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OCTOBER 2002 |
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ISSUE #14 - 27th October 2002 [70]
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China's
Great Famine
Two weeks ago I talked about the Irish Famine and its aftermath, the
combined effect of which halved the population through starvation, disease
and emigration over a period of ninety miserable years, underlain by an
overall inability to recover economically.
Unlike the Irish Famine, the Chinese Famine was caused primarily by the deliberate action of man. Actually, one man, Mao Tse-Tung, who in launching his “Great Leap Forward” in 1958 secured his place in history of mankind as the greatest mass-murderer of all time. Mao made steel-production the nation's number one priority, in fact its only priority. Tens of millions of peasants were forced from the fields
The result was mainly lumps of brittle cast iron unfit for even simple tools. Meanwhile, food production plunged - yet (as in Ireland) food exports continued; and as the peasants starved, the political élite continued to be well fed. This dramatically illustrates the rôle of non-representative government, in that the direct penalties of the famine were borne by one group of people (the peasants) whereas the political decisions were taken by another (the rulers). Had the rulers been accountable to the ruled, both groups would have been forced to share the pain. This would have ensured that the steps eventually taken as from 1962 to resolve the famine, such as opening China to grain and fertilizer imports and to freer trade, would have been implemented years earlier. Tens of millions fewer would have perished. Natural factors, such as a drought in 1960-61, exacerbated the famine, yet even some of these were man-made. Several species of birds thought to devour crops were proclaimed vermin and a nation-wide programme of slaughter ensued. Doubtless this provided some extra protein for consumption, but it immediately led to a dramatic rise in the insect population (which was normally kept in check by the birds) resulting in increased crop losses. Mortality figures have never been accurately gathered. Reckonings range from 16½ to 40 million, but the most generally accepted estimates seem to be around 30m unfortunates (plus a similar number of lost or postponed births). This chart, with the famine period shaded, shows both the official Chinese figures for the death-rate, peaking at 25 deaths per thousand in 1960, and a reconstructed rate (peaking at 44/1,000) believed to be closer to the truth. Huge as the 30m figure is, it represents only some 5% of China's pre-famine population of 641 million. Moreover, it is quite remarkable as the death rate chart shows, how dramatically the population decline was arrested in 1962 once the remedial steps were begun. The pain lasted only three years. Contrast this with Ireland's famine [chart updated in 2006]. Its population also declined by about 5% in the first three years 1841-44. But after that it just kept falling and falling - for the next ninety years until it was almost halved.
But at least no-one responsible for the Irish Famine or its aftermath is glorified. To this day, even in Western society, the monster Mao Tse-Tung is revered and celebrated as some sort of icon, yet no single person is responsible for more avoidable deaths than he. They even name restaurants after him, for goodness sake, though I'm not going to provide links. I would rather eat in a restaurant called Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot or Idi Amin.
I had wanted to write something about the Washington Snipers, but when I read Sunday Times columnist Andrew Sullivan's take on 25th October, I found I had nothing to add. Thought provoking; well worth reading.
More Innocents Die as Russia Mishandles Another Crisis Russian rulers have a centuries-old tradition of not caring about the human lives of their people. Think of Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Lenin, Stalin and countless other imperialist leaders. The break up of the Soviet Empire uncovered the Russian “Federation” for what it is, a Russian Empire comprising Russia itself plus a large collection of unwilling nations, of different ethnicity, language, religion, culture, assembled by force of arms. Little Chechnya, brutally conquered in the 19th century, is but one of these nations. Russian leaders’ disregard of human life was brutally exposed in all its fecklessness to an aghast world when the Kursk submarine sank in August 2000 killing all on board.
The whole conduct of the two Chechen wars, insofar as they have been reported on, seems to be an abject lesson in how to brutalize a nation for the sin of not wanting to remain a member of the Russian Empire. The recent theatre hostage crisis has provided yet another opportunity for Russian leaders to be casual about other people’s lives. From the moment that more than 50 Chechen rebels seized Moscow’s Palace of Culture Theatre taking hostage the audience of some 800, it was notable how the concepts of negotiation and patience were absent from the pronouncements of Russian leaders and pundits. Enraged, understandably, by the heinous crime, they were clearly itching to get in there and sort the rebels out. They waited only 58 hours; negotiations were perfunctory at best. There was no attempt to try to wear down the kidnappers’ emotional and physical resistance, much less seek a peaceable resolution. It has been stated that the rebels killed two hostages and that this was the trigger for the Russian special forces to go in, but there doesn’t seem much evidence for this. Indeed, at least one newspaper says the raid started before dawn on the basis that the rebels said they would start executing hostages at dawn, ie none had actually been executed. What is clear is that, in what from a military point of view seems to have been a well executed operation, the siege was forcibly ended with the death of 50 rebels and some 90 hostages (still counting) and the gassing of the rest. A few rebels seemed to have escaped and the remainder were captured. Only one of the soldiers died. In the TV footage that followed, Russian officials including President Putin were seen
But from none of them was there a word of remorse for the huge loss of life among the hostages - over two killed for every rebel. Actually, Putin did in the end make a not very convincing TV apology for the death of hostages. Meantime, the authorities refuse even to disclose the nature of the gas that incapacitated so many surviving hostages, thus making more difficult the task of the hospitals that are treating them. The mystery gas was also directly responsible for many of the hostage fatalities, through heart failure, breathing difficulty and choking on vomit. It seems likely that the gas is forbidden under international chemical weapons treaties; hence the secrecy. For the Russian leaders, the ending of the siege was an unmitigated success, and no churlish remarks about trivial civilian deaths or sick hostages will be allowed to sully it. Of course any sort of success at all vis-à-vis the Chechen War is a rare enough event. Why don't the Russians just
On October 12th, in the Dominican Republic, Audrey
Mestre, a glamorous French free-diver of 27, set
out to establish a new world record by diving to 165 metres (541 feet) on
a single breath of air, while being filmed for an upcoming movie, “Oceanwomen”.
She was attempting to break the “No
Limits” world record that her husband Pipin Ferreras set in January
2000. Together,
they were the most famous free-diving couple in the world. Audrey was born a water baby and got hooked on free diving through a combination of science and romance. Both her grandfather and mother were spearfishers, and from her early teens, Audrey was an accomplished scuba diver. After her family moved to Mexico, she studied marine biology at La Paz University and for her thesis examined the effect of deep diving on human lungs. There are three main versions of free diving, each bringing you deeper :
No Limits is the
showiest, most dangerous and most exciting of the three. It is about exploring
the outer ranges
in a dark, cold, lonely rush through the ocean depths. At
70 metres the pressure is strong enough to crush a Coca Cola tin. The
lungs constrict to one eighth of their capacity and the heart rate drops
dramatically, redirecting the blood flow from the legs and arms to more
vital areas. It hurts. Audrey's record attempt ended in tragedy. Taking a huge gulp of
air, she apparently reached bottom. But on her way back
to the surface, she blacked out at a depth of 90 metres. An emergency
inflatable device was activated to rush her to the surface, but it was too
late. Efforts
to resuscitate her were fruitless. Her dying moments, foaming at the mouth
and bleeding, were stark and terrible. The dive was supposed to
take only three minutes, and she had been underwater more than nine
minutes. By its nature, No Limits pushes the body to the limits of survivability, so in a sense an eventual fatality was inevitable. But Audrey's death will not deter adherents. Additional safety measures will be put in place and techniques further improved.
Ulrika Johnson, the 34-year-old Swedish beauty, has just launched her autobiography “Honest”. In it she claims that, when she was a TV weather girl of 19, she was date-raped by a well-known TV presenter, subsequently identified as John Leslie. On 24th October, the Daily Mirror reported that her book says she spent four days in hospital recovering. In a recent TV interview she talked of being “violated and raped” and that she felt a sense of responsibility towards other women in a similar situation. Yet she is not pressing charges; she merely seems to be milking the incident to promote her book sales. She has put herself in a slippery situation.
Roy Keane disclosed in his recent autobiography
that he had deliberately assaulted Manchester City midfielder Alf Inge
Haaland in a game in April 2001. The TV footage clearly shows Roy
aiming his boot at Alf's shin not the ball. For this, and for
publicising his intent, the Football Association punished
him with a £150,000 fine plus five match ban.
Quite right too. Ulrika and Roy both chose, for reasons of personal reward and narcissistic delight, to bring into the public domain colourful aspects of their lives. Celebrities such as they should realise that this kind of egotistical self-publicity brings responsibility and accountability as well as the cash.
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ISSUE
#13 - 20th October 2002
[47]
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Fields of Bali
The appalling October 12th bombing, which killed over 200 people, most of them Australian youngsters on holiday, was not the first taste of hell in that erstwhile Paradise on earth known as Bali. Like many ex-colonies, Indonesia is an unnatural country of different nationalities, religions, languages, cultures, with no common theme. It :
(It's odd that many Indonesians have only one name.) An attempted coup d'état in 1965 by communist revolutionaries known as the PKI, which had over 1½ million members, was defeated. An unholy alliance of anti-communists, Islamists and the military, with General Suharto in the vanguard, then fomented a (nominally) anti-PKI purge, with the army and mobs engaged in large-scale massacres of half a million people. This began in Bali where 80,000 were killed (an appalling 5% of its population), then spread to East-Java Province and Sumatra. And because this was all done in the name of anti-communism, it shamefully had the support of the Western powers including the CIA. Out of the chaos, which included rampant inflation requiring a thousandfold devaluation of the rupiah, emerged General Suharto as supreme leader, deposing his colleague Sukarno in 1967, who died under house arrest three years later. In hindsight, of course, we can see that the anti-communist excuse and rhetoric were just a cover for power-consolidation and suited Suharto's purposes admirably as events proved. He went on to misrule Indonesia for the next 31 years with a mixture of repression, cronyism, corruption and illiterate economics. The current (unimpressive) president, Megawati Sukarnopoutri, is the daughter of Sukarno. So the pain associated with the tragedy of October 12th is no stranger to outwardly placid Bali. Perhaps the mixture of a Hindu island in a Muslim archipelago pandering to the pleasures of Christian tourists makes it irresistible to certain types of evil people. Meantime, the perpetrators have ensured that Australia is a fully committed and active ally of America's in the global War on Terrorism. In time, they will pay a terrible price for their evil actions. You can find a detailed if incomplete history of Indonesia here.
Sinn
Féin, for reasons best
known to themselves, have managed to engineer the collapse of Northern
Ireland’s ruling Executive, the fourth suspension since it was
inaugurated. An interesting aspect of this
is that the British Government have appointed two
new ministers from the mainland, Ian Pearson (MP for Dudley
South) and Angela Smith
(MP for Basildon), to join the
Northern Secretary, John
Reid, and his colleagues, Jane Kennedy and Des
Browne in running the province. The five of them will carry out the work previously performed, with the consultative assistance of several Assembly committees, by
drawn from five political parties. In other words, the work of
fourteen Northern Ireland ministers plus the committees will now be done by just five
people. In fact, since three
of them were already in place, you could argue that the work of the
fourteen will be done by only the two new Westminster MPs, Mr Pearson and
Ms Smith. A year ago, I had the
opportunity to go to Stormont
on a visit graciously hosted by the UUP’s Chief Whip, Jim
Wilson.
As this was during the third suspension of the Executive, I asked
him who was running the province, and he said (with a sly smile) that civil
servants were. When I asked
what the civil servants would do when the Executive was eventually
reinstated he replied that they would go back to doing their normal jobs.
In appointing Mr Pearson and Ms Smith, Dr Reid has said that he will be a “hands-on” Northern Secretary, willing to tackle difficult issues that Executive ministers were reluctant to act on, such as
In other words, by bringing in
a mere two ministers Dr Reid plans to do not only the same work as the
fourteen recently displaced Northern Ireland ministers, but to do more -
and more difficult - work. We may find that the people of Northern Ireland actually prefer the services afforded by Dr Reid’s team to what they have been experiencing under their elected representatives. That should give all political parties pause for thought, not to mention the fourteen displaced ministers who are aching to regain the responsibilities and trappings of office. The longer the suspension, the more you will have to question the size of the eventually reconstituted Executive and the value it gives for money. And one day, the people on mainland UK may enter the debate. After all, it is they who contribute 70% of the running costs of Northern Ireland. The natives pay only 30% and the work of the ministers therefore centres not on raising money but on spending it. An easy portfolio.
N Korea Goes Apologetic … and Nuclear It’s not often that we hear about goings on in the reclusive Stalinist dictatorship that is North Korea, suffering under the hereditary misrule of the enigmatic Kim Jong-Il, tutored at the knee of his dead founder-father Kim Il Sung. But
suddenly two curious items occur.
In both cases, the surprise is not the acts themselves, which are thoroughly in character of both the man and his murderous father, but the admissions. Based on previous patterns, North Korea has only “given” something when it wants - and generally gets - something huge in return. So the question is, what's he after this time ? Well it's money of course, it always is. But this time it is perhaps tinged with fear arising out of President Bush's “Axis of Evil” phrase and his subsequent belligerence towards Iraq. From Kim Jong-Il's perspective, Bush probably looks slightly mad and therefore to be treated with caution. So once again, as in Iraq, Bush's behaviour is eliciting concessions from despots. The Soviet Union was defeated not by arms but by the crippling economic cost of trying to match America's arms spending under a cloud of bellicose statements (remember the “evil empire”) from President Reagan. Perhaps we are seeing signs of North Korea's collapse under similar economic pressure. The tragedy is that the North Korean people are starving to death the longer the wicked regime remains in place. The current per capita annual income is US$900 which is a mere twelfth of that in free, capitalistic South Korea. The days of the current regime are surely numbered.
Good to see Scottish devolution in action in the form of Scottish children not willing to be pushed around by mindless multinational organizations from down south. The Scotsman newspaper (motto “Scottish News direct from Scotland”) reports that two men from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a large multinational animal rights organization), one in a cow-suit, recently conducted a protest outside an Aberdeen school to let pupils know about the claimed hazards in milk and cruelty to cows. But then in response about 100 children, carrying banners and shouting “milk for the masses”, quite reasonably pelted them with cartons of milk, until - thoroughly drenched - they had to be rescued by two gallant policewomen. One pupil, Alan Smith, 16, said: “I certainly won’t stop drinking milk just because a man has dressed up as a cow outside my school.” About time these unaccountable multinationals were brought under control, don’t you think ?
BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Have a look here at the delightful winning entries to this year's competition, currently on view at London's Natural History Museum. In particular, view the overall winner - a photograph by Angie Scott of a family of elephants staring at a strutting heron in a Zambian river. Breathtaking.
The University of Hertfordshire has just competed a year of remarkable research to find the world's funniest joke. (This is not a joke). People from all over the world apparently sent in their favourite jokes, no fewer than 40,000 in all, and provided almost two million ratings of how funny they found other jokes. Goodness knows how the relevant faculty of the university managed to sequester the money for this. As well as sifting through all the data to discover the best joke in the world, the university research also identified the jokes rated funniest by respondents in America, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Germany and the UK, along with various also-ran jokes. Many of them are not new. To save you the trouble of clicking through various website pages to find them, here they are, starting with ... The World's Best Joke A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and ... Ah, heck, just click here and you'll find them all, neatly assembled for your edification !
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ISSUE
#12 - 13th October 2002
[39]
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Suicide Bombers - A Father's Lament Abu Saber, the distraught father of a young Palestinian suicide bomber, has written a most moving letter to the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat (translated into English by MEMRI). He is doubly distraught because the bomb organizers are now targeting his 16-year old second son to emulate his brother. For the bereaved family, having their home razed to the ground under the new Israeli policy is merely an aside in comparison with their heart-rending grief. He begins by quoting from the Koran (2:195) "Act for the sake of Allah, and do not throw yourselves to destruction with your own hands." (Non-Muslims may not be aware that suicide is forbidden by Islam.) Abu Saber then quite reasonably asks why the sheikhs who issue fiery religious rulings, or the leaders who express joy on TV at each suicide bombing, do not send their own sons. Worse, he names several of them who have deliberately sent their sons abroad. And he points out that the "idiotic policy" (of suicide bombings) has proved a colossal failure at obtaining even a tiny part of the usurped Palestinian rights. The suicide bombers' loss of their own lives has been futile. My own view on this issue is slightly different. If those fiery sheikhs and joyous leaders had real concern about the future of Palestine and believed in the efficacy of suicide-bombings, they would not send out youngsters. The youth are the seedcorn for a future Palestine, prosperous in peace. It is only they who can do the work that will provide growth and wealth for the putative nation. They should be nurtured and educated, not destroyed. And they are also entitled to expect a few of the good things of adult life before they die. So if you really do believe that sending out suicide-bombers will enhance your cause, you should look for them amongst the 60 year olds and above,
If you think the Palestinians are to be helped by suicide-bombing - which I agree with the mourning father is an "idiotic policy" - then send out granddads not teenagers. (This will never happen, of course, because granddads are far too worldly-wise and canny to fall for the martyrdom slogans that seduce the teenagers.) Abu Saber has bravely pointed out the appalling cynicism and hypocrisy of those sheikhs and leaders, and named some of them. He had better watch his back.
Pundit Melana Zyla Vickers has written a most interesting analysis which contrasts the military aspects of
It describes five areas where fundamental changes will occur :
Well worth reading the full report.
Big Countries Escape EU Punishments As part of the plans for the single European currency, the €uro, the EU's "Growth and Stability Pact" was agreed in 1997, under great pressure from Germany's Bundesbank who feared flaky countries like Greece or Italy would undermine the €uro with profligate fiscal policies. The pact stipulates
More than a year ago, the European Commission formally censured Ireland for proposing a budget that the Commission deemed was inflationary. Ireland strongly rebutted this and ignored the reprimand (though it is now clear that the Commission was right !). Some months later, Portugal was also ticked off, for a deficit that was in danger of crossing the 3% threshold. But look at what's happening now, in 2002. Lo and behold, it is mighty Germany itself that is most likely to breach the limit. That's because of lower-than-expected economic growth, coupled with - because it would be unpopular with voters - unwillingness to rein in public-sector spending, not to mention implementation of economic restructuring. France and Italy are in a similar predicament. So will these huge countries, founders and self-appointed leaders of the EU, face the mandatory reprimands and fines that the Growth & Stability Pact specifies, not to mention loss of face among their peers ? Of course not. That big stick is reserved solely for little countries that can't fight back. Instead, the Growth & Stability Pact is now being weakened (prompted of course by the said big countries) to relax the rules and allow the miscreants a further year. Euro-zone finance ministers have agreed to allow Germany, France, Italy and Portugal to exceed the 3% limit from now until 2003. Moreover, France, still not satisfied, has said that due to "other priorities" it has no intention of reining in its deficit until at least 2004. Some smaller member-states have reacted with fury, demanding that the European Commission should reprimand Paris without delay, pointing out how quick they have been to reprimand small countries. This won't happen of course. For many, the major negative effect of the EU's Nice Treaty will be the extension of qualified majority voting to 30 new areas. Among other things, this will permit some EU countries to group together to protect their own interests without regard to the others. In effect, a two-tier Europe will be enabled. Jacque Delors, still highly influential, has talked of the more eager countries forming an avant-garde - “We could have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation for the avant-garde”, he said in an interview. But, the Growth & Stability Pact has exposed the fact that a two-tier Europe is already in play -
The Nice Treaty will legitimise and so encourage such two-tiering. Fourteen countries have ratified it. Only Ireland, with just 1% of the EU's population stands in the way of its formal adoption. But it is the only country that is asking its people, rather than the parliament, to decide about Nice in a referendum. And when it is put to the vote on 19th October there is every possibility it will be defeated, causing Nice to turn to ashes. Anger over the cynical approach of France, Germany and Italy to the Growth & Stability Pact will have contributed to such a result. Interesting times.
Imagine a peasant country, subjugated by foreign rulers, beset by a diseased harvest year after year. People are dying in huge numbers of hunger and pestilence, while others leave in droves to find work and new lives (and racial discrimination) in faraway foreign lands, countless perishing in the process. Meanwhile, the rich élite remain rich and even export food to the foreign rulers. Imagine the population crashing by one-third in three decades. Imagine that the economic devastation is so utter that the population continues to decline for a further ninety years, until it is almost half what it was. Imagine that 160 years after disaster first struck, the population still stands in 2002 at only 67% (73% by 2006). Other than the time-scale, it sounds like many African countries in this generation.
On a recent trip to the south west of the country, driving around the spectacular Ring of Beara, the emptiness, punctuated with deserted stone cottages, reminded me that this was once a well populated region. But beautiful as it is, it was a harsh place, bitter and windy, especially in the winter. All you could hope was to survive a few miserable years scraping a subsistence living. Yet for centuries people existed like this, until the famine began to take hold in 1841 and changed the landscape forever. The Irish famine is seared deep into the soul of every Irish person, at home and in the diaspora.
We all have heard of computer viruses and worms, those malicious pieces of software that arrive as uninvited attachments from known or unknown correspondents, infect our machines and use our address books to send themselves to other victims. The newest to gain widespread publicity was the BUGBEAR worm which featured very recently in television broadcasts. I immediately updated my anti-virus software, and was glad I did because in the space of the next week, it picked up no fewer than eight incoming e-mails which contained BUGBEAR. A narrow escape. I use free-of-charge downloadable anti-virus software from www.grisoft.com, which so long as you update it every two weeks, is very effective. Microsoft have a site which will scan Windows computers for security loopholes. However, I recently learnt something about computer parasites when I inadvertently found out I had contracted one. They typically embed themselves, silently, onto your system via free software or other items you have downloaded from the internet. They are intended to help the commercial businesses that have provided the free software, and unlike viruses and worms are not meant to be malicious as such. Parasites fall into three main categories :
In addition, because they are often badly written, parasites can degrade your system performance, cause errors and precipitate repeated crashes. These latter were the symptoms I have been experiencing over the last few months. However a rather mysterious company called Doxdex gave me clear instructions of how to find and uninstall the offending software, which was called "new.net". Performance has much improved since. I would recommend you check out your own system. Footnote - I have no personal interest in any of these linked sites
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ISSUE
#11 - 6th October 2002
[29]
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Too
Much Currie for the British Conservatives John
Major, Tony Blair’s predecessor as British Prime Minister, was seen as a
good but grey man who despite his best endeavours gradually lost control
of his party and its agenda. After
six years of steady decline in the fortunes of the Conservatives, he was
unceremoniously turfed out of 10 Downing Street in 1997 in a landslide
defeat. His ascension up the
greasy political pole had been spectacularly fast and stealthy, like a
shark rising from the deep. He
was first elected to Parliament in 1979, in two years he was a
parliamentary private secretary, became a whip in 1983, a minister in 1986
and chancellor (finance minister) in 1990.
When Margaret Thatcher was ditched in 1991, he was elevated to party leader
and PM at the start of the First Gulf War, because he was seen as the man least likely to rock the boat or
offend anyone, attributes which he more or less fulfilled.
But
what’s this ?
Edwina
Currie, another one-time Minister under Mrs Thatcher, whose ministerial
career came to an abrupt halt in 1988 when she announced, truthfully, that
all eggs contain salmonella bacteria to a greater or lesser degree, has
suddenly published her memoirs (“Edwina
Currie Diaries, 1987-1992”),
and they include four years of steamy
passion with none other than said grey John Major.
The
affair ended in 1988 and has been secret until now. Had it come out during Mr Major’s own ministerial career,
that too would have stopped dead in its tracks. This would have resulted in a different party leader and
quite possibly the earlier return of ("Old") Labour to power, and God knows how
differently British contemporary history might have developed. The Conservatives, already reeling with stories about
are
furious about the Major/Currie revelation.
But whom are they annoyed at and why ? Well, it is Edwina who is the object of their ire, for her effrontery in publicising the affair. “Tories rage at Currie treachery over Major”, screams the Sunday Times (though unfortunately the online article is subscription-only). David Mellor, former Conservative minister whose own ministerial career was ended by a sex scandal, calls Mrs Currie "a cheap trollop". No-one
is criticising John Major for embarking on the affair, though in doing so
he broke his solemn marital vows. No-one
is criticising Mrs Currie for the same thing. No.
It is the messenger who has committed the cardinal sin, the sin of
revealing naughty behaviour. The
naughty behaviour itself is perfectly acceptable.
Chutzpah or what !
In his book The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defines chutzpah as being possessed of the ability, having murdered both your parents, to plead for mercy on the grounds that you are an orphan.
Catholic Church : A Source of Evil ? Professor
Richard Dawkins is a controversial professional atheist who has written several
books on themes of logic and atheism.
His atheism is more than just non-belief in God, it is an
aggressive anti-religionism of the sort that in earlier times resulted in
the destruction of churches and slaughter of priests, in for example,
Leninist Russia, republican Spain, Maoist China.
In
a recent interview
with Dubliner Magazine in Catholic Ireland, he asserted that the Catholic church is
“one
of the forces for evil in the world” and that it is a lesser sin for a priest to molest a child (an act
with a finite end) than to instil the child with Catholic beliefs (a
lifetime brainwashing). This
is truly an outrageous assertion and an unacceptable downgrading of
paedophilia as a crime. The
essence of the Catholic faith, as first articulated by Jesus Christ, is to
love your neighbour as yourself. How
anyone can view such a philosophy as a source of evil is beyond me, and if
all children could be “brainwashed” to follow it throughout their
lives the world would be a better place.
Of course there are many Catholics, clerics and lay alike, who do
not follow Christ’s teaching, but their evil behaviour does not make the
teaching evil. Just as the
9/11 bombers were not following the precepts of Islam, so paedophile
priests and nuns are not following the precepts of the Catholic Church. As I discussed in an earlier item entitled “Catholic
Church and Sexual Abuse”, paedophile clerics are, in
any case, only a tiny minority. But
then the Catholic Church itself often seems incapable of not shooting itself in
the foot from time to time, in a way that invites cynicism and ridicule.
According
to the Irish Times, a Monsignor Andrew Baker -
of the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops, no less - recently
made some extraordinary
statements regarding homosexuality, including these choice phrases -
In effect, the Vatican seems to be saying that homosexuality is a curable disease. Like leprosy. As a practicing Catholic, I am utterly shocked by this reprehensible
attitude and can imagine little that is more un-Christlike and therefore
un-Catholic than sentiments such as these in respect of people unlucky
enough to be born gay. Suppose the
word "black" or "disabled" were substituted for
"homosexual" ??? With people like the Monsignor to defend Catholicism, you have to have some sympathy with the likes of Professor Dawkins who see it is a source of evil.
Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, has been making money on the lecture circuit lately, promoting his book “The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature”. He propounds the preposterous theory -
As they grow
up, these differences grow or diminish depending on how they are raised.
Their personalities at adulthood are therefore a function of both
nature and nurture, not just nurture.
This has outraged many left wing liberals who believe
Professor Pinker’s findings seem to astonish everyone - except for anyone who has ever had any contact with growing children. What astonishes me is the contrasting readiness with which some people will accept that humans are born with genetically-dictated physical differences - such as skin colour, height, muscularity, disease susceptibility. No-one seems to deny that, in general,
Yet these same people will deny that there might be genetically-dictated differences that dwell in the head, such as differences in personality or mental ability.
I was astonished to learn that waiting and other staff in restaurants don't necessarily receive the tips that customers add to credit card slips when they use this method to pay their bills. Not only that, but a recent EU court case has ruled that the restaurant management may count such tips towards meeting their obligation to pay employees the statutory minimum wage. Apparently, the legal title to the tips rests with the restaurant because that is who the credit card slips are made out to. So before you add a tip to your credit card slip, ask whether the waiters will receive it. If not, give them cash.
I have sometimes been asked whether I make any money out of blogging. I don't. It's a labour of love. Fellow-blogger John Scalzi expresses it much better than I in this piece. Clay Shirky explains why -
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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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