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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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ISSUE #80 - 27th June 2004 [187] |
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The Dilemmas of Post Handover Iraq Just a few days to go before the Americans hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis. (Actually, it's just happened on 28th June, two days early). Of course it's not going to be a perfect handover. The new government under Prime Minister Dr Ayad Allawi is a 100% appointed one and thus has no electoral legitimacy. But
As such, not only has it more legitimacy than the previous administration (which was also UN-approved under Resolution 1483), but it is the most representative government that any Arab state anywhere has ever had throughout world history. That's quite a claim. The new Government will be responsible for all aspects of running Iraq, but there will of course be grey areas. For example,
The new arrangements are also presenting some uncomfortable dilemmas.
I believe in the coming few months we are going to see a major change in the dynamics of Iraq, that it will indeed move towards democracy, that the insurgency movement will be largely suppressed until it is viewed more as a criminal movement. The anti-warriors will grow resentfully silent and Old Europe will find a way to provide material support. No-one will stop hating George Bush, however, just as they hated Ronald Reagan for deploying nuclear weapons in Europe. So we'll probably have to wait for Mr Bush's funeral before his own contribution to world democracy is generally acknowledged.
Prisoner Abuse in Saddam's Abu Ghraib The international media have rightly given prominence to the outrageous American abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Abu
Ghraib.
We have all seen the photographs; the Economist even ran one on its
cover. Though the behaviour of those US male and female soldiers is unforgivable, it is encouraging to see Americans, as well as the rest of the world, rise up and demand the truth, which is slowly,
reluctantly trickling out. And perpetrators will be punished.
In terms of maltreatment of prisoners, you can see that these images massively surpass anything that we've seen the Americans do in Abu Ghraib.
Yet as far as I know, hardly a single mainstream media outlet, at least in Europe, has run this truly shocking story, much less published stills (such as the one above) or provided internet links. Apparently this is only one of many such videos in the Pentagon's possession. Only the New York Post seems to have provided some coverage.
There is an explanation for the silence. These images make the overthrow of Saddam look moral and right, and by implication the US and Bush/Blair/Berlusconi/etc likewise. They might even help Bush's re-election. Are we surprised that the media want to remain schtum ? However,
you
don’t appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it.
And when you see those dreadful crimes with your own eyes, you can
never again say, with a clear conscience, that the invasion and overthrow
of Saddam were wrong. You can access a full description of the video clip here, and the clip itself here. But be aware, they are graphic, unpleasant and wholly unsuitable for children.
If you happen to have contacts with journalists, I would urge you to make them aware of this story in the hope that they might give it the airtime it needs.
The Surprising Grand Ayatollah Sistani Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, born in Iran around 1930, is the most revered leader of Iraq's Shi'ites, who with 60% are the largest religious grouping in the country. Many Iraqis will tell you they will stay quiet or rise up, purely on the say-so of this holy man. Yet he is an enigma. He rarely speaks publicly, preferring to let his thoughts and wishes be known via third party spokesmen. He is hardly ever seen, never gives interviews and has consistently refused to meet even with Paul Bremer, America's pro-consul in Iraq. One reason is that he believes America's democratisation plan is too slow. He is a traditional cleric, yet for all his conservative trappings and secrecy he appears to be surprisingly open minded, modern and pragmatic. Not only does be believe in the separation of religion from politics, which for some imams is close to apostasy, but he is prepared to entertain questions about Islam and the Koran. He has his own website, www.sistani.org, which among other things lists answers to a range of questions covering a broad swathe of life. Here are a few examples.
What strike me is how sensible and humanist most of his answers are, for example that suicide is forbidden under all circumstances, that cheating is wrong. Of course some are not so defensible - such as
Nevertheless, in perusing his site you get the impression that Ayatollah Sistani is certainly someone you can do business with. If only he would agree to meet you ! I think he will be a positive force in the new Iraq, supporting both the democratic process (which will of course return a Shi'ite majority) and the suppression of insurgents.
Freedom and Democracy Through Military Might I've written before about the left-wing anti-American anti-free market bias of many so-called charities. They collect large amounts of money from ordinary people as well as Governments, but then devote time and donations pursuing political objectives, and often telling deliberate porkies, instead of delivering help to people in need. Last week the chairman of Trócaire, Ireland's biggest charity was at it again. Bishop John Kirby wrote a stultifying screed denouncing America and all its works in Iraq, and for good measure capitalism and free markets in general. It could be lifted straight from a 1960s or 70s undergraduate Marxist magazine. In a brutal fisking last year entitled “Chronicle of a Pious Fraud”, Blog-Irish brutally exposed how deeply embedded are the (loony left-wing) political activity and vitriolic anti-Americanism of Trócaire and its leaders, including the good bishop. The bishop's latest article is in the same vein. “Freedom and democracy cannot be imposed through military might” he intones as he lectures President Bush and the Americans on foreign policy, helpfully pointing out that terrorism is no more than criminality. But tell that to nations such as Japan, Germany, South Korea, Serbia, East Timor, Panama, Grenada. They are all democracies thanks only to the guns and armies of courageous Western alliances, overwhelmingly American. In fact the bishop has completely missed the point. For “freedom and democracy cannot be imposed through military might unless accompanied by military victory”. Without a military victory you get a Vietnam, still a Communist dictatorship three decades after America withdrew defeated. However, without a boost of military might, democratisation often happens at only a snail's pace. If Trócaire and its leaders cared a fig for freedom and democracy therefore, they would be cheering on America from the sidelines for its efforts to democratise Iraq though military might. But of course the welfare of Iraqis is the last thing on their minds. Left wing anti-Americanism and gouging money from gullible governments and well-meaning citizens is what drives them. Nothing else.
Set up in 1987, this is a choir of forty Finnish men, dressed in black suits, white shirts and black rubber ties, who don't sing. They shout. They've also made a movie. I was intrigued, thinking it might be something unusual and sonorous to include in the CD I make every year to enclose with Christmas cards, so I did a little research. The choir is certainly unusual, but it is not sonorous. In fact the Finns sound ghastly and look ugly. They will not be added to the CD. Punish yourself by experiencing this 40-second clip or this photo.
In the interests of unfairness, lack of balance, unsavouriness and general nastiness, I can't resist linking to this little item featuring President Jacques Chirac exploring diplomatic avenues.
Quote : “Leaving aside his nationality, Mr Sutherland's advocacy of liberal economic policies is not an asset.” The
French government explains why Ireland's Peter Sutherland, Fear of liberal economic policies also explains Quote : “[T]he way to Iraqi hearts is through their sewer pipes.” So learns Yash
Sinha, a first lieutenant
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ISSUE #79 - 20th June 2004 [175] |
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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 Bogotá, 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 of 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá 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
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ISSUE #78 - 13th June 2004 [324] |
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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 2½%. 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 5½% 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. 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,
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| Return to Tallrite Blog |
During the ceremonies
in Dublin to welcome the ten new
countries into the EU on 1st May, I wandered around the 30-odd stalls
representing existing, new and would-be member states set up in a street
near the Irish parliament. In the Finnish tent, there was a small
poster about Mieskuoro Huutajat. 
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]
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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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