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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| August 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #133 - 20th August 2006 [151]
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Arab Crimes Against
Palestinians Overlooked Conflicts in the Middle East frequently pose awkward questions. Rory Miller and Alan Shatter ask some more ... Now that a ceasefire in Lebanon has been agreed there will, no doubt, be numerous inquests and questions asked about the month-long Lebanon war. So here's some we would like to ask. Which country invaded its neighbour in mid-2006 in order to, as they put it, “crush” Islamists threatening regional stability? Which country killed an estimated 500 people in a week when its artillery began bombarding its long-time guerrilla enemy in late July 2006, causing mass displacement and suffering? If you think the answer is Israel, you guessed wrong.
So how come our politicians completely ignore these crises and instead choose to focus solely on Israel's campaign in Lebanon? Why have the same politicians hardly let out a whisper of criticism of those responsible for other such tragedies in Darfur, with its estimated 300,000 dead and at least 2.5 million refugees; or Chechnya, where an estimated 150,000-160,000 have died, where a third of the population has been displaced and the country has been left in rubble by the Russian army; or the war in the Congo, with over four million dead or driven from their homes? Why has the Lord Mayor of Dublin, for example, described the Israeli action as “probably one of the greatest scandals of the new millennium” but not seen it necessary to comment on any of these other conflicts? Why have supposedly apolitical cultural bodies - such as the Irish Film Institute and the Festival of World Cultures in Dún Laoghaire - decided to cancel sponsorship from the Israeli embassy because of Israel's actions in Lebanon, but never seen the need to act similarly regarding countries involved in other conflicts around the world? The truth is that Israel's use of military force, combined over the 60 years since its birth, has caused far fewer casualties and damage than war, conflict and oppression in Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Chechnya, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Eritrea and Ethiopia (and that's only the beginning of the alphabet; if we go to countries beginning with "I", there's India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq). So why is it that people have taken to the streets of Dublin, Cork, Galway and Dundalk to protest at the Israeli campaign in Lebanon but have never felt the need to do the same to express anger over any of these more bloody conflicts? Why is it that, over the last few decades, successive governments have made numerous statements condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, while TDs (members of parliament) and Senators have called for the economic boycott of Israel, but have felt no need to do the same in response to the mistreatment of Palestinians across the Arab world from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, a country which was condemned in a June 2006 Amnesty International report for its “long-standing discrimination and abuses of fundamental economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees”? Or, for that matter, why has there never been any Irish outcry when Arab countries have killed Palestinians on a grand scale? In 1970, King Hussein of Jordan ordered the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian refugee camps in the course of putting down the Palestinian uprising during “Black September”. This left between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinian refugees dead. Why was the fact that King Hussein killed more Palestinians in the course of a single month than Israel managed to do in decades never held against him, or even raised, on his visits to this country? Again, more than two decades ago, Abu Iyad, the number two man in the PLO, publicly stated that the crimes of the Syrian government against the Palestinian people “surpassed those of the Israeli enemy”. Much of this took place in Lebanon, where Syria was responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths and for the flight of up to half a million civilians from their homes, as well as for mass executions, as occurred, according to one 1986 Amnesty International report, when Syrian troops entered the town of Tripoli and executed hundreds of civilians, including numerous women and children. How come in the 25 years that this was going on there was not one Dáil (parliamentary) debate or public statement by a politician on these Syrian atrocities in Lebanon? Where were the calls for boycotts, or the condemnations of Kuwait, when in the wake of its liberation in 1991, it embarked on the widespread slaughter of Palestinians living in the kingdom? This revenge against innocent Palestinian workers was so severe that Yasser Arafat himself acknowledged: “What Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories”. Lastly, why, 60 years after its establishment, is Israel the only state in the world whose politicians are presented in Oireachtas (parliamentary) debates as war criminals, whose economy faces relentless calls for sanctions and boycotts, and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged in the letters pages of our newspapers? Maybe one of those who has felt the need to write such letters, or to call for a boycott, or to take to the streets against Israel, or to speak out in the Seanad (Senate), but has not seen the need to do the same in regard to any other country or conflict, could let us know why - because we just can't figure it out.
UNIFIL's Choice of Katyusha or Smart Bomb
If you go for the Katyusha, the contents of what looks somebody's toolbox are the kind of things that will end up embedded in your flesh and bones.
That is the choice that troops of UNIFIL will face in its currently-being-reconstituted form. Half-time was declared in Lebanon on 14th August in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Yes, I know the term cease-fire has been used, but in the absence of a clear victory by either side, hostilities will inevitably resume. Hezbollah will not go away or abandon their annihilate-Israel raison d'être, so Israel will not be able to ignore them when they go back to their customary hostile activities. Last week Italy, France and a number of other EU countries agreed to contribute some nine thousand troops to a beefed up UNIFIL force in Lebanon, designed to give effect to the UN's cease-fire resolution 1701, adopted unanimously on 11th August. 1701 is merely the eighth in a series of resolutions stretching back nearly three decades demanding that Lebanon be governed by the government of Lebanon, and not - as at present - have a big chunk hijacked by a bunch of terrorists accountable to foreign dictatorships. Up to now, not one of them has been enforced (much as successive Iraq disarmament resolutions went ignored for twelve years until America took 1441's “serious consequences” seriously). Resolution 1701 mandates UNIFIL to
In simple language, UNIFIL is supposed to disarm Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, prevent it from fighting and keep it from being re-supplied with weapons. To this end it is to use “all necessary action” which presumably includes shooting, if that is necessary. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predictably describes 1701 as “a Zionist document”. And in case of any doubt, Prof Bruce Thornton points out that “the French, the Lebanese, and other potential enforcers of the resolution 1701 have [already] stated explicitly that they will not disarm Hezbollah, which has made it clear it has no intentions of abiding by those terms of the resolution”. Turkey, another potential contributor, is also emphatic about not shooting fellow Muslims. Nevertheless, the mandate puts UNIFIL in an unenviable situation, because it has no choice but to take one side or the other, the consequence of which is to attract either Katyushas or smart bombs.
The last time the UN got into a shooting war specifically authorised as such was in Korea back in 1953. One way or another, it's clearly not going to get into one in Lebanon. So when the bullets, smart bombs and Katyusha rockets do start flying again, and the first blue helmets fall, you can be sure UNIFIL will be among the refugees fleeing for cover. Israel will have to do its own dirty work - as it has always had to.
Six Rules for America to Win its Wars According to the inimitable Victor Davis Hansen, there are six rules that America must follow if it is to win its wars in the current age of Western relativism coupled with media exposure and bias.
You gotta read the whole article to appreciate how he arrives at these extraordinary - but rational - conclusions. (The italics are my own interpretation.)
Most modern-day so-called anti-war types in the West are in fact pro-war pro the other side (eg “we are all Hezbollah now”). They don't want wars like the one in Lebanon to stop. They want Hezbollah (and any other militant Islamists whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or London) to fight and win them. They are quite unlike “The Religious Society of Friends”, founded in the 1650s and more commonly known as Quakers, a Christian sect that is truly pacifist. Quakers believe that war and the preparation for war are inconsistent with the spirit of Christ, and so devote effort toward mediation and reconciliation whilst resolutely refusing to bear arms or join the military, even when conscripted. However, like many other equally genuine pacifists - Ghandi springs to mind - the Quakers completely rely, unwittingly or not, on the morality and protection of the very non-pacifists they abhor. They live and thrive overwhelmingly in Western countries. There, their pacificism is accepted by everybody. Historically, refusal to bow to conscription has been punished with imprisonment, and indeed many Quakers have bravely paid this price, but very few were ever executed. Today the penalty for refusing conscription in the handful of Western countries that still practice it is more likely to be some form of community service rather than going to jail. Even in rough places like today's Russia, refusal to obey the call-up results in incarceration not death. Thus Quakers can continue with their way of life, doing good wherever and whenever they can, and practicing their religion. But this is not so, and would not be so, under a totalitarian or Sharia regime. Pacificism such as Ghandi's non-violent resistance to British imperial rule in India would have simply been met with death.
But seventy years ago, Europe was threatened by a totalitarian atheistic ideology that looked set to swamp it. Had it not been resisted by the British, and then defeated by the Americans and Russians, Nazism would have reigned supreme across Europe. Wherever Quakerism thrives today, its pacifism would not have been tolerated for one minute under Hitler's followers. Nazism was defeated by guns not dialogue. The same goes for the termination of the Japanese totalitarian model of imperialistic militarism, which by 1941 had effectively strangled the Quaker movement. The Japanese Quakers have never recovered, but after the effect of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no-one would have prevented them from doing their stuff in Tokyo should they have wished. Sixty years ago, once Nazism was vanquished, another totalitarian atheistic ideology threatened to engulf Europe and indeed did so in much of the eastern and central parts, to the misery of their inhabitants. This time it was Soviet Communism.
Who can doubt that without American arms Quakers would not today be permitted to live their pacifist lifestyle? Once again, it was guns not dialogue that removed a malign totalitarian ideology from (most of) the world. And to this day, 37,000 American troops are deterring the million-man army of the totalitarian (and Quaker-free) North Korean tyranny from overrunning democratic South Korea. In modern times, you would also be hard-put to find Quakers active in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia, because these too are totalitarian regimes and while not atheistic are virulently anti-Christian. Yet were radical Islam to have its way, and an Islamic caliphate rule the world along the lines of Iran or the Taliban, there would be very few places indeed for Quakers to wave their flag. Yet who are doing most to prevent precisely such an outcome? Why, those annoying Cowboys again, with their damnable guns and their brave soldiers. So whilst Quakers are to be respected for their heartfelt anti-militarism (unlike the more vociferous, publicity-hungry anti-war crowd), they should recognize that they are, and have always been, effectively free-loading on the guns, blood and goodwill of others. Though they are not alone in this.
Before I went to live and work for a few years in Australia during the 1990s, I was familiar with the one-word epithet whingingpoms that the natives routinely employ to describe their former colonial masters. It was therefore with some surprise to find out how many whingers there actually were among the Ozzies themselves; in fact the whinge level (about everything and anything) was a lot more than I ever witnessed in England. I perpetually whinged about this.
But enough of my own whinging. Graham, my spy in Australia, alerted me to what happened on 19th August in Auckland. Australia and New Zealand played a crucial game in Auckland, in which the All Blacks eventually secured the coveted Tri-Nations trophy by defeating the Wallabies 34-27 in an especially rough-and-tumble fixture. In the course of this, Australia's Lote Tuqiri inflicted on New Zealand's iconic new captain Richie McCaw a highly dangerous spear tackle, lifting him up and dumping him heavily on his head, as this sequence of video-grabs shows. Fortunately no injury resulted. However, the assault, perpetrated in open-field play, went unpunished because, amazingly, the referee and two touch judges all failed to spot it.
Nevertheless, as you can see the cameras had caught it, so sometime
after the match, New Zealand were able to lodge an official Then New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark pitched in with one of her own. During a radio interview, she said -
When the no-nonsense Wallabies coach John Connolly, nicknamed Knuckles, heard Ms Clark's erudite remarks, he struggled to contain his laughter, saying “She has to be kidding, this is a wind-up, this is a wind-up”. No, just another Kiwi whinge!
Week 133's Letters to the Press Five letters since the last issue; I've got to try to break this habit. Only the one on Cuban health care was published; it exposes (on my second attempt) Castro's record of having killed 73,000 people, over which I am still engaged in a dispute.
- - - - - - - - - - L E B A N O N - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “The beauty of this war was that a force of just 6,000 or so members with light weapons superseded an organised army that all the Arab countries are scared of ... The point about Nasrallah is that he says something and then does it. And that is very unusual among leaders in the Arab world. Hezbollah doesn't just threaten, it achieves.”
Mohammed Sharak and
Saeed Nimur, - - - - - - Quote: “[We call on you our] troops to stand alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible army after it was defeated.” A Lebanese army circular makes plain that it is allied to Hezbollah This is the force
that has been sent south of the Litani river When this war
resumes - as it surely will before long - - - - - - - Quote: “Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war? [I think he means worLd war!]” Poll question put by
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's The answer when I
voted was 30% Yes, 70% No,
Warning: According to
“Give
Israel Your Support” - - - - - - - - - - M U L T I C U L T U R I S M - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “Multiculturalism makes a nation no more than a holding pen, its whole merely the sum of its parts. And so in the absence of cultural confidence, demography will decide. Or in the superb summation of the American writer James C. Bennett, ‘democracy, immigration multiculturalism … pick any two’.” Mark Steyn,
lecturing in Sydney on
“It's not
‘Them’,
It's Us: Think carefully about Mr Bennett's three words. - - - - - - - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “The tribunal has been staggered by the amount of indiscipline and insubordination it has found in the Garda [Irish police] force ...There is a small but disproportionately influential core of mischief-making members who will not obey orders, who will not follow procedures, who will not tell the truth and who have no respect for their officers ... It is wrong to suggest that the people of Ireland are getting value from every Garda employed by them” A damning report by a tribunal
into - - - - - - Quote: “What [I am looking] for in a Rose [is] someone a bit like myself, someone who is direct and not afraid to express an opinion ... the old days are gone.” Weird remarks from
Royston Brady, - - - - - - - - - - F O R M U L A O N E - - - - - - - - - - Quote (via Graham in Perth):
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ISSUE #132 - 13th August 2006 [240+93=333]
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I recently read down (and eventually chipped in to) a long discussion thread that followed a post, “Israel-Lebanon”, on the blog of Sunday Times columnist Sarah Carey, which she drew attention to in her weekly Sunday Times column. Though it was lively, and a few valid points were made, its contributors largely lacked knowledge of history, logic or indeed grammar, though there was no shortage of emotion. Needless to say, a large proportion of contributors criticised Israel for its effrontery in resisting and retaliating against Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks. Well-meaning people throughout history and across the world have always had genuine sympathy for the plight of Jews, the globe's eternal downtrodden, from pre-Christian times when they were enslaved by the Egyptians to post-Christian Europe, the Middle East and Africa, to the early twentieth century when six million of them in Europe were murdered by the Nazis. Of course among Christians they lost tremendous empathy for urging the Roman conquerors in Jerusalem to crucify Jesus, though it has always struck me as odd that even greater odium was/is not directed against the Italians since it was the Romans who made the actual decision and then carried it out. It's largely explained by Saint Paul, who left a huge corpus of inspirational writings, but who included in his first letter to the Thessalonians that awful calumny, “the Jews ... killed ... the Lord Jesus” (2:14-15). He surely knew better, or else there was a mistranslation. Then in 1948 the United Nations, in a fit of post-Holocaust guilt, agreed to establish as a homeland for the remaining Jews the state of Israel, in a small piece of the landmass they used to occupy during the time of Christ. Most of this land had been vacant for centuries because it was nothing but arid and empty earth and scrub. The absentee Turkish and Arab landlords from whom the Jews had during the early years of the twentieth century bought most of it couldn't believe their luck in getting hard cash for worthless real estate. But then, having got their country, those pesky Jews stopped reading the script, and started mouthing cheeky phrases like, “Never again”. It seems they didn't intend to become victims any more. Not ever. They not only created a thriving economy out of that desert, in the process attracting thousands of hitherto unemployed Arabs to take up the jobs that were suddenly created. This show of independence was bad enough. But when their neighbours started - and continued - to attack them, from the very day the state was formed, they for the first time in their millennia of history fought back - and won - instead of becoming punchbags yet again. In so doing, they created and honed the first Jewish army in 2,000 years. So suddenly, simply because they refuse to be on the losing team any more, everyone hates Jews again. Well, lots of people do and by no means only Muslims. The whiff of anti-Semitism within polite society and across the media is as overpowering as the stench from an open latrine in the summer. With such Jew-hatred alive and well within developed Western economies, Hitler can rest happy in his grave; his work has not, it seems, been in vain. But there was humour within Sarah Carey's discussion thread. One particular contributor, a Billy Waters, between sneers at Israel's “reckless” self-defence against an enemy sworn to annihilate it, remarked. “You don’t see the Dalai Lama bunker-busting Beijing do you?”, which appears to be his advice to Israel. There is of course one answer to this: Tibet. Tibet is a country brutally invaded by the illegitimate Communist regime that runs China, which for the past five decades has been single-mindedly focused on eradicating all vestiges of Tibetan identity, culture and language. It does this through military force, the chasing away of unco-operative religious leaders (hint: the Dalai Lama), the imprisonment or execution of any other awkward Tibetans, the wanton destruction of Tibetan holy and historic places, and massive immigration of ethnic Han Chinese. The latest step on this road is the opening of a hugely uneconomic direct train service from Beijing to Lhasa, covering some thousand kilometres, climbing higher than five thousand metres and costing well over four billion dollars. Outstanding engineering feat that it is, its primary purpose is to make further colonisation by the Han and other non-Tibetans even easier. It has nothing to do with tourism or trade, though no doubt the money these bring in will be welcome offsets to the enormous capital and operating costs. Tibetans are now a besieged, discriminated-against minority in their own country, much as the Koran demands that in Sharia-ruled lands infidels become dhimmis (if not dead). Indeed, thanks to Tibet's new demography, the Chinese thugs who run it might even at some stage feel brave enough to allow a little bit of democracy to creep in, and everyone will cheer. Oh, and by the way, the world has looked on at the rape of Tibet, virtually applauding, for the past 55 years. You see Tibet is not like the Middle East. It is not important in the material sense, so it can be safely ignored. No oil, no minerals, little fertile soil, no coastline, no vital trade-routes, no pipelines, no influential or rich friends. Only the Dalai Lama keeps us feeling faintly guilty. Tibet's fate is the logical result of not resisting (with bunker busters if needed) aggression aimed at your annihilation. You can be sure if, as Billy Waters speculated, the Dalai Lama had possessed bunker-busters, along with both the aircraft and the desire to deliver them to Beijing, Mao Tse Tung would have thought much more carefully before marching in roughshod. The world's greatest-ever mass-murderer would not have enjoyed one of them landing on Tiananmen Square. Yet not using its bunker-busters or whatever else in its arsenal it might need, is precisely what many Western anti-Semites seem to advocate for Israel. Because they would love to see those Jews turned if not into cinders, then Tibetans. Eternal victims again, for whom we can all feel sympathetic once more, and quietly go “Tut-tut”. And why does anyone imagine that, once the Jews are all disposed of, the remaining infidels are not next on the shopping list? What is happening in Lebanon is part of an existential battle not only for Israel, but for all us infidels. We better hope they win.
Last week I alluded to the dreadful Qana incident, where an errant Israeli bomb (or as others would have it a carefully directed Israeli bomb) struck a building containing only women and children, killing up to 54 of them. But I also pointed out that later reports gave a figure of “only” 28 dead. It seems there is more to this story than just an inability to count dead bodies, and an Israeli attack on a town from the area of which Hezbollah had launched some 130 rockets into Israel. That the count had actually reduced should have immediately raised suspicions: typically in a disaster (think of the tsunami), people record the bodies as and when they are recovered. With time more bodies are recovered so the tragic number goes up. It never goes down, at least not appreciably so, because you can't easily overcount corpses. And you certainly can't count 54 if there are only 28. Some have dug deeper and the story gets curiouser.
Moreover, in none of the images, do you see any of the “rescue workers” covered in dust, like the little boy is, even though they have apparently been scrabbling about in the rubble using their bare hands to unearth victims. Then there is the matter of the corpses themselves as photographed.
All the above doesn't prove much, other than the cynical use of innocent children's bodies to obtain dramatic photographs. But it does raise the question:
You be the judge.
Perhaps Qana will in due course be added to the pantheon of non-Israeli massacres and Israeli non-massacres, to join Sabra, Shatila, Rafah and Jenin. Late Note: For
an incredibly detailed account of
When a young man wants to woo a young woman, what kind of things does he do? Says nice things to her. Tells her she's beautiful. Buys her flowers. Takes to the theatre, to restaurants. Brings her for drives to the countryside. Presents her with jewellery. Maybe even offers to walk her down the aisle. With any luck she falls for it all and eventually succumbs to his endearments. And then, perhaps years later, they are a couple, but things start going a bit wrong. Misunderstandings arise, rows erupt, crockery gets broken. If things aren't put right, the relationship is going to blow apart. Or indeed it does, and the woman walks out, or else throws the man out. A period of reflection follows, and remorse, and let us say that the man wants to reinstate the relationship that had been so special. So he contacts the woman again, expresses his regrets, and attempts another round of wooing, not unlike the original one, only probably more expensive! Maybe he succeeds, maybe he doesn't. And if he doesn't he might get angry, start shouting, even get violent. But at this point, he knows in his heart that his chances of winning over the woman are over. It's now all about revenge, nothing more. So he has nothing to lose by being nasty. All this is pretty much common sense to anyone who's ever read a Mills & Boon novel (I haven't). So why, when men move from the business of trying to get close to a woman on a personal level, to trying to get close to another group of people, do they take such an utterly opposite approach? Why do they think that the best way to woo that group is to get angry, start shouting, even get violent? Examples? Everywhere.
In every case, the first party thinks/thought the best way to get or keep its hands on the second party is/was to be thoroughly nasty and hostile, up to and including launching a war. In no case does anyone seem to think that the way to woo the other is through old-fashioned seduction. Why does Spain think the way to win back Gibraltar is to impose trade and travel restrictions and to issue dire warnings to those uppity Gibraltarians who keep voting to remain with the UK? (Why would they want it anyway?) When did Irish republicans, though they passionately desire a united Ireland and it is only Northern Ireland's Protestants who stand in their way, last declare their undying love for Ian Paisley? Last February, republicans organised a riot which prevented Ulster Protestants from staging a (now laughably named) “love Ulster” march down the main street of Dublin. Argentina launched an invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas, were ejected, and continue to be thoroughly unpleasant towards the inhabitants. Yet it somehow thinks this behaviour will entice them to fall into its blue and white arms. Nigeria fought a dreadful (three million dead) civil war in the late 1960s to prevent Biafra from declaring independence, but at least it had a reason. All its oil was located within Biafra. Bitterness of course remains to this day. Czechoslovakia with its 1993 “velvet divorce” was the admirable exception to national break-ups. More typical was Yugoslavia and the bitter wars of succession which killed 115,000, and without preventing the break-up. A bit of this lingers on. Serbians make up only 10% of Kosovo, yet believed the way to prevent divorce was to wage war on the Muslim 90%. And it still makes no effort at all to persuade the hearts and minds of those Muslims to remain with the motherland; it is all tough and bitter denunciation. Russia is furious with its former vassal Georgia (Stalin was a Georgian) and its “Rose Revolution”, because its democratically elected new leader Mikhail Saakashvili is leaning firmly westward and now wants to join NATO. Mother Russia thinks the way to persuade Georgians to change their minds is such measures as trade embargos, border closures and shutting shut off energy supplies However, Georgia is almost as bad and unpleasant in relation to its own breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as is Moldova towards its secessionist Transniestria (with Russia supporting all three rebels). And we all know Russia's methods of showing its love of Chechens: 200,000 of them killed by the Russian army in two brutal wars, and the capital city Grozny levelled to the ground, along with much of the rest of the republic. There is an Aesop fable about a battle between the Wind and the Sun. To settle which of them was stronger, they agreed to see who could remove the cloak of a passing man. The Wind had first go, and it blew and it howled and it roared, and the stronger the Wind, the tighter the man pulled the cloak around him. But when it was the Sun's turn, it simply cleared the sky of clouds and shone and glistened and burned, and of course the man simply removed his cloak. And his shirt. Moral of the story: persuasion is more powerful than force. Or put another way, woo with charm not aggression. Since charm clearly works in matters of the human heart, why do so many leaders think the aggression is the solution when it comes to a nation's heart? For what is a nation's heart but a collection of human hearts?
How long can you survive this test? My personal best is 10.625 seconds.
Week 132's Letter to the Press Only one letter this week, and it wasn't published. It flogs the long-dead horse of anti-Israel propaganda and misinformation, and draws on last week's post, “Belligerent Disproportionality” .
- - - - - - - - - - B R I T A I N - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “Go now.” The intercepted
message from Pakistan to British suicide bombers, “This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” Paul Stephenson, London's Metropolitan
police deputy commissioner, Quote: “Well, [Mr Blairs' is] the same kind of relationship [with Mr Bush] that Ms Lewinsky had with the former US president ... “Two of the Arab world's beautiful daughters, Jerusalem and Baghdad, are in the hands of these foreigners, these occupiers, and nothing can be done by the Arab rulers, because they are in bed, fornicating with the foreigners, who are occupying and using these beautiful Arab daughters as they will.” The intrepid George
Galloway, with illicit sex on his mind, - - - - - - - - - - L E B A N O N - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “The most immoral of solutions would be to accept the current situation and give up on an immediate ceasefire.” French president
Jacques Chirac lectures Washington on
“morality”. - - - - - - - - - - R W A N D A - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “If some outfit wanted to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas in Rwanda, we would see far, far more international reaction than if they wanted to slaughter thousands of human beings.” General Romeo Dallaire,
60, The incident is now
being filmed as
“Shake Hands with the Devil”,
- - - - - - - - - - C U B A - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “It is true that we [Cubans] were beaten, tortured, imprisoned, impoverished, censored, patronised, shot at, lied to, denied the vote, denied our religion and prevented from leaving for 50 years. But whenever it made us sick, there was always a doctor.” Quoting a
“Havana resident”,
satirist Newton Emerson - - - - - - - - - - B U S H E S - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “As I have said over and over again, I support the policies of the President without question. But, whenever I try to say that publicly, reporters look for even the hint of a nuance, for a way to drive a wedge between myself and the President. So I have decided, for now, it is better for me not to talk about it.” George Bush Senior backs his son. What a surprise.
Late Note: Thanks Sarah Carey for providing this priceless link |
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ISSUE #131 - 6th August 2006 [166]
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Belligerent Disproportionality A terrorist organization devoted to the eradication of a sovereign UN member state, invades and attacks it, damages its military equipment, kidnaps its wounded soldiers and kills several more. Sound familiar? That is of course
Israel has been waging a vicious war against both organizations ever since, and they in turn have continued to rain down rockets on Israel. Out of its stock of 13,000 rockets, Hezbollah has fired some 1,800 into Israel killing over forty civilians. Meanwhile, Israel, up to early August, had mounted perhaps 8,000 air sorties into Lebanon, dropped countless bombs, wrecked acres of infrastructure and killed maybe 500 militants plus a further 500 civilians (reliable numbers are hard to come by), at a cost of over fifty of its own soldiers. If Israel is deliberately targeting Lebanese civilians, as many claim, it is astonishingly bad at it, since it seems to take sixteen sorties just to kill one of them.
Nevertheless, the more this barbarous war continues, the more people all over the world are looking at numbers like these - particularly the Lebanese civilian casualties - and the more they are declaring that Israel's response in this belligerency is “disproportionate”. From the UN's Kofi Annan, to senior EUrocrats to respected American columnists to Arab governments to France & Russia. Yet what is remarkable about the learned gentlemen who speak for these outfits, is that not one of them ever ever comes up with an alternative response for Israel that he would term “proportionate”. And if you look at their own record, you might actually wonder whether they have even the faintest idea of what the word means.
Almost as bad, for the last six years Hezbollah has been merrily digging in and getting armed in southern Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN's armed force, UNIFIL, whose sole purpose is to keep the peace in the area. In fact, here is UNIFIL in early 2004 proudly fluttering the UN flag alongside Hezbollah's flag near Metullah on the Lebanese-Israeli border (photo from Inside the Asylum by Jed Babbin). “Proportionate” flag-flying perhaps. The European Union was hardly “proportionate” in the 1990s when it failed to do anything effective about the wars of the Yugoslav succession, right in its own back yard, until, 115,000 corpses later, the Americans strong-armed their way in. With the help of some vigorous bombing, they then imposed the peace that endures to this day. To no thanks from the spoilt EUropeans of course. Arab governments (all dictatorships except for Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon) routinely imprison, torture and/or kill their own citizens who disagree with them, or oppose them, or support Israel, or are openly gay or renounce Islam or are otherwise a nuisance. This is all a necessary part of any dictators' arsenal to remain in power when he has no legitimacy to do so whatsoever, and apparently the world deems such behaviour entirely appropriate to the threat (of being deposed). Two examples:
France takes no nonsense when it senses that its interests are threatened, even if thousands of miles away from the homeland. In 2004, when the beleaguered government of Ivory Coast tried to re-take the city of Bouake from rebels, nine French peacekeepers were killed collaterally, plus an American. Jacques Chirac's “proportionate” response to this accident was to ignore the apology and to mount a raid that destroyed the Ivory Coast's entire airforce. An anti-French mob then went on the rampage so French troops opened fire and killed 62 of them. As for Russia and “proportionality”, only one word springs to mind: Chechnya. Over 200,000 citizens killed by the Russian army in two brutal wars, and the capital city Grozny levelled to the ground, along with much of the rest of the republic, plus some 11,000 Russian soldiers dead. And all because Chechens are tired of being a despised second-class corner of Russia, thanks to imperial conquest by the Tsars in the 19th century, and want a bit of independence or at least a high degree of autonomy that would reflect their different ethnic, language and religious essence. So these are the organizations which arrogate to themselves the right to lecture the Israelis about “disproportionality” in Lebanon, without providing the slightest suggestion of an alternative response that from their own ivory towers they would deem to be “proportionate”.
But frankly,
I don't blame them because it's awfully hard to think of one.
Or maybe what is needed is a response
that is
“proportionate”
not to the aggression suffered but to the threat of being
annihilated, when this is the openly stated purpose of the aggressors, their
backers and
of nearly all the neighbourhood countries.
This would logically involve the attempted
annihilation of the enemy, the two Hs. But these are people who
disguise themselves as civilians, and hide themselves and their arms
among civilians, and fire their
Protocol I of 1979, Article 48 of the Conventions states that
So Hiz-Ham violate this by not wearing distinctive uniforms and by hiding among civilians. To cater for this “cowardly blending among women and children” (to use the words of UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland), Article 51-7 adds that
In other words, the Geneva Conventions entitle Israel to attack the two Hs even when they are shielded among civilians. It's almost a carte blanche for flattening. So is Israel's response in Lebanon and
Gaza
“disproportionate”?
Can you see Hiz-Ham behaving in any such similar fashion? It's probably the one thing that would have them rolling in their bunkers with laughter. Compared to the level of intensity to which the rules of war entitle it, Israel's belligerence is most decidedly not “disproportionate”. Though this is cold comfort for its civilian victims. See Mark Steyn's views on proportionality, issued the same day as mine.
More Scandalous Politics from Trócaire When I attended Sunday Mass a couple of weeks ago, I was outraged and scandalised when the priest read out an appeal, sponsored by the Irish charity Trócaire and endorsed by the Irish Catholic bishops, which called for an unconditional ceasefire in Lebanon. It urged worshippers to send a letter to that effect to Javier Solana in the EU, to the Irish foreign minister, to the US missions in Dublin and Belfast and to the UK foreign secretary. The letter, we were told from the pulpit, was to be found on Trócaire's website. This was, in my view, a blatant misuse of a religious ceremony to promote a pro-Hezbollah anti-Israel political viewpoint. I don't blame the priest - he was just following orders from Head Office. Naturally, however, when I got home I downloaded the letter, which infuriated me further. So, making a guess at his e-mail address, I wrote to Justin Kilcullen, Trócaire's director.
Mr Kilcullen quickly replied, accusing me of being an “à la carte Catholic”, and providing me a copy of an even more incendiary missive from a body called the “Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs”, a document that apparently had just been approved by the Irish Catholic bishops. His letter also contained a subtle threat that I was risking Ecclesiastical wrath. Needless to say I “Fisked” the appalling ICJSA document and sent it back to him. I found it especially odd that at no time did the Catholic Bishops urge Catholics to actually pray for a just and lasting peace, which you would expect from spiritual leaders. I have recorded the whole exchange with Mr Kilcullen, which I will add to as and when it develops. Meantime, if you still have lingering doubts about the anti-Israel bias of Mr Kilcullen and others of Ireland's depraved Left, look at Trócaire's proud report of a demonstration it organized last week outside the US Embassy in Dublin. This called for an immediate ceasefire (no mention of conditions) and talked about “Palestinian territory” (hint: until the Palestinians accept their own state, it remains “disputed territory”). Note that the demo never went near the Iranian or Syrian embassies, as if they are playing no part in sponsoring Hezbollah. This behaviour is not anti-war; it is pro-war pro-Hezbollah, ie it is seeking a Hezbollah victory. And remember, Trócaire is supposed to be charity, devoted to good works. Its political behaviour is scandalous. See also Atlantic Blog's similar irritation, “Bishops (sigh)”, on 2nd August. If you want to support an international Irish charity with principles and integrity, be glad that GOAL exists.
Perils of a Big Deck, Brogues and PDF Oh dear. My friend Allen seems to be contemplating adding a deck to his house. He is hoping for a big one. So he sought out this 5 Mb of video advice from four gentlemen in America. (Play it in Windows Media Player, not RealPlayer.) ---------- And then there's this ... Bertie and Mary, Ireland's prime minister and deputy prime minister,
as they head off on their summer holidays in the most elegant outfits they can muster.
---------- And finally ...
Week 131's Letters to the Press Four letters this time, one of which was published [P!]. The first and last I also sent to the individuals whose writing I was disparaging. Bishop Kirby is the chairman of the Irish charity Trócaire and Mr Higgins is the president of Ireland's Labour party and its foreign policy spokesman. No response from either of them yet.
- - - - - - - - - - I S R A E L / H E Z B O L L A H - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending . . . among women and children ... I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.” Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief accuses Hezbollah,
Hezbollah has built bunkers and tunnels Quote: “No sentient human being could fail to be moved by the suffering and death. It's terrible.” Tony Blair commenting on the Israel/Hezbollah war Quote: “If you bomb our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity. We will bomb Tel Aviv.”
Hezbollah leader
Sheikh Nassan Nasrallah delivers an ultimatum to Israel. This all sounds like weakness. Why doesn't he bomb Tel Aviv anyway?
Quote:
“Israel must be wiped out
the world.” A billboard in Tehran featuring Hassan Nasrallah. Surely Iran cannot really be behind Hezbollah?
Quote (via Mark Humphrys): “The Cedars Revolution is not going to allow Terrorists to use the blood and flesh of Lebanese citizens to shield their organization from disarmament. It won't accept that an entire Lebanese community is taken into hostage by a Pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian organization which aim is to obstruct democracy in Lebanon and reverse the Cedars Revolution ... Let M. Nasrallah and his supporters chose another land to wage their personal wars with whomever they want. Lebanon is not their private property to use and abuse.”
The World Council of the Cedars Revolution, a Lebanese
organization, Quote: “Editors, journalists, and readers are urged to use the word ‘Hizbullah’, which is written this way to reflect a standard Arabic pronunciation. The widely used word of ‘Hezbollah’ reflects a slang pronunciation. “They are also urged to use the official reference to Hizbullah as ‘the Lebanese Islamic Resistance [sic] Movement’, not the other derogatory Israeli conflict terminology as guerilla group, terrorist group, militant group, etc”. The Editor of Al-Jazeerah pleads for a bit
of journalistic discipline, In so doing he convinces most of us - - - - - - - - - - I R A Q - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine ... Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine.” Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of
Al-Qaeda, Quote: “I ask you, being an Iraqi person, that if you reach a verdict of death, execution, remember that I am a military man and should be killed by firing squad and not by hanging as a common criminal ... This case is not worth the urine of an Iraqi child.”
Saddam
Hussein, on trial in Baghdad, asks for a soldier's death
If he is
indeed sentenced to death, - - - - - - - - - - V E N E Z U E L A - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “It gives our soldiers a special spirit of firmness when we hand them Kalashnikov rifles that replace old 1940s guns.” President Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela, This has predictably
enraged the US which has an arms embargo on Venezuela, - - - - - - - - - - S H O W B I Z - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “F*****g Jews ... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?” Mel Gibson upbraids the
police officer who apprehended him for drink-driving. Quote: “Who? ... Oh yeah... he's, like, your president? ... I don't know what he looks like.”
American heiress and renowned geopolitical pundit
Paris Hilton,
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But if Australians have a reputation, if unwarranted, for whinge-free
toughness, it is as nothing to
that
of the New Zealanders and their terrifying
Well,
New Zealand, who's doing the whinging now?
at the top right of his blog)
weapons from amongst civilians.
So such a response would doubtless entail annihilating much of the civilian population along with the
two Hs, flattening all of south Lebanon and Gaza, à
la
Now, for a little [Light Relief]
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
Religion
Iona Institute
Leisure
Blog Directory
My Columns in the
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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