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Just for fun, the latest Rasmussen poll on President Barack Obama’s popularity will
from now on be published at the head of the Tallrite Blog. The date is on the charts.
(Click on them to get the latest version.)

More Climate Faeces

In an article entitled “World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown”, the Sunday Times reports on another stunning piece of fraud or incompetence or wishful thinking on the part of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  In Volume 2 of its fourth (and most recent) report in 2007, it warns that

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding ... [so fast that], if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high ... Total area will likely shrink [80%] by the year 2035 ... The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases”

Pretty scary, huh?  Click on the thumbnail graphic to expand it: it apparently shows how India's Gangotri Glacier, source of the mighty Ganges, has melted over the centuries from 1780 to 2001.  And it's all the fault of us anthropogenic humans. 

In other words, a monumental conclusion about “anthropogenic global warming” propounded by the mighty IPCC, the world organisation universally regarded as the font of “settled science”, is based on nothing but one man's pure conjecture underwritten by no science, no research, no peer-review, no evidence whatsoever and this aspect was not noticed by the army of eminent scientists that produced the report. 

Dr Philip Lloyd is Managing Director of South Africa's Industrial and Petrochemical Consultants and a “co-ordinating lead author” for the IPCC, but even an insider like him has a breaking point and becomes a dissenting apostate.  He tells us that:

“The process [of preparing, reviewing and publicising IPCC reports] is so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap without delay.”

Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun, who attended December's climate change jamboree wrote that “nothing [was] real in Copenhagen - not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the ‘solution’.”

Incidentally, Lord Christopher Monckton asserts, in the video at the foot of this post, that the melting of Gangotri Glacier from 1780-2001 that you can see in the thumbnail above is due to local geological instability - nothing at all to do with global warming.

The issue about the climate changeology cult is not that everything that comes out of it is necessarily wrong.  It is that what it preaches is so riddled with incompetence, fraud, trickery and doubts (hockey stick temperature profile, hacked e-mails, Himalayan glaciers, dissenting IPCC authors to mention a few), that there is no way of knowing what to believe and what to reject. 

Mark Steyn once remarked that

“it’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the UN.”

As with the UN, so with the UN's much beloved protégé the IPCC and the rest of the global warm-mongers. 

With the excess of climate faeces permeating the IPCC's work, the only rational response is to reject everything until universally credible evidence of catastrophic man-made climate change emerges (as if!). 

The current state of the “settled science” is no basis for investing $100 billion per year of other people's money for up to a hundred years** as Hillary Clinton pledged at the December Nopenhagen conference that, ironically, launched Europe's and North America's coldest winter weather for thirty years after more than a decade of falling - not rising - global temperatures. 

**Hillary's $100 bn figure has form. 

Way back in 1999, John Weyant and Jennifer Hill in an article entitled “Introduction and Overview” published in The Energy Journal, Kyoto Special Issue: xxxiii-xxxiv, BEA 2001b-c, told us that meeting Kyoto's modest emissions targets would cost $100 billion per year, or 2% of then world GDP, until 2094.  Other experts told us that Kyoto if implemented would merely defer by a paltry six years a 1.9°C rise in global temperatures

This didn't sound then like a great return for $100 bn/yr x 95 years = a cool $9½ trillion, and neither does Hillary's pledge today. 

I've written a fair bit of stuff over the years about the “Climate Changeology Cult”.  But nothing I've said comes close in thoroughness, eloquence and impact to the lecture that the almost comically patrician Lord Christopher Monckton gave last October to the Minnesota Free Market Institute in St Paul. 

I love this slide of his in particular. It reminds me of that other slogan about Greens: they're like tomatoes - they start out green but always end up red.

Set aside 1½ hours and view it in full; you will not be disappointed. His captivating delivery alone could serve as a masterclass for a certain American president renowned for his own oratory.

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No Need to Take to the Streets When Logic Is On Your Side

I had an article published in the Irish Times last week under this headline. Somewhat to my satisfaction, it elicited a minor avalanche of furious comments from readers, some published in the paper, some not, some by e-mail direct to me. 

The piece (which grew out of a couple of posts back in March and September of 2005) basically says that because logic is overwhelmingly on the side of right-wing policy arguments, right wingers merely need to explain them to make their point.  But when people advocate left-wing positions what they say, by contrast, makes no sense and they know it.  So therefore they have a greater need to get emotional, to shout and roar and sometimes to engage in violence.  Obviously I am generalising, but you get the point. 

On the other hand, righties are hopeless when it comes to the arts, in particular modern music.  Who can visualise right-wing ideologues (Dick Cheney, for instance) coming up with songs like “Where have all the flowers gone”, “Imagine”, “We shall overcome” etc.  And at least a singing leftie is not throwing chairs through a McDonald's window. 

You can view the whole sordid saga - article plus reaction - here. 

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Lara Marlowe Enrages Me

Lara Marlowe is a particularly irritating (to me) foreign correspondent with the Irish Times, once married to the equally irritating Arabist Robert Fisk.  Indeed, they are so similar in many ways that I am surprised the marriage didn't last. 

Earlier this month she wrote a piece entitled “US just doesn't get it about motivation for suicide attacks”, which predictably places all the blame on America's incompetence (how quickly the Obama gloss is tarnishing) and Israel's perfidy towards Palestinians who want to kill them. 

In the aftermath of the jihadist killing spree in Fort Hood and failed attempt by the Christmas Day knicker-bomber, she excoriates the American media for being blind to Israel as the root cause.  And America is apparently remiss for its “dangerous failure to provide Muslims appalled by US policies with an alternative to suicide bombing” (a squadron of F16s and Predator drones put at their disposal perhaps?)

My blood boiled, so I wrote to her as follows. 

Dear Ms Marlow,

Yours is an incredible piece in which you are guilty of the deliberate blindness of which you accuse the Obama administration.

You accuse the Americans of not mentioning Israel, but you don't mention the Koran once.

Yet these suicide bombers find their inspiration in the Koran which tells Muslims, unequivocally, that infidels are to be killed, enslaved or converted, in the quest for a global caliphate (see verses 2:187, 8:12, 8:39, 8:57, 8:60, 8:71, 9:5, 9:29, 9:41, 9:123, 47:4, to name just a few).

The vile Mohammed started the process with the incredibly successful Muslim conquests (of largely Christian cultures) in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries.

All the other stuff is just excuses - Israel one day, American hedonism another, Andalucía in 1492 another, the Crusades another. The basic motivator is the strictures of the Koran, which few non-Muslims seem to want either to read or to believe.

And as for a the lack of a Palestinian state, why don't you first point out that the Palestinian leadership has steadfastly refused one whenever it has been offered, successively, in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000.

And then clarify that the moment the Palestinians stop attacking Israel will be the moment that Israel stops retaliating, and that this would immediately open the way to meaningful negotiations. (George W Bush was once widely mocked for essentially saying this in an aside to Tony Blair when he thought the microphone was switched off.)

A Palestinian state is there for them any time they show the slightest (serious) interest in obtaining one. Israel's departure from Gaza presented a unique opportunity to implement such a desire on a sample basis.  But Hamas, whom the Palestinians had elected, deemed the destruction of Israel and Jews to be more important than competently running a state. Of course when pre-1967 Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan the West Bank, the Palestinians weren't interested in a state either, and nor was any other Arab or Muslim nation.

Oh, and while we're on Gaza and its supposed siege, why don't you point out that this is more of an Egyptian blockade as last week's violent events merely emphasised. Israel lets in far more trucks of supplies into Gaza, 70-80 per day, than Egypt. If Egypt simply opened its Rafah crossing, there would be no blockade at all (and no need for those incredibly dangerous tunnels either).

Yours truly,

Needless to say I received no acknowledgement from Ms Marlowe, much less a reply, which was no surprise really.  It must be very hard for her to be coherent when she knows that what she writes makes no sense.  Maybe she should throw a chair through a McDonald's window or sing a dreamy song, stuff that, as noted above, lefties are so good at.

I see Mark Humphrys and Tom McGuirk
are similarly enraged. 

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Uncircumcised Royal Hypocrite and Charlatan

Superfreakonomics, which I've just finished reading (see panel at right), is a collection of amusing anecdotes reflecting surprising aspects of human (and sometimes animal) behaviour.  It makes the point that sometimes there are very simple solutions to very serious problems, such as doctors washing their hands to prevent spreading infection from one patient to another (a practice few to this day apparently apply assiduously). 

At the end of Chapter 5, the two authors' low-cost answer to reducing the spread of HIV is to circumcise males, which is said to reduce infection rates by some 60%. 

In South Africa, King Goodwill Zwelithini of the Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal Province has been gaining a lot of kudos recently for advocating exactly this course of action.  It used to be a Zulu right of passage for all young men (still is for the Xhosas), but was abandoned two centuries ago because it took too long for young would-be warriors to heal and return to battle, and also many of them died of wounds that went septic. 

In business, there is a simple management maxim that is perhaps the most important of all: “Visible Management Commitment”.  It means that if a leader wishes his followers to adopt a certain course of action, he must himself be utterly committed to it but also be seen by everyone around him and his followership to be committed to it. 

It is a point I continuously hammer home when I lecture on industrial safety management - you cannot expect the workforce to adopt safe work practices if its own chief executive is not seen to be absolutely and personally committed to such practices.  If he doesn't bother with a hard-hat, why should anyone else?

Thus it seems to me that if King Zwelithini is serious about young men getting circumcised he needs to show personal leadership and commitment.  That means putting himself first in the queue to get circumcised and making sure everyone knows it.  And if he is already circumcised it also means making sure everyone knows it and is convinced it is true.  Embarrassing as it might be, a clear and public photograph of the circumcised weapon attached to its owner is needed, just as in 2003 only a photograph of their corpses convinced Iraqis and the world that Saddam Hussein's brutish two sons truly were dead.

I have done search after search using Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and other engines with all kinds of combination of “Zwelithini” and “circumcision”.  But nowhere can I find any reference to the King's own actual or imminent circumcision.  If he wanted to set an example, he would make sure it was known, otherwise what would be the point? 

Therefore take it from me - he is not circumcised and has no intention of becoming so.  He has six wives and 27 children and evidently feels no compunction to tamper with any of the equipment that generated them.  That is an indignity to be suffered only by his lowly subjects.

The man is an uncircumcised hypocrite and a charlatan and Zulu men should call him out. 

If I am wrong, please tell me and I shall not hesitate to withdraw and delete any incorrect or demeaning sentences and to apologise to the King. 

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David Beckham and Il Suo Pacco

I try to keep this blog fairly mannerly and child-friendly and avoid gratuitous prurience, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  From King Zwelithini's weapon to ... David Beckham and il suo pacco. 

Amongst his many commercial endorsements is Armani - its panties in particular, as embodied in this rather cringeworthy in-your-face ad.

You know how in Italy at the marketplace they like to handle the sausages and tomatoes, squeezing them, caressing them, sniffing them and holding them up to the light, checking for plumpness, freshness, authenticity etc before they haggle over the price? 

Well, Elena di Cioccio is a good-looking thirty-something TV journalist and she was not convinced about the authenticity of this Armani photo, so she intrepidly set out to find the truth for herself about what the Italians delicately call “il suo pacco”.  Going bravely where several women (Victoria, Rebecca Loos, to name but two) have gone before, she first donned a pair of lurid and impregnable yellow rubber gloves for her self-protection.   Then, with camera crew in tow she sought out Mr Beckham in a Milan street where, curiously and without an interpreter, he was being questioned in Italian while answering in English.  Slowly and carefully, like a tigress stalking a hapless antelope, she inched her way closer.  Then -

Camera! Lights! Action!

She suddenly made her move, a yellow mitt lunging southward grabbing at its prey.  Mr Beckham's eyes popped.  Security men flurried.  There was running.  There were shouts. There was fear. There were cars.  But Ms di Cioccio survived the pursuit and in the midst of the mayhem was able to report her disappointing news: that things were humbler than expected or portrayed. 

“È piccolo Beckham!”

“It's small, Beckham”, she wailed at him disconsolately. “Wait, let me check again. You've taken us for a ride, David. How could you have done this? What did you fill it with?  Cotton? I have to ask you something to your face - did you get it enlarged?”

Some (well, Victoria anyway) think the lady's actions constitute an unacceptable assault on the blessed integrity of Mr Beckham and his future progeny.  But as Mark Simpson, author and self-confessed “Father of the Metrosexual, the Retrosexual & Spawner of Sporno” (whatever all that means), pithily puts it,

“If you are paid very large wedges of cash to put your lunchbox on the side of buses to sell overpriced underwear to the masses then perhaps the only shocking thing is that more punters don’t cop a feel of the goods.”

Couldn't have put it better myself.  Grazie a lei, Signorina Elena, for brightening up our day. 

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Canada Solves Air-Terrorist Problem

The Canadian government has ordered Air Canada to keep  the nutters all together where they can be watched. 

President Obama, in this age of nut-case shoe-bombers and knicker-bombers, please take careful note.  That old fraud Bush never thought of this clever ruse. 

But as SmallDeadAnimals asks, “if it's a nut-free zone, how are we going to hold down the bolts?”

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Issue 201’s Comments to Cyberspace

Just a handful of comments during my over-long absence. 

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Quotes for Issue 201

Republican Scott Brown in his victory speech
after winning the “impregnable” Massachusetts federal Senate seat
occupied by the Kennedy Brothers for 58 years. 

Worries over security as well as health care
and profligate stimulus spending were the reason
Independents deserted President Obama's candidate in droves.

Quote: “The money [£25,000 pa in state benefits] belongs to Allah and if it is given you can take it.”

Ahmed Choudry, renowned preacher of hate
against infidels and founder of the now-banned Islam4UK group,
justifies his scrounging from the beleaguered British taxpayer.

More fool the taxpayer.

Question: If it belongs to Allah,
how come Mr Choudry gets  to spend it?

Quote: “If Britain does not stop talking nonsense it will get a slap in the mouth.”

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister,
uses impeccable diplomatic language
to tell Simon Gass, the British Ambassador in Teheran, 
that he doesn't like Britain urging the Iranian dictatorship
to respect the human rights of protesting Iranians. 

They'd killed eight of them by the end of 2009.

Quote: “The system worked.”

Janet Napolitano, President Obama's Head of Homeland Security
absurdly claims credit for her department for the
failed detonator and the heroics of Dutch passengerJasper Shuringer
that thwarted the knicker-bomber of Northwest Flight 253. 

It was of course her department which was responsible
for allowing the Jihadist bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
- a known security risk not even admitted into Britain -
to board a flight to Detroit with bomb material strapped to his crotch.

She later backtracked: “Our system did not work in this instance” 

Quote: “Boy, now he's in real trouble.”

Witty headline in the Los Angeles Times,
reporting that it took the US authorities twelve long days
to revoke the visa of the said Mr Abdulmutallab

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

Quote: “The country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a ‘light-skinned’ African-American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

The dour Harry Reid, Democrat Majority Leader in the Senate
and chief architect with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
of President Obama's healthcare legislation,
uses unacceptable racial language in 2008
to describe the then presidential aspirant.

In 2010 he grovelled,
“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words.
I sincerely apologise for offending any and all Americans,
especially African-Americans, for my improper comments.” 

Quote: “I think the man is evil.”

Talk show host Bill Press referring to Joe Lieberman,
the independent (though until recently Democratic)
senator from Connecticut.
He also calls him “Traitor Joe”. 

What's Joe's sin?  He opposes Obamacare.

Quote: “I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East.”

Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General
expands upon her extensive foreign policy credentials.

This was one of many reasons she was resoundingly defeated
by Republican Scott Brown
in the race to seize the Senatorial seat
occupied by John and Edward Kennedy for nearly sixty years

She must have been inspired by the Sarah Palin 
“You-can-actually-see-Russia-from-land-here-in-Alaska”
school of foreign policy.

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

Quote: “It's a growth I intend to defeat or it will defeat me.”

Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan,
the only half-way competent member of the cabinet
and in these economic doldrums and
the one with the most demanding and most important portfolio,
comments on his Christmas diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Were he unable to continue,
it would be a major setback on Ireland's own road to recovery 
and the international markets' confidence in this.

Quote: “They are running a big campaign. The money [stolen by the IRA] from the Northern Bank must be stretching fairly far. Quote me on that. While occasionally we [Fianna Fáil] send out letters to planning applicants on the wrong paper, we have never been involved with anyone who shot anybody, or robbed banks, or kidnapped people. I suppose I'm going a bit too far when I say this but I'd like to ask Mr Quinlivan is the brothel still closed?”

Irish defence minister Willie O'Dea had to
apologise and pay damages to Sinn Fein candidate Maurice Quinlivan
for this remark. 

The brothel observation refers to a recent case
where three Brazilian women were run out of Limerick
for running a brothel in an apartment owned by
Mr Quinlivan's older brother Nessan, an escapee from Brixton Prison.

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

Quote: “I can't stand it any more! I can't stand it any more. I think something’s going to blow before I get to the end of this term in office ... I'm forced to stay here messing around.”

Rachida Dati, French MEP and one-time cabinet minister of justice,
whinges about the burden of being an MEP. 

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

Quote: “When I lean across and say ‘I love you, Darling’, I really mean it.”

Happily married David Cameron taunts Prime Minister Gordon Brown
about his Chancellor, Alistair Darling

Not to be outdone, the feisty Mr Brown retorts,
“For you to talk about love and marriage today,
when you are the person who cannot give a straight answer
on the married couple's allowance -
whether you can say ‘I do’ or ‘I don't’ on it.”

- - - - - “S P O R T” - - - - -

Quote: “This is the worst act of contact with the eyes that I have had to deal with: it is a case of deliberate eye gouging.”

Judge Jeff Blackett,
the European Rugby Cup's independent judicial officer,
rightly hands down a career-destroying 70-week playing ban
to David Attoub, a prop-forward
with one of France's top rugby clubs, Stade Français. 

During a ruck in a game against Ulster last month in Belfast,
kneeling team-mate Julien Dupuy (22-week ban)
held down Ulster's Stephen Ferris
while Mr Attoub stuck his finger right into -
and perhaps behind the eyeball of - the right eye,
as this shocking photograph clearly shows.

Such a gang attack suggests it was pre-planned, and
certainly not explainable as a heat-of-the-moment aberration. 

Few will complain about the severity of the punishments,
but the French predictably do. 
They are claiming - preposterously -
that this incriminating photograph is doctored.

“With them [presumably the ERC's judge who is English],
it's still the Hundred Years War”
moaned Jacques Delmas, the Stade Français coach.

Quote: “Tiger did express a keen interest in my all-women shortlists ... it took 76 seconds for boxer Amir Khan to get his opponent Dmitriy Salita on his back ... Tiger achieved a similar result with his various partners.”

David Cameron, revealing his jolly side

ISSUE #200 - 6^th December 2009 [315+1617=1932]

Climategate Scandal - Bye-bye Nopenhagen

As Christmas draws nigh, our thoughts turn to sleighs and bells and snow.  Or, if we think carbon dioxide has melted the snow, to Copenhagen and the UN’s fifteenth big Climate Change Conference, dubbed COP15.  The fifteen thousand delegates who are jetting in from 191 countries across the world had better enjoy it, for it is likely to be the last such climate change jamboree in their lifetimes.  Despite their desire to establish a world system, which would replace the universally broken promises of the Kyoto Protocol by imposing a global system that would place extra taxes on as many billions of people as possible, the effort is already doomed. 

The reason is simple but horrible.  I am old enough to remember the original Watergate which destroyed the Nixon presidency in 1974.  His re-election campaign sent a gang to break into the Watergate Hotel to steal documents from the rival Democratic Party.  The hotel name entered the lexicon as a byword for reprehensible behaviour and has spawned countless “gates” ever since.  Its notoriety derived not so much from the break-in or use of the stolen documents, as from the attempted cover-up which ensued.  It’s always the cover-up and damage limitation that attract the greatest opprobrium. 

Just look at what’s going on right now in the Catholic Church in Ireland.  Outrageous and inexcusable as the clerical sexual abuses themselves were, what has really enraged people is the Church’s strenuous and disgraceful efforts to hide these heinous crimes over the years and in so doing facilitate their continuance. 

Despite efforts by much of the media and conventional wisdom to suppress or downplay its significance, the climate change movement is slowly becoming engulfed in a “gate” of its own, for which it has no coherent answer.  Last month an anonymous hacker downloaded an enormous amount of correspondence spanning decades from the anodyne-sounding Climatic Research Unit.  The CRU, a state-funded department of the University of East Anglia, is the world’s foremost authority in gathering and analysing historic climate change data.  The CRU has provided, over the years, a huge amount of material for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to build into the four assessment reports it has issued since 1990, along with its numerous other reports, technical papers and technical material.  The IPCC is regarded by many as the world’s foremost authority on climate change issues.  It is the bedrock of the movement. 

The stolen e-mails, whose authenticity the CRU has confirmed, paint however a horrifying picture as to how it has conducted its climate business.  It turns out that at even the highest levels of seniority, strenuous efforts have been made to suppress data and opinions which fail to confirm the climate change hypothesis that the globe is warming due to human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases. 

Some examples. 

Incidentally, this curve prepared in 1998, which appeared in the IPCC’s third report in 2001, is highly controversial not only because it tags recent thermometer readings onto ancient geophysical data, a very dubious scientific technique.  But Dr Mann’s geophysical data and computer modelling have also been shown to be highly selective in order to provide the millennium of constant low temperatures required to demonstrate the hockey stick effect.  In 2003, Canadian environmental economists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick removed these distortions to show that historical temperatures for long periods far exceeded today’s.  This completely undermined Dr Mann’s hockey stick hypothesis.  

Moreover, the upper graph is clearly marked “NORTHERN HEMISPHERE”.  This is because inclusion of the even less warming south would have made the deception even more difficult. 

The Daily Telegraph has reproduced some of the raciest quotations from the hacked e-mails.  Further information and analysis are still emerging, but the nature of the CRU outrage and what it means for the integrity of the climate change movement can no longer be in doubt.  

Watergate was a scandal involving an illegal break-in followed by a shocking cover-up of the break-in.  “Climategate” is a scandal involving an illegal break-in which has however revealed a shocking cover-up of scientific information in order to promote an anthropogenic global-warming conclusion. 

Meanwhile, Al Gore’s double-Oscar-winning, Nobel-prize-winning movie “An Inconvenient Truth” is steadily being debunked as a collection of “Inconvenient Untruths”, the process accelerated by Climategate.  Some Hollywood types are even demanding that his two Oscars be rescinded, while he himself, to many the spiritual father of global warm-mongering, has chickened out of showing up in Copenhagen, or Nopenhagen as some wags put it. 

Climategate is not a trivial issue.  In my first ever blog two hundred issues ago, I mentioned that experts had put the total global cost of reducing CO2 to meet Kyoto commitments at $100 billion per year for a century.  I don’t know the latest figures but with inflation both in costs and in expectations at Copenhagen, this number is unlikely to reduce.  It aggregates to ten trillion dollars, money that would be taken out of everyone’s pockets and would therefore be unavailable for other causes whether fighting poverty and disease or wealth-creating capital investment or simply day-to-day consumption. 

By way of comparison, the UN and World Bank have told us that $200 bn is sufficient to provide all humanity with clean drinking water and sanitation and thereby avoid two million deaths per year in the developing world.  I know which way I would prefer my money to be spent. 

Climategate demonstrates that there has been such a pervasive atmosphere of scientific fraud within the CRU for so many years, that no-one can have confidence any longer in whatever it says or has said, nor in any conclusions others might draw from its material.  How is someone to separate the wheat from the chaff? 

Climategate undermines the whole case for climate change and makes a nonsense of the upcoming COP15 conference.  It’s going to end up as bye-bye Nopenhagen I reckon.  The truth is bound to enter the consciousness of the general public before too long. 

Amazingly, however, people want to go to Copenhagen to protest against (mythical) climate change rather than against the climate change fraud that COP15 will attempt to perpetuate. 

And if you are wondering what is the real incentive for the Climategate fraud, consider these numbers, that I included in a post last year entitled “Global Warm-mongers Keep on Scamming”.   According to the august US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in 2007,

Meanwhile, Al Gore, for one, had about a million dollars in the bank when he left the Vice Presidency in 2000 and began his global warm-mongering campaign.  His worth is now approaching a billion.  

Go figure.  The numbers answer the question. 

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Hate-isms Are Only for the Approved Victim Groups

When recently reading a mealy-mouthed apology by the rabidly left-leaning Israel-hating New Statesman for an anti-Semitic cover cartoon it ran way back on 14 January 2002, I happened upon this remarkable sentence:

“To call somebody a ‘white bastard’ is just not the same as calling somebody a ‘black bastard’, with all its connotations of humiliation and enslavement. Given the distribution of power in our world, discrimination by blacks or Asians against whites will almost always be trivial.”

In a stroke, it trivialises and thus legitimises all instances of white racism, thereby exonerating people like Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Mugabe, for their overtly anti-white leanings.  No matter what you say against white people, now matter how you discriminate against honkies, no matter how publicly you disparage the palefaces in thought word or deed, you are, according to the New Statesman, totally unable to perpetrate a racist act of any sort. 

And it turns any white who is glad to be white into an automatic racist because he doesn’t want to turn brown or black. 

The modern anti-white interpretation of the otherwise neutral word racism is quite remarkable, but it appears to set a template for the contemporary fashion of “hate-isms”.  

If a National White Police Association were to be formed there would be uproar over its overt racism.  Yet no-one blinks at Britain’s National Black Police Association, or America’s National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives or National Black Police Association, which in concept are just as racist. 

Consider a few others examples :

Sexism

Does anyone seriously consider that actions which disadvantage males (ineligible to join the Women’s Institute, child allowance paid to the mother not the father, state-funded clinics for breast-check but not prostrate-check) would be regarded as sexist? Of course not.  A woman is incapable of acting in a sexist way against men.  Only men are capable of sexism (hence the fury among Irish feminists when Ireland’s Supreme Court recently ruled that a men-only golf club could remain so.)   Women frequently demand female quotas for particular jobs - parliamentary representation and board room seats in particular.  Even though such demands inherently demean all women by declaring that they possess insufficient talent and appeal to succeed on their own, no-one wants to point out that such quotas are blatantly sexist in that they discriminate against men.  

Last month Ireland appointed as its next EU Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn “ahead of other well-qualified candidates” just because she’s a woman, in other words not on her own merits.  This was in obeisance to the instruction of European Commission president José Manuel Barroso: “I would ... urge you to pay particular attention to the presence of women in the college [of Commissioners]”.  How humiliated she must feel as she takes up her new role; how the male Commissioners will snort in derision behind her back. 

And the same goes for the never-elected-to-anything Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU’s new Lisbon-enabled Foreign Minister or whatever she’s called.  As President Sarkozy put it, she got the job because she’s a female centre-left Brit, certainly not because she has superior ability, much less any expertise in foreign affairs where her experience is zilch.  

This kind of humiliation is all a natural consequence when only one kind of sexism is acknowledged

Ageism

This is something invented to allow older people to whinge when they are compulsorily retired or when younger workers are promoted ahead of them or paid more.  If you’re in your twenties, try seeing how far you get when you point out that it’s ageist for over 65s to get the bus-pass (paid for out of your taxes) just because they’re over 65 and you’re not.  It’s just not possible for an older person to behave in an ageist fashion against a youngster.  And if you try to argue that you shouldn’t have to subsidize old folk solely because they haven’t bothered to prepare for their own old age during the 50 long years that were available to them, well then that proves you’re just an ageist. 

Blasphemy

There is great excitement these days about blasphemy as people conclude it is wrong to denigrate another’s choice of religion, even though unlike skin colour it is no more than a personal choice.  Ireland’s 1937 Vatican-approved constitution, the EU’s oldest after Belgium’s, forbids blasphemy (the Christian variety, obviously) yet it was only this year that the Justice Minister, scrabbling for something to fill his time, decided to create a law proscribing it.  So that means no more ridiculing of God, Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, Shiva, Krishna and all the other gods and saints that people like to worship. 

What’s that?  I forgot a pair?  Allah and Mohammed?  I think you get my drift. For in fact all this abhorrence about blasphemy is directed solely at those last two.  If you make fun of the others, draw cartoons about them, configure them in jars of urine, blow up 1500-year-old world heritage statues of them, everyone is perfectly cool.  Some crazy religious nuts might be offended but who cares - they should get a life.  Oh, but express the slightest negative observation about Allah or Mohammed and you are immediately a culturally insensitive boor who deserves the full weight of the law to descend upon you, if a scimitar hasn’t sawn your head off first.  In today’s craven world, it is impossible to blaspheme against any religion but Islam. 

Last month a cover of the Economist illustrated this neatly, with a fauxtograph of Jesus with high explosives rocketing him into the sky, as compared to Mohammed the Dane, with the high explosives under his hat.  One image is OK, the other is not (and has never been reproduced in the Economist). 

Which brings us to Islamophobia, not Christianophobia, not Judeaophobia, not Hinduphobia, not Shintuphobia, not Taophobia, not even atheophobia or agnosticophobia.  It seems when it comes to religion there is only one that merits the tag phobia. 

Curiously though, Islamophobia means only that you the infidel fear Islam, which should surely be a cause of rejoicing for Muslims rather than objecting.  But the word is used, incorrectly, to mean hatred, a very different human feeling.  Misosislam would be more accurate as this prefix means not fear but hate (as in misogyny, hatred of women).  Nevertheless the point remains - though shalt be free to hate any religion but Islam. 

Anti-Semitism

This is especially interesting because it does not exist.  It is today perfectly acceptable to express your hatred of and disdain for Jews all you like so long as you cloak this with the thinnest of veneers.  This usually means that you must object not to Jews but only to the current Israeli government or Israel itself or the shadowy pro-Zionist cabals that bribe Western governments, bankers, businessmen and media.  Sometimes it is sufficient merely to say you despise “neo-cons”   (because some have names like Woflowitz, Perle, Feith and no doubt Shylock).  Thus the Guardian newspaper not only regularly berates Israel, but fosters a “Comment is Free” debating line which is rife with anti-Semitism anti-Israelism, but which systematically deletes and bans pro-Israel contributors and whose moderator is (secretly) the daughter of the Editor. 

Of course Muslims need not be circumspect at all, as the rest of the world regards their brand of anti-Semitism not as real anti-Semitism but as just another attractive facet of their rich cultural inheritance.  For example,

Everyone - even the most rabid Jihadists - denies being anti-Semitic; they just don’t like Israel and the pigs and apes that inhabit it.  Anti-Semitism?  What anti-Semitism?

Homophobia

While I must admit I have not known (in either the Biblical or non-Biblical sense) many uncloseted gays and lesbians, neither have I known them ever to express any contempt or hatred for straight people.  Good for them, because the reverse is not true. 

Nevertheless, for purely academic purposes it would be interesting to meet a group of homosexuals who despised me just because I am different from them.  For would that not be just as heinous as hating gays because they’re gay.  However, I can’t see myself getting much sympathy, much less redress from the courts, for complaining that a bunch of lesbians and ladyboys jeered at me for being straight. 

Anyone heard of the Straight Police Association, to promote the interests of non-gay cops?  I thought not, and you never will. 

But there is a perfectly respectable European Gay Police Association, a “Eurogay” outfit and in the UK a Gay Police Association, all devoted to looking after the interests of gay police officers.  Now the Irish Garda Siochana are about to recognize Group G, a network for lesbian, gay and bisexual members of the police.   Nobody objects to the discriminatory nature of these organizations. 

These few examples illustrate that homophobia (or misohomo as it should properly be called) is only allowed to be a one-way street.  Indeed, even a declaration that you are grateful to be straight rather than homosexual contains within it a nuance of homophobia in today’s touchy environment. 

_______________

So let me sum up.  I am a white hetero male Christian, who is glad to possess those attributes.  I dislike the religion and ideology of Islam because of the brutality and fascism it preaches and I dislike anti-Christian blasphemy because I am a Christian.  I don’t think oldsters should receive perks funded by but not available to younger taxpayers.  If only I were young again, I could truly be described as an ageist, racist, sexist, misoislamist, misoblasphemist, to which some might (incorrectly) add misohomo.  But I am a little too old to be a true ageist any longer so I will just have to glory in the other five hate-isms.

Oh to be an elderly, African, female, anti-Semitic (secretly gay) Muslim sawing the head off a Mohammed cartoonist.  There would be no end to the scope of my immunity and my victimisation. 

Hate-isms operate in only one direction.  The approved groups alone are privileged to find themselves never on the delivery side of hate-isms; they are always the lucky victims. 

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Who Am I?

Who am I?

I am Adolf Hitler.

Source: Barry O'N

If you were thinking of another charismatic national leader you should be concerned, very concerned! 

Co-incidentally ...

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World SuperBower

What’s with the world’s SuperBower?  Does he really believe that grovelling before dictators and hereditary emperors somehow enhances the standing (so to speak) of the world’s oldest constituted democracy? 

He seems to have warmed up in London during his first presidential visit to Europe with with an absurd “reach across the aisle” handshake gesture to Communist China’s illegitimate dictator Hu Jintao. 

London, 1 April 2009, G20
A Western democracy “reaches across the aisle” to an illegitimate Communist dictator

France’s little squirt Sarkozy then shows him, with a smirk, how “reaching across the aisle” is supposed to work when dealing with illegitimate dictators.   

London, 1 April 2009, G20
The illegitimate Communist dictator “reaches across the aisle” to a Western democracy

Undaunted, the SuperBower than got down (down being the operative word) to real business when he was graciously granted a few moments of precious one-to-one time with Abdulla the illegitimate tyrant of Saudi Arabia.  How Sarkozy and Spain’s Zapatero enjoyed the moment; as you can see they could scarcely contain their derisive laughter.

Paris, 3 April 2009, NATO
A Western democracy bows low before an illegitimate Islamic hereditary dictator
(while French and Spanish bystanders guffaw)

Then it was onwards and downwards to Japan where the Chosen One was granted another audience with an Exalted Presence . Here it was to the world’s only emperor, Akihito, (unelected) incumbent of the world’s oldest (1350 years) hereditary monarchy, that the SuperBower rendered homage, stooping even lower than to that illegitimate Arab despot.   

Tokyo, 14 November 2009
A Western democracy bows even lower
before an Oriental dynastic emperor and empress

Not content with semi-prostrating himself before dictators and emperors, the SuperBower then decided, perhaps in a fit of atypical egalitarianism, that he needed to extend his kowtows to a wider group of beneficiaries slightly lower down in the hierarchy of illegitimate despotic power.

Shanghai, November 2009
A Western democracy humbly bows to
mere functionaries of a Communist Chinese Dictatorship

Who can make sense of all this outreach, bowing, scraping, prostrating and kowtowing to individuals who (all but one) have - unlike the US president - no legitimate right to hold the positions they hold, never having been granted the assent of the peoples on whom they impose their tyrannical rule? 

Well, it seems Michael Ramirez can.  He is a brilliant two-time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist for Investors Business Daily. 

He provides the real explanation.  Americans, observe and weep.  While the rest of us cringe in sympathetic embarrassment at the antics of the ignorant juvenile man you (so foolishly) elected as president.  On whom will he next bestow his insulting grovel?

World SuperBower indeed.

Confession:
I picked up the term from Mark Steyn

+ + + + +

Late Note
(25 December 2009)

Whoops! 

Here goes the SuperBower again,
and this time it's Santa Claus,
on the front cover of the Christmas edition
of the prestigious New Yorker, magazine.  

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

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White House Gate Crashers - and “Human Error”

We all enjoyed the story about Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the polo-playing society couple from Virginia, who with extraordinary chutzpah blagged their way into Barack Obama’s glitzy first state dinner at the White House on 24 November.  Playing the part to the full, they arrived in a chauffer-driven stretch SUV, she a beautiful blonde in a striking red sari-style silk dress (in polite tribute to guest of honour President Manmohan Singh of India), he in a dapper dinner jacket. 

Putting on an air of supreme confidence, the glamorous couple swept into the White House and past the first security checkpoint with nary a sideward glance.  Evidently the three uniformed Secret Service officers manning the desk felt too intimidated to confirm their identities against the guest list.  Then, once the Salahis had gone through the metal-detector to check for guns, they were in. 

They mingled among the 338 guests, a mix of wonky Washington, Hollywood A-listers, prominent figures from the Indian community in the US, and Obama friends, family and campaign donors.  They chatted, shook hands and got photographed with dozens of people including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Vice President Joe Biden and the US President himself. 

And as the guests were eventually called for dinner, the two gate-crashers discreetly departed the scene to avoid being rumbled as obviously there was no place set for them at the table. 

Their final act was to post a few photographs of their adventure on Michaele’s Facebook page. 

Needless to say, there was uproar when the story came out. 

Mark Sullivan, the grim-looking director of the Secret Service was hauled before the Congressional Committee on Homeland Security to explain himself.  He testified that the security breach was the fault of the Secret Service, and that the agency was deeply embarrassed.  But he went on to blame the lapse entirely on the the three hapless Secret Service personnel at the guard post who had since been sent on “administrative leave”. He put it all down to “human error”, rejecting any notion that it might be symptomatic of a series of management deficiencies.  “The security break down was not an institutional problem.  I believe it is an isolated incident,” Sullivan declared. 

He is almost certainly wrong.  Such mishaps never occur in isolation and can never be attributed to a single factor.  Industrial psychology research repeatedly demonstrates that incidents are caused

Therefore no investigation of an incident should exclude a very deep look at the culture of the organization in which it occurred. 

As I indicated some years ago (“Spanish Train Crash - The Sham of Human Error”), “human error” is the first refuge of the scoundrel.  It is always a sham, but it creates an easy solution (“fire the bastard who did it”) while relieving the organization of any real responsibility or need to take substantive action.  But there are always underlying problems behind the incident and since, under the  “human error” excuse nothing is done to resolve them and a certain smugness sets in, a recurrence of related incidents becomes more, not less, likely.  

In the gatecrasher case, institutional contributory factors identified by journalist Ronald Kessler who has written a book about the President’s secret service, include:

According to Mr Kessler, overworked, underappreciated, and infuriated by senseless transfer policies, agents are resigning in increasing numbers, forcing the agency to hire inexperienced, less-qualified agents. Within the Uniformed Division alone, the attrition rate is 12% a year.

Mr Sullivan would be far wiser to delve into these kinds of areas than try to slide out of any meaningful action by blaming it all on a convenient case of “human error”.  Otherwise Mr Obama should remove him forthwith from his position as Secret Service boss as it means he has become a menace and a threat to the President’s security.   

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Issue 200’s Comments to Cyberspace

Half-a-dozen varied comments during my over-long absence. 

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Quotes for Issue 200

- - - - - J I H A D - - - - -

Quote: “[US] Department of Defense should allow Muslim Soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious Objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.”

Nidal Hasan, US Major and Islamic Jihadist murderer,
in a lecture to fellow-psychiatrists
prior to his massacre of 13 fellow-soldiers at Fort Hood

Quote: “Her efforts were superb ... She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded but managed to wound him four times.  It was an amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer.”

US Army Colonel John Rossi and Lieutenant-General Bob Cone
pay tribute to Sergeant Kimberly Munley at Fort Hood. 

Barely five foot tall, she is a civilian police officer
stationed at the base, who
immediately and fearlessly confronted
the Jihadist murderer Major Nidal Hassan,
bringing him down with four bullets
while taking three shots herself, in the leg and wrist.

Quote: “These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk, and at times, give their lives to protect us. It’s difficult enough when we lose these brave men and women overseas. It is horrifying when we lose them on American soil.”

A moving tribute by president Obama
to the thirteen military personnel killed in a shooting spree
by Major Hasan, a psychiatrist no less,
who disapproved of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
and was about to be deployed there.

Thirty more people were injured before Sgt Munley thankfully shot him.

Quote: “Nidal Hassan is a hero ... The only way a Muslim can justify serving in the US military is if he intends to follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal ... The American Muslims who condemned his actions have committed treason against the Muslim Ummah and have fallen into hypocrisy.”

Anwar al Awlakia, a radical American imam living in Yemen,
who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers,
praises as a hero the Fort Hood mass-murderer

Quote: “Some [Guantánamo] detainees would rather stay put than go on trial in the US, where they would probably receive a life sentence or could wait years for a death sentence to be carried out.  They know there will not be the same privileges as here. Given the choice of being sentenced forever in Guantánamo or moved to a Supermax [gaol within the US], it is ‘no, can I stay in Gitmo?’. Here they can be outside, they can smell the sea.”

An Arab American cultural adviser,
for security reasons identified only as “Zak”,
who is employed at Guantánamo to liaise with detainees.

Seems Guantánamo is not so bad after all.

Maybe that’s why Attorney General Eric Holder
wants to bring them to New York

Quote: “I’m concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that.”

With such priorities, General George Casey,
the US Army’s top officer,
who also “doesn’t rule out terrorism” [D’oh],
sounds like he is ready for a career change.

Quote: “Where there are no Muslims, the problem of jihadist terrorism does not exist either.”

Astute observation by Irish columnist and polemicist Kevin Myers.

He reminds his readers that neither of these entities exist in
Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Iceland, Japan, Mozambique, Taiwan.

- - - - - O B A M A - - - -

Quote: “Few would have foreseen ... that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.”

President Barack Obama makes clear,
in a video message to the world
on the 20th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall
that had imprisoned East Germans for 28 long years,
that it was all about, well, Mr Obama

Quote: “Brazil, Japan, China, Russia and Israel are all countries [which] have come to see Obama as a diffident, dithering, doubting dilettante who can be dissed with impunity.”

Ouch! Former presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan
observes that foreign leaders are not impressed
by the new US president’s foreign policy

- - - - - E U - - - - -

Quote: “The year 2009 will mark the first year of global governance.”

Herman Van Rompuy, the new king of the EU,
strikes terror into the heart of every right-thinking EU citizen
now railroaded into the Lisbon Treaty

- - - - - S P O R T - - - - -

Quote : “I've let my wife down, I've let my family down (and he's let his trousers down).”
(The Sun, 3 Dec 2009, print edition only)

Droll headline in the (Irish edition of) The Sun, commenting on
the story of Tiger Woods and
his three (at latest count) glamorous mistresses,
which seemed to have resulted in his wife
chasing him out of the house with a three-iron

Quote: “They [the Football Association of Ireland] have asked very humbly ...  can’t we be team number 33 in the world cup.  Yes, they have asked for it really!”

Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, mocks - to widespread laughter -
Ireland’s pathetic attempt to be allowed play
in next year’s World Cup Finals in South Africa,
after having been eliminated by France due to a hand-ball. 

How exactly a knockout tournament was to have been staged
with an odd number of teams the FAI did not explain. 

The FAI only managed to make itself - and Ireland - look ridiculous. 

Quote: “Did you get my good side?”
(Sunday Times, 29 Nov 2009, print edition only)

Jockey Eddie Power, who was photographed
during a spectacular fall on his horse Gilo at the last fence
during a race at Thurles in Tipperary

- - - - - J O C U L A R   R A C I S M - - - - -

Acceptable
Quote: “There is no place for racism in the modern world, and the sooner that Greek twit and his Kraut wife realise it, the better.”

Comedienne Miranda Hart
decries Prince Philip, consort of Queen Elizabeth,
 for making disparaging remarks towards some visiting Indians

Unacceptable (first half, anyway)
Quote (Minute 1:30): “Let’s welcome the chocolate hobnob and custard cream of late night television.”

Andrew Neill, host for the TV show “This Week in Politics”,
introduces his panellists Dianne Abbott
(black with chocolate-coloured hair)
and Michael Portillo (white with custard-coloured hair).

- - - - E N I G M A - - - - - -

Quote (and here):
“To the Members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 1176 without my signature.

For some time now I have lamented the fact that major issues are overlooked while many
unnecessary bills come to me for consideration. Water reform, prison reform, and health
care are major issues my Administration has brought to the table, but the Legislature just
kicks the can down the alley.

Yet another legislative year has come and gone without the major reforms Californians
overwhelmingly deserve. In light of this, and after careful consideration, I believe it is
unnecessary to sign this measure at this time.

Sincerely,  Arnold Schwarzenegger”

California governor Schwarzenegger
vetoes a bill to redevelop San Francisco Port. 

Seeing red, the letter also secretly expresses his disdain
for Assemblyman Tom Ammiano who had heckled him.

“My goodness. What a coincidence. 
I suppose when you do so many vetoes,
something like this is bound to happen”,
remarked the Governator’s spokesman, innocently

ISSUE #199 - 25^th October 2009 [225+1472=1697]

Don’t Lower the Drink Drive Limit

Everyone understands that alcohol in any quantity impairs your judgement and reaction times and therefore agrees with the principle that if you drink then don’t drive. 

Yet distractions abound that also impair, for example, 

There is therefore a certain level of alcohol impairment that is no more malign than these other acceptable diversions. 

We do not know what this level is, but most jurisdictions have settled on a maximum blood-alcohol level that is legal for driving, for example -  

In Ireland there have been commendable efforts over the past decade to enforce the law by (semi-)random breath-testing, upping the annual arrest rate for drunken driving from from 11,000 to 18,000 and applying penalty points licences.  See this chart covering the period 1999-2008

According to a study by Lane Clark & Peacock, a respected international actuarial consultancy, this has helped reduce by about a third the road death rate per population and per vehicle, as this chart running from 1980-2007 illustrates (both are from an LCP study into road deaths in Ireland).   

Evidence from all over the world indicates that the thing that deters criminals more is not the severity of sentence for a given crime but the likelihood of getting caught.  A strong chance of getting apprehended followed by a light sentence is a greater deterrence, apparently, than a lengthy sentence but only a remote chance of arrest. 

By the same token, the sure way to deter drink-driving is to increase the enforcement rather than worsening the punishment or indeed lowering the blood-alcohol limit.  

However, in Ireland (and probably elsewhere), there is a problem with being truly grim about enforcement.  Statistics published by Ireland’s HSE (Health & Safety Executive) confirm what everyone instinctively knows: that most drunks crash their cars at the weekend ...

and during the hours of darkness, with a peak at 3 am ...,

in other words driving home after an alcohol-fuelled night out in the pub, club, disco or restaurant. 

Since that’s where the problem clearly lies, that’s where the enforcement should concentrate.  Breath-testers should be waiting outside such establishments late at night at weekends to pounce on patrons as they stagger out and into their cars. 

But this would naturally cause uproar, not only on the part of the thousands of drunk drivers who would find themselves fined, penalty-pointed or banned, but among the entertainment establishments themselves whose patronage would drop off dramatically. 

That’s why politicians - Irish ones at any rate - are hugely reluctant to oblige the boys in blue to properly enforce the 80mg drink-drive limit. 

It’s also why they much prefer to introduce new legislation (also to be under-enforced) so that they at least appear to be “doing something”.  Hence the Irish government’s current proposal to reduce the limit to 50mg.  Yet to everyone’s surprise, backbenchers have stopped this wheeze in its tracks because of the effect it would have on rural pubs and on the fabric of rural society centred on going to the pub. 

I say “wheeze” because that’s what it is.  The reason advanced for the proposed reduction is twofold.  

Firstly that Continental Europe have largely adopted 50mg (so what?). 

Secondly because, according to the HSE, eighteen drivers were killed in 2003-05 with blood-alcohol levels of between 50mg and the current 80mg limit.  Indeed, when the backbenchers stymied the new law earlier this month, one front-page headline screamed that “10 will lose lives”, having seemingly divided eighteen by two to get an annual figure.   

The source of the eighteen is a report, published last December by the HSE, which tabulates drivers killed against differing levels of alcohol within their systems.  I have reproduced the table below, highlighting the relevant bits. 

The fact that eighteen men died in road accidents with a BAC of between 50 and 80mg by no means proves that this range of alcohol caused their deaths. 

Look more closely at the table: if this conclusion were true so would be another. 

The fact that no fewer than 165 drivers were killed with zero alcohol in their system equally “proves”, equally wrongly, that sober drivers are 60% more dangerous than those with up to twice the current legal limit (103 killed).  Moreover the HSE earlier reported that 65% of all road deaths in 1990-2006 were unrelated to alcohol.  Is driving sober that hazardous? 

The truth is that no-one has ever demonstrated any increase in accidents attributable solely to reducing the blood alcohol limit from 80 to 50mg. Indeed, you only have to peruse accident reports in newspapers (eg here) to see that alcohol levels are invariably described as being several times over the legal limit. Never marginally above, let alone below.

It is extraordinary that most drivers only learn they are over the limit when stopped and breathalysed. It’s like inadvertently breaking the speed limit when you have no speedometer.

A ready means for drivers to measure and control their own inebriation, coupled with more focused enforcement of the existing alcohol limit, will do far more to reduce alcohol-induced road accidents than any amount of tinkering with legislation designed to dodge hard decisions.

The threat to life and limb of drunken driving is too serious to contemplate any action unless it has a high likelihood of reducing alcohol induced road accidents.   

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Fifteen Laws Broken in Eleven Minutes

No sooner had I finished typing my ignorant diatribe above about drunk driving when I stumbled over a story about a guy in St Gallen, Switzerland who committed fifteen traffic offences in just eleven minutes, thereby breaking some kind of world record surely worthy of recognition by Guinness.  And not one of them was alcohol related.  So he is evidently part of the 65% of non-drunk drivers who cause mayhem on the roads, though in his case one of the fifteen was failing a drugs test. 

His litany of violations were that he

1. raced past an unmarked police car doing 150 kph (94 mph) in a 100 kph zone while

2. driving too close to other cars and

3. too close to the kerb and

4. weaving across the white dividing line in the road, while

5. failing to stop for police sirens, and

6. at a road block and

7. at a set of red lights, then

8. driving at 130 kph in an 80 kph zone and

9. endangering life through

10. reckless driving then

11. driving on the hard shoulder while all the time

12. driving under the influence of drugs,

13. failing to drive with due care and attention,

14. driving a car with no MOT and

15. using a mobile telephone at the wheel.

The Swiss police must, in that law-abiding place (if you don’t count white-collar international tax fraud and money-laundering), be leading a very dull life.  With no chain-saw massacres or Bonnie-and-Clyde-style bank robberies to deal with, a spokesman droned on that  “I can’t remember a case this serious.  It’s remarkable”.  No wonder they are so excited about having bagged that paedophile Roman Polanski. 

The driver was an Italian of course, aged 47, and the St Gallen fuzz are hoping to ban him for years (until “Halley’s Comet makes its next appearance” according to one of them [ie 2062]) and with luck have him cast into prison as well.  There is nothing police like more than throwing the book at a foreigner (provided of course it’s a he, he’s middle-aged, he’s straight, he’s white and he’s a nobody).  

My own record-breaking traffic violation took place in Italy where I was living as a callow youth in my mid-twenties and driving my beloved red Fiat sports car (what else?).  Spotting a speed-limit sign of 15 kph on a straightish stretch of road at dead of night, I couldn’t resist.  I deliberately floored the pedal until I reached 150 kph.  Miraculously I emerged unscathed, uncaught, unpunished, unrepentant. 

And I have never heard of anyone ever managing to exceed a speed limit anywhere by a factor of ten.  That wimpish non-callow Italian in Switzerland didn’t manage even to double it.  I bet that Fromula-One guy Lewis Hamilton has also never come close. 

Something else for the Guinness Book of Records perhaps. 

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Issue 199’s Comments to Cyberspace

Two comments this time, on drink-driving and Obama, some people’s favourite topics, whether for or against. 

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Quotes for Issue 199

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

Quote: “It feels just unbelievable, it’s like as if the past 3½ months have been like a dream.”

Nightmare more like.  Sharon Commins,
an aid worker with the excellent Irish charity GOAL,
upon her release 107 days after being kidnapped in Darfur,
along with a Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kawuki. 

Amongst other abuses, the young women
were subjected to frequent mock executions. 

The rumour - hotly denied - is that the Irish government,
via the Sudan government,
paid a $150,000 ransom for their freedom.

“We know them by name, clan and tribe,
so they will never escape punishment,”
said Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister
Abdul Bagi al-Jailani of the kidnappers

- - - - - J I H A D - - - - -

Quote: “What is a ‘proportionate’ attack against an enemy dedicated to exterminating your people? A dedication to exterminating all of his?”

Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times,
writing in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” column
about about Israel’s’ recent war in Gaza. 

He generated an enormous stream of entertaining vitriol,
all along the lines of -
“how dare he say anything in defence of Israel and
how dare the Guardian publish such tripe”.

Quote: “What Vice President Cheney calls ‘dithering’, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs
responds to Dick Cheney’s charge that
the Obama administration is “dithering” over
General Stanley McChrystal’s request for a surge of
40,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

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

Quote: “My father served in the RAF during the Second World War
- yours spent it in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler.”

Nick Griffin, chairman of the much reviled British National Party,
responds pugnaciously to the charge of Nazism
by Jack Straw, Britain’s minister of justice. 

They were sharing a platform on the BBC Question Time programme.

But it’s a bit pathetic for a grown man to say
“my daddy is braver than your daddy”. 

The BBC had hitherto refused to invite the BNP onto this forum,
until it won two parliamentary seats
in the European election in June 2009.

Mr Griffin won 132,094 votes in that election. 
That’s nearly three times more democratic votes
than all the other panellists combined (Jack Straw 17,562,
Sayeeda Warsi 11,192, Chris Huhne 19,216, Bonnie Greer zero).

- - - - - I T A L Y - - - - -

Quote: “I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent.”

Silvio Berlusconi, 72, tries to put down Rosy Bindi, 58,
a former minister (under Romano Prodi),
during a TV argument he was losing.

Ms Bindi feistily replied
“I am not one of the women at your disposal”.

This exchange woke up 98,000 Italian feminists who declared
“It is by now well evident that a woman’s body has become
a major political weapon in the armoury of the prime minister.
He sees women as physically seductive, pretty young things,
totally submissive to the Big Boss’s will.
We protest against this cretinisation of women, of politics and of democracy.
This man offends women and democracy.  Let’s stop him.”

So there.

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 What I'm 
currently reading

NEW!!

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.

+++++

This is a delightful, exquisitely written historical novel published in 1959
and set in 1830s China.  The Chinese Imperial dynasty is at its most flamboyant, cruel, wasteful and hubristic, as it simultaneously wants to enjoy the fruits of trade with the west while forbidding such trade and disdaining all barbarians. For their part, the barbarians of Britain, America and Portugal, based in the Portuguese colony of Macao, desperately want to make money through trading, with the sale of Indian opium to Chinese dealers being especially lucrative.

The climax is a thrilling account of a sea-battle near Hong Kong in which just two British frigates annihilate, solely through superior  tactics, 29 Chinese men-o'-war.  This leads directly to China's secession of the barren, worthless island of Hong Kong to Britain,
in perpetuity.

++++++

 
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the Rugby World Cup
scores, points and rankings.

After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze.  Fourth is host nation France.

No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes