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ISSUE #25 - 26th January 2003 [61]
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Yet another Iraq dossier - the fourth - has just been issued, this time by America. It's called "Apparatus of Lies" and sets out in a dozen pages Saddam Hussein's disinformation and propaganda over the period 1990 to 2003. With an extensive bibliography and 31 references (most of them non-Governmental) it makes for convincing reading. The dossier divides the behaviour of Saddam and his regime into four categories.
Worth reading for the details. And if you haven't already studied them or read my earlier piece and you have the stomach for it, the other three dossiers are :
But
be quick, there's another one coming. Today's Sunday Telegraph leads
with : “Blair demands new dossier to
drum up support for Iraq war”. While we're on the subject, do you think the following amount to a “material breach” of said UN Resolution 1441 ?
The inspectors are not in the country on a scavenger hunt for weapons. They are there to confirm that Iraq has destroyed and dismantled the weapons that the UN knows exist. In the absence of evidence that it has done so, are we safe to assume that they have all disappeared ? Certainly sounds like a material breach to me.
Palestinians Campaign for Likud Do the Palestinians have rocks in their heads or do they not want their war with Israel to be replaced with a peace settlement ? Israel's last four governments, each democratically elected, have alternated between “soft” and “hard”.
Regardless of whether you support them, it is to Israel's considerable credit that it has a powerful democratic system which, when confronted with failure, allows different approaches and different leaders to be given a chance. Would that the Palestinians were given such opportunity. Nevertheless, the Palestinians are playing, as they always have done and whether they like it or not, a crucial rôle in influencing Israel's next choice of party and leader.
And which of the two parties are the Palestinians backing ? The continuing attacks over the past two weeks show they are voting convincingly for the hardline Likud party. At the same time the Palestinians are distracting attention away from corruption scandals involving Mr Sharon's son Omri and other party members. They can't believe their luck.
SimDesk - Houston Replaces Microsoft Office The US Department of Justice spent years dragging Microsoft through the courts to prove it is a wicked monopolist and should therefore be broken up. Although most of us might have thought the case was obvious, Microsoft with its army of lawyers managed to slide out of it all with little more than a slap on the wrist and the promise of better behaviour in the future. But if the DoJ were unable to tweak the tail of one of America's mightiest corporations, the City of Houston in Texas has. It all started after Microsoft threatened to audit Houston for allegedly having more copies of Microsoft Office than they have licences for, unless Houston signed a new three-year $12 million contract. This bully-boy approach has backfired badly. According to USA Today, it galvanised Houston to think of alternatives to Microsoft Office. As a result of a chance meeting on an aircraft, Houston has awarded a five-year $9½m contract to an obscure, unproven competitor called SimDesk, to replace Microsoft Office on the desks of some 6,500 city workers and, eventually, up to three million city residents. It is true that SimDesk does not possess all the glorious (and about 90% unused) functionality of Microsoft Office, but it is apparently perfectly adequate for the word processing and spreadsheeting that most people require, and is easy to learn and use. Meanwhile, not only is SimDesk way cheaper to buy, but It operates from a central server rather than being installed on every PC. This means Houston don't have to upgrade their existing computers. Had they stuck to Microsoft, they would, in addition to that $12m contract, have had to replace thousands of computers to enable them to run Office XP. Microsoft, known by many as “the evil empire”, are whinging but seem powerless. Few are shedding tears.
Saturday night a week ago, 18th January, the city of Limerick in the Munster province of Ireland erupted in an all-night orgy of revelry. Limerick is the heart of rugby in Ireland, and the Munster rugby team, in their crummy home ground of Thomond Park, had just pulled off an utterly impossible win against the (hitherto) all-conquering English club, Gloucester in the annual Heineken European Rugby Cup competition. Having played in the semi-finals and/or finals of this prestigious competition for the past three years, yet never won, Munster were on the verge of being booted unceremoniously out of the competition. Their only chance was to defeat Gloucester (who three months earlier had trounced them 35-16) by no fewer than four tries and 27 points. In an extraordinary match, that for Munstermen is equalled only by the classic 12-0 defeat in 1978 of New Zealand's All Blacks that has spawned an award-winning stage play, Alone It Stands, Munster defeated Gloucester by the required margin, with the winning two points coming only in the last seconds of injury time. The final score was 33-6 in front of a frenetic crowd of 14,000. Gloucester just didn't know what had happened to them. Then over the next couple of days, a curious story emerged. Limerick taxi-driver and avid Munster fan Tom O'Donnell will tell you he is small, fat, bald, 52 and now the toast of Limerick, and considering launching himself on the after-dinner speaking circuit. The day before the match, he happened to carry in his taxi an official of the Gloucester contingent, who committed the fatal mistake of leaving behind in the car Gloucester's top-secret game-plan. Tom realised what it was, but at first no-one would listen to him. It was only with great difficulty that he managed to deliver it to the Munster squad on the morning of the match. Thus it was that Munster knew in advance
This undoubtedly helped towards the win, though they will never admit it. In one of the many radio interviews that followed after the story broke, Tom was asked whether he considered giving the game-plan back to Gloucester rather than passing it to the opposition. A stunned silence followed - he simply did not understand the question. It was like expecting the British to return the Enigma machine to the Nazis. Gloucester have considered taking some kind of legal action, but, frankly, they are just too embarrassed by everything to do with their disastrous weekend in Limerick. So that's the story of why Tom O'Donnell is the toast of Limerick !
Flt Lt Henry Botterell, 1896-2003 Henry Botterell died in Toronto earlier this month at the massive age of 106, the last surviving fighter pilot of World War I. Flying his Sopwith Camel biplane, his one "kill" was to shoot down a German observation balloon in Northern France in 1918, as illustrated in this painting. By then he had crashed three planes, nearly annihilating himself in the process. As well as countless bombing raids (tossing bombs by hand out of the cockpit) over the course of the four year war, he also participated in seven dogfights, clocked up 251 combat hours and claimed he had also killed an enemy observer. Every dogfight ended with bullet holes and flak damage to his plane. In those days, planes were made of wood and canvas and I am reminded of how my own grandfather, eight years his senior, escaped from the trenches and all the horror that they entailed. He was an upholsterer by trade, and his possession of curved needles (seen as a novelty) coupled with his skill in wielding them found him a ready home in the Royal Flying Corps. He spent the rest of the war sewing up aircraft battle-damaged like Flight Lieutenant Botterell's. I wonder did they ever meet.
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ISSUE #24 - 19th January 2003 [60]
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America and Britain are in the final stages of launching their war against the Iraqi regime (with or without another UN resolution, with or without further allies). Lots of people - besides Saddam - object to this, though none ever come up with a coherent alternative strategy for dealing with
Many “whatabouters” say
It doesn't make sense, they claim. In fact it makes chillingly good sense. This table compares some of the nasty qualities of Kim Jong Il's North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
See how similar they are to each other. But a couple of key contrasts and conclusions stand out.
North Korea thus provides the very reason to attack and disarm Saddam. And NOW while it's still possible, before he gets his bomb and starts using or selling it. North Korea, because of its nuclear arsenal, is essentially non-attackable. But Kim Jong Il cannot help but notice and be influenced by a swift and successful action to disarm Iraq, and thus to be more inclined to negotiate a reasonable and verifiable stand-off arrangement with the rest of the world.
So it will be with Kim Jong Il after Saddam has been disarmed and eliminated. He will start being sensible. The effect on other dictatorships in Arabia will likewise be benign.
Meanwhile, over the past few days we've seen anti-war protests in New York, Washington, Bahrein, Berlin, Cairo, Christchurch, Goteburg, Karachi, London, Moscow, Paris, Shannon, Tokyo, and God knows where else. But if the protesters don't want war, why are they massing outside US embassies and other US institutions ? For it is not the USA but Iraq, under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, who for more than a decade has been violating binding UN resolutions - including agreements he specifically signed up to as a condition of ending the 1991 Gulf War. The upcoming Second Gulf War is the direct consequence if his violatory actions and his alone. So if the peaceniks don't want war, it is to Iraqi embassies and institutions that they should direct their rage. Otherwise, it means they support Saddam's violations and regime. Not to mention his human rights abuses so eloquently articulated in Tony Blair's graphic and compelling dossier (197 kb)
Child Pornography and Sentencing On 8th September 1999, the FBI raided the home of Thomas and Janice Reedy in Fort Worth, Texas and found that the couple were providing child pornography to some 35,000 subscribers in the US. On further investigation under the code name Operation Avalanche, it emerged that they were in fact
The FBI set about identifying the US and foreign subscribers from their credit card details, which they then passed to police forces in the subscribers' countries of residence. These included 7,000 in the UK and some hundreds in Ireland. In Ireland, over 100 homes were raided simultaneously last May, including those of a barrister, a choirmaster, a solicitor, a health authority official, a teacher, a circuit court judge and a celebrity TV chef. The first two trials were set for last week, and out of a possible 100 defendants it is odd that two high-profile individuals were selected, the judge and the chef. The circuit court judge obtained a three month deferment on the grounds of ill-health (though was later spotted drinking a pint in a pub). The celebrity TV chef, Tim Allen, is widely known throughout the country, as are his mother and his wife both also celebrity TV chefs. He pleaded guilty to possession of 92 child pornography images and was convicted. However his non-custodial sentence of a €40,000 donation to charity and 240 hours of community service has provoked outrage due to the leniency and the perceived ability of the wealthy to buy themselves out of trouble. But more pernicious is the precedent it sets for the future prosecutions. Because when a man of lesser means is threatened with jail, he is bound to plead that this is only due to his lack of wealth and fame. Moreover, if a millionaire is fined €40,000, his own fine should be proportionately less. The mismanagement of the Tim Allen case may thus, in Ireland, devalue the severity of child pornography into a mere misdemeanour. The Americans understand the gravity of this foulest of crimes far better. Thomas Reedy is currently serving a prison sentence of 1,335 years. Not days. Years.
In common, I imagine, with most of you, I receive on a weekly basis one or more e-mails from a stranger saying he (or sometimes she) is a Nigerian or Cameroonian or Ghanaian or Angolan or Congolese or from some other African country. He is either a senior functionary in the Finance Ministry or else the close relative of a departed despot (such as Sani Abacha or Laurent Kabila). He has gained access to a huge sum of money (up to $60m) and would I please provide a safe haven for it in return for 30%. All I have to do is provide my bank details. This is known as the “419 Fraud”, after the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code. If you don't want your bank account plundered or Nigerian arrest warrants issued or countless other interesting developments in your life, the only response is to hit the Delete button - pronto. Have a look at this excellent fraud alert issued by London's Metropolitan Police Force, which provides full details about the 419.
What did you do when you were 16 years old and for the next five years ?
No, nor did I. I was a pretty boring youth compared with handsome, charismatic Frank Abagnale from New York. Sadly, the law eventually caught up with him and he was sentenced to twelve years in the slammer. But after only five years he struck his cleverest deal of all. The FBI, realising his expertise in embezzlement and swindling, freed him in return for help to catch other con-men. And he wrote his life-story, Catch Me If You Can, suitably embellished (as you would expect) to make it even more dashing and glamorous. From there he went on to become a suave consultant assisting major companies to thwart all kinds of fraud. A pillar of society, Frank is now a 54-year-old family man, and professes to be embarrassed that Hollywood have made a movie of his life (though being played by that girlie Leonardo di Caprio is enough to embarrass anyone). A role model for all.
The phone rings:
Take a look at the pictures ..... you won't believe it.
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ISSUE #23 - 12th January 2003 [58]
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One Year On
The
new transitional Afghan government under the charismatic, English-speaking
President Karzai has been in power for scarcely a year.
It was inaugurated via a “Loya Jirga”, which is a traditional
Afghan consultative assembly in which all shades of opinion (bar the
ousted Talibans’ !) was heard. Short
of the pan-Afghanistan elections planned
for late 2003 the assembly represents the closest thing to
democracy the country has ever seen.
No
longer hitting every day’s headlines, the country has quietly been undergoing an
encouraging transformation and reconstruction, thanks to the financial and
other support of some sixty nations, with the US as the biggest single
donor. In a dramatic vote
of confidence in the future, over two million Afghan refugees have
returned to Afghanistan to remake their lives. It’s
worth recounting some of the achievements.
Last
month, Afghanistan and six
neighbouring countries signed the “Kabul Declaration on Good Neighborly
Relations”. This is a pledge to respect Afghanistan’s independence and
territorial integrity, to offer co-operation, non-interference and
goodwill – vital pre-conditions for future domestic security.
Meanwhile, there have been :
In the 15 months since the 9/11 atrocity, the UNHCR has spent $848m on on humanitarian relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction, including $100m in food aid and $140m for resettling the 2m returning refugees.
This information comes from a press release last month by Philip Reeker of the US State Department and a press conference with Andrew Natsios of USAID.
Not only is all this extremely encouraging in its own right, but it give the lie to those who said war against the Taliban in Afghanistan would ravage the country for decades. The reverse is true. It is the war that has liberated the Afghan people and enabled reconstruction to race ahead.
The same naysayers are making the same claims in respect of the coming war to remove the Saddam regime from the Iraq it has systematically tortured, devasted and disgraced over the past 20 years. They will similarly be proved wrong.
As will their underlying preference to leave Saddam in place to do his worst rather than remove him.
Ireland - Europe's Refugee Haven The Geneva Convention states that a refugee is someone with “a well-founded fear of persecution”. However, Ireland's asylum-seekers all arrive after departing from mainland Europe or Britain, where there is no persecution. They are therefore not refugees; they are illegal immigrants. Further, Rudd Lubber, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, advocates one refugee per 1,000 citizens for the host country, which he believes would eliminate Europe's refugee problem. In 2002 Ireland had four asylum-seekers per 1,000 citizens, compared with only 1.2 in Britain. Just two years ago, the figures were 0.7 and 2.9 respectively, demonstrating how popular Ireland has become. Meanwhile, to support illegal immigrants who should not be there, Ireland is
spending €300
million per annum. This is being paid not by society's wealthy, but by
those being deprived of its use - the homeless and thousands on housing
waiting lists. Ireland's homelessness problem would be solved with
just €40 million given to the charity groups established for that
purpose. That would still leave €260 million, enough to build
2,000 social houses per annum. A significant indirect cost, among many, is the way rents have grown
due to the increased demand from illegal immigrants who are are competing
with the poorest in society for the available space. Why do these illegal immigrants leave France, Germany, Holland, Britain, etc, and come to a wet windswept island on the western fringe of Europe, in unprecedented numbers ? Simply, because it is by far the best deal in Europe. Ireland contributes to the problem by having no coherent strategy for managing legal immigration. What it badly needs is a joined-up immigration policy, that
But meanwhile, at least there is no tunnel under the Irish Sea for them to pour through.
As we all well remember, Republican George W Bush became the US's 43rd president only after a nail-biting election. The count was so close in the crucial swing state of Florida, that it took six weeks before the US Supreme Court forbade further recounts and declared W as the winner. The favourite, Democrat Vice President Al Gore, had lost. The final tally was
Democrats were understandably outraged, since Gore won more votes than W. To this day, many of them still complain that Bush is an illegitimate leader. They are joined by left-liberals in the US and abroad who abhor Bush's policy (and success) in tackling world terrorism, some even saying that his elevation to power is as undemocratic as Saddam's. But this is to misunderstand the underlying philosophy of the American presidential election system. It uses an “electoral college” (EC) whereby each US State has a certain number of electoral college votes depending on its geographical size, population, history and other factors. For example,
Whichever candidate wins a majority of popular votes within a particular State is awarded all the electoral college votes of that State. Whoever wins more than half the nation's 538 electoral college votes becomes president. To ensure that heavily populated States like California do not submerge and make irrelevant the preferences of tiny States like Hawaii or empty ones like Alaska, voters in the latter two carry twice the weight of the average American (as the above table shows). The system is deliberately designed this way. A key effect is that it makes it possible for the presidential candidate with most popular votes to be be defeated if he doesn't also have the most electoral college votes, as happened to Al Gore. It not only makes this possible. The electoral college system exists for no other purpose than to enable such an outcome. If every US president were elected with a plurality of the popular vote, the electoral college system would have failed. So those who say that Bush's election was undemocratic are really saying that the views of the less populated states should be ridden over roughshod. A valid view, perhaps, but the focus of attack should then be not Bush but the electoral college system. And for that matter the Senate as well, since each State appoints the same number of senators - two - regardless of size.
Readers will recall my piece about the anti-Christian pogrom in Nigeria by Muslims who were outraged because a newspaper journalist had suggested that the Prophet Mohammed might have liked to marry one of the Miss World contestants. 220 people were killed, over 20 churches burned down, the offices of the newspaper destroyed, and the journalist had to flee to the USA. Three days before the Christmas, BBC TV ran a programme about Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ whose birth Christmas commemorates and venerates. The programme speculated, among other things, that contrary to the fervent belief of Catholics (and many other Christians), Mary was not a virgin. Moreover, that her pregnancy resulted not from divine intervention but as a result of her having been raped by a Roman soldier. This is pretty much about as offensive to Catholics as it is possible to get, and I would think more insulting than the Miss World comment. Yet
Just some genteel words of dismay from a number of church members. Does that mean Catholics are civilised or spineless ?
Cargo Handling at Italian Airports Pat Cox, the president of the EU Parliament, visited the Pope over the New Year break and invited him to address the EU Parliament. But on arrival at Rome's Fiumicino airport, his suitcase was missing from the carousel. When it eventually caught up with him, a valuable pair of diamond-studded cufflinks had been removed. This seems to be an Italy thing. Only last August, the BBC reported the arrest of 36 baggage-handlers at Milan's Malpensa international airport following the discovery of €25,000 worth of stolen goods during police raids on their homes. Closed-circuit TV evidence revealed that the men routinely broke into suitcases in the airport's cargo area, stealing anything from jewellery to snowboards. Furthermore, the TV footage also showed the baggage-handlers getting together in their locker room for an impromptu auction at the end of the day when they bartered the spoils of their labours. One enterprising handler, named as Roberto C, had apparently been recorded breaking into and stealing from up to 50 suitcases during his 5½-hour shift. Happy New Year from the ever-active cargo department.
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ISSUE #22 - 5th January 2003 [29]
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On 14th December in Copenhagen, the EU agreed to admit, as from July 2004 ten new member states. Cyprus was one of these, however since it was invaded by Turkey in 1974, it has been divided and ethnically cleansed into a UN-unrecognized Turkish-Cyprus in the north and a legitimate Greek-Cyprus in the south, with UN troops monitoring the sealed border. Turkey-proper maintains 35,000 soldiers in the north. Because
the north, comprising 37% of the landmass, is not recognized, foreign
investment has gone almost exclusively to the south which has prospered
mightily (GDP
= $16,000 per head) while the north has languished in relative poverty
(GDP =
$5,300 per head).
In
almost thirty years, despite huge efforts by the UN, the two sides have
signally failed to reach a settlement.
Indeed, thoughout this period, they have had virtually the same
leaders - Rauf Denktash (now 79 years old) for the Turkish half, Glafcos
Clerides (83) for the Greek half. This
obdurate duo
have made their careers out of never-ending bad-tempered negotiations,
each bolstered in their intransigence by their respective sponsors, Turkey
and Greece. Turkey and Greece have nurtured their own mutual ill-will for many years, dating back to the days of the Ottoman Empire when Greece was effectively a Turkish colony. Until relations softened after they each generously helped each other out with dreadful earthquakes in 1999, they were hardly on speaking terms, despite both being members of NATO. The
UN recently proposed yet another peace/reunification plan for Cyprus,
which would involve creating a loose federation comprising two largely
autonomous cantons, linked by a weak central administration.
Mr
Denktash has once again dismissed this, no doubt to the delight of his
partner Mr Clerides, especially since the previous government of
Turkey-proper (with an eye on its own EU application) loosely endorsed it.
But the prospect of Cyprus's EU membership has changed the whole equation, since the Turkish half will be admitted only if there is a settlement. The deadline for this is 28th February because the die will be cast in March when the Greek Cypriots hold a referendum to accept the EU’s invitation to join. If the Greek-Cypriots join without their Turkish-Cypriot compatriots, they will thereafter, as full members of the EU, be in a position to veto Turkish-Cypriot membership – and indeed that of Turkey proper – for ever. Or at least until they have secured a settlement that favours the Greek-Cypriots much more than the current one on offer does. Hence for the first time ever, the Turkish Cypriot population is panicking, holding demos and hunger strikes demanding that Mr Denktash and his government accept the UN reunification plan. And across the water, Turkey's newly elected prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a major departure from Ankara's 30 year old Cyprus policy, has twice called for the reunification of the island as per the UN plan. He asserts that Mr Denktash will not be permitted to block progress in negotiations with the Greek Cypriots. An eleventh-hour settlement therefore now looks very likely. If indeed it comes to pass, it will be thanks to EU geopolitics and the lure of future economic prosperity. A vivid (and perhaps rare) demonstration of the EU’s power to do good in the world. Meanwhile, it is high time those two old dinosaurs, Messrs Denktash and Clerides, were put out to pasture. They're in the way. Their time has passed.
Irish Reunification ? Forget It !
Another count has recently been made in Northern Ireland of those saying they are Protestants (53%) or Catholic (43%). The remaining 4% (a remarkably low figure) are atheists, refuseniks, Muslims, Bhuddists, Hindus etc.
When in 1921 Irish voters agreed in an all-Ireland referendum to be partitioned (yes, they did !), only 30% of Northern Irish were Catholics.
Over the years much has been made of the demographic swing towards the Catholics, with an expectation that before very long, perhaps in 2030, the Catholics will finally outnumber the Protestants. Overnight, it is said, Ireland will be reunited.
Such extrapolations however, and in particular the reunification conclusion that some draw, are fatally flawed.
It all adds up to an unavoidable conclusion. Forget any notion of Irish reunification in the foreseeable future. It will never happen.
One day soon, both communities in Northern Ireland need to come to this realisation - and their leaders need the courage to say as much.
So they all better get on with implementing the Good Friday Agreement, and recognize it for what it is.
The cut-price airlines of Europe, notably
have revolutionised travel within Europe. With a streamlined, radical and superior business model, they have drastically undercut the national carriers such as BA, Air France, KLM, Iberia, TAP, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus - behemoths and minnows alike.
Meanwhile, it sometimes feels as if their CEOs - particularly Michael O’Leary of Ryanair and Easyjet’s Stelios Haji-Ioannou - are never off the air aggressively proclaiming
These flourishing airlines are handsomely rewarding their shareholders, yet they also attract a great deal of bad publicity, particularly in relation to how they deal with customer complaints. It appears they just don’t care whether they annoy their passengers, which seems strange for a highly successful, expanding consumer business engaging in vigorous competition. Until you look closer at what they really mean by “competition”. Complainers in a supermarket can march out and buy their groceries at another supermarket. Therefore supermarkets take them seriously and deal with them courteously, as well as keeping prices down. But if you want, for example, to fly from London to Málaga, it’s either Easyjet or take one of the costly major carriers like Iberia or BA. There’s no other cheap option for that route, and that’s not just by happenstance. In aggregate, Ryanair, Easyjet and Buzz fly to and from no fewer than 102 airports in fifteen European countries. But only seventeen of these destinations are serviced by two of the airlines, and only one – London’s Stanstead – by all three. See this tabulation for the details. And not a single route is duplicated, much less triplicated. In other words, the three low-cost airlines, that trumpet so loudly the virtues of free markets and competition, make utterly sure they never ever compete against each other. Their open market message is directed at the national carriers only, safe in the knowledge that the changes required for them to operate on a shoestring are so extreme as to be almost impossible to achieve. BA tried, failed, then created GO as an independent low-cost subsidiary, found it too difficult and sold it off at a loss to rival Easyjet. I would never allege that the three management teams collude to share out Europe in the way that the Great Powers divided up the Middle East in the 19th century in what Rudyard Kipling called the “Great Game”. Collusion to carve up a business market on such a scale would breach a slew of anti-monopoly laws and expose the senior managers to prison terms. What might otherwise look like non-competing behaviour among Ryanair, Easyjet and Buzz must in fact merely be the result of a series of coincidences. I suppose. Nevertheless, the day will come when one of them cracks and begins to compete with the other two - or indeed a fourth upstart will muscle in on their routes. That can result only in better service as well as even lower fares for us their passengers.
Where Do African Elephants Die ? Ivory was one of the abundant treasures that lured Europeans to invade and colonise Africa. To this day, Côte d'Ivoire (the scene of current revolutionary turmoil) takes its name from this trade. The Portuguese were among the earliest ivory seekers and they would buy tusks from Africans who would hunt down the elephants. It is no mean feat to pursue and kill an elephant when you're on foot and armed only with spears. The usual method was to chase the unfortunate beast into a hole they had previously dug. But the Portuguese were intrigued why there was so little ivory around. After all,
Why were there no corpses lying around of elephants who had died just of natural causes, so you could simply help yourself to the immensely valuable ivory ? Where were their bodies, their skeletons ? For many years it was the Africans' closely guarded secret. The elephant is sacred, so is his death, and such mysteries are not to be divulged, especially to the white man. Even today, the explanation is not widely known.
There, on the bottoms of African lakes and rivers, are the age-old elephant cemeteries.
Rael Return of the Tallrite Blog Shortly before the Christmas of 1973, Frenchman Claude Vorilhon, a sportswriter and race car driver, was motoring near an extinct volcano called Puy de Lassolas, which is near Clermont-Ferand in the beautiful Auvergne region of central France. There, to his surprise, a bell-shaped a flying saucer 23 feet in diameter flew into sight and came to a standstill hovering 30 feet above him. Out of it, down a retractable stairway, emerged, exuding harmony and humour, a four-foot-tall green alien, with long dark hair, a trim little beard and almond-shaped eyes. In perfect French, he explained that he was from the Elohim people in a faraway planet and that this was not their first visit to Earth. For, went on the little fellow, a mere 25,000 years ago they had used DNA technology to create the first human being in an Elohim laboratory back home, and then planted the new species on the earth, leaving it to grow and multiply. The rest, as they say, is history, and there are now more than 6.3 billion of us. By the way, I am not making this up ! The strange chap further elucidated that, having created all life on earth (not just us humans) and originated all religions, he would much appreciate if an embassy could kindly be set up for future official contact, preferably in Jerusalem, that sea of tranquility. On the subject of religion, it was none other than the Elohim who chose and educated Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. Well, Claude was so taken aback by these startling revelations, that he did what any of us would have done. He immediately changed his name to Rael and set up a new sect called the Raelians (notice how it rhymes with aliens) to promote free love, cloning and the return of aliens to Earth. The Raelian organization now boasts 55,000 members in 84 countries. Oh, and Claude kindly asks CNN and the rest of us to address him as “His Holiness”. Having educated Buddha etc, the Elohim now seem to have trained today's Raelian scientists in their DNA laboratory arts of 25,000 years ago. For, with virtually no warning or fanfare and a minimal budget, they have trumped the world’s scientists in the field of cloning. A cloned human baby was born in the USA last month just 29 years after that fateful Auvergne meeting, another in Holland in January, and we are told several more are on the way. DNA analysis will apparently provide confirmation. This, of course, paves the way for our own immortality. When I die, I will therefore leave instructions and funds in my will for my immediate cloning, so that I re-appear as a bonnie infant a year or so later.I will resume the Tallrite Blog as soon as possible thereafter. You have been warned.
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But the day eventually comes when a tired old elephant
can no longer raise his trunk. So to drink clear water he has to
walk farther and farther out into the lake. His legs sink into the
muck, deeper and deeper. The lake pulls him into its cavernous interior.
He fights for a time, thrashing about, trying to extricate himself from
the bog and get back to the shore. But his own weight is so great,
and the pull of the lake's bottom so paralysing, that finally the animal
loses his balance, falls over, and vanishes under the water forever.
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
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