapse of the corrupt house of cards in 2000. Montesinos went into hiding and Fujimori fled to Japan where he resigned in November by fax and was granted asylum based on his blood-line (much to Peru's fury). Despite plastic surgery to disguise his identity, Montesinos was found in Venezuela the following year and jailed in Peru for nine years, condemned by the evidence of his own records and videotapes . But it means we now know how Montesinos prioritised his spending to subvert Peruvian democracy under Fujimori.
For this, the activities of pro-Fujimori candidates would be broadcast, that of opponents not, and criticism of the government would be silenced. That's all that was needed. Unfortunately,
there is no archive link to the Radio 4 item and I wasn't quick enough to
record it, but at a Stanford University
corruption conference last year, Professor Ocampo presented a detailed and
interesting paper
(Word, 400kb) on the Montesinos case, ominously entitled, “Power
Networks And Institutions In Latin America”. Montesinos recognised that TV provides the biggest single check on misuse of power, that it governs the relationship between politicians and the population in general. Therefore it needs to be the number one target if you want to subvert (or indeed protect) democracy. This allows you to maintain the veneer of a working democracy without the perils of installing an actual dictatorship. For example in nominally democratic Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe could never get away with his destructive behaviour if he did not have a tight grip on the TV stations. It just goes to show how prescient were those military lecturers at Sandhurst. To protect - or to subvert - democracy, you must concentrate above else on the broadcast media. In the 1950s/60s/70s that meant radio. Today it's TV. Tomorrow blogging ?
Ireland's Open Door Asylum Policy Ireland, like all rich, liberal democracies, is the target of many refugees and asylum-seekers, fleeing to escape persecution or to live a better life or both. And who can blame them for targeting wealthy, free, safe countries with generous welfare. Where's the fun in being granted residency in democracies such as Sri Lanka or Singapore or Argentina or Israel or Nigeria ? Last week, Ireland's Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, or ORAC, published its annual report for 2003 (pdf, 737kb). It reveals that the two countries that provided most of Ireland's 8,000 refugees and asylum-seekers last year were two democracies, however flawed. One was Nigeria (the source of 39%) and the other Romania (10%). Even the Czech Republic, now a fellow EUer, sent along 2˝%. These are themselves capitalistic democracies with fairly independent legal systems, and where the state does not make a habit of hounding its law-abiding citizens. Yes if you're a Christian in Northern (Muslim) Nigeria you can get harassed, and vice versa in the South, but equally you can always move to elsewhere within that huge country where you won't be tormented. By contrast,
the virulently undemocratic and militaristic dictatorships of Congo and Somalia,
where there's nowhere to hide, managed only 5˝% between them. No doubt
there are countless Congolese and Somalis who live or decamp in daily fear of torture and murder by the State,
so the wonder is that there are so relatively few of them fleeing (to Ireland, anyway). However, the persecution need not be confined to that perpetrated by the organs of the State; it could be anyone, even your next door neighbour. All you then have to say is that you “are
unwilling to avail yourself of your country's protection”. Your country may have the world's finest police force
eager and able to protect you, but you just have to say you don't want their protection. Yet very few such individuals enter Ireland without having transited through another EU country, because there are no direct connections to Ireland from, say, Nigeria or Somalia. Under the EU's Dublin Convention concept, you would think applicants would be simply put straight back on the same flight or boat from Europe on which they arrived. But no, the small print intervenes again. The two EU countries have to agree to the return. Letters and forms must be exchanged over a period of months during which the process usually just runs out of steam or beyond the six-month time-limit, because of course no-one wants to accept the returning applicants. Hence, out of 8,000 asylum applicants, just 38 were deported under the Dublin Convention. And even they were matched by 37 deportations into Ireland from other EU countries. So, if you're reading this out there in the depths of Africa or the Middle East or South America or the Far East, and you're not happy with your lot or your neighbour is a nuisance, just call yourself a persecuted asylum-seeker and come on over. The door's always open. Oh, and in just three years we will give you an Irish/EU passport as well.
Non-Israeli Massacres and Israeli Non-Massacres I was happy to have provoked Raymond Dean, the Chairman of the Ireland Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, within the pages of the ( subscription-only) Irish Times last month. (For non-subscribers, I have transcripted the relevant correspondence here). I had responded to a letter accusing Israel, as usual, of carrying out massacres at Sabra, Shatila and Rafah, by pointing out
In high dudgeon, Mr Dean referred me to Principle VII of the 1950 Nuremberg Tribunal (1950) : “Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity. . . is a crime under international law” and claimed that the Israeli army supervised the Sabra and Shatila slaughters. This is not true. It was Christian Phalangist militias who entered the two refugee camps in September 1992 to seek out terrorists following the bombing of their leader, Lebanon's then president-elect Bashir Gemayel. This was done by agreement with but not supervised by the Israelis, who remained outside and who nevertheless warned them not to harm civilians. The Phalangists ignored the warning and shamefully killed hundreds of innocent Palestinian children, women and old men. The Israelis' failure was not to have anticipated the possibility of atrocities by the enraged Phalangists nor to have taken more concrete steps to have prevented them. It is right to criticise the Israelis for this, as their own exhaustive Kahan Commission did, which Mr Dean quotes. Indeed, it places much blame on the then Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, who was punished along with other senior figures. (Imagine this happening in any other Middle East country.) But if failing to prevent a predictable slaughter is a Nuremberg crime, then the UN's new International Criminal Court could find itself rather busy. Among its candidates :
The Irish Times have not so far published my riposte along the above lines.
With the death of Ronald Reagan, we were reminded of the key role he played, ably supported by Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, in destroying the evil empire that was the USSR. They applied
to vanquish and humiliate it through economic ruin and without firing a shot. With some exceptions, the peoples of the Russian Federation, ex-Soviet republics and Central Europe were after 1991 freed at last from the suffocating tyrannical wickedness of Communism. The exceptions are subject-states such as Chechnya imprisoned within the Russian Federation (which should more properly be called the Russian Empire, for that is what it is). Would that the peoples of the Middle East could enjoy the freedom to pursue their dreams that Hungarians and Poles today take for granted. Of those three 1980s champions of freedom, only the Pope is still in his job, hanging in there gamely and grimly despite his failing health. Before the D-Day commemorations, he met with George Bush and reviewed the bravery of those American, Polish and other Allied soldiers who freed the peoples of (as it turned out only Western) Europe. But what a disgrace to see him chiding George Bush last week for toppling Saddam and reminding him of the Vatican's unequivocal opposition to the war.
At the time, the Vatican was was predicting 15,000 American deaths along with “fire and tumult all over the Middle East”. It seems the Pope is now simply too proud to admit that he was wildly wrong and that America's war has given Iraqis their first chance to build their own representative democracy, the first in Arabian history. He would deny Iraqis what he praises American military power for delivering in 1945 to the Japanese, the Germans, the (South) Koreans, and in 1991 to the Europeans east of the Oder. He is befuddled and ill, and has lost the clear-sightedness he possessed when he stood alongside Reagan and Thatcher to confront the Soviets. As I've argued earlier, he should retire now before he wrecks his admirable legacy.
When he wasn't vanquishing and destroying the despicable Soviet Empire, the late Ronald Reagan adhered to a famously laid back work ethic. Lazy, you could say. And his intellectual prowess was perpetually misunderstestimated. (Not unlike a current incumbent, by all accounts). These are some of my favourite Reaganisms.
If you've got any more in similar vein, you might like to add them as a Comment.
Half a Million Dollars to Smoke Cigarettes
Nice work if you can get
it. Mr Stallone's letter of agreement has - no doubt to his embarrassment - been published by the British Medical Journal, no less, in a recent paper called, “Policy priorities for tobacco control”, aimed at telling doctors and politicians how to get smokers to quit. Despite its almost religious zealotry (“the smoking of tobacco should eventually become an activity undertaken only by consenting adults in private”) the piece is unusually readable.
Size 12 Wedding Dress - No Reserve
This one recently fetched $3,850 on e-bay (price $1,200 new), having attracted over a hundred bids and 50,000 hits. Never mind that. It's the seller's cracking commentary which accompanies the sales description that made this item so popular. “It’s a really nice dress” he says. “Personally, I think it looks like a $1200 shower curtain, but what do I know about this.” He also got five marriage proposals, some from women. You should read his commentary in full.
“He talked of winning one for the Gipper and as president, through his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev, with us today, the Gipper and, yes, Mikhail Gorbachev won one for peace around the world.” Ex-President George Herbert Bush Quote : “I spent several years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, in the dark, fed with scraps. Do you think I want to do that all over again as vice president of the United States ?” Vietnam war hero Senator John McCain (Republican) Quote : “It means the Second World War is finally over.” German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on his decision
to attend ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. Quote : “Why be surprised that Spanish voters don’t have the stomach for war? To fight for king and country is to fight for the future, for your nation, for its children. But Spain with its birthrate of 1.1 per woman has no children, and thus no future. What’s to fight for? ” Freelance
columnist Mark Steyn, in typical acerbic style,
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Top of Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ISSUE #77 - 16th May 2004 [3x200+144 =744]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Prompted by a piece by Joan Swirsky, entitled “Nick Berg’s Death Forebodes Our Own”, reader Ray Kraft proposes that the term Islamofascist be replaced with IslamoNazi, on the basis that Nazi is a more accurate epithet and fascist is too benign. Fascism, after all, only means an authoritarian hierarchical government
rather than a specific ideology.
I agree with Mr Kraft. That's why I'll be using the term IslamoNazis from now on, starting with the following two posts.
Which terrified prisoner would you prefer to be ?
Your choice is :
Personally, I'd prefer to be the Arab treated by an American like a dog (or woman) on a leash than the Jew-goat being prepared by an Arab for a feast. In January 2002, Daniel Pearl, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, was beheaded because he was the wrong Jew in the wrong place (Pakistan) who got picked up by the wrong people (Al Qaeda). His Jewishness was well known (he was forced to “confess” it on camera), and this was sufficient to provide his murderers with every justification for their act. But Nicholas Berg ? Also a Jew, though you'd hardly know it from the mainstream media. The Jerusalem Post and other Jewish media and some blogs have pointed it out. But for most of the others, he was just an American. For example, CNN bury his Jewishness in this transcripted interview, the Washington Post is silent, likewise the International Herald Tribune in an editorial that is devoted solely to Mr Berg. The NRO tells us he was killed “because he was an American, plain and simple” whereas Daniel Pearl “was beheaded by al Qaeda ... for the dual crimes of being an American and a Jew” An American passport contains no big yellow star denoting Jew, nor do Jews customarily sew such stars to their clothing. So we can only speculate how his slaughterers became aware it was a Jew they had the good fortune to capture. But consider these facts, gleaned from the Washington Post and the 13th May (paper) edition of the IHT. Though he supports the war, Mr Berg has no connections to the military, nor to any company that is operating in Iraq. Yet in defiance of State Department warnings, he goes to Iraq at the end of last year on a freelance basis, seeking work building and maintaining telecommunications masts. Whilst wandering around Mosul, he is picked up on 24th March by the Iraqi police, who are of course trained and and controlled by the Coalition forces. The police apparently believe he might be involved in “suspicious activities”. He is held for thirteen days and is interviewed three times by the FBI who want to ascertain his identity and what he's doing in Iraq. They advise him to leave the country at once and he refuses. By now their identity checks, if not his name, have revealed that he is a Jew. No doubt the Iraqi police also know and it is quite possible this key piece of information leaks. And he has become an irritant, a maverick unaffiliated to any Coalition activity, who ignores warnings and refuses to be exported. It doesn't help that his dad is a known anti-war agitator back home. Nick Berg is then released on 6th April and three days later kidnapped by Al Qaeda, who slaughter him. It
seems inescapable to me that he was killed by IslamoNazis “because
he was a Make your own judgement. And beware of being a Jew in the Muslim parts of today's world.
Bombing Iran's Nuclear Facilities The Iranian site ActivisitChat.com, which is viscerally opposed to everything about the IslamoNazi ruling regime in Iran, and to every act by anyone that might give it comfort, has started advocating that Iran's nuclear facilities not be bombed. For their destruction is something that has been gaining approval among a number of Americans who support Iranian freedom, and who think Israel should do the deed. But ActivistChat.com (which appears as BlogIran on my blogroll) argues that military strikes would be counterproductive, turn many Iranians against the United States, and increase regional war resulting in thousands or millions of Iranian deaths. However, it doesn't want to bore the reader with “a plethora of other reasons”. I'm sorry but, in the absence of that plethora, this is utterly without foundation. It has provided not a single cogent reason why bombing Iran’s nuclear installation(s) would strengthen the mullahs, leading to “increased regional war” and countless Iranian deaths. Have people already forgotten how grateful the world is to this day that Israel unilaterally bombed Iraq’s French-built plutonium-producing Osirak (O’Chirac) nuclear plant in 1981 before it could go into operation ? Had the Israelis not done so, Saddam would have possessed nuclear weapons as from the 1980s, and indeed would doubtless have used them on the Iranians, as he did poison gas, to conquer Iran in the 1980-88 Iraq/Iran war. The destruction of Osirik certainly did not strengthen him. Iran, like Iraq, doesn’t need nuclear power - it has enough indigenous oil and gas to fuel it for generations to come (at current exports 83 years worth of oil, 377 years of gas), and at much lower cost. No. Those IslamoNazi mullahs want expensive, unnecessary nuclear facilities for one reason only. It will enable them to develop a bomb, which will certainly make them mightier, both at home and on the world stage. Remove the bomb from them and they will be weaker not stronger. If Israel does decide to send in its bombers, the Iranians can conveniently blame it (whom many of them already seem to hate so it doesn’t matter) whilst continuing to love the Americans. From what ActivistChat.com is saying, therefore, a careful strike that destroys Iran’s nuclear facilities with a minimum of civilian casualties can have only a beneficial outcome. Either there are other reasons for not doing so, or they have made an elegant case for a bombing raid. Maybe that's their subtle intention. But that doesn't mean that I'm personally advocating such an action.
The two most virulently anti-war media in the UK have been the BBC and the Daily Mirror newspaper. Yet between them they have recently lost three top executives in cataclysmic circumstances, whilst the prime object of their ire, Tony Blair, remains in office.
The falsifications should come as no real surprise, because if you claim concern for the Iraqi people as both organs do, there is only limited intellectual content to an anti-war stance. For in essence, no-one has come up with a better way to liberate the Iraqis from the Saddamite thugocracy than to remove him militarily and try to form some kind of representative replacement government. This is what the Americans are trying to do, however ineptly. The embarrassing absence of WMD does not alter this. Therefore, anti-war equals pro-Saddam. So the only way to press the anti-war case without seeming to support Saddam is to get ever more hysterical, using volume in place of reason. From there, especially if you at the same time wish to project a certain level of intellectual sophistication, it is but a short step to start making things up. And that's what the BBC and Mirror both did. And when caught out, the top heads rolled - a chairman, a director-general and an editor - and grovelling apologies followed. In a way, the war argument is akin to the right/left divide as discussed here last month. The case for being right (in essence, free open market capitalism which gives opportunity to everyone to enrich him/herself) is overwhelmingly convincing, compared to being left (centrally-controlled goods and services that never match capitalism in terms of enriching and freeing people). So to argue for the left, you have to resort to high volume and hyberbole or even invention, rather than cold logic, experience and trusting the people. Just like trying to explain you are anti-war and anti-Saddam. Lord Hutton's incisive report has caused considerable reformation of the way the BBC goes about its business. It now makes a real effort to be objective and to get its critical facts right. A similar reformation will doubtless unfold at the Mirror, and not before time.
Stamping Political Aspirations Ireland is rightly proud to have been holding the EU presidency
as it welcomed ten new countries It has produced this special stamp to mark the historic occasion. But the eagle-eyed have spotted two mistakes, both of them political, which have embarrassed the issuing Post Office, though its spokesman defends them with the curious words, “the map is only a representation of what the new Europe should look like”. It seems he is expressing somebody's political aspirations. Can you spot the mistakes ? Scroll down ...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
....
The current (print-only) issue of Horizon reports that the Singapore government has made it compulsory for Indonesian and Filipina maids to complete a course that teaches them about the peculiarities of big city life, in particular the dangers posed by heights. Almost everyone in Singapore lives in a skyscraper and clothes are dried on bamboo sticks hung from windows. This can represent a serious risk to the servants, who generally come from underdeveloped villages of single-storey dwellings. In the last four years, over a hundred domestic employees have fallen out of frighteningly tall buildings in Singapore while cleaning windows or hanging out clothes. Singapore is noted for its nannying approach to governing grown-ups. But this is one case where you'd have to admit from the evidence that they have a point. But if a hundred maids tumble out, it makes you wonder how many children also do.
Quote : “Without reservation we apologise unconditionally to each one of you for the suffering we have caused. We express our heartfelt sorrow and ask your forgiveness. We ask forgiveness for our failure to care for you and protect you in the past and for our failure to hear you in the present. We are distressed by our failures. We have been earnestly searching to find a way to bring about healing. We need your help to do this.” The Central Leadership Team of the They are the first Catholic order worldwide A 1996 TV documentary exposed the scale of abuse ++++++++++ Quote : “The people have given their verdict, I accept it. My party may have lost, but India has won. I do, however, have the satisfaction that our country is now stronger and more prosperous than when you placed the reins of office in our hand.” India's Prime Minister, 89-year-old leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, The world's most populous country (after China)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
For previous issues, click on Archive or Index; or view Letters |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Why not tell your friends to click on www.tallrite.com/blog |
North
Korea in last week's (subscription only) 
The
Pope had previously disgraced himself a month prior to the war by shaking
the bloodied hand of Saddam's (Christian) deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, a
brusque, tough, 
Do
you need a size 12 wedding dress and gown, used just once, and fetchingly
modeled by this tattooed gentleman ? Who doesn't. 
Now for a little Light Relief
BLOGROLL
Religion Leisure Blog Directory
|
