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ISSUE #52 - 31st August 2003 [107]
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In recent months, we've heard a lot about the need to circumcise baby boys and adolescent girls in the name of someone or other's rich cultural heritage. The issue came to the fore recently in Ireland when a botched back-street circumcision of a Nigerian baby resulted in the baby bleeding to death. Groupings such as Muslims, Jews, many Africans and others practice circumcision of male infants for no reason other than that it has always been done. It is widespread across the world. When there is a medical requirement for circumcision, this presents no problem, and there are clear procedural guidelines. However, medical need is rare; parents usually request that their son be circumcised only for religious or traditional, not therapeutic, reasons. In this event,
The British Medical Association has managed to anger both sides by publishing ethical guidance for doctors which amounts to saying if you can get both parents to agree, then you can go ahead and do the non-therapeutic chopping. Female circumcision, more commonly called FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), is at least specifically outlawed in many Western jurisdictions, for it is far more barbaric and dangerous than the male equivalent. It is practiced extensively in 30 African and Middle Eastern countries and by their nationals when they emigrate. Unlike the religious dimension and utter pointlessness of male circumcision, FGM is not religion-based but has a sinister purpose - to remove a woman's sexual pleasure and thus ensure her faithfulness. As well as the agony the young girl has to undergo and the infection that frequently follows, it also causes lifelong genito-urinary problems and - similar to the male procedure - there is hardly ever any medical justification for it. There is a third way that children are cut (without anaesthetic as usual).
These forms for child mutilation may be summed up and compared as follows :
The only things in common is that they are all medically unnecessary, hazardous, painful, result in long term damage and have no redeeming feature. This is reason enough to trample roughshod over religious and cultural sensitivities and ban all forms of child mutilation in the West. A condition of living in the West should be to respect children's rights. Meanwhile we should be campaigning for similar bans in countries where this barbarity finds a home. When children are old and mature enough to make their own informed decisions, they should be allowed to undergo the procedures should they wish. But neither parents nor doctors should be permitted to assault children. We make enough fuss when the religious orders abuse them. Late Note : There is a fourth kind
of religious-driven mutilation,
Let me summarise a great 2,000 word article by columnist Victor Davis Hanson. He argues that it is not hard to determine who wishes the United States to succeed in rebuilding Iraq along lines that will promote consensual government, personal freedom, and economic vitality. Apart from the Iraqi and American people, hardly anyone.
All this hysteria and unrest
should come as no surprise given the audacity of the American endeavour,
which is no less than a war of civilization to end both terrorism and the
culture and politics that foster it, across the globe.
Moreover, after two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has
lost only 10% of those who perished on 9/11.
In assessing the value or
otherwise of what has been accomplished, I would paraphrase Internet
Communicator's question (most
recently on 24th August) that trumps all other questions.
“Are the Afghanis and Iraqis better off than before the Americans conquered the previous rulers ?” Forget the bedgrudgers and
disparagers. The answer speaks for itself.
Anti-Semitic Zayed Centre Shut Down My colleague Graham in Abu Dhabi informs me that the country's innocent-sounding yet rabidly anti-Jewish “Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow Up” has been shut down on the orders of its namesake, UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, for “engaging in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance ... a basic principle of Islam”. No doubt the bad publicity it has been getting in recent months from
all had something to do with it.
I had a run in a couple of months ago with the Justin Kilcullen, Director of Trócaire, Ireland's largest charity, when he deliberately misquoted a Paul Wolfowitz speech that purported to say that oil was the purpose of the Iraq war. Mr Kilcullen half-apologised when I caught him out (ah, the power of cyberspace). Unchastened by this, he was on the radio last week being interviewed by Pat Kenny, together with Tom Arnold the CEO of Concern the next biggest Irish charity. (You can listen to the interview here up to Monday 1st September.) Ireland recently decided to double its aid budget to the Ugandan government. Pat suggested the behaviour of the Ugandan government made this a mistake. Surely it was better that aid be channelled via NGOs like Trócaire and Concern so as to make sure it goes where it is needed. However, Justin and Tom put up a robust defence as to why the Irish taxpayer should indeed send more money to the corrupt Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his government, while Uganda continues
The interviewer therefore posed a simple question - if the current circumstances warrant an increase in aid, how much worse must the Ugandan authorities behave before aid should be frozen or withheld ? The two charitymongers were unable to answer coherently, only to say that there were “some signs” of improvement and that should be sufficient to keep shovelling across the cash. When questioned about Ugandan corruption, they said that there are no clean leaders in Central Africa, therefore you must deal with what you have. Isn't that racism, asked the interviewer, to apply lower standards to Africans than to Westerners ? If France were to support a brutal civil war in Austria should we support it ? Should we overlook Saddam's minor infractions and invite him back to help rule Iraq in the interests of stability ? The charityeers were pretty dumbfounded. “Governments have to make judgments,” they mumbled. NGOs can't do their business unless the Irish taxpayer pays money to the Ugandan government, which according to Pat Kenny, creams off 70%. It was an ignominious performance, prompted, I can only think, by an expectation that some crumbs of the Irish taxpayer's subvention ends up in those charities' coffers. Either that or the charities want to suck up to the governments of Ireland and Uganda in exchange for unspecified favours. By comparison, John Shea, the head of GOAL, Ireland's third biggest charity, in an earlier interview had clearly stated his opposition to sending any aid at all to the Ugandan government while it continues its illegal activity. So long as certain charities devote their energies to politicking instead of the causes they purport to support, I for one will give them nothing. So, Trócaire and Concern are taboo for me; my vote and €uros go to GOAL. Late Note : Read this follow-up, entitled “ Trócaire Fisked not Fixed”
Counting outwards, Earth is the third planet (after Mercury and Venus) to whizz around the sun, and the next one out is Mars. Mars is coloured red by iron-rich dust kicked up in the swirling, wind-blown atmosphere as the planet spins like a toy top. It has polar caps of ice and frozen carbon dioxide, an incredible 25-kilometre high extinct volcano, a canyon system 5,000 km long, dunes and channels carved by water, and surface temperature averages minus 50ºC. Earth, bigger and heftier than all four planets, is double the diameter of Mars and ten times heavier. Because of these variations and their different orbits, their proximity to each other varies over time. To see what Earth looks like from Mars click here. Mars generated a flurry of interest last week when it skidded by within a mere (sic) 56 million km of earth, and was visible with the naked eye as a reddish dot. The last time it was this close was 59,619 years ago, so the last people to have seen it this easily were the Neanderthals who lived in parts of Eurasia during the last Ice Age. They looked similar to us but with more pronounced foreheads, wider noses and larger jaws. Neanderthals were short, stocky and said to be robust, though not enough to avoid mysterious extinction 25,000 years later.
When he publishes his full selection on the web, I'll provide a link.
Meanwhile, cartoonist Martyn Turner is not convinced that everyone is happy to see Mars and Earth pass so close.
A lot of people think wealthy people become wealthy because they either make a lot of money or they inherit a lot. But that's not true for the vast majority people. In fact, most of the wealth accumulated by the so-called well-off was accumulated over a lifetime by simply making a habit of saving. The reason rich people get richer and poor people get poorer is that
So let's examine how rich people became, well, rich. To begin with,
It's not so easy to fix being poor, but we can fix being broke. There's no magic. We must just work hard, get a little money, save some of it, and turn this process into a habit for very long periods of time. Eventually, we won't be broke any more. But the poor people next to us will remain poor - because they will spend any small amounts of money they might come upon, so preventing themselves from accumulating wealth. To make this work ...
We can make all the excuses we want, but the fact remains. Either we will or we will not achieve wealth.
Or we can ignore all those problems and save anyway. It's entirely up to each of us. That means we need to start saving money now - no matter how little we have, no matter how old or young we are. For example,
It won't take long to realise how remarkably easy it is to save money. And, over time, the wealth will come, little by little. It's just a matter of habit.
I've noticed that there's much less rhubarb in the shops this summer than in previous years. Apparently we should blame the global warming that we Europeans have all been enjoying (well, perhaps not French grandparents). Rhubarb, which has been flourishing since its first mention 4,700 years ago in China, just can't take the heat. With its pharmaceutical roots, delicious stalks and poisonous leaves, the Chinese over the centuries used different bits of it variously as
Cultivation began in Europe only in the 17th century and in America the following century, and rhubarb gained notoriety in the dual function of medicament (the roots) and pie-filling (the stalks). In England, medical rhubarb was often sold by Englishmen dressed up as Turks to give it a convincing exotic aura. Some say the name comes from Rha Barbarum, because it once grew along the river Rha (now the Volga) on the other side of which foreigners (barbarians) lived. Others think it comes from rheo, the Greek for 'to flow', a coy allusion to the purgative properties of the root. Still others think rhubarb simply means red beard. Whatever, it's not going away, just north to cooler climes. Icelanders are apparently keen growers - they love rhubarb soup.
Quote : “America’s bitter victory in Iraq has been described a thousand times. The mistake made by the international community, and by France, is to see nothing beyond this apparent failure and to cynically rejoice, proving America wrong. Even if the US is not going at it right, it is trying to defend freedom against an aggressor who wants total war, as proven by the attack on the UN. We must remember and never forget the original act of terror against the World Trade Center: the war against the ‘World’.
Its goals are clear: whether we are French, American or Moroccan ... Christians, Jews or Muslims, we are all a target. The US is caught in a quagmire in Iraq. To join them under the banner of the UN is an act of self-defense.” Alain Genestar, editor of Paris Match,
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ISSUE #51 - 24th August 2003 [122]
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UN Bombing in Baghdad as a Breakthrough That dreadful UN suicide-bomb in Baghdad snatched 23 innocent lives last week, including that of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Representative to Iraq, who was also successor to Ireland's ex-President Mary Robinson as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Some 100 more people were injured. Yet, to the disappointment of those malefactors who planned the outrage, it may herald a breakthrough into a new era of mutual understanding, respect and co-operation between the UN and the US, after the bitter row that followed the UN's unwillingness to enforce its Resolution 1441. For it has surely driven home a few truths.
Actually, columnist Mark Steyn expresses the American blame thing much more elegantly than I ...
Nevertheless, those red bullet points above surely must point in only one direction - the need for the US and UN to co-operate together in the reconstruction of Iraq, but with overall responsibility remaining in US hands.
We have to assume that the countries of the UN - refuseniks like France, Germany and Russia included - do at heart have the best interests of the Iraqi people, no matter how much they may resent what they see as America's high-handed action in removing Saddam. All parties should now therefore seize the opportunity to use the bombing of the UN offices as a breakthrough - an excuse to put their differences behind them - in order to confront the common enemy in the pragmatic way suggested. But will they ? There is much to do on the civic front; appointing the Governing Council was only the first step towards democratisation. In fact, democratisation is in a sense not a beginning but an end point that you achieve only after doing more difficult things - services and constitutionalist things - such as
The contribution that the UN can make in many of these areas is immense, if it can put its mind to it. But the US, because there is no-one else and because they will continue to provide up to 80% of the manpower, will have to remain in overall charge, though should be prepared to allow the UN significant input in decision-making. The UN should be pleased with such a pact - involvement and influence, yet still leaving America to carry the can for any and all mishaps. Kofi Annan recently remarked that America should share with other countries not just the burden of managing Iraq but also decisions and responsibility. This is doable provided “sharing” is interpreted to mean “consulting” rather than the unworkable paralysis of “unanimity”. As for responsibility, everyone is going to blame America no matter what, and for non-Americans you would think this was just fine. There are therefore grounds for optimism that some sort of UN Resolution will take shape to embrace such concepts in a face-saving formula. In that case, the sacrifices of those unwitting UN victims will not have been entirely in vain. And the chances of creating a successful new democratic Iraq will have been bolstered. The alternative - where everyone just walks away and leaves Iraq to descend into civil war - is too dreadful to contemplate. Yet I heard on the radio only today (Sunday 24 Aug), Ireland's distinguished Senator David Norris declare exactly that - that the Americans and British should “get out of Iraq”. Chilling.
Once again, the Israel/Palestine question looks utterly intractable. A three-month ceasefire is supposed to be in place. The Palestinians call it a “hudna”, whose true Islamic meaning is a short-term truce against a stronger enemy, to be employed as a tactic to build up forces in order to subsequently vanquish the foe. Both sides have taken a few tiny, bad-tempered steps down the roadmap. But violence has continued and it looks like everyone is now abandoning the truce. The violence has a grim pattern, which precedes the ceasefire.
The first job of any Government is to protect its citizens. That includes Israel, the only proper democracy in the Middle East and thus its only legitimate Government with a mandate from its people. There are only three ways for them to respond to an attack on their civilians.
Attack civilian targets
Target militant leader(s)
Israel is thus in an impossible situation. Yet the world remains largely tolerant of the Palestinians' suicide-bombing behaviour, even though, because they overwhelmingly target non-combatants, their human rights record is far worse than Israel's. A study last year showed that
This highlights the irony
that Palestinians attack soft civilian targets because they cannot get
close to tough military ones. In
other words, the very success of the Israeli Defence Forces as a fighting
unit established to protect Israeli civilians is in fact contributing to
the Israeli civilian casualties. What
is the solution ? To
downgrade the IDF’s capabilities so that Palestinians can kill them more
easily ? Nevertheless, I am still hopeful about Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, who at least denounced the bombing as “a horrible act which does not serve the interest of the Palestinian people at all”, and vowed to hunt the bus-bomb organizers despite threats by Hamas not to act against it. Abu Mazen,
ever the pragmatist, has
said that Israel has He must fear that a point may come when Israel feels it no longer has anything to lose from a decisive military defeat of Palestinian lands, accompanied by mass deportation of Arab inhabitants. At a stroke, crowded Israel would increase its landmass by a third, win valuable extra Mediterranean coastline (Gaza), and strengthen its defences to the East (ie regaining absolute control over the West Bank and its commanding hills). The Palestinians, and most of the 21 Arab dictatorships around Israel, have long proclaimed their intention “to drive the Jews into the sea”. Israel may one day feel it is time to do that to the Palestinians. The recognition by realistic Palestinian leaders such as Abu Mahzen of such a scenario is probably the only grounds to hope that a peaceful settlement might one day be struck.
In recent months, five cameramen have tragically died in combat zones in Iraq and Israel.
The thing in common is that the five cameramen were all trying to film armed US or Israeli soldiers at a time of high tension when armed conflict was either going on or reasonably to be expected. The other thing in common is the bulky, shoulder-mounted cameras that they were carrying. Which in each case, the soldiers in their jumpy state mistook for RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). Should we be surprised at this ? Look at the pictures below
Suppose, in your heightened state of mind, you were expecting people to shoot at you with an RPG, and the ongoing situation was confused, or at a distance or in poor visibility (or all three). Would you really want to wait and get up close to ensure that that big thing pointing at you really was only a camera - and not an RPG ? Or would you say, I'm not taking a chance, I'm taking him out. This is not to defend the killing of innocent cameramen. But I am astonished that some cameramen don't seem to take every possible measure to ensure that everyone in the conflict zone knows they are only taking pictures.
So long as cameramen ignore these essentials, they will continue to get shot.
Last week, I watched a TV documentary made by the BBC and Jerusalem TV called “The Virgin Mary”, who is the second most important person in Christian iconology after Jesus Christ himself. It's anti-Christian bias was unmistakable in the incessant snide remarks along the lines of, “there is no truth in the rumour that ...” Amongst other things, the programme suggested that
Had the BBC made a programme which similarly distorted the story of Mohammed the Prophet and grossly offended believers in Islam, there would be an uproar in the liberal West. Had it been screened in a Muslim country, riots and killings (probably of Christians) would have followed. Remember the lethal rampage in Nigeria when a journalist suggested that Mohammed might have liked to take a Miss World contestant as his wife ? But causing deliberate offence to believing Christians is apparently OK. We will not go on the rampage. The BBC is safe. But our disgust is no less for that.
The Observer has published the top ten of what it calls the “greatest sports photographs of all time”, with a little story about each of them. They are all quite magnificent. This is my favourite, a shot of Mohammed Ali knocking out Cleveland Williams in Houston in 1966. The dramatic effect is enhanced by the plain white ring with no billboard ads, the champion in plain white shorts, the defeated challenger prostrate in black. This photo is also ranked number one by The Observer, but only third by a poll of its readers. To see the full selection, click here.
In his race to become the next Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has probably received a set of the best endorsements he could hope for. For there is an equation : California = Hollywood = Left-Wing Movie Stars = Democrat Arnold is, however, both a movie star and a right-wing Republican. Hollywood is appalled. Here is a roll-call of some who have sworn to block his ascension to the State's highest office.
In typical understatement, Cybill Shepherd the once-upon-a-time presidential hopeful (yes, really !) says it “would be the worst tragedy in the history of California”. So that's about the end of the campaigning. With people like these as his enemies, Arnie cannot fail to be elected Governator by the sensible and disgruntled voters of California.
Quote : "An attack on the United Nations is an attack on the United States. The UN is a soft target, just like oil pipelines and water mains. They got very lucky, and we got very unlucky because we lost some of the best people in the international system today." Richard Holbrooke,
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ISSUE #50 -17th August 2003 [144]
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This is the 50th
issue of the Tallrite Blog; Nauru - Enriched and Impoverished by Guano Nauru is a dot of just 21 square kilometres in the Pacific, three thousand kilometres north-east of Australia and a further three thousand from Hawaii.
Throughout most of its antiquity, it was a nesting place for seabirds, who, over the aeons, deposited thousands of tons of droppings right across the island, until it lay 60 metres thick. This huge reserve of guano was to shape its modern-day history, for better and for worse. It was first inhabited by seafaring Polynesian and Melanesian explorers. A future blog will explain the curious story of how they sailed there, against the wind, from … Taiwan. The first European who set
foot on Nauru was English whaleship captain, John Fearn in 1798. He liked
the little settlement with its small houses and called it “Pleasant
Island”. But around 1850, Europeans
began to arrive in some numbers, bringing with them firearms and alcohol.
These products destroyed the social balance and defied the
island’s name by leading to a ten-year internal war, which reduced the
population from 1,400 to 900. In 1888, and with no reference
to the inhabitants, the island was
allocated to Germany as part of an Anglo-German Convention. But when the
British realised that it was covered in guano, from which valuable phosphate
fertilizer could be made, it quickly concluded a deal with the Germans to
start exploitation in 1906. The peace conference of 1919
which followed the carnage of World War 1 then allocated it from defeated Germany to
victorious Britain, with participation of Australia and New Zealand who
said their agriculture would collapse without it.
Guano exports resumed, with a royalty paid to the few thousand
locals. Apart from three years of Japanese occupation during World War 2, these arrangements continued until 1968 when at last the local people gained independence as well as control over their resource.
But they had not been suffering through the years, because by this time they had one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world, though at the same time their homeland was disappearing under their feet. For it was not just the guano that was being removed on an
industrial scale (680,000 tons in 1994), but the vegetation and wildlife
habitat that overlay it. Astutely, the Naurans in the 1980s began a campaign of
investment in Australia, Southeast Asia and elsewhere as a hedge against
the future. Indeed I remember hiring offices in downtown Manila in 1993 in the
Pacific Star building, which had been built by the Nauru Government as
part of this multi-billion dollar programme.
Today, with its population of
10,000, Nauru is turning into a bit of an environmental and economic disaster.
The phosphate reserves are nearly exhausted, and but for a few
fields still used for agriculture, the place is barren. Most of the plants, trees, flowers, animals and birds are
gone, while young people are leaving to find work elsewhere. Everything
has to be imported, even water, so the cost of living is high. GDP is down to $5,000
per head, ranked 100th in the world. Income from those foreign investments
helps,
as does a limited amount of fishing and tourism. But it has found a
lucrative fresh source of income in money-laundering for the Russian mafia.
Yet there is some spark of
hope. Effort is going in to
restore the island’s fertility – removing the coral outcrops laid bare
by the removal of guano, relaying fresh soil. But they reckon effective rehabilitation will take over
twenty years. The guano, with the help of
human hands, has truly enriched
and impoverished an island race.
Last weekend rioting erupted in the southern Shi'ite city of Basra. Residents angry at shortages of power and fuel barricaded roads with burning tyres and attacked vehicles with chunks of concrete. The city was calmer the following morning, but electricity was still off for most of the day, leaving residents at the mercy of searing summer temperatures. British forces distributed fuel to petrol stations in 25 tankers; some people were furious at rationing that restricted fuel supplies to 25 litres for each car. Isn't it great to hear such encouraging news from that unfortunate country ? Let's pray for more such riots. For if Iraqis dare vent their fury over lack of services, it means they are feeling increasingly secure over, well, security. The menace of Ba'athism is receding. The riots are thus another sign of returning normality. The Iraqis are becoming just like us pampered people in the West, moaning when things don't work properly. OK, we may not be attacking vehicles with chunks of rock, but the difference is one only of degree. There's no doubt it will be a long, slow grind for Iraq to drag itself into the modern, confident, free world where it deserves to be. So while we may deplore the bloodshed arising from the violent actions of dissidents, we should also rejoice at the evidence of normalcy. Riots over no electricity in the 50°C heat of summer is one. New Yorkers have hardly been relishing their own power cuts. They might as well be Iraqis.
Suppose I were to take into my home a known murderer and protect him from the authorities who want to bring him to justice. If the murder were an evil act, would that not make my protection also evil ? Suppose he were a multi-murderer, multi as in 400,000 murders, would the extent of my evil behaviour also be multiplied 400,000-fold ? And suppose he was also a cannibal ? And had evicted 40,000 people from their country of birth ? Step forward Saudi Arabia. Congratulations on having protected for 24 years the despicable, cannibalistic, multi-murderer Idi Amin, granting him a life of comfort which ended only when he (thankfully) died in a coma a few days ago. I suppose it's all of a pattern -
The harbouring of Amin is yet another example of the moral depravity of the drinking, smoking, womanising, money-grabbing Saudi royal regime which pretends to defend Islam while squandering the patrimony of the 18 million Saudi citizens it rules over without their permission. Perhaps it really is all about oil. If you have enough of it, you can get away with murder.
Moral Guidance from the Old Testament And while
we're on the subject of morality, Dr Laura
Slessinger is a well-known conservative talk show host in the US. She firmly
supports and advocates biblical morality on her TV and radio shows, and on
this
basis, has expressed very negative beliefs about homosexuality.
An anonymous American correspondent, “Jim”, recently wrote an open letter on the internet seeking Dr. Laura's advice on applying biblical morality and religious duties in today's world. Dr Laura failed to respond, so I have tried to provide meaningful answers to the dilemmas Jim has posed. ________________ Dear
Dr. Laura: Thank
you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have
learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When
people try to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply
remind them that Leviticus 18:22** clearly
states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I
do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws
and how best to follow them. I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your devoted disciple and adoring fan, Jim
“Water, water, everywhere, So goes Part II of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's But It isn't just mariners who run short of good drinking water when there is plenty of unpotable water around. Think of
An astonishing new product has recently hit the market that, with no moving parts or power or chemicals, will purify the dirtiest, most contaminated bilge you can imagine, full of viruses, bacteria, poisons.
And for what it is, the price isn't bad. Weighing just 175 grams, a two-liter bag costs $17, and gets cheaper the bigger the set-up you buy. No doubt mass-production - and competition - will reduce costs further. In a disaster or emergency situation, flying in 175 grams is nothing compared to the 2 kg weight of two litres of water. Hydration Technologies Inc has full details on its website and more information is available here. The US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance is apparently planning to use the technology for the first time to supply hospitals and clinics across Iraq with clean water for use as oral rehydration therapy. Oh, and I've ordered one HydroPack.
Perjury and Paedophilia on Coronation Street I admit it. I watch Coronation Street, that long-running soap opera featuring ghastly people living in some working class slum near Manchester. I have been intrigued lately by the casual acceptance of serious crime as nothing to get overheated about.
This criminal activity is held to be all good fun. But imagine the outcry from the media if (when) they get hold of such stories in real life, especially the paedophilia. I find it pretty hypocritical for the same media to tacitly condone such behaviour just because it occurs in a soap opera that is meant to represent real life and that millions of all ages watch addictively.
Quote : “These are people who have been displaced three or four times in the last few months, people who can fit everything they own into a plastic bag” Charity
worker David Tropp
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ISSUE #49 - 10th August 2003 [109]
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Consider three Catholics, or three classes of Catholic.
The Vatican condemns the behaviour of only one of these as “evil”.
And it’s not the behaviour of married man Mickey McKevitt,
that attracts the epithet “evil” from the Vatican. Nor has any IRA member - Catholics all - been excommunicated from the Church.
Nor did the Vatican call “evil” the behaviour of Catholic-born Papa-Doc Duvalier, the (married) tyrant of Haiti, from whose knee perhaps Saddam Hussein might have learnt his craft. Oh, and shortly before the Iraq war, the Pope gave an audience to Saddam’s Vice President Tariq Aziz, a Catholic, shook his bloodied hand and never used the word “evil” in respect of that regime’s behaviour.
No. “Evil” is reserved solely for the behaviour of number three,
This use of “evil” comes from a document entitled, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, which was published a week ago by the Vatican under the Pope’s authority. In four pages it reiterates the Catholic Church’s position on such unions. It points out that marriage between a man and woman is, in effect, society’s founding unit, blessed by God, whose prime purpose is the procreation and raising of children. Few can find fault with that.
But obviously no gay behaviour will result in procreation. Therefore, from the Church’s viewpoint, it is
and that’s why gays may not marry each other. The Pope is perfectly entitled to state - indeed make - the rules of the Church, regardless of whether others agree with them or find them offensive. Providing guidance to adherents in matters of faith and morals is the very function of every religion.
However one of the main objectives of the Considerations is to tell Catholic politicians across the world that not only are Catholic marriages between gays impermissible, but so are civil unions, in whatsoever form. This is where things get freaky.
Gays who seek a form of marriage typically want to get State recognition of mundane things that many unmarried co-habiting heterosexuals in the West are also demanding, such as
How do these fall into any religious ambit ? An argument put forward is that
but frankly I just can’t see the logic of such connections.
If anything, gay unions would reduce promiscuity among gays which from both the religious and the society viewpoint is presumably something desirable.
The Considerations also say that for gays to adopt children is to perpetrate violence upon them, which is another blatant non-sequitur (my Oxford dictionary says violence means physical force). Nevertheless, while few can doubt that a married father and mother represent the best possible environment in which to raise their child, two caring gay parents adopting, for example, an abandoned child certainly seems preferable to a Romanian orphanage, a Brazilian street, an African slave-market. Life is often about seeking out least-bad alternatives.
The Considerations are heavy on what is wrong with gay behaviour and how society should treat them, and they do reserve some words of compassion for people with “homosexual tendencies”, saying that “unjust discrimination” must be avoided.
However the document contains absolutely no guidance for those at the very centre of the issue. The only thing Catholic gays themselves can glean from it is that they must remain single and celibate for life, the only group so required. (Priests and nuns have voluntarily vowed to remain single and celibate, which is a totally different proposition.)
And this is really at the nub of the matter. Because the Church believes that innate homosexuality does not really exist.
Therefore, gays should get themselves cured and marry a nice spouse of the opposite sex.
When someone is born with an incurable mental disability, physical deformity or congenital disease, the Church teaches that this is God’s will and the rest of us should therefore rally round and do what we can to make life more bearable for the afflicted to the best degree possible.
But if the Church were to designate homosexuality as an inborn affliction, not only would it mean recognizing it as God’s will, but that we should seek ways for such people to enjoy companionship and fulfillment to the best degree possible. And that’s the slippery slope leading to recognition not of civil unions but of religious marriage itself. Which is just too radical for any leading Churchman to contemplate.
So against all the scientific and social evidence throughout the history of mankind, not to mention the large percentage of its own priests and nuns who are gay, the Church maintains that homosexuality is curable.
And it’s fighting tooth and nail to protect the façade. Even if it means branding gay behaviour as more evil than mass-murder.
Declaration of Interest :
Sour Reception to Release of Palestinian Prisoners
It is said that the Palestinians never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity.
This time it’s over the release of Palestinian prisoners, of which the Israelis hold some 6,000. Last week they let out 330 as part of the UN/EU/US/Russia-backed Road Map to a Palestinian/Israeli peace. At just 5% it was a pretty miserly move, especially since many were due for release pretty soon anyway, but it was at least a step in the Palestinians’ direction. And as Mao Tse Tung said, the longest journey begins with a single step.
You would think that the Palestinians would want more releases, but to call the first 5% “ worthless and meaningless” as Palestinian Minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo did, will hardly encourage more such steps. Furthermore, judging by photos of the joyful reception that families and friends gave to the 330, the new-found freedom was anything but worthless and meaningless.
Abu Mahzen (Mahmoud Abbas), the Palestinian Prime Minister, is a sensible pragmatist, which is the main reason I have called him the Palestinians’ great hope. He believes in doing things that work, things that help achieve Palestinian objectives, rather than making empty or counter-productive gestures.
In this vein, he now has to drum into his people - including Minister Rabbo - the concept that tit-for-tat applies just as much to a peace process as it does to a war process.
In this way progress along the road-map is made on both sides, and at the same time mutual confidence grows. And perhaps with time the individual steps get bigger.
Sour reactions can only put a break on the process. Just look at the sourness that bedevils sectarian politics in Northern Ireland, where no-one ever gives the other side credit for anything ever. Where graciousness exists in no-one’s vocabulary.
In one sense there is grim satisfaction in the death sentence an Indonesian court passed last week on Amrozi Bin Nurhasyim, a 40 year-old Javanese mechanic, for his part in the Bali bombing of 12th October 2002 which killed 202 people. He himself turned to the cameras and punched the air in delight, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great). The execution will probably be carried out in a matter of days. One of 50 men in custody for the Bali outrage, he is utterly without remorse and says he welcomes death as a martyr. After the sentence, he burst into song,
And yet, is a death sentence really the most appropriate punishment for his crime and the right deterrent to others ? Put yourself in Amrozi’s shoes.
And so you are not afraid of dying (a quick, painless death of course). Even death by judicial execution. But suppose instead you were to to be sentenced to life imprisonment, where
To eke out your life, to grow old, in utter despair, year after year, behind those hostile prison walls, despised and - worse - forgotten. To die a broken nobody in perhaps thirty years time. Could there be a more dreadful prospect, for Amrozi and for others who might want to follow his path ? Shoe-bomber Richard Reid is currently living out this hell in the US. I do not support the death penalty under any circumstances mainly because I believe it is morally wrong. But in this instance,
My signature is illegible as are those of many others, particularly those of doctors who write prescriptions. It has never caused me any difficulty anywhere, nor those doctors. But Glaswegian Charles Weinstein, 45, has difficulty precisely because his signature is legible and this can sometimes really irritate the authorities. Recently, he visited the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles to register a change of address on his driving licence. But they told him his signature was unacceptable and he would not get his new licence unless he “stopped fooling around and signed right”. Right as in right way up.
He refuses to sign any other way, saying that this is his valid legal signature that he’s been using without problem for more than eight years on all official papers, cheques, credit cards - even his old driving licence. So the licence office threw him out as a trouble maker and wouldn’t give him back his old licence. It’s now become an issue for the American Civil Liberties Union, who say they know of no provision in the law requiring a signature to be legible; therefore who is to say if it is right-side up or upside-down. Since no-one else has been able to find any statute that defines an “acceptable” signature, the matter has been sent to Delaware’s attorney general for a ruling. Oh, and since you ask. My own illegible signature is upside-down also. But this is acceptable because it is illegible when viewed from any angle.
Northern Ireland’s (print-only) “Farm Week” newspaper - not one I’d ordinarily subscribe to - informed its readers on 8th August that supermarket chain Tesco is about to launch the world’s first tear-free onions. It’s what millions of cooks have been waiting years for, the chance to cook with tears of joy instead of tears of pain. The Supasweet onion contains less than half the usual amount of pyruvic acid, the volatile constituent which stings your tear ducts, skin and nostrils and makes your eyes weep. Tesco are apparently waxing lyrical about the social revolution now in the making :
The most curious
claim is that it’ll
reduce knife accidents in the kitchen, of which there
were almost 30,000 in the UK last year. And no, I don’t understand
the connection either. The other strange thing is that though the Supasweet story features on such reputable websites as those of, for example, the BBC and the Sydney Morning Herald, Tesco’s own website contains not a word. Also, no-one is talking about onion breath or sweat.
And while we’re on the subject of food ... The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste. To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. But after a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh wriggling fish, not sluggish fish. So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem of getting fresh-tasting fish to Japan ? All they did was to add a small hungry shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but the remaining fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged, to put it mildly.
Quote : “The panel of [five] judges declare that the defendant Amrozi has been found guilty of criminal acts in carrying out terrorist crimes ... and the sentence on the defendant Amrozi is death ... [The bombings were] actions beyond the bounds of humanity and outside any religious teaching.” Chief judge I Made Karna passing judgment and
sentence
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Return to Tallrite Blog |
The British Dental Association's (subscription-only) Launchpad
journal recently 
My
friend Samir, a skilled amateur astronomer, was the first to send me a
photographic image, achieved with his computer-controlled 8
the capability to defeat
every Arab nation, simultaneously, if it so chooses. 
Now, for a little [Light Relief]
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
Religion
Iona Institute
Leisure
Blog Directory
My Columns in the
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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