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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| May 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #125 - 7th May 2006 [195+761=956]
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Why Animal Rights Activists Love Halal (and Kosher)
[ How about cutting the neck, arteries and oesophagus, without bothering with stunning or other anaesthetic, and allowing the heart to continue pumping until all the blood has been drained out? Nice way to die? That's both the Kosher and the Halal method of slaughter. Jews and Muslims claim it is painless, unlike the infidel method where the animal is knocked out before being killed. According to Hassan Malik, President of the Islamic society in Oxford University, “Halal is the best method of slaughter for animals and humans alike [because] the killing takes less time.” Humans, too? I can only hope that Daniel Pearl and Ken Bigley would agree, though judging from the despairing shouts followed by gurgles during the one ritual IslamoNazi beheading whose video I have viewed - with horror - on the internet, Halal/Kosher does not seem as painless as its adherents claim. It's recently become an issue at Oxford University because infidel students have just found out that, for goodness knows how long, they've been unwittingly fed Halal meat at seven of the university's colleges, who didn't bother to tell them. And they're pretty mad about it. Not just for the deceit and for the kow-towing to Islam, but because they don't like the animals having to suffer more than they have to. In other words, for them it's an animal rights issue, a matter of ethics. So where are the animal rights activists who are always getting into the news? For example,
In the UK some 2.7 million creatures, mostly rodents, were used in animal testing in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available. By comparison, animals killed for food were 6.8m in the first three months of this year or 27m for the full year. I have no idea how many of these are killed by Halal or Kosher methods, but since Jews and Muslims comprise around 1.9 million, or 3.3% of the UK's population, it's reasonable to assume that a similar proportion of animals suffer that particularly barbaric form of death, or 0.9m. The proportion of creatures subjected to testing who actually suffer is a moot point, both in terms of the particular tests to which they are subjected, many of which are pretty benign and do not involve pain, and their individual degree of sentience. But the prolonged death by knife and bleeding of 900,000 large, very sentient farm-animals is unmistakable; they feel, and they know what's happening to them as their life ebbs away through their open veins.
*Logo was changed a couple of months after this post Well, here's the (convenient) thing. Animal testing is confined almost exclusively to Western countries, that is the familiar old white fascist imperialist bugbears of America, Europe, Australia etc, where there happens to be inordinate respect for something called human rights, embedded in the respective governments as well as their populations. Thus you can be as bad as you like, knowing that, whilst you may risk prison, there will never be a concerted effort, either by the military or the populace, to summarily exterminate you and your kind from the face of the earth. Why, the West is so soft and fair-minded it has even spared Nine-Eleven's 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui from execution (see next post). You can upset, at will, the natives of the Western democracies without any fear of
On the other hand, Halal killing of animals takes place right across the broad swathe of the Islamic world; around a billion Muslims depend on it for their food, or 20%-ish of the world's population. (So do the world's Jews, but there are only 15m of them.) The animals suffering death by Halal far exceed those in Western animal laboratories. So Muslims, Muslim livestock-farmers and Muslim abattoirs surely constitute a ripe and plentiful target for terrorist attacks by Animal Rights Activists. Yet they're doing nothing. So, again, why is this? You may think that such Activist/Terrorists would not want to object to Halal because they believe, in their ignorance, that all Muslims are terrorists and thus feel a certain kinship for their fellow professionals. Honour among thieves, and all that. But can their knowledge of IslamoNazi terrorism, and the tiny proportion of Muslims who so indulge, really be that shallow? Or it might be their view that anything a Muslim does, or a Jew (ha!), is by definition OK, including torturing animals to death. So for this reason it should be ignored. Alternatively, is it possible that the Animal Rights Activists are just the teeniest bit nervous about criticising a key practice of one of (all right, two of) the mighty Abrahamic religions, in case it brings blood-thirsty retribution down upon their own heads?
But then, isn't that the whole purpose of animal-testing in the first place? No wonder Animal Rights Activists love Halal (and by association Kosher) killing methods.
Good Riddance to Zacarias Moussaoui It came as a surprise to many of us non-Americans that Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th Nine-Eleven hijacker, has escaped with his life. America, and Virginia in particular where he was tried, have a well-earned reputation for executing killers at a rate unmatched in the democratic world (though far behind the judicial killings of totalitarian utopias like China, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, Belarus ... need I go on?). The six life-sentences-without-parole are notable for two aspects.
I am on the side of the jury who decided not to execute, like for instance Froma Harrop of Clear Politics. I disapprove of the death penalty in all circumstances, because (a) it is morally wrong to take a life if you don't need to and (b) there is always the chance of a mistaken conviction. (Mark Humphrys disagrees.) Moreover, as I've argued previously in respect of Amrozi Bin Nurhasyim, the Bali bomber sentenced to death by Indonesia in 2003, a lifetime in jail is probably a worse punishment. Imagine. Day after monotonous day, devoid of companionship, family, stimulation and purpose, with no end in sight other than your own slow deterioration and death of old age many decades into the future. So let Mr Moussaoui, prisoner 51427-054, rot away in permanent confinement, to become a forgotten nobody, the ennui relieved perhaps only by the occasional bouts of prisoner-on-prisoner violence for which US jails are renowned. And when the end eventually comes, let him be cremated and his ashes scattered somewhere obscure, so that there can never be a Yasukuni-style shrine to him. This should form part of his sentence. Good riddance.
Love Will Find a (Technological) Way Last week we learned that Dr Patricia Rashbrook from Sussex in England is to give birth at the ripe old age of 63 - thanks to IVF treatment costing her £50,000. She and her husband John Farrant are delighted, and seem not at all concerned that they will be in their mid-eighties by the time their child reaches the age of maturity. I say “their”, but “his” would be more accurate because the baby was conceived using a donated egg, and thus to misquote an old Jamaican song, “your mommy ain't your mommy but your mommy and everyone else don't seem to realise”. Many have reacted with horror at the selfishness of bringing into the world a child with such ancient parents, although once conceived you have to say the child, indeed any human being, is lucky to be getting born at all, even if his/her parents are antediluvian. This constitutes quite a moral dilemma even if you abhor the idea of elderly parents. Moreover, since the natural mother is someone else altogether, and by definition is of child-conceiving and child-bearing age, you have to wonder why the 63-year-old Dr Rashbrook didn't go the surrogate route, which would be safer and easier for both her and more importantly the baby. Nevertheless, many older couples will undoubtedly be cheered at the thought that technology is now able to nurture new life out of aging female bodies. Not least the starry-eyed Malaysian newly-weds Muhamad Noor Che Musa and his blushing bride Wook Kundor. Muhamed is a strapping gentleman of 33 in the prime of his fatherhood days and this is his first marriage. Wook, by contrast, already knows a thing or two, having - how can I put this delicately - been around the block a few times. That is, twenty times. So this makes it her 21st trip down the aisle. (Her parents' views are unknown and her 20 exes are judiciously keeping out of the limelight.) Like most newly-weds, Mohamed and Wook no doubt plan to have a large family, but there are a couple of problems. Firstly, Wook is poor, which if nothing else demonstrates that it was purely for love that the young buck Muhamad married her. However, this lack of money wouldn't matter quite so much if they didn't need, as Dr Rushbrook has illustrated, £50,000 per child. You see, Wook recently celebrated her birthday. Her 104th birthday. So the couple are a bit late for the conceiving bit, but as we now know - thanks to medical technology - certainly not for the child-bearing bit. When they are not wrestling together with this problem (or in the boudoir), and not watching Coronation Street on the TV like any other married couple, Muhamad apparently spends his time explaining to Wook the intricacies of Roman Script while she teaches him all about Islam. Though she would be unwise to tell him too much about about those legendary 70 nubile virgins.
Is there no limit to the ways in which modern technology and attitudes can enhance people's lives?
A Valediction for Charles Clarke Jeepers! I never realised that Tony Blair would be one of the listeners to my Podcast last week about his quadruple quandary (prisoners, peerages, sex and nurses). It seems my thinly-veiled ridicule of Charles Clarke and his colleagues was the Straw (sorry, Jack) which broke the Dear Leader's back.
Of if not that, then at least we should remember last
year's magnificent song, which points out that his ID cards were truly the
mark of
the
“Very
Model of a Modern Labour Minister”.
Is that Gilbert & Sullivan applauding? Click here
for a valedictory performance (MP3, 2 Mb); and sing-along with the words here.
Week 125's Letters to the Press Two letters this week, neither of them published, the first possibly because it does not sufficiently revere Gay Byrne, Ireland's most iconic broadcaster now turned road-safety tsar.
- - - - - - - - - - N I N E - E L E V E N - - - - - - - - - -
Judge Leonie Brinkema, handing down six
life sentences,
Mr Moussaoi's response.
In a curious twist, Aicha el-Wafi, - - - - - - - - - - I R A N - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel.” One
of Iran's senior Revolutionary Guards commanders, Quote: “This is what we know and this is what we’ll do if you continue to do nothing.” Meir Dagan, chief of Mossad, Israel's
famed intelligence service,
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana
Senator John McCain, the hardman, responds
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So why the silence from, for example, the 
Mr Clarke's valiant attempt to introduce anti-terrorist
Identity Cards so as to frighten off the bad guys (yeah, right), is one of
the big things that Mr
Clarke, ex Home Secretary, will be remembered for.
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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