November 2005 Tallrite Blogs

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November 2005

ISSUE #112

ISSUE #112

IRA’s ‘Legitimate’ Targets

IRA’s ‘Legitimate’ Targets 12th November 2005

On 12th November, the inimitable Mark Steyn accorded me “Letter of the Week” for the submission reproduced below, though he left out the links. Devin Leonard's letter, to which mine refers, has gone from Steyn's website but I've preserved a copy below, charmingly entitled “You’re Anti-American Scum”. It was a hugely emotional diatribe that claimed that the IRA killed only legitimate targets not civilians. He was attempting an indignant response to a Steyn column in the Jewish World Review, “These Irish eyes are smiling at White House snub of IRA”, which rejoiced at Gerry Adams' exclusion from George Bush's St Patrick's Day party earlier this year in favour of the sisters and fiancée of murdered Sinn Féiner Robert McCartney. Mr Leonard, who is a fireman, concluded his rebuttal by recommending that Steyn have a fire extinguisher rammed up his butt.

Letter of the Week
THE IRA’S ‘LEGITIMATE’ TARGETS
From Mark Steyn's Mailbox, 8th November 2005 (approx)

That was an, er, interesting letter in your mailbox from the Irish-American armchair-patriot-firemanDevin Leonard of Turbeville, Virginia, who says that the IRA's victims were "mostly Soldiers, Police and UDA/UVF members, in other words ... legitimate targets".

You might with to refer him to this illustration of three decades of killings in Northern Ireland. I constructed it for a blog post from data found in David McKittrick's “Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died Through the Northern Ireland Troubles”, Mainstream Publishing, ISBN: 184018504X.

Behind the numbers in my chart lie the following.

Republicans (IRA and its associates) suffered 397 of their own number killed. In reply, they killed 2,157 people, of whom so-called "legitimate targets" were made up of

818 policemen and soldiers from both Britain and Ireland,
plus 377 assorted loyalists.

The balance of Republican victims comprised

802 ordinary civilians and
160 of, extraordinarily, their own men.

Excluding the "own goals", civilians thus constituted over 40% of the Republicans' victims. No other party to the conflict killed so many civilians or such a high proportion.

Mr Leonard is talking tosh. I hope that that fire extinguisher doesn't prevent you from disabusing him (or whatever the word is).

Regards,

Tony Allwright

Dublin, Ireland

YOU’RE ANTI-AMERICAN SCUM
From Mark Steyn's Mailbox, 8th November 2005 (approx)

As a proud former US Marine (1st Force Reconnaissance Co.) (15th MEU), and proud Irish American...I wish to express my disgust for the article These Irish Eyes Are Smiling, For White House Snub of IRA.

Only someone with the vast stupidity and ignorance of Mark Steyn could have written such a piece of shit.

Here are a few facts for the obviously racist and idiotic Steyn.

1. Sinn Fein is a LEGALLY recognized political party. This is the first time they have not attended St. Patrick’s Day festivities at the White House in 10 years. This has far more to do with the fact that George Bush and his inner circle are anti-Irish pussies, who like to suck up to the Brits, then it is does any legitimate grievances with Sinn Fein or the IRA.

2. Seeing as how the JWR is known for it's GOP "Ass Kissing" and racism, it's not surprising that a JWR "hack" like Steyn would propagate these types of administration lies.

3. Like the brave Jewish soldiers of the Irgun and Stern Gang, the French Resistance, and the great American Revolutionaries...The IRA is a legitimate guerilla army fighting against oppression and injustice. Unlike the REAL terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaida, the IRA has killed mostly Soldiers, Police and UDA/UVF members. In other words they killed people who would be legitimate targets in any war. My Force Recon unit targeted these same types in both Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and never once were we considered terrorists.

4. The IRA has killed civilians, but then so did the Jewish Irgun and Stern Gang, the French Resistance, and even the American Revolutionaries...I never hear any condemnation of these attacks by Israelis, Jews, French or Americans.

The reason for this is simple: Unfortunately innocent people die in all wars, we killed 500 innocents in Kosovo. We didn't mean to, but that's the way war is.

I find it strange that Republican cowards and anti-American scum like Mr Steyn, always talk about the IRA while never mentioning the Loyalist terrorists of the UDA and UVF, who have (according to the US State Dept.) killed several hundred more civilians then the IRA has...and yet are apparently ok because they represent Britain as opposed to Ireland. If the IRA are terrorists, then the Jewish groups that fought against the Brits are too. In fact, so are the KLA, Northern Alliance, French Resistance, and even our own American Revolutionaries...Now, I don't know about a puke "wanna-be Irishman" like Steyn, but I consider those groups to be anything BUT terrorists. Sinn Fein will ALWAYS have the support of the vast majority of Irish Americans. As for the IRA, they are patriots who kicked the shit out of the British for 30 years, and unfortunately...they were justified in doing it.

I am sick of right wing, panty wearing faggots like Steyn, insulting their own people. If Mr. Steyn has any guts (which we all know he doesn't) he can come out to the Turbeville Fire Dept in South Boston and talk his anti Sinn Fein shit with a bunch of us REAL Irish American patriots. And he can bring some of those "Pussy" Brit soldiers he gets whiney ass E-mails from. We will give him and his "Brit Buddies" an old fashioned Irish "ass whippin" and send him back to the JWR offices, with a fire extinguisher up his butt...Which come to think of it, probably would be something his faggot ass would enjoy.

Devin Leonard
Turbeville, Virginia

THE RACIST IDIOTIC WANNABE IRISH PANTY WEARING FAGGOT REPLIES: A note to all readers in the Turbeville area: If your house is on fire and the fire truck shows up without an extinguisher, at least you’ll know where to look for it – although whether that counts as improper storage of municipal property is something you should take up with your elected representatives.

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What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

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

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

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
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

	how the death penalty is administered and, er, executed in Singapore,
	the corruption of Singapore's legal system, and
	Singapore's enthusiastic embrace of Burma's drug-fuelled military dictatorship

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

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,

	part of a death march to Thailand,
	a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma railway (one man died for every sleeper laid),
	regularly beaten and tortured,
	racked by starvation, gaping ulcers and disease including cholera,
	a slave labourer stevedoring at Singapore’s docks,
	shipped to Japan in a stinking, closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men,
	torpedoed by the Americans and left drifting alone for five days before being picked up,
	a slave-labourer in Nagasaki until blessed liberation thanks to the Americans’ “Fat Boy” atomic bomb.

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.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

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.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment.

It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:

	Drunk walking kills more people per kilometer than drunk driving.
	People aren't really altruistic - they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds.
	Child seats are a waste of money as they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts.
	Though doctors have known for centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection, they still often fail to do so.
	Monkeys can be taught to use washers as cash to buy tit-bits - and even sex.

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.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics.

It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as

	Why does asparagus come from Peru?
	Why are pandas so useless?
	Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth?
	Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine?

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:

	Argentina protects its now largely foreign landowners (eg George Soros)
	Russia its military-owned businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs
	The US its cotton industry comprising only 1% of GDP and 2% of its workforce

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.

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

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,
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