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Rasmussen poll on President Barack Obama’s popularity. The date is on the charts.
(Click on them to get the latest version.)

Cameron as Clinton

I am filled with both admiration and disdain for David Cameron and his actions since becoming the UK's Conservative party prime minister, with the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg at his elbow. 

As the joke goes, the new coalition is Conservative with a little c. 

Admiration

Mr Cameron's pre-election campaigning and debating were remarkable for all his dodging, weaving and prevarication whenever questions about economic policy arose.  Never admitting that he would reduce any spending whatsoever (other than that old chestnut about eliminating waste), much less would he elaborate on what might specifically be cut or by how much.  It was always a waffly case of we will not shy away from making the hard decisions, whatever that might have meant. 

Of course his competitor parties said exactly the same kind of thing, but since Labour had been in power for the two years since the economic tsunami struck, it had no excuse for not having broached the “hard decisions” at all, only talked about broaching them.  At least you could think (dream?) that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were keeping their powder dry in order not to frighten the electorate. 

And so it proved, at least as regards the Conservatives.  Since taking office they have announced draconian across-the-board cuts in public expenditure of 40%, with however the National Health Service (probably entity that accounts of most waste of public money) remaining inexplicably exempt from the scalpel. 

The UK is mired in debt, and as any housewife will tell you, if you can't pay your bills you must cut your spending at least until you can increase your income.  Housewives know this, but it seem to be a mystery to many politicians who think the way out of debt is to borrow more and spend more (president Obama's favourite solution under the beguiling rubric “stimulus”). 

Ireland is mired in far worse debt per person than either the UK or America:

But Ireland's finance minister thinks a significant dent in its annual deficit of €20 billion can be achieved merely by trimming a delicate €3 billion from its annual budget (while not firing a single civil servant despite the decimation of economic activity). 

Full credit to Mr Cameron therefore.  And not only for his draconian cuts per se.  Because cuts of this magnitude (40%) will only be achieved by a radical reformation of the way the state is run.  You simply cannot cut 40% of costs from any activity without having to get rid of a lot of people and then doing whatever stuff you are able in a completely different and necessarily more efficient manner. 

This was Margaret Thatcher's great legacy in the 1980s when, much like Mr Cameron, she took over a country broken by Labour's left-wing madness and radically transformed it, largely through savagely cutting back on the size of the state and selling off state assets from council houses to corporations.  Under her watch, Britain turned from the Sick Man of Europe into one of its most vibrant. 

Let us wish Mr Cameron well in this very difficult and painful project.  Provided he and his cabinet do not flinch, he and they deserve our admiration. 

It is interesting, incidentally, to note that this week's Economist (14th August) seems to have adopted, for its cover story, a similar approbation to mine of Mr Cameron's radical domestic activity. 

Disdain

But Mr Cameron, please stay at home and concentrate on your gargantuan domestic economic project.  On matters foreign you have shown yourself, within your first few weeks in office, to be ignorant, foolish and, frankly, an embarrassment. 

Tony Blair was dubbed George Bush's poodle; this was unfair and not sought.  Mr Blair brought Britain into the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the basis of conviction, not poodling.  Moreover, far from being Mr Bush's lapdog, Mr Blair forced the Americans to spend a fruitless and ultimately destructive year trying to convince the French, the Russians and the rest of the UN to endorse the invasion of Iraq.  These parties already had too much invested, on both national and frequently also personal bases, in the continuing health, longevity and prosperity of Saddam Hussein ever to agree he should be toppled.  But that year of delay was long enough to turn huge swathes of global public opinion against an invasion and created a climate of hatred that has hardly abated.  Were Mr Blair a poodle, he would have gone along with Mr Bush's invasion immediately, and it would have happened in 2002 instead of 2003 with, I would wager, far less of an insurgency that that which actually ensued. 

Mr Cameron, on the other hand, went across the Atlantic precisely to advertise that he was Mr Obama's poodle. 

The New Bill Clinton

He reminds me of Bill Clinton as president.  Mr Clinton managed the domestic economy with great skill.  He presided over a 50% economic expansion (America's largest in history), brought unemployment down from 7½% to 4%, raised average wages by over 6½% in real terms, kept inflation below 2% and left behind a $4 trillion budget surplus.  One of his finest achievements was to place a five-year lifetime limit on Federal benefits which, though highly unpopular among the left, did more to encourage the unemployed back to work than any other single measure. 

But with only a few exceptions (eg peace in Northern Ireland), his foreign policy was dreadful.  The US trade deficit ballooned to $400 billion, he helped to collapse the international trade talks in Seattle in 1999, but above all he slept soundly through the rising tide of Islamism.  Attacks on American interests were met with at best a few token, desultory (mis-targeted) missiles, at worst with relative indifference.  For example -

These provocative attacks were largely regarded as mere criminal matters rather than acts of war by Islamists against American interests.  The CIA knew that Al Qaeda was responsible for at least two of them and had Osama bin Laden within its sights.  Yet, because Bill Clinton passed up several opportunities to capture him and would not authorise his assassination, he survived to perpetrate 9/11. 

Mr Clinton's disinterest in the Islamic threat that grew so alarmingly under his watch bred such a sense of security and invulnerability in the hearts of the Islamists, that they were finally emboldened to perpetrate the successful 9/11 outrage on those same Twin Towers bombed in 1993 and other targets. 

It took Mr Clinton 's reviled successor to recognise that America had a war on its hands. 

David Cameron gives the impression of being the new Bill Clinton. 

As competent as the former president in domestic affairs, he is however every bit as incapable as Mr Clinton was (and arguably Mr Obama is) insofar as confronting the global Islamic threat to the West is concerned, which is the pre-eminent international policy issue today.  However his ignorance of history is closer to Mr Obama's than Mr Clinton's. 

As much as possible, therefore, Mr Cameron should stick to his domestic agenda and, at least until he develops some knowledge, expertise and backbone, venture as little as possible into the foreign arena.  It is safer for all of us that he keep out than that he make matters worse. 

Meanwhile, long may he continue to make matters better at home. 

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Worse Than Oil on a Beach

President Obama and his administration kept telling us that BP's Macondo blowout was America's worst ever environmental disaster.  This was always a stupid claim. 

We all remember the president's first visit to the Gulf of Mexico in a vain search for an oil-blackened beach when this pristine strand was the best photo-opportunity he could come up with. 

It is clear that the president and many others are deeply disappointed that, with the well now capped, they can't find Macondo oil coming ashore, killing the wildlife, devastating the fishing industry.  In fact three-quarters seems to have just disappeared (evaporation, biodegradation etc), which is clearly infuriating.

No matter. 

Come back BP!  All is forgiven!  

You really can find worse things on the beach than a bit of black oil ...

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Islam's Affinity for Entropy

There are various definitions of “developed world”, but they all roughly boil down to the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, which have annual GDPs per person of between $20,000 (Portugal) and $50,000 (Singapore).

Is it not remarkable that not a single Islamic country is a member this exclusive club, and that they are nearly all mired in penury?  The exceptions are the super-wealthy states of the Gulf, but their riches virtually all derive from their sole dominant industry - the export of oil and gas using almost exclusively Western technology (augmented by tens of thousands of Western engineers).  If it wasn't for those fossil fuels, they would be as poor as Egypt (GDP $6,000 pp) or Indonesia ($4,000). 

Might there be a reason for universal Islamic poverty and might that reason be rooted in Islam itself?  After all it self-avowedly is supposed to dominate every aspect of a Muslim's life so it would be reasonable to theorise that Islam influences the outcome of Muslims' lives. 

I first heard of entropy when I was taught about it during my engineering studies many years ago.  Entropy has various formal definitions, most of which are unintelligible -

But there is a simpler way to understand entropy. 

Ever since the Big Bang, the universe, left to its own devices, has tended and continues to tend away from order and inexorably towards chaos.  This movement is said to represent an increase of entropy.  It is only by inputting energy that you can reverse the process, turning chaos into order such that entropy is reduced. 

Human development has been and remains entirely predicated on dragging down entropy - fighting nature to create order out of chaos.  Thus it is through human labour and thought that hunting and gathering - which is how wildlife still feeds itself - progressed to farming, to better diets, to longer lifetimes and hence to the opportunity to dream up further improvements in life.   There is no betterment in humankind's condition that was not brought about by human effort, and humans have also learnt how to augment this with external energy: 

Underlying all such development is that inexhaustible inexplicable resource capable of solving all problems: the liberated human mind.  What drives it is two things - the urge to stay alive and propagate, and once these are reasonably assured the desire to be personally free and content.  The US founding fathers were indeed prescient when they declared in 1776 that every person has an unalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. 

When one or more of these is denied, human progress slows or stops allowing entropy to rise.  Through history you can more or less correlate human development with the extent of realisation of these three simple concepts.  But America is the only country to have put them on a constitutional basis, which largely explains why its has outstripped all other societies past or present in its rate of innovation and development leading to the creation of wealth. 

Which brings us to Islam. Apart from its strictures on religious observance (praying, fasting, visiting Mecca etc), it is extraordinary that the Koran seems to have only one external focus: the irreversible conversion of the world to Islam, where necessary by coercion, which is the source of all Islamist violence.  Under Sharia, coercion comes in three forms: subjugated infidels must either (eg Koran, 9:5)

1. 1  convert to Islam “voluntarily”, or

2. 2  accept second-class status (“dhimmitude”) and pay “jizya” (infidels' tax), or

3. 3  be killed.   

Of course the prospect of option 3 provides a great incentive to “volunteer” for option 1.  But so does option 2; indeed many defeated countries (eg in once-Christian North Africa) did indeed convert to Islam “voluntarily”, but only slowly - sometimes over centuries - as Christians, Jews and others would gradually decide to give up on the burden of jizya and the other ritualised humiliations reserved for dhimmis. 

This Koranic focus is entirely destructive.  The Jihad that it spawns makes a virtue only out of defeating and subjugating enemies of Allah wherever they may be found and destroying their property - this comprises over 60% of the Koran.  Even within Islam, the principal emphasis is to ensure, via heavy often lethal penalties, that Muslims remain true to the demands of the faith.  Islam provides no place for creativity, only conformity and violence.  Even when it lives close to infidels and has dominance over them, the infidels' own creativity is to be staunched through the punitive jizya and restrictions on what business activities they are allowed to engage in.   

So there should be no wonder that there has been so little original development in the Islamic world other than a brief period in the 8th to 11th century, when unaccustomed freedom allowed Muslim scholarship to flower.  Even this, however, was largely a matter of absorbing existing Greek thought and outside technology rather than engaging in disinterested enquiry.  The latter is “haraam” (forbidden) because the source of all knowledge is of course the Koran.  This is why a thousand years ago the mullahs eventually clamped down on the whole idea of seeking the secrets of nature - a stiflement of scientific discovery that continues to this day. 

When the United Nations published its 2003 issue of the “Arab Human Development Report”, the world was stunned by its observations that

With every few exceptions (eg North Korea), it is only non-Islamic entities that proved themselves to be structurally capable of creating wealth.  Consider

When failures of these types of countries do occur, they can invariably be attributed to specific incompetencies or greed or criminality, rather than to the overriding bar to or neglect of constructive behaviour that is characteristic of Islam.  For all their inherent wickedness, even Mao and Stalin attempted, however misguidedly and irrationally, to develop their countries, to thereby reduce entropy.  

One can only speculate what the world would (will?) be like when Islam conquers all, because it will barely have the means to feed itself.  Islam's sanction on the discovery of knowledge makes it entirely parasitic, dependant on Western technology and the money of Westerners and others.  As any naturalist will tell you, a parasite without a host will quickly die out; yet it is Islam's intent to eliminate the very infidel nature which makes its host its host. 

With free thinking and free endeavour constrained if not haraam, Islam represents a belief system with an extraordinary affinity for entropy, inexorably pushing it up, driving the world towards chaos and away from order.  How strange that Allah would create infidels for construction in this world but destruction in the next, while demanding an all-Muslim world which would necessarily be doomed for destruction.

Maybe since He chose six billion years ago to launch the universe with a Big Bang followed by ever-increasing entropy, that's actually just the way He wants it.  In that case, it makes for an irrational Allah to have ever created Man, particularly infidel Man, the one obstacle to unfettered entropy. 

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Iceland Goal Celebration

I absolutely hate the infantile hugging and kissing and somersaults that footballers engage in when one of their number scores a goal.  I can never understand why the opposite side does not simply take its kick-off in the middle of the love-in and catch the enemy unawares.  Not cricket apparently.

However Iceland, so different in so many ways from the rest of Europe (is it even in Europe?), sometimes has a different more innovative approach to such celebrations.  Have a look at team Haldor Orri in the 2010 Iceland Football League.  It's only 35 seconds. 

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Issue 208’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 208

- - - - - F R A N C E - - - - -

Quote: “The war against criminality, the war against terrorism — it’s the terminology of American neo-conservatives and George Bush, and we know how little they succeeded.”

France's former prime minister Dominique de Villepin slags off his nemesis. 

The only problem is that Mr Bush's war in Iraq
has actually succeeded in not only overthrowing Saddam Hussein,
but in creating a kind-of democracy with a level of illegitimate killing
now far lower than in Saddam's time. 

The only difference is that under Saddam such killings
were perpetrated by the State;
nowadays it is done individuals and by non-State Islamist entities.

I hope it drives Mr de Villepin crazy to be proved so wrong.

- - - - - M I D D L E   E A S T - - - - -

Quote: “Security incidents across Iraq remain at the lowest level since the U.S. has kept records.”

General Ray Odierno, America's top commander in Iraq,
gives great news to President Obama.

Quote: “Who is the second one?”

Ehud Barak, Israel's Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister),
responding to the charge by Iran's illegitimate “president”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the US and Israel
“have decided to attack at least two countries in the region
in the next three months”. 

Iran meant Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. 

Mr Barak is making it pretty clear where Israel's primary threat comes from.

Quote: “Let me be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change ... Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” 

UK Prime Minister David Cameron,
fresh from telling the world that America entered the Second World War
as Britain's senior partner in 1940 (vs almost 1942),
now calls Gaza a prison camp
and it's all the fault of those damn Jews again. 

Firstly, if he wants Palestinians and Hamas let out, he should demand
that Egypt opens up the Rafah crossing to its fellow Arabs.

Second, he needs to visit Gaza to learn the wealth of the tiny enclave,
the only place in the world where the refugees drive Mercedes.

- - - - - R U S S I A - - - - -

Quote: “I met them [the twelve Russian spies expelled from America].  We talked about life. We sang, not karaoke, but to live music. We sang From What the Motherland Begins [a sentimental Soviet song from the 1968 film Sword and Shield, about a daring Russian agent who is sent to Germany during the second World War and infiltrates the SS]. 

I’m not joking, I am serious. And other songs with a similar content.”

Russian Czar prime minister Vladimir Putin
welcomes back to the Motherland the twelve spies,
including the glamorous Anna Chapman,
who had been swapped by America
in return for four spies expelled from Russia. 

“Let me be clear. It wasn’t my idea to send [Anna] back”,
jokes vice president Joe Biden

- - - - - U K - - - - -

Quote: “British National Party [supporters] should be treated as less than human.”

Trevor Phillips, chairman of Britain's Commission of Equality and Human Rights, declares (at a Union meeting back in 2007) his view of
the human rights of humans,
of whose views he happens to disapprove. 

I guess this makes it OK with Mr Phillips to slaughter BNP members
as if they were “less than human” pests or farm animals.

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

Quote:  “This ‘I’m alright Jill’ attitude shows a sad lack of solidarity with other women.”

Susan McKay. chief executive of
Ireland's National Women’s Council
howls with outrage when most female parliamentarians (TDs)
fail to support her demand for quotas
to ensure greater female participation. 

Ms McKay evidently thinks the sisters are just too dumb
to make it to parliament on their own merits. 
Those existing TDs who aren't beg to differ. 

Quotas demean not only those selected
by telling everyone they don't possess the necessary abilities,
but also cast doubt on the competence of women who do.

- - - - - W A R M - M O N G E R I N G - - - - -

Quote: “The arctic ice is disappearing faster than was predicted. And instead of waiting until 2030 or whenever it was to have an ice-free Arctic, we’re going to have one in five or 10 years.”

With prophet Al Gore in disgrace over divorce and sexual shenanigans,
fellow-failed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry picks up
the global warm-mongering cudgel. 

Whereas, inconveniently, the Arctic has been re-freezing again
since a low in 2007, as the chart shows,
Senator Kerry declares that the Arctic is in fact still melting,
and catastrophically so,

That is just so Al Gore!

Sources: National Snow and Ice Data Center (Colorado)
and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

ISSUE #207 - July 2010 [467+1122=1589]

Climate Change: Lecture + Rebuttal + Refutation = Lawsuit? - 24th July 2010

Lecture

Last January, I stumbled upon a 1½ lecture the previous October in St Paul Minnesota by Lord Christopher Monckton, which tears to shreds the current convention/cult that the world is warming as never before and that it is all the fault of us humans and our penchant for burning fossil fuels.  I referenced it in my blog in a post entitled “More Climate Faeces”, and conveniently provided the Youtube video, where you can still find it.  In addition, you can download a 7.5 Mb PDF of his 86 slides here.

He gave a shorter but not dissimilar lecture in Australia in February, to loud applause. 

Interestingly, last May the prestigious Oxford Union hosted a debate, with Lord Monckton as one of the speakers, which roundly rejected, by 135 votes to 110, the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis.  Opinion is certainly turning. 

There have been some fascinating developments as a result of the October 2009 lecture, which are likely to lead to a media explosion that will largely demolish whatever faith is left in the climate changeology cult.  It is already limping badly after the Climategate e-mails of November followed by the disastrous Nopenahagen Climate Change Conference in December.

Three events have occurred.

The outcome of this affair is not going to be pretty for the University of St Thomas or for the climate changeology movement generally. 

Along with no doubt hundreds of others, I wrote to Father Dennis Dease who is president of this Catholic university, and said the following.

I do not expect a reply.  Nor does even a proper investigation appear likely. 

= Lawsuit

However, having now received the Lord's lengthy refutation letter and implicitly acknowledged, by virtue of the revised rebuttal, that he is at least partially correct, the University can no longer claim the justification of honest mistake.  This can only mean even greater retribution when Nemesis eventually descends, as it undoubtedly will, most probably as a lawsuit.  Or maybe two, with each side suing the other for defamation and libel (though I imagine no betting shop will give odds that the University will win either of them).

Meantime, as mentioned, I expect this issue will go as viral as did the infamous Climategate e-mails, with consequences that seriously compound the existing damage to the cult.   

At least I hope so. 

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Political Guide to Ireland - 19th July 2010

Ireland is an island to the west of Britain but Northern Ireland is just off the mainland - not the Irish mainland, the British mainland.

The capital of Ireland is Dublin. It has a population of a million people, all of whom will be shopping in Newry this afternoon. They travel to Newry because it is in the North, where Sterling prices are lower because of Gordon's devaluations.  The North is not part of Ireland or the €urozone, but shoppers from the South still pay in €uros.

Under the Irish constitution, the North used to be in Ireland, but a successful 30-year campaign of violence for Irish unity ensured that it is now definitely in the UK. Had the campaign lasted longer the North might now be in France.

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. It has a population of half a million, half of whom have houses in Donegal.

Donegal, in the west of Ireland, is in the north but not in the North. It is in the South. No, not the south, the South.  All agree it is not in the east. 

There are two parliaments in Ireland.

Their respective jurisdictions are defined by the border, an imaginary line on the map to show fuel launderers where to dump chemical waste.

Protestants are in favour of the border, which generates millions of pounds and €uros in smuggling for Catholics, who are opposed to it.

Travel between the two states is complicated because Ireland is the only country in the world with two M1 motorways. The one in the North goes west to avoid the south and the one in the South goes north to minimise the price of drink.

We have two types of democracy in Ireland.

Ireland has three economies - northern, southern and black. Only the black economy is in the black. The other two are in the red.

All versions of the IRA claim to be the real IRA but only one of them is the Real IRA. The North's biggest industry is the production of IRAs. Consequently, we now have (at latest count) the Provisional, Continuity and Real IRA. The Real IRA is by far the most popular among young graffiti writers because it is the easiest to spell.

Hat tip: Dave Parker in Spain

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Soccer Needs Major Overhaul

The world cup snoozeroo is over; it is another four years before we will again have to get worked up (or fall asleep) over the next one, in Brazil. 

If ever there was a case for a complete review and overhaul of how soccer games are managed, surely the South Africa event had made it.  It is bad enough that so few goals are scored: I calculated that in 2006 there were 40 minutes between each World Cup goal, and I doubt if 2010 was much different.  It is why it cannot catch on in America, yet this is a problem quickly solved simply by widening the goal mouth. 

But the on-field management of the game is an ongoing train-wreck which continues to drive spectators and TV viewers (OK, me) crazy.  There are a number of serious structural problems, which can nevertheless be remedied easily, cheaply and rapidly, if only there were the will to do so.

Consider the injustice of:

Wrongly Allowed Goals
The handball of Thierry Henri last November where he patted the ball over to William Gallas to score the goal that secured France's qualification for South Africa at the expense of Ireland.

Though the referee didn't spot the handball, nor did the linesmen, the TV footage clearly showed it. So Mr Henri and his Fr(h)enchmen were through and the Irish were out.

Wrongly Disallowed Goals
The equalising goal that was clearly scored by England's Frank Lampard in the 39th minute in its knockout match against Germany yet inexplicably disallowed by the referee. 

The English went on to lose 4-1 and get kicked out of the tournament, but who knows how a draw at that crucial moment might have changed the game dynamics?

Cheating Rewarded
The handball save by Uruguay's Luis Suárez of a sure winning goal by Ghana at the end of extra time was spotted by the referee who punished it with a red card for Suárez and a penalty for Ghana. 

Unfortunately, though, Ghana missed the penalty, went on to lose the subsequent penalty shoot-out and so went home dispossessed and early.  Yet Uruguay's profit from its blatant - and observed - cheating was entirely within the rules of soccer.  No wonder Suárez was booed every time he touched the ball in the semi-final which, to general relief, Uruguay went on to lose against the Netherlands. 

Diving
Diving - or pretending you have been knocked over by an opponent in the hope of securing a free kick or penalty - has long been one of the disgraceful features of soccer, and South Africa was no exception. 

Apart from its obvious unsportsmanship, it is distinctly unmanly to roll around weeping on the floor feigning injury when there is none.  Soccer is supposed to be a game for men not schoolgirls. 

Italy's Daniele De Rossi, who crumbled to the ground in seeming agony after the slightest shirt-tug from New Zealand's Tommy Smith, was rewarded with a penalty.  This evened the score and avoided an embarrassing defeat of the 2006 world champions by a soccer minnow like New Zealand (a bit different from NZ rugby!). 

As some kind of divine justice, however, Italy never made it to the knock-out stages anyway.  Neither did New Zealand - largely due to that penalty - but unlike Italy it was one of only nine teams which didn't lose a single game, despite being ranked 78th in the world.  So while the reigning world champions left South Africa in disgrace, NZ did so with head held high.   

There were countless similar incidents of diving, many of which the referee also rewarded, though he also often ignored them. 

But diving per se is never actually punished, either during the game or after it.  So you have nothing to lose (other than your manliness and self-respect). 

Missed Fouls
Then there are the fouls which the referee fails to spot.  He is human and the players are clever, so you cannot lay the blame on him providing he's doing his best.   

In the World Cup final, the referee issued a record-breaking 14 yellow cards for various fouls, nine against the Netherlands.  Yet only one player, Dutchman Johnny Heitinga, was sent off.  With its resultant one-man advantage, Spain eventually scored the match's winning only goal in the dying moments of extra time to secure the revered trophy for the first time.

It was a bad-tempered game with fouls aplenty, especially by the Dutch, yet despite the yellow-card count, several more were missed by the ref but broadcast on TV. 

But if the referee doesn't spot your foul, you've got away scot-free. 

Feeble Yellow Card
Soccer's yellow card is a pathetic sanction, as we saw in the Netherlands/Spain final.  The offender plays blithely on and suffers no real punishment (eg a sending-off) unless he is foolish enough to collect a second one (as Mr Heitinger did).  So it is a very feeble deterrent to foul play. 

Conversely, the red card is such a harsh punishment that it is rarely issued. 

What is absent is a meaningful “medium-level” disciplinary measure that would inflict sufficient pain to constrain bad behaviour at an early stage, but without ruining the game. 

Barracking the Referee
Finally, there is the constant arguing of players with the referee. 

Often he is clearly intimidated, to the extent of being driven back by a crowd of angry young men shouting and waving their arms because they happen to disagree with his decision.  (The photo shows Manchester United doing the barracking.)

The ref appears to be powerless to deal with this kind of behaviour, and therefore gets more of it. 

In big games it's probably partly because the players are much better paid, more famous and more influential than he is, he doesn't want to blot his copybook for the future and, disgracefully, he cannot count on FIFA's unequivocal support. 

Remedies
So what are the remedies? 

Pretty simple, really.  Learn from other games.

àCopy tennis or cricket:

Introduce goal-line technology. 

If Wimbledon's hawk-eye system is deemed too slow, there is another promising German system known as Cairos GLT (= “goal line technology”). This involves burying wiring in the goal area and putting a chip in the football which sends an instant goal-no-goal signal via computer to the referee's wristwatch.  It apparently costs just £7,000 per stadium. 

No doubt other technology systems are available.

àOn discipline, copy rugby:

These simple and above all proven measures would hugely enhance soccer as a worthy game. 

Soccer badly needs to enter the real world.

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Macondo Commentary - More Ignorance - 10th July 2010

I was asked by a colleague to provide some brief feedback on three posts about BP's Macondo blowout and oil spill.  They are written by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, with titles suitably mordant in line with the PCI's own name. 

Mr Heinberg, is a prolific American author of eight books and numerous treatises, as well as a public speaker, all on the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, that peak oil is imminent and that we are all pretty much doomed.   Interestingly, although he gives the impression of being an academic, he doesn't seem to have graduated with any kind of third-level degree from anywhere, his main qualification being that he is a “Senior Fellow-in-Residence” at the Post Carbon Institute.  The PCI is a small-ish think-tank (eight staff) in California established in 2003, which seems to be committed to promoting the man-made global-warming agenda. 

Answering the fundamental query whether the “climate crisis” is real or overblown, it devotes just 160 words ending with an exasperated “End of story”.  Like any zealous religious cult, the PCI clearly has little patience with asinine questions. 

But, unqualified for anything as he appears to be, Mr Heinberg has penned no fewer than 4,237 words in the above three posts, and I have read every turgid one of them (so you don't have to).  Judging from this selfless exercise, I would conclude that PCI Senior Fellowshipness relies not on the content was what is written but on volume, a carelessness towards facts, a rather incurious approach to science and engineering, and a generally flatulent writing style.

For example, Mr Heinberg postulates (without any data) that the casing within the Macondo well might be breached, with reservoir pressure causing the whole well to collapse into a crater.  This is ridiculous science.  With a clear path for the reservoir pressure to escape up the wellbore driving gas and oil into the sea, there can be no differential forces at reservoir level to cause such a crater. 

He happily parrots consultant Matt Simon who says without a shred of evidence that it could take 24 years to kill Macondo (my maximum estimate would be one year). 

Mr Simon is the author of “Twilight in the Desert” which makes a case that Saudi Arabian oil production has peaked.  In fact, as I wrote four years ago, Mr Simon seems completely unaware of Saudi's huge scope to squeeze much more oil out of its existing fields and to discover more fields.  It simply has to apply the latest technology and accept robust returns on investment rather than the ridiculously outlandish levels to which those spoiled princes have become accustomed.   Mr Simons' analysis and prognostications can be too shallow and should not be accepted at face value. 

Actually, Mr Heinberg is only too willing to anyone who will enhance his doomsday storyline, without a thought for the quality of his source. 

He also repeats multiple errors, for example,

He writes a long, meandering, meaningless essay about the need for “courage”.  He seems to mean that Governments should do stuff (green stuff of course) even when they're electorate don't want it, which is normally the prerogative of totalitarian regimes. 

But I can't go on any further; it's all just too boring - but you get the idea. 

Not a word that Mr Heinberg writes should be taken seriously.  From a position of considerable ignorance, he is spoofing from start to finish, sprinkling the occasional fact here and there like some kind of stardust. 

I wouldn't suggest you not bother clicking on the three links at the start of this post. 

Footnote (11th July): I submitted a brief comment at the end of each of the three  Richard Heinberg posts, each stating that my own observations could be viewed on the Tallrite Blog and providing a link to this post. 

Despite 54 other comments appearing, mine have been blocked.  I wonder why. 

Actually I don't.  It is normal behaviour for religious cults to excise all signs of heresy. 

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The idea of building a giant mosque just a few yards from Ground Zero in New York is beyond parody. But it's apparently going ahead (unless Americans can screw up the courage to stop it). 

It seems that many Americans think that objecting to such a mosque is somehow, well, nasty to Muslims, without regard to whether such a mosque might itself be somehow, well, nasty to non-Muslims, especially those connected with the viciously murdered 2,976 innocents on that terrible day in September 2001.

Yet this is the same country that built, as a memorial to the heroes of United Airlines flight 93, where the passengers attacked and overcame the Jihadist hijackers thereby aborting the mission, albeit at the cost of the lives of everyone aboard, a “Crescent of Embrace”. 

One can hardly conceive of a more insulting or tasteless tribute to those 36 upstanding citizens who were violently slaughtered by an Islamic “Crescent of Embrace”.   

This one-minute video, titled “The Audacity of Jihad”, sets out the case against the Ground Zero mosque.

There are, however, even moves afoot to suppress it.

Late Note (27th July 2010)
Englishman Pat Condell articulates what Americans themselves should be saying. 

The mosque is to be called “Cordoba House”, a choice of name which
could hardly be more provocative to Christians and triumphant for Muslims. 

As Raymond Ibrahim, a Christian Arab scholar of Islam recalls,
the Christian city of Cordoba in Spain “was conquered by Muslims around 711,
its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba
— the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque —
was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church”.

The symbolism is unmistakeable. 

These are extraordinary times. 

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Ignorance Rules Reactions to Macondo Blowout

This post underlies an article published in the Irish Times on 2nd July 2010

Undoubtedly, the uncontrolled blowout of oil and gas from the 5,500 metre deep Macondo well while being drilled by BP in 1,522 metres of water is amongst the worst disasters to have resulted in the history of the hydrocarbon exploration and production industry.  Only the most dedicated and skilful of human ingenuity and engineering grunt, without regard to cost, will bring it back under control and make it permanently safe. 

But, despite what “expert” after “expert”, up to and including the White House energy adviser (and top environmental adviser) Carol Browner and her boss have told us, it is certainly not the worst such catastrophe, at least not yet.  Eleven men were killed, which is an untold and never-ending tragedy for each of their families.  But, for example, when in 1988 the North Sea's Piper Alpha platform, operated by  America's Occidental Petroleum exploded (twice) and was destroyed, the appalling death toll was 167. 

We are similarly misinformed that Macondo represents America's worst environmental disaster, worse even than the Exxon Valdez in 1989.  Firstly, though we know the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels of heavy viscous crude because that was its capacity, no-one knows the Macondo flow rate because there is no way to measure it.  Every single figure being bandied about, from 2,000 bbl/day to 80,000 or more is based on nothing other than humans eyeballing the flow as depicted by underwater TV cameras; there is no science involved whatsoever other than measuring the oil that is recovered. 

In any case what is relevant is the environmental damage being done.  The Valdez ran aground and spewed its treacly load just four kilometres from Bligh Island and fifteen from the Alaskan mainland, so all the wild life and beaches were instantly devastated. By contrast, Macondo is 80 kilometres offshore and its crude is lighter and more volatile, so that much of it is simply evaporating in the balmy Gulf of Mexico weather, being biodegraded by wave action and spreading out thinly as it makes its leisurely way towards land or further out to sea.  That is, the oil that has escaped BP's clever ruse of applying dispersant at the seabed.  On top of that BP has contracted an armada, largely from local fishing communities, of 1,400 vessels and 20,000 people to boom and skim and scoop the oil to keep it from the coastline.  Consequently, our TV screens are not depicting mile upon mile of blackened beaches and tens of thousands of oil-covered birds and animals that were such a shocking feature of the Valdez calamity, nor indeed docks brimming with idle fishing boats. 

As for the total amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, Macondo is a long way from the record of 1979's Ixtoc blowout in just fifty metres of water in the Bay of Campeche.  It leaked 3.3 million barrels over a nine-month period before finally being capped, having  despoiled nearly 3,000 square kilometres over 260 kilometres of mainly Texas coastline, and killed up to 80% of marine life. 

It is instructive, however, that thanks to rigorous clean-up and nature´s own recovery mechanisms neither the Valdez nor Ixtoc caused lasting damage to the environment.  Likewise, we can be sure BP is big and rich enough to fulfil its promise to make good all its mess, eventually. 

Just as public figures have failed to put perspective on the Macondo blowout, they have displayed similar ignorance concerning the extraordinary technological efforts BP has been applying in reducing the flow until such time as the two relief wells reach their target.

BP has been working with up to 20 surface ships in close proximity, each held in position by satellite-centred dynamic positioning, most trailing some kind of piping or electric cabling to control a device at seabottom, ensuring activities are co-ordinated and nothing gets tangled.  In the cold, pressurised, lightless, hostile environment 1,522 metres underwater, BP has been using some fourteen unmanned submarines to conduct a series of intricate manoeuvres such as shoving, tugging, manipulating, cutting, grinding, positioning, connecting, observing.  But because few understand the engineering that is going on and it cannot be seen, interest in this astounding activity is scant.  So the ignorant assumption is that it is all a bit amateurish with silly names like topkill and BOP.  But BP has been systematically applying one imaginative potential solution after another, each one carefully thought through with failures and back-ups accounted for in their plans.  No organization could be tackling this massive challenge more professionally than BP and every attempt to distract it reduces its chances of success. 

Nevertheless, BP's highly professional (if unrecognized as such) approach to the problem it has created does stand in stark contrast to the events leading up to it, which indeed are highly questionable.   A lot of evidence suggest disgraceful, last-minute, cost-reducing short cuts at the expense of best practice and proper planning. 

A couple of weeks ago, the day after the US Administration subjected Tony Haywood and BP to a $20 billion “shakedown” (Congressman Joe Barton's word), Mr Haywood appeared before a Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce to be grilled on primetime TV, ostensibly about these events.

Some days earlier it had sent him a fourteen page letter detailing five technical areas where BP had arguably cut corners to save time and thus money on this million-dollars-a-day well. It was superbly crafted, meticulous in its technical detail, leaving very little wriggle-room for Mr Haywood. Yet when it came to the hearing, the search for the truth of what caused the blowout was overwhelmed by the Congressmen's and Congresswomen's overweening desire to demonstrate their toughness.  In  opening statements lasting over an hour, they one by one expressed their horror, fury and disdain in what felt like a public lynching, yet not the slightest modicum of curiosity.  

Once the real questioning began, the aggressive tone continued, yet the questions singularly failed to delve into the acute technical issues so adeptly exposed in the letter.  In turn this allowed Mr Haywood to repeat his mantra that BP was still investigating, he wasn't a technical expert, action would be taken and other evasions.  It was patently clear that the interrogators themselves had not bothered to swot up their subject – or even studied their own letter - and were therefore cautious not to dig too deeply. 

For example, it was pointless to ask Mr Haywood if, were he on the rig, he would have cancelled the “CBL” (cement bond log, an expensive technique for estimating how effectively pipe has been cemented in place).  This simply allowed him to slide away by saying cementing was not his area of expertise.  It would have been far more incisive to demand a straight answer to the question implicit in the letter – why did BP cancel the CBL?  But a coherent response risked the terrifying prospect of exposing the Congressional interrogators' ignorance, so it was safer to emote and grandstand. 

This kind of ignorance meant that the Congressional enquiry, for all its cost and distraction, yielded not a single additional piece of useful information beyond what was in its letter. 

You would think that not just for BP, but for the US Administration and the general public, the most important issue right now is to kill that damn well, make it permanently safe and clean up any damage, and that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of this and every assistance afforded.

Yet the US administration seems to apportion greater priority not to winning this gargantuan battle against nature but to launching enquiries, belligerent “kick ass” blather, criminal investigations.  This is the behaviour of ignorance. 

Once Macondo is solved – and it will be – there will be plenty of years and decades for anger, recrimination, retribution, lawsuits, enquiries, investigations, compensation, fines, prison sentences, sanctions or whatever, and to do it properly.  The future is a long time. 

Meantime, ignorance seems to hold sway.

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Economic Truisms

I love these four econojic truisms that author Gary de Mar recently penned:

These are not concepts that find a ready ear among the left.  But you can be sure that Ronald Reagan and his soulmate Margaret Thatcher would have enjoyed and endorsed them. 

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Issue 207’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 207

Quote: “You have no f**king soul ... And my soul is screaming because you don’t have one to join mine. You have no f**king soul. You can’t give a f**k. I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground. You and I have none, zero. You won’t even f**king try.”

Mel Gibson, divorced, fervid Catholic, Jew-hating
Oscar-winning movie star and director,
displays his sensitive side, as he
engages in a spiritual discussion about souls with his mistress,
the classical musician Oksana Grigorieva. 

Quote [not online]: “She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.”

Ginger Meggs, Australian cartoon character

Hat-tip: Graham in Perth (Oz)

Quote: “Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naive.” [added July 16th]

Billboard by the North Iowa Tea Party. 

They were later prevailed upon (I wonder buy whom?) to remove it
as “the pictures overwhelmed the intended message of anti-socialism”.
Apparently. 

Quote: “Dutch researcher Sara Kinsbergen caused some amusement when she categorised the different types of non-governmental organisations flooding the developing world into

Columnist Sarah Carey, commenting on a recent conference
organised by Dóchas, Ireland's umbrella organisation for NGOs.

There's a whole new vocabulary we need to learn.

Quote: “I do leave my religion behind me and I genuinely mean that. While we all have our beliefs and our own religions, I don’t think it should cloud our judgment.” [Added July 12th]

The clownish Dermot Ahern,
Ireland's one-time Foreign Minister currently Justice Minister,
doesn't want his judgement clouded by, well, judgement.

He has just forced through a Civil Partnership bill
which for no return to the State
grants the financial benefits of marriage to gay and unmarried partners
- provided they are sex-oriented.
(No room for cohabiting maiden aunts.)

Either Mr Ahern believes in his Roman Catholic religion,
in which case he is deeply sinful for wilfully abandoning its moral teachings
when he goes to work;

or he doesn't, in which case he is a disgraceful hypocrite
every time he walks into a church. 

Either way he is a man without a true moral compass. 

He really should have stuck to his canoeing,
and without a compass of any kind so he could stay missing longer. 

Quote: “We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place [in the event of use of the military option] at the expense of the security of the UAE.”   [Added July 7th]

Yousef al-Otaiba, United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States,
in unusually blunt remarks, endorses an attack on
Iran's nuclear facilities to disable its bomb-making programme.

John Bolton, America's pugnacious ambassador to the UN under George W Bush
reckons Mr al-Otaiba echoes the misgivings of many Arab countries.

Since we know President Obama won't upset his Iranian dictator friends,
it seems only Israel can make the Arab world safe. 
Ironic, isn't it?

Quote: “I am convinced that his honour would have ruled differently had he been sitting in the Sderot youth cultural centre, rather than on Brighton's sunny shores.”

Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UK, makes a caustic observation when Judge George Bathurst-Norman tells a jury in Brighton that life for Gazans is “hell on earth”. 

As a result, vandals who wilfully caused £180,000-worth of damage
to a factory fulfilling an arms contract for Israel, walked free.

Update (3rd July)
Melanie Philips reveals that the judge,
who it turns out was born in the Arab town of Jaffa (opposite Tel Aviv),
has form in going easy on anti-Semites those who oppose Israel

ISSUE #206 - June 2010 [506+826=1331]

Attitudes Towards Gaza “Humanitarian” “Aid” Flotilla - 13 June 2010

Millions of words have been written across the world about the recent flotilla which set sail to deliver “humanitarian” “aid” to the people of Gaza, so my addition here will be brief. 

Those two words in the heading have been put between ears for four reasons. 

Mark Humphrys has put out a great summary of the whole flotilla saga. 

I have restricted myself to a little analysis of the letters pages of just one Irish newspaper, the Irish Times, which has hosted a lively discussion on the subject.  I simply totted up the score of anti-Israel and pro-Israel letters over the period Tuesday 1st June 2010 to Saturday 12th.  Here's the result. 

There was a total of 79 such letters, of which 70% roundly castigated Israel, 24% expressed support or understanding for Israel's dilemma, while 6% were neutral. 

It is my guess that, sadly, this three-to-one ratio probably mirrors

These could of course be false or distorted conclusions because the Antis are undoubtedly more vocal than the Pros, in Ireland as in the rest of the world. 

But as far as Irish politicians are concerned it is distorted in the other direction.  Of 226 parliamentarians, only one, Alan Shatter, consistently speaks up for Israel.  He is also the sole Jew.  The others, from ministers down, thoroughly enjoy denouncing the Jewish state. 

Update 14th June:
I stand corrected. Fine Gael TD Seymour Crawford is a second Irish politician
prepared to speak openly in support of Israel.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer recently made a very depressing observation

Sadly, if reaction to the flotilla is anything to go by, this has the ring of truth. 

By now millions of people have viewed the pro-Israel video, “We Con the world”, Caroline Glick's witty parody of the wonderful 1985 charity song “We Are the world”, copyrighted by Warner/Chappell Music.

It has proved so popular that Youtube have unilaterally taken it down, supposedly for copyright reasons, even though under the US Copyright Office's own Fair Use Doctrine “use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied” is specifically exempted from copyright protection.

You can find over 300 other parodies of “We are the world” but only the pro-Israel one has been taken down. 

Make up your own mind how anti-Semitic this piece of censorship is. 

Meanwhile since Youtube, owned by Google, don't want you to see the pro-Israel parody, here it is, thanks to ShareCrazy.com and Eyeblast.tv. 

Enjoy.   Especially the key couplet (despite dreadful rhyme)

We'll make the world abandon reason ...
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas is Momma Theresa. 

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Fisked - The Economists' Appalling Anti-Israel Cover Story - 10th June 2010

I am an avid Economist subscriber, have been for decades.  But I have just read, albeit a little late, the latest cover story of the 3rd June edition, and find its anti-Israel tone and so-called remedies appalling.  In effect it seems to be advocating, at best, the capitulation of Israel to the foes that surround it. 

Here is the article, which I have Fisked.  My comments in indented red italics.  See if you agree with me. 

Israel and the world

Israel's siege mentality

The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker

Jun 3rd 2010

THE lethal mishandling of Israel’s attack on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza was bound to provoke outrage—and rightly so.

Rightly so?  That is your (prejudiced) judgement.  Wrongly so would be more objective.

The circumstances of the raid are murky and may well remain that way despite an inquiry (see article). But the impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily.

Too readily?  You seem to endorse this view.  Yet the violence was begun by the jihadis on the Marmara who beat each Israeli soldier on roughly a four-to-one basis, with sticks and perhaps knives, as they rapelled singly down from their helicopter.  Is there no stage at which it is considered legitimate for the Israeli soldiers to defend themselves?

More worryingly for Israel, the episode is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation.

It is the attacks of neighbours and the world generally which is isolating Israel.  It would be no less isolated were it not to defend itself as you seem to advocate.

Once admired as a plucky David facing down an array of Arab Goliaths

which it is still doing,

Israel is now seen as the clumsy bully on the block.

Clumsy perhaps, but it is weird to call the bully the smallest guy in the neighbourhood, outnumbered as Israel is

Israel’s desire to stop the flotilla reaching Gaza was understandable, given its determination to maintain the blockade. Yet the Israelis also had a responsibility to conduct the operation safely.

And safely is exactly how the Israelis conducted their interception on all boats but the Marmara where they were attacked by jihadis.   “Safely” cannot mean that the Israeli soldiers should submit to their own lynching. 

The campaigners knew that either way they would win. If they had got through, it would have been a triumphant breaching of the blockade. If forcibly stopped, with their cargo of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, they would be portrayed as victims—even if some, as the Israelis contend,

and the video and still photographs demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt

brought clubs, knives and poles. As it was, disastrous planning by Israel’s soldiers led to a needless loss of life.

Agreed.  Had the Israelis been prepared for battle rather than crowd-control, there would probably have been fewer casualties but just as great an outcry.

For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions—about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged. 

Surrounded by hostile Islamic states bent on the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jews, Israel is indeed besieged, and not “strangely”.

Losing friends, strengthening Hamas

The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed.

Not very cruel – the Gazans can get everything they need, food, water, fuel, medicines, and even luxury restaurants and hotels.  And not a failure, because Hamas has been unable to import weapons of the efficacy and in the quantities that they desire. 

The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission.

Hard to be starved when you’re not short of food. 

Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed.

Both true. 

Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.

But not the heavy artillery they want and Iran and Syria want to supply.  Nevertheless, to stop the other stuff, Egypt is building a steel subterranean wall to put a stop to the tunnelling.  (Notice how no-one criticises the Egyptian blockade of Gaza?)

Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator.

It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants. 

Agree. Startling how much of the world draws such a conclusion. 

Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews,

Ah yes, Stalin’s “useful idiots”!

are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s.

Israel is the Middle East’s only mature democracy.  That is why it is constantly changing government from accommodationist  to hawkish and back again (no fewer than eight such “regime changes” since 1983), always trying to find different avenues towards making  peace with Palestinians who don’t want it.  When Netanyahu’s current “hawkish” approach fails no doubt Israel’s electorate will once again change tack in its never-ending search. 

A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans.

Partly a result of the Democrats’ love-affair with Mr Obama and his twenty years of Jew-hating indoctrination in the Rev Jeremiah Wright’s church. 

Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset. 

I doubt the head of Mossad was making a case for surrender, just a sad observation.

That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America’s cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal.

I wonder how you know what Mr Obama’s “motivation” is?  The only people needing prodding to make “a fair deal” are  the Palestinians to make peace, of which the outlines have long been on the table (eg Bill Clinton, 2000). 

He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal.

Rightly?  That’s your judgement.  The real – and only – blockage to peace is the Palestinians’ own steadfast refusal to recognize the right to exist of Israel and its Jews, without which no peace agreement will ever be possible. 

Mr Obama’s greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good — including Israel’s.

This is a bland statement unencumbered by foundation.  Its underlying premise is Jewish surrender. 

Harmony is not just a dream

Israel is caught in a vicious circle. The more its hawks think the outside world will always hate it, the more it tends to shoot opponents first

when they attack it (eg the Marmara)

and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies. Though Mr Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to freeze settlement-building and is negotiating indirectly with Palestinians, he does not give the impression of being willing to give ground in the interests of peace. 

He has publicly stated his willingness to make a two-state agreement and the necessary conditions.  As usual, neither Palestinians nor the wider Arab and Muslim world have shown the slightest interest in following this up.  Destruction of Israel is clearly still more important for them than peace. 

Yet the prospect of a deal between Palestinians and Israelis still beckons. The contours of a two-state solution remain crystal-clear: an adjusted border, with Israel keeping some of the biggest settlements while Palestine gets equal swaps of land; Jerusalem shared as a capital, with special provisions for the holy places; and an admission by Palestinians that they cannot return to their old homes in what became Israel in 1948, with some theoretical right of return acknowledged by Israel and a small number of refugees let back without threatening the demographic preponderance of Jewish Israelis.

This is largely what Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat in 2000 under the auspices of Bill Clinton.  Arafat’s response was to say no, to make no counter-offer and to return to the West Bank and start the Second Intifada.  Your paragraph should be directed to the Palestinians not to the Israelis, who more or less already agree with it. 

And what about Hamas, if Israel is to lift the siege of Gaza? How should Israel handle an authoritarian movement that refuses to recognise it and has in the past readily used terror? One answer is to ask the UN to oversee the flow of goods and people going in and out of Gaza. That is hardly a cure-all,

An understatement.  The UN has become so rabidly anti-Jew, led by such toxic sub-bodies as the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the UN Human Rights Council, that it can never be relied on to police the flow of weapons into Gaza and bombers and fighters out of it.  This would be tantamount to an Israeli capitulation. 

but Hamas would become the world’s problem neighbour, not just Israel’s.

And who cares?  Just look, for example, at the Hamas (and Hezbullah) flags and symbols in anti-Israel rallies across Europe, as well as the “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla.  And when even Gays and Lesbians align themselves with the homosexual-executing fascists of Hamas – as they do – it is clear that few are worried about Hamas so long as Jews are their target. 

The Arab world must do more, pressing Hamas to disavow violence, publicly pledge not to resume the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and revoke its anti-Semitic charter.

Yes

The West, led by Mr Obama, should call for Hamas to be drawn into negotiations, both with its rival Palestinians on the West Bank as well as with Israel, even if it does not immediately recognise the Jewish state.

And what, exactly, will the Jewish state talk about when Hamas’s primary objective remains its obliteration?  The IRA is sometimes used as an example of negotiating with terrorists.  But this happened only when the IRA had been militarily defeated and was at a standstill.  Hamas are a long way from that happy condition. 

It is still the party the Palestinians elected in 2006 to represent all of them. None of this will be easy. But the present stalemate is bloodily leading nowhere. 

Your “solution” would accelerate the disappearance of Israel and its people. 

Israel is a regional hub of science, business and culture. Despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians

behaviour has consequences

in the land it occupies, it remains a vibrant democracy. But its loneliness, partly self-inflicted, is making it a worse place, not just for the Palestinians but also for its own people. If only it can replenish its stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late.

Why do you persist in placing the whole onus on Israel?  Why not call for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims to “replenish their stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late”?  They are the only ones determined to continue with war. 

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BP's Brilliant Management of its Blowout - 7th June 2010

When it comes to BP's Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, no matter which side different media outlets may dress - left, right or centre - there are all playing pretty much the same game, or at least reading the same script.  Yet it is a script of abject Ignorance at all public levels, reaching from the highest echelons of the US Administration, to the prestige newspapers of the world, to TV and radio and down to the man-in-the-street.  But it is worse than ignorance because it is accompanied by completely unfounded confidence in what is being expressed. 

The basic problem is, as I alluded to in my previous post, that outside the small circle of engineering-oriented people (of whom I am one) who already understand the intricacies, technologies and limitations of drilling deep, hot, high pressure wells in very deep waters, no-one can visualise what is going on.  There is nothing to see but a collection of vessels floating on the surface and a large oil slick, or perhaps sheen, on the surface of the sea, plus some blurry video footage of oil spewing at the seabed. 

So let's go through some of the ridiculous assertions that are being made. 

Start with the beginning. 

The drilling rig Deepwater Horizon did not “explode”.  An explosion occurred, followed by a fire and the rig sank.  The explosion took place because BP lost control of the well, allowing high pressure gas to force its way up the well and into the rig area where it ignited, probably due to a random spark somewhere. 

Oil is not leaking from the rig at the bottom of the sea (other than maybe from its fuel tanks), it is flowing from the well. 

Moreover, the situation is not what White House energy adviser (and top environmental adviser) Carol Browner would have you believe.  (Her ignorant remarks largely explain why Irish bookie Paddy Power are giving 16-1 odds that she will shortly resign).  

We know how much oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez - its 250,000 barrel capacity.  Furthermore, it was a thick crude and it was spilled close to shore.  Therefore it exacted the maximum environmental damage imaginable on the wildlife and scenery of the Prince William Sound area. 

As regards Macondo, no-one has the faintest idea how much oil is spilling, other than “a lot”.  That is because there is no way of actually measuring the flow.  All the estimates are based on the same thing: technologists' guesses by eyeballing black emission from the leaks as portrayed by underwater TV.  And even the eyeballing is based on what measured flows look like on surface, yet who knows whether 5,000 barrels a day flowing from a pipe on surface looks the same as 5,000 bbl/day viewed on TV in 1500 metres of water? That's why guesstimates vary between 5,000 and 80,000 bbl/day. 

Yet the important thing is not so much the quantity of escaping oil but the damage it causes, and for Macondo there are several other mitigating factors.  One of BP's many brilliant innovations in this catastrophic saga is the injection of dispersant at the sea bottom, which reduces the amount of crude that reaches the surface. 

The crude itself is comparatively light (85% of the density of water) compared to the more syrupy crude on the Exxon Valdez (84%).  The difference is significant because lighter crude is easier to refine which makes it some $5/bbl  more valuable.  It also means that much of the Macondo oil is evaporating in the balmy Gulf of Mexico weather, which is why the slicks are so relatively thin compared with those of the Exxon Valdez.

Moreover, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef which is just four kilometres from Bligh Island and 15 km from mainland Alaska, whereas Macondo is 80 km from the nearest landfall. So there is plenty of

This too explains why the Macondo slicks bear no comparison with those of the Exxon Valdez. 

But here is the clincher.  How many TV and newspaper pictures have you seen of birds and animals clogged with oil?  How many beaches turned black with the dreaded sludge of crude?  The answer is very few, because there is very little actual environmental damage, at least so far.  A week ago the Sunday Times included a graphic in the print edition claiming there were 444 dead birds, 200 dead turtles and 19 dead dolphins; seven days later the bird count had soared to ... 600 damaged.  Look, I am sorry if one of those dead or damaged birds is your auntie, but these numbers are derisory.  Every day in the USA, domestic cats alone kill over half a million wild birds.  A recent study found that windfarms in just one area of Washington state kill over 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats every year.

The only living things that look polluted are protestors who have poured black paint over themselves. 

President Obama flew to Louisiana to look at environmental damage and all he could find was this pristine beach.  If there was an oil-clogged one, do you think he would not have wanted to be photographed there to show his concern if not his (manufactured) “enragement”?

Another big reason is the 1,400 vessels and 20,000 people that BP has engaged to lay booms to contain surface oil, skim and scoop it up, keep it from the coastline and to clean up beaches and wildlife where oil is found.  Where has it sourced this armada and army?  In a pretty clever PR strategy, they are mostly local fishermen and others, who are apparently now making more money from BP than they would in their usual pursuits, which explains why there have been so few of them protesting.  For example, there's a class-action lawsuit against BP on behalf of Louisiana shrimpers being worked up by ... just two shrimpers - hardly a mass movement. 

So that's most of the environmental nonsense put to bed.  It's not to say that there won't be serious damage in the future, but it certainly has not remotely happened so far. 

Then there is BP's response.  In my previous post, I made it pretty clear that there were serious shortcomings in the way the well was drilled and perhaps in the BP cost-cutting culture which might have fostered them. 

However, my reservations there have been completely blown away by the thoroughness and professionalism of what it's being doing ever since, not to mention it's money-no-object mentality.

It rapidly built up a huge team of experts, not just from within BP but from its contractors and even its competitors to develop solutions to the unprecedented problem it faces.  While there are many techniques for dealing with a wild well such as Macondo, which are throroughly proven on land or shallow water, they have never been attempted in deep water, where currents across the 1,500 metre water depth are unpredictable and different, while on bottom there is no light, the temperature is close to freezing, the ambient pressure is some 160 atmospheres and no human diver can survive.  Every activity must therefore be conducted by remote control. 

BP broke its workforce into teams that systematically developed an array of different options for controlling the well.  These ranged from trying to lessen the flow by poking pipes into pipes to draw off some of the oil, to commencing two relief wells which will each cost about $100 million. 

Over twenty vessels have at times been active on the surface in the vicinity of the well at the same time, most with pipes or wires running into the water.  The water depth is too deep to anchor, so each of them is dynamically positioned, meaning that computer-controlled thrusters keep them on station using GPS, which in itself is a pretty sophisticated technology. 

For example, each of 14 ROVs (remote operated vehicles, ie unmanned submarines) is controlled by a tether connecting it to surface.  A specific team - perhaps with an air-traffic control background - is therefore allocated merely to manage the positions of the surface vessels and to ensure that submarine cables and pipes don't get tangled with each other.  

As each technique has been tried and failed, the next technique has been brought into play.  Here are a the main ones. 

You would think that not just for BP but for the US Administration and the general public the most important issue right now is to kill that damn well, make it permanently safe and clean up any damage, and that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of this.

Yet solving Macondo seems not to be in the forefront of the priorities of the President and his cohorts.   They have launched both a Congressional enquiry and criminal investigation in respect of the blowout, meanwhile coming out with meaningless blather like keeping the boot on BP's neck and being enraged.  There will be plenty of years and decades for anger, recrimination, retribution, lawsuits, enquiries, investigations, compensation, fines, prison sentences, sanctions or whatever once the well is safe.  The future is a long time. 

But launching such processes now in the midst of this gargantuan battle against nature means that to defend itself BP is forced deploy its most senior managers and hire umpteen lawyers.  And who will brief those managers and lawyers?  Why the top technologists that BP can muster.  The very men and women who should be devoting all their expertise and energy to solving the problem.  You could hardly do more to damage America's interests. 

There seems no limit to the ignorance if not malice of the Obama administration. 

Back to List of Contents

Issue 206’s Comments to Cyberspace

While I've been lazy in recent weeks about blogging, I have still been harrassing innocent publishers with my witterings online. 

Back to List of Contents

Quotes for Issue 206

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

15th June - Quote and here and here: “Don't stand here and say you represent Iranian people ... I don't want to be attacked by these fucking murderers ...Murderer! ... Why did you murder political prisoners? ... Do not touch me. You can't touch me ... What the f**k is going on here? ... Down with the Islamic regime of Iran.”

A little bit of Iranian thug politics comes to Ireland. 

Shaho Zamani, an Iranian Kurd seeking asylum in Ireland, shouts his protests
at Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister,
invited to Ireland to address the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin. 

The Minister's own security thugs (believed to be armed)
tussle with the Kurd until the Irish Gardaí intervene
to save him and escort him out of the building.

14th June - Quote:  “The Irish Times ... is ... quite a dangerous paper.”

Irish Minister of State Martin Mansergh of the ruling Fianna Fail party
is unhappy that the latest Irish Times poll puts his collapsing party,
for the the first time, in third place behind Labour and Fianna Gael.

No greater compliment can a government minister pay a newspaper. 

- - - - N E T H E R L A N D S - - - - -

10th June - Quote: “More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam -- that is what the Netherlands has chosen.”

Gert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom,
on winning 24 seats in the Netherlands' recent general election. 
His party demands demands, inter alia,
an end to immigration from Muslim countries
and bans on new mosques and the Koran 

This makes his party the third biggest
and potentially the king-maker in a coalition.

- - - - - U K - - - - -

10th June - Quote: “I think that the best thing now is not ... to attempt to damage the reputation of a great British company ... but to sort out [the problem].”

Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London, responds to
President Obama's childish, anti-British rhetoric over the BP blowout
(fire the CEO, boot on neck, kick ass, British Petroleum etc)

Quote: “Follow the Islamic way to save the world.”

The thoroughly nutty Prince of Wales,
future head of the Church of England and future British king,
extols Islam, the CofE's main competitor in Britain,
for its AlGorian environmentalism.

No wonder the 84-year-old Queen won't step down and hand over to him. 
She is obviously hoping to find a way to skip a generation
and pass her throne on to her more stable grandson Prince William.

Quote: “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”

Liam Byrne, Labour's outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
leaves a handover note for his successor, Liberal-Democrat David Laws.

It it rare indeed you get a truthful statement from a Minister,
especially a Labour one.

Unfortunately, pretty soon afterwards
there was no Chief Secretary to the Treasury left either,
when Mr Laws had to resign for fiddling his expenses.

- - - - - I S R A E L - - - - -

Quote: “Remember Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!”

Activists get themselves in the mood to greet,
with rods, knives and bottles,
Israeli soldiers as they rappel down from helicopters
onto the Marama, 130 km offshore Gaza.

The Marmara is a Turkish vessel which was attempting to carry
10,000 tons of “aid” to Gaza along with 600 people to deliver it (600?).

The battle-cry commemorates Mohammed's'
ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arabia in the eighth century

Quote: “Shut up, go back to Auschwitz!... We're helping Arabs go against the US.  Don't forget 9/11 guys.”

Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza “aid” flotilla,
replies when warned by the Israeli Navy
that it was approaching the blockaded area.

When boarded by Israeli commandos, persons aboard the Marmara
attacked them with rods, knives, catapults and bottles. 
Eventually, in self-defence, the commandos drew their guns
and killed twelve of their attackers.

Quote: “This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it's about breaking Israel's siege on 1.5 million Palestinians.” 

Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of the
“humanitarian” “aid” flotilla, makes clear that
the humanitarian so-called needs of Gazans are irrelevant.

Quote: “Peace could be achieved in no more than a week if Israel is willing ... Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ministers must understand that peace is in [Israel’s] interest”.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is absolutely right,
except for one small detail. 

It is he and his fellow-Palestinians who must be “willing” -
willing to renounce violence and
willing to accept the existence of a Jewish state in historic Jewish land.

As George Bush famously whispered to Tony Blair,
all it takes is to “just get Syria to get Hezbollah
to stop doing this shit and it's all over”.

In other words, stop attacking Israel and a peace accord will quickly follow. 

Israel has demonstrated time and again its willingness to make peace. 
Each time this has been rejected by the Palestinians, most recently in 2000.

- - - - - R U S S I A - - - - -

Quote: “Russia is guided by its own long-term state interests ... Those who speak on behalf of the friendly Iranian people must remember this ... Any unpredictability, any political extremism ... is unacceptable for Russia.”

Sergei Prikhodko, a senior diplomat in the Kremlin,
slaps down Iran's “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
who had threatened that Russia's actions could
“place Russia in the ranks of their historic enemies”

I hate to praise an autrocracy such as Russia,
but why cannot the West be equally assertive
in defence of its interests?

Hat tip: Jawa Report

- - - - - U S A - - - - -

13th June - Quote: “[I, Barack Obama am] still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather ... [my] half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and ... [I am] that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.”

President Obama confides in Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Ghei
(according to the latter).

It serves as a reminder of a curious statement he made
during an interview on the campaign trail that
“John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith”.

See how long it takes the mainstream media to pick up this little gem. 
Not

The president's admission is rather disappointing. 
One of the few things I had admired him for
was his apostasy from the Muslim faith he was born into,
and his conversion
to Christianity via the United Church of Christ,
albeit under the auspices of the toxic Rev Jeremiah Wright. 

But it seems I had formed too high an opinion of him (hard to do).

Hat tip: Tom Carew 

Quote: “We're going to keep the boot on the neck of BP.”

Ken Salazar, America's Interior Secretary,
mouths one of the US Government's typical meaningless platitudes
which serve no constructive purpose. 

It should be devoting all its energy to supporting BP
in fighting the Macondo blowout and oil spill

There will be plenty of time for recriminations,
compensation and lawsuits later.

Quote: “it is almost at the level of sedition.”

Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts
and a big buddy of the US president, on his assessment of
Republican opposition to the Administration's policies

Quote: “Obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is”

With this fatuous clause, Barack Obama pays “tribute”
to the memory of Daniel Pearl at the signing of a new
“Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act”. 

Surrounded by still grieving relatives of Mr Pearl, the American Jew journalist
whom jihadists triumphantly beheaded on video in Karachi in 2002,
Mr Obama displays not just his now familiar ignorance and disdain of history,
but an astonishing lack of human sensitivity.

Mark Steyn rightly eviscerates the president.

Quote: “What they are doing ... They're sticking our kids with the bill. And that's immoral. That's generational theft.”

Sarah Palin is referring to mounting debt and government programs.
Though she means America's, her remark is true for all economies. 

Heaping enormous debt onto a nations'
children, infants and unborn
could also be described as a form of child abuse.

Quote (Minute 4:20): “It's racial harassment if we say it's racial harassment. Don't bother us with the facts.”

Todd Tucker, author of
“Notre Dame vs the Klan:
How the Fighting Irish defeated the Ku Klux Klan”,
a book which describes a two-day battle in 1924
between Catholic students of Notre Dame University and
the all-powerful Indiana Ku Klux Klan, which ultimately destroyed the IKKK. 

Mr Tucker is referring to a kangaroo court of the - wait for it -
Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis (IUPUI). 

It had convicted one of its
mature students, Keith John Sampson,
of “racial harassment” because he had been seen reading the book on campus. 

The book's cover features burning crosses
and white hooded figures.
Case proven.

The IUPUI president eventually apologised for the injustice to Mr Sampson
but took no investigative, disciplinary or preventive action.

- - - - - K O R E A s - - - - -

Quote: “This was an unacceptable provocation by North Korea ... the international community has a responsibility and a duty to respond.”

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says the right thing for once. 

It is of course empty rhetoric because
her boss will never allow America to take any actual action
which might upset its enemies.

- - - - - er, F R A N C E - - - - -

Quote: “We must know what to tell them in case we get in bed with them, right.”

Carla Bruni, aka as Mrs Nicolas Sarkozy,
explains the need, in 1996, for a book
to translate sexy phrases into four languages,
with a number of graphic examples. 

So now we know what the French president
gets up to in the Elysee Palace.  

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home

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 What I'm 
currently reading

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,

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:

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

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. 

+++++

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.

+++++

 
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