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| August 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #52 - 31st August 2003 [107]
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In recent months, we've heard a lot about the need to circumcise baby boys and adolescent girls in the name of someone or other's rich cultural heritage. The issue came to the fore recently in Ireland when a botched back-street circumcision of a Nigerian baby resulted in the baby bleeding to death. Groupings such as Muslims, Jews, many Africans and others practice circumcision of male infants for no reason other than that it has always been done. It is widespread across the world. When there is a medical requirement for circumcision, this presents no problem, and there are clear procedural guidelines. However, medical need is rare; parents usually request that their son be circumcised only for religious or traditional, not therapeutic, reasons. In this event,
The British Medical Association has managed to anger both sides by publishing ethical guidance for doctors which amounts to saying if you can get both parents to agree, then you can go ahead and do the non-therapeutic chopping. Female circumcision, more commonly called FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), is at least specifically outlawed in many Western jurisdictions, for it is far more barbaric and dangerous than the male equivalent. It is practiced extensively in 30 African and Middle Eastern countries and by their nationals when they emigrate. Unlike the religious dimension and utter pointlessness of male circumcision, FGM is not religion-based but has a sinister purpose - to remove a woman's sexual pleasure and thus ensure her faithfulness. As well as the agony the young girl has to undergo and the infection that frequently follows, it also causes lifelong genito-urinary problems and - similar to the male procedure - there is hardly ever any medical justification for it. There is a third way that children are cut (without anaesthetic as usual).
These forms for child mutilation may be summed up and compared as follows :
The only things in common is that they are all medically unnecessary, hazardous, painful, result in long term damage and have no redeeming feature. This is reason enough to trample roughshod over religious and cultural sensitivities and ban all forms of child mutilation in the West. A condition of living in the West should be to respect children's rights. Meanwhile we should be campaigning for similar bans in countries where this barbarity finds a home. When children are old and mature enough to make their own informed decisions, they should be allowed to undergo the procedures should they wish. But neither parents nor doctors should be permitted to assault children. We make enough fuss when the religious orders abuse them. Late Note : There is a fourth kind
of religious-driven mutilation,
Let me summarise a great 2,000 word article by columnist Victor Davis Hanson. He argues that it is not hard to determine who wishes the United States to succeed in rebuilding Iraq along lines that will promote consensual government, personal freedom, and economic vitality. Apart from the Iraqi and American people, hardly anyone.
All this hysteria and unrest
should come as no surprise given the audacity of the American endeavour,
which is no less than a war of civilization to end both terrorism and the
culture and politics that foster it, across the globe.
Moreover, after two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has
lost only 10% of those who perished on 9/11.
In assessing the value or
otherwise of what has been accomplished, I would paraphrase Internet
Communicator's question (most
recently on 24th August) that trumps all other questions.
“Are the Afghanis and Iraqis better off than before the Americans conquered the previous rulers ?” Forget the bedgrudgers and
disparagers. The answer speaks for itself.
Anti-Semitic Zayed Centre Shut Down My colleague Graham in Abu Dhabi informs me that the country's innocent-sounding yet rabidly anti-Jewish “Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow Up” has been shut down on the orders of its namesake, UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, for “engaging in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance ... a basic principle of Islam”. No doubt the bad publicity it has been getting in recent months from
all had something to do with it.
I had a run in a couple of months ago with the Justin Kilcullen, Director of Trócaire, Ireland's largest charity, when he deliberately misquoted a Paul Wolfowitz speech that purported to say that oil was the purpose of the Iraq war. Mr Kilcullen half-apologised when I caught him out (ah, the power of cyberspace). Unchastened by this, he was on the radio last week being interviewed by Pat Kenny, together with Tom Arnold the CEO of Concern the next biggest Irish charity. (You can listen to the interview here up to Monday 1st September.) Ireland recently decided to double its aid budget to the Ugandan government. Pat suggested the behaviour of the Ugandan government made this a mistake. Surely it was better that aid be channelled via NGOs like Trócaire and Concern so as to make sure it goes where it is needed. However, Justin and Tom put up a robust defence as to why the Irish taxpayer should indeed send more money to the corrupt Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his government, while Uganda continues
The interviewer therefore posed a simple question - if the current circumstances warrant an increase in aid, how much worse must the Ugandan authorities behave before aid should be frozen or withheld ? The two charitymongers were unable to answer coherently, only to say that there were “some signs” of improvement and that should be sufficient to keep shovelling across the cash. When questioned about Ugandan corruption, they said that there are no clean leaders in Central Africa, therefore you must deal with what you have. Isn't that racism, asked the interviewer, to apply lower standards to Africans than to Westerners ? If France were to support a brutal civil war in Austria should we support it ? Should we overlook Saddam's minor infractions and invite him back to help rule Iraq in the interests of stability ? The charityeers were pretty dumbfounded. “Governments have to make judgments,” they mumbled. NGOs can't do their business unless the Irish taxpayer pays money to the Ugandan government, which according to Pat Kenny, creams off 70%. It was an ignominious performance, prompted, I can only think, by an expectation that some crumbs of the Irish taxpayer's subvention ends up in those charities' coffers. Either that or the charities want to suck up to the governments of Ireland and Uganda in exchange for unspecified favours. By comparison, John Shea, the head of GOAL, Ireland's third biggest charity, in an earlier interview had clearly stated his opposition to sending any aid at all to the Ugandan government while it continues its illegal activity. So long as certain charities devote their energies to politicking instead of the causes they purport to support, I for one will give them nothing. So, Trócaire and Concern are taboo for me; my vote and €uros go to GOAL. Late Note : Read this follow-up, entitled “ Trócaire Fisked not Fixed”
Counting outwards, Earth is the third planet (after Mercury and Venus) to whizz around the sun, and the next one out is Mars. Mars is coloured red by iron-rich dust kicked up in the swirling, wind-blown atmosphere as the planet spins like a toy top. It has polar caps of ice and frozen carbon dioxide, an incredible 25-kilometre high extinct volcano, a canyon system 5,000 km long, dunes and channels carved by water, and surface temperature averages minus 50ºC. Earth, bigger and heftier than all four planets, is double the diameter of Mars and ten times heavier. Because of these variations and their different orbits, their proximity to each other varies over time. To see what Earth looks like from Mars click here. Mars generated a flurry of interest last week when it skidded by within a mere (sic) 56 million km of earth, and was visible with the naked eye as a reddish dot. The last time it was this close was 59,619 years ago, so the last people to have seen it this easily were the Neanderthals who lived in parts of Eurasia during the last Ice Age. They looked similar to us but with more pronounced foreheads, wider noses and larger jaws. Neanderthals were short, stocky and said to be robust, though not enough to avoid mysterious extinction 25,000 years later.
When he publishes his full selection on the web, I'll provide a link.
Meanwhile, cartoonist Martyn Turner is not convinced that everyone is happy to see Mars and Earth pass so close.
A lot of people think wealthy people become wealthy because they either make a lot of money or they inherit a lot. But that's not true for the vast majority people. In fact, most of the wealth accumulated by the so-called well-off was accumulated over a lifetime by simply making a habit of saving. The reason rich people get richer and poor people get poorer is that
So let's examine how rich people became, well, rich. To begin with,
It's not so easy to fix being poor, but we can fix being broke. There's no magic. We must just work hard, get a little money, save some of it, and turn this process into a habit for very long periods of time. Eventually, we won't be broke any more. But the poor people next to us will remain poor - because they will spend any small amounts of money they might come upon, so preventing themselves from accumulating wealth. To make this work ...
We can make all the excuses we want, but the fact remains. Either we will or we will not achieve wealth.
Or we can ignore all those problems and save anyway. It's entirely up to each of us. That means we need to start saving money now - no matter how little we have, no matter how old or young we are. For example,
It won't take long to realise how remarkably easy it is to save money. And, over time, the wealth will come, little by little. It's just a matter of habit.
I've noticed that there's much less rhubarb in the shops this summer than in previous years. Apparently we should blame the global warming that we Europeans have all been enjoying (well, perhaps not French grandparents). Rhubarb, which has been flourishing since its first mention 4,700 years ago in China, just can't take the heat. With its pharmaceutical roots, delicious stalks and poisonous leaves, the Chinese over the centuries used different bits of it variously as
Cultivation began in Europe only in the 17th century and in America the following century, and rhubarb gained notoriety in the dual function of medicament (the roots) and pie-filling (the stalks). In England, medical rhubarb was often sold by Englishmen dressed up as Turks to give it a convincing exotic aura. Some say the name comes from Rha Barbarum, because it once grew along the river Rha (now the Volga) on the other side of which foreigners (barbarians) lived. Others think it comes from rheo, the Greek for 'to flow', a coy allusion to the purgative properties of the root. Still others think rhubarb simply means red beard. Whatever, it's not going away, just north to cooler climes. Icelanders are apparently keen growers - they love rhubarb soup.
Quote : “America’s bitter victory in Iraq has been described a thousand times. The mistake made by the international community, and by France, is to see nothing beyond this apparent failure and to cynically rejoice, proving America wrong. Even if the US is not going at it right, it is trying to defend freedom against an aggressor who wants total war, as proven by the attack on the UN. We must remember and never forget the original act of terror against the World Trade Center: the war against the ‘World’.
Its goals are clear: whether we are French, American or Moroccan ... Christians, Jews or Muslims, we are all a target. The US is caught in a quagmire in Iraq. To join them under the banner of the UN is an act of self-defense.” Alain Genestar, editor of Paris Match,
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ISSUE #51 - 24th August 2003 [122]
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UN Bombing in Baghdad as a Breakthrough That dreadful UN suicide-bomb in Baghdad snatched 23 innocent lives last week, including that of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Representative to Iraq, who was also successor to Ireland's ex-President Mary Robinson as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Some 100 more people were injured. Yet, to the disappointment of those malefactors who planned the outrage, it may herald a breakthrough into a new era of mutual understanding, respect and co-operation between the UN and the US, after the bitter row that followed the UN's unwillingness to enforce its Resolution 1441. For it has surely driven home a few truths.
Actually, columnist Mark Steyn expresses the American blame thing much more elegantly than I ...
Nevertheless, those red bullet points above surely must point in only one direction - the need for the US and UN to co-operate together in the reconstruction of Iraq, but with overall responsibility remaining in US hands.
We have to assume that the countries of the UN - refuseniks like France, Germany and Russia included - do at heart have the best interests of the Iraqi people, no matter how much they may resent what they see as America's high-handed action in removing Saddam. All parties should now therefore seize the opportunity to use the bombing of the UN offices as a breakthrough - an excuse to put their differences behind them - in order to confront the common enemy in the pragmatic way suggested. But will they ? There is much to do on the civic front; appointing the Governing Council was only the first step towards democratisation. In fact, democratisation is in a sense not a beginning but an end point that you achieve only after doing more difficult things - services and constitutionalist things - such as
The contribution that the UN can make in many of these areas is immense, if it can put its mind to it. But the US, because there is no-one else and because they will continue to provide up to 80% of the manpower, will have to remain in overall charge, though should be prepared to allow the UN significant input in decision-making. The UN should be pleased with such a pact - involvement and influence, yet still leaving America to carry the can for any and all mishaps. Kofi Annan recently remarked that America should share with other countries not just the burden of managing Iraq but also decisions and responsibility. This is doable provided “sharing” is interpreted to mean “consulting” rather than the unworkable paralysis of “unanimity”. As for responsibility, everyone is going to blame America no matter what, and for non-Americans you would think this was just fine. There are therefore grounds for optimism that some sort of UN Resolution will take shape to embrace such concepts in a face-saving formula. In that case, the sacrifices of those unwitting UN victims will not have been entirely in vain. And the chances of creating a successful new democratic Iraq will have been bolstered. The alternative - where everyone just walks away and leaves Iraq to descend into civil war - is too dreadful to contemplate. Yet I heard on the radio only today (Sunday 24 Aug), Ireland's distinguished Senator David Norris declare exactly that - that the Americans and British should “get out of Iraq”. Chilling.
Once again, the Israel/Palestine question looks utterly intractable. A three-month ceasefire is supposed to be in place. The Palestinians call it a “hudna”, whose true Islamic meaning is a short-term truce against a stronger enemy, to be employed as a tactic to build up forces in order to subsequently vanquish the foe. Both sides have taken a few tiny, bad-tempered steps down the roadmap. But violence has continued and it looks like everyone is now abandoning the tru |
The British Dental Association's (subscription-only) Launchpad
journal recently 
My
friend Samir, a skilled amateur astronomer, was the first to send me a
photographic image, achieved with his computer-controlled 8
