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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| June 2005 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #101 - 25th June 2005 [133]
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Juncker's a Guy Who Can't Hear No And he's in a terrible fix ... over democratic reality and uncooperative voters.
On the now-infamous EU “Tea or Coffee” constitutional referendums, he seems to be so overcome by self-importance that he's taken complete leave of his senses, including those of seeing and hearing what's going on around him. Before the French and Dutch referendums, preceded as they were by polls that left no doubt as to their outcome, he was saying
After voters went on to deliver a resounding Non and Nee to the coterie of Brussels imperialist dreamers whom he heads, he was still digging.
Actually, according to Le Monde on 15th June, the Constitutional Treaty's primary architect, French ex-president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing told the current president Jacques Chirac that copies of the hefty document should never have been distributed to the dumb French plebs, because he also reckoned it was too complicated and too long for them to understand it. Yet now, undaunted by the tsunami of EuroNo sentiment sweeping the Continent, the intrepid Mr Juncker is going ahead with his very own referendum on 10th July despite all his EU colleagues putting their respective ratification processes on indefinite hold. For he is convinced that the sophisticated half-million Luxembourgeoisie will show the pig-ignorant other 456½m EUropeans the proper way to vote. This is in the face of his domestic opinion polls where the Noes are rudely in the ascendant (from 24% to 45% in eight months and climbing), which show that they will do precisely the opposite. This man has a serious problem with reality. Most people, encountering bad news, go through five distinct phases - Shock, Denial, Anger, Acceptance, Action. Mr Chirac passed through these phases very rapidly (skipping over Acceptance) and is now well ensconced in Action. His action is to blithely ignore the French Non and distract his people from it by launching a withering and unprovoked budgetary attack on Tony Blair. He's demanding more British money, with no quid pro quo, that he knows (and hopes) Mr Blair will not deliver. Top marks for dynamism, hubris and changing the subject. But Mr Juncker? He cannot get beyond Denial, and as a result is going to be pushed back to Shock when Luxembourg votes No on 10th July. But at least by then his six-month tenure as top EU minister will have lapsed so his haywire ramblings can be safely ignored. Though you'd pity the people he goes back to serving. It'll then be up to them to give him the boot he richly deserves. Meanwhile, to the horror of old-schoolers Juncker, Chirac and Schröder who are all on their electoral way out, the perfidious Albionite Blair, freshly re-elected, will take over the EU presidency. And to make matters worse, he's also going to head up the G8.
Philosopher-President Juncker has also been giving us the benefit of his deranged wisdom in relation to the Common Agricultural Policy. While there is that fierce row raging between Britain and France over exchanging cuts in Britain's rebate for cuts in France's agricultural subsidies, and elsewhere about the whole morality of the CAP, here's a translation of what the Junckist had to say (in French, para 26), still in denial over the anti-Federalist Non and Nee. He was responding to Tony Blair's inference that money should shift from the wealth-destroying CAP toward wealth-creating research and innovation.
In other words, the CAP is, for the EU élite, a symbol of some would-be Federal United States of Europe. This, alone, they deem to be sufficient justification for eating up nearly half the EU budget, regardless of whether it does any other good or bad. Let's recap on the CAP.
So with agriculture, we have an industry so woefully valueless that (most of) it should be
abandoned. Yet 95% of successful tax-paying individuals and enterprises are
punished by having to reward this failed industry with an enormous subsidy. The
CAP money, or just a small fraction of it, would be far better spent on retraining the EU's farmers and farm workers to learn new, marketable skills that customers actually value.
They would be able to hold their heads up in pride again for the first
time in half a century. Clearly, I should spread my derision of Mr Juncker to a large cohort of MEPs.
On the face of it, this is appalling - taking advantage of Israel's humanitarian processes to murder random Israelis. But I don't buy this simplistic version of the story. Look at the details
I'm sorry but this just doesn't add up. Women in the west hardly ever get burnt in kitchen fires, but it happens all the time in India and in various Muslim states. Women are deliberately burnt, scalded or otherwise assaulted and killed in the kitchen because they have - or are suspected to have - transgressed the sensibilities of male relatives, usually through sex. The story then given out is always that the woman had an unfortunate accident whilst cooking. Yeh, right. You can be sure that, similarly, Wafa has had some boyfriend her family disapprove of, so her brothers go about setting her on fire to preserve the family “honour”. She is supposed to die as a result but doesn't, and after five months of not healing properly she is becoming an embarrassment.
Then along comes a sympathetic recruiter, perhaps even her boyfriend, from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of Fatah, offering a simple solution to her troubles. He is her saviour. All she has to do is get into Israel and blow herself up. Instantly she will be relieved of all her suffering, go straight to heaven and be remembered on earth as a glorious martyr and an honour to her family. Compared to her alternatives, this is a blissful scenario. And it is the pattern of almost every female Palestinian suicide bomber independently investigated. Their suicides are rooted not in ideology but simply in man trouble; everything else is details. Barbara Victor has written quite movingly about these women in “Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers”, his Roses being what the thug Arafat used to call them. I also wrote in a previous post, “The Depravity of Suicide-Bombing”, about Reem al-Rayashi who blew herself up at the same Erez checkpoint to gain release from her complicated man troubles here on earth. These women should, of course, not be spared our opprobrium for the vileness and unforgivability of their deeds. Yet we should also recognize the circumstances surrounding those terminal acts and reserve some condemnation for the role that their so-called loved ones have played. Only proper Western-style democracy, which thanks to the death of Arafat, is now a realistic possibility for the Palestinians, has any hope of saving these women (as well as their would-be Israeli victims) from the depraved, nihilistic barbarity that is suicide bombing. Meanwhile, Wafa is deservedly serving a twelve-year sentence in a high-security Israeli jail. Late Note (June
2007): In it, one of Wafa's
friends confirms that indeed
A 58-year-old control freak, claiming he is Jesus, routinely has sex, forcible as well as consensual, with his wife, his daughters, his nieces and his granddaughters, some of whom he “marries”, and they bear him nine children. He also beats them, confiscates their money and forbids them any contact with men. After police officers call at his house, he convinces his oldest daughter to shoot her eight siblings dead through the right eye and then to commit suicide. The police find a pile of bloody bodies in a back bedroom. After a three-month trial in Fresno, California, he is convicted on 23 counts of murder, rape and continuous sexual abuse of his daughters, granddaughters and nieces. Ho, hum, boring. Well, that seems to be the attitude of the American and indeed international media. As far as I can find, the LA Times is the only mainstream US newspaper to carry the story in any detail, and the The Scotsman internationally. Even the blogosphere seems hardly to have touched this tale of multi-murder, abuse, incest and polygamy. Do a Google search on “Marcus Wesson incest” and you'll see what I mean. Yet can you imagine a more horrific set of crimes that Marcus Wesson, for that is his name, or anyone could have committed? Yet nobody's interested. It must be some measure of modern society's moral degeneracy when Michael Jackson's fondling of young boys and licking their hair are regarded as much more shocking and newsworthy, and his acquittal a matter for outrage. The only solace is that Wesson will never again be a free man, and with a potential death sentence hanging over him, may not even be a live one. Either penalty is too good for him.
Collapse of a tunnel has pretty grim consequences - unless the collapse is financial rather than physical. Eurotunnel, the public company that owns the tunnel - or Chunnel - which runs under the English Channel connecting the UK to France and known to some as the mother of all white elephants is, as ever, in dire financial straits. It Chairman Jacques Gounon has threatened the Board that it is facing collapse unless saved by its long-suffering creditor banks, to whom it owes £6.4 billion. It has no hope of meeting interest payments on this vast sum, let alone debt repayments. But with fierce competition from both ferries and low-cost airlines, there is not much it can do, other than self-liquidate and start again. The company, its banks and the market all think this is a terrible idea because of the huge amount of money that will instantly vanish. So do the shareholders, although they've already seen the value of their shares drop by 98% so you'd wonder why they don't just forget about the remaining 2%. For the truth is that whatever the theoretical value of the company, that value simply no longer exists. The ferries and airlines should be just as worried by Eurotunnel's imminent demise. For, from the customers' point of view, it's joyful news. Following liquidation, the tunnel itself and all its facilities will not disappear. Someone else will end up buying the Eurotunnel company for a sum that is linked solely to its future revenue-earning capability in a cut-throat market and with no regard whatsoever to the cost of construction or past debts. That means, with a low capital base and no debt to speak of, the collapsed and then resurrected Eurotunnel will instantly start undercutting the boats, Ryanair, Easyjet etc, which will also drive down their prices. Consumers win; so do traders at both ends and also the carriers thanks to the increased traffic prompted by the lower fares. It was Margaret Thatcher's brilliance in the 1980s to refuse to commit Exchequer money for digging the tunnel despite screams from the nationalise-everything Labour opposition. As a result, every now-vaporised penny and franc that went in to it was from willing private investors instead of coerced taxpayers. Indeed, no railway construction project in the UK has ever made money; Eurotunnel has merely been following a well-worn tradition. It is those who pick up the pieces who are able to cash in. And that's the heartless Capitalist system for you. Nearly everybody benefits nearly all of the time and ordinary consumers most of all. But some people, such as Eurotunnel's current shareholders and creditors, most certainly don't. The Socialist system, of course, ensures that no-one benefits any of the time (except the rulers).
Last Saturday 25th June, the British and Irish Lions rugby team were ignominiously and deservedly defeated 21-3 by a rampant New Zealand All Blacks squad in the first of three weekly test matches. The series is conducted only every 12 years on the hallowed rugby soil of New Zealand. Every single Lion, with just a few honourable exceptions, underperformed spectacularly, and added to this by implementing a give-the-ball-to-the-All-Blacks-at-every-opportunity strategy that ensured the Lions were never in a position to score, not that they made the slightest effort to.
The question that always occurs to me, though, is why do their opponents accord it any respect whatsoever? Why do they, as in this photograph, just stand and politely face the All Blacks as they do their girlie thing? The Haka is nothing but a pre-match mind game, and an eminently successful one. But in my view it works only because opposing teams always choose to co-operate. However their opponents, since they don't have a comparable ceremony, really ought to play a mind game of their own. They should simply ignore the Haka, turn their backs, chat among themselves, giggle derisively at the dancers and generally diss the performance, all behaviour that the proud macho All Blacks would find supremely irritating. What an excellent state of mind to start the real battle! Maybe after their drubbing, the Lions will at last adopt a new attitude towards the Haka for their next test match on 2nd July. Actually, they should adopt a new everything and especially a new team.
Los Boliches lies on the coast, and within ten minutes stroll from the apartment are countless restaurants, tapas and other bars, lively nightlife, great shopping, magnificent sandy beach and pristine sea. In fact everything you'd expect from a modern Costa del Sol resort, including the sunshine of course. For full details, photos and map, click here.
Quotes of Week
101 Quote: “I come from a country where my mother, when she wanted to say something scary, would say: ‘The Turks are coming’.” In a wonderfully racist inference, Romano Prodi, _________________________ Quote: “No sane person could understand the verdict” Russian billionaire businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “We find the verdict fair and objective” Natalia Vishnyakova, _________________________ Quote: “Britain has been making a gesture because, over the past 10 years, even with the British rebate, we have been making a contribution to Europe 2½ times that of France. Without the rebate, it would have been 15 times as much as France. So that is our gesture.” Tony Blair, in an answer designed to infuriate
Jacques Chirac, For the arithmetically minded, the reply means that _________________________ Quote: “It's said that being rich doesn't make people happy, but Ireland's experience shows that it definitely helps and quite a lot.” Sociology professor Wil Arts,
one of the authors of a new 25-year survey, (Other commentators, in
similar vein, have observed that
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Jean-Claude Juncker has long been the prime minister
of tiny Luxembourg (pop
Last week, 21-year-old Wafa al-Biss, travelling from
Gaza through the Erez checkpoint to Israel for medical treatment for serious
burns at the famed Beersheba Hospital, was 
Before
major matches, and this was nothing different, the All Blacks always perform their
Haka. This is an ancient war dance handed down by the native Maoris,
involving a lot of stamping, arm-waving, shouting and sticking out
tongues. It's designed to give them courage for the contest ahead
and to intimidate their opponents, and generally achieves both aims, particularly
it would seem against the latest Lions. 
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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