 |
| Blog |
 |
| Archive |
|
|
|
|
| Blog |
| To find an archived article, simply click on Index and scroll the subject titles, or do a Ctrl-F search |
TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For some reason, this site displays better in Internet Explorer than in Mozilla Firefox | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| February 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ISSUE #118 - 19th February 2006 [206+406=615]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Presidential Glorification of Terrorism Question: At the end of January, Mary McAleese, the British-born president of Ireland for these past eight years, made a presentation about Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising. In April of that year, in the depths of World War One, a handful for Irishmen, led by Pádraig Pearse, mounted an armed protest against British rule in the streets of Dublin and proclaimed an independent Irish Republic. By the time the British Army had put this insurgency down, some 500 Irish civilians, the vast majority of them unarmed and non-participants in the drama, lay dead. Ireland at that time was an integral member - albeit a largely unwilling one - of the United Kingdom with its own parliamentary representatives in Westminster, not unlike Scotland today. As such, whilst not an independent country neither was its rule without a significant measure of democratic legitimacy, and a lot more than any of the further flung dominions of the British Empire. Moreover, Parliament had recently passed a Home Rule for Ireland law whose implementation awaited only the end of the war. So post-war independence of a united Ireland was virtually assured. The insurgents however were impatient. Moreover they completely ignored any concept of democracy, being entirely self-appointed, and were deeply unpopular among the Irish. But this changed when Pearse and his fifteen fellow leaders of what mythology now calls “The Rising” were executed by the British for terrorism during a time of war. For many, they suddenly became martyred heroes, and as such they provided the inspiration for the IRA (and Sinn Féin) through countless terrorist campaigns over the next nine decades. Yet their proclamation is also seen as the founding moment of the 26-county republic which came into being six years later, detaching from the six counties (Ulster), which remain part of the UK to this day (and whose assimilation into the republic is the Sinn Féin/IRA casus belli). The Home Rule law, by comparison, envisaged no such partition. Nevertheless, whether by the standards of 1916 or those of today, those insurgents would be seen as terrorists. With no mandate whatsoever, they burst on to the streets of the capital, guns ablazing, unmindful of how many citizens they killed, in an attempt to overthrow the sitting government by force of arms. Try that in Washington DC, and after you've shot 500 people see how long it takes you to get to Guantanamo Bay, via rendition camps in Morocco. If you're not yourself dead first. 90 years later, Ulsterwoman Mary McAleese, who has held Ireland's top job for these past eight years, gave her speech at a university conference titled “The Long Revolution: The 1916 Rising in context”. In it, she spoke eloquently, at length and without reservation, of the “heroes of the Rising”. Much of what she said was nonsense (eg that Pearse & co were committed to inclusiveness and non-sectarianism, when his brand of nationalism forced more than 50,000 Protestants to flee the Republic following independence), and she deftly skipped over the moral hazard posed by those inconvenient 500 nameless and innocent dead. Yet there was no doubting the high regard in which she personally held the Pádraig Pearse Sixteen, terrorists by any other measure. She finished by saying,
That was last month. Last week another significant event occurred across the water. After several months of battling, Tony Blair successfully pushed through a vote in the House of Commons last week approving his Terrorism Bill, whose central objective is to criminalise the glorification of terror, with a penalty of up to seven years in jail plus a fine. To précis the meat of its opening few paragraphs,
Now line these words up along side those of President McAleese. Do hers not exactly fit the characterisation of glorification as described - and proscribed - in Tony Blair's new Bill? And being born in Northern Ireland is she not technically British and subject to British jurisdiction, at least within the UK? (She is surely one of the world's very few foreign-born presidents). But if she continues to glorify terrorism once the new Bill becomes law, she better watch her step when she visits her family in Ulster or cavorts in Buckingham Palace with her UK counterpart. Actually, over the past year, ever since she likened Protestant Unionists in her homeland to Nazis, the President has repeatedly put her foot in her mouth, her January speech being but a recent example. Three further ones in quick succession are -
I wonder whether she is losing her marbles; also she doesn't look especially healthy any more. Eight years is a long time to be President. She has six more to go, heaven help us! But hey, allowing for remission for good behaviour, that's about the same penalty as a conviction for glorifying (1916) terrorism.
So far so normal about weird happenings in the heart of pig territory in France's deep South. But then someone faxes the photo so that it comes out in blurred black and white. Then a notorious and fiery Danish imam, Ahmad Abu Laban, declares that this is yet another Mohammed cartoon from infidel Denmark, far more offensive than the others, because it depicts the prophet as a pig. He adds to it
neither of them the work of Danish cartoonists nor published in the Jyllands-Posten. Abu Laban, who is leader of the Islamic Society of Denmark (which claims that all Muslims in Denmark are members whether they want to or know it or not), then prepares a write-up and sets off with it on a tour of Muslim countries to stir up fury at the Danish cartoons, citing as his most egregious examples, his own three faked ones. Indeed without them, it really is hard to find any source of deep insult in the original twelve cartoons (A bomb in a hat? Very funny. Very offensive. Not.) The fake cartoon story amounts to yet more news - not to mention more images - not published by the conventional Western print and TV media because they are afraid of showing up Muslims in a bad light. Actually they are just afraid, period. Once again, cowardice, appeasement and dishonesty. But thank goodness the blogosphere ensures we can know about such things and thus understand better what is going on in the world about us. In that ancient pre-Internet universe (where I spent most of my life), how much of this covering-up and self-censorship went on that we ordinary people had no idea about? We sometimes hear snippets of cover-ups of old, where scandalous stories were widely known by journalists who however honoured omerta - such as
But not much.
He was an accomplished Sicilian musician born in Boston, a concert pianist who also directed Taormina's Plectrum Orchestra in Italy for nearly 30 years. Along the way he collected five wives and several children. But that is not what he is remembered for. He is remembered and revered as the athlete that always came last. For sixteen years in a row, he entered and completed the Empire State Building Run-Up, an annual race up the edifice's 86 flights of stairs, or 1,576 steps (or 783 if you take them two at a time as the serious racers do). On every occasion, Mr Simone was both the oldest and last to finish (of over 100 finishers). It's a gruelling race for anyone, as fellow-competitor Barbara Hummel painfully describes. Mr Simone's most recent time, in 2005, was 49 minutes 28 seconds (four times the winning time). Sadly he missed the 2006 event a couple of weeks ago because he had passed away last April, aged 93, two months after his finale appearance. He will climb stairs no more, except perhaps to Heaven. To honour his memory, the Empire State Building, in a most gracious gesture, lit itself up in red, white and green - the colors of the Italian flag. Interestingly, since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, built in Depression-laden 1931, is once again New York's tallest, at 381 metres.
Week 118's Letters to the Press Two letters last week, one published, one not.
Quote: “The decision was taken to express solidarity with the feelings of anger sweeping the Muslim world as a result of slandering Prophet Mohammed in Danish newspapers.” Faycal Batawil, Director General of Public Relations Cherie Blair, Ireland's President Mary
McAleese, “The two Danish speakers that were invited to speak apologised sincerely for not attending the forum. Their invitations were not revoked.” Amr Hassan Enany, Chairman of the
Jeddah Economic Forum 2006, Blair, McAleese, Gore, Forbes, and Schroeder ____________________ Quote: “[Kofi Annan is] just flat wrong ... We shouldn't close Guantanamo. We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people who if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans. To close that place and pretend there's no problem just isn't realistic.” US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ____________________
Quote: “I'd rather be Rula Lenska's pussy cat than George Bush's poodle” George
Galloway, MP and excruciating ex Big Brother contestant, He
plagiarised
this from 13-year-old Lucian George
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ISSUE #117 - 12th February 2006 [204]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Industrial Accidents and Root Causes It is now fifteen years since five men lost their lives in an industrial accident in West Africa, fifteen years since a slapdash investigation failed to dig out root causes and key learning points, fifteen years that the five families have had to struggle both in their bereavement and without their principal breadwinners. Too often, the lessons of an accident are too difficult to dig out or too painful to acknowledge or too hard to apply. But failure to do these things leads inevitably to further accidents. I have written before about accidents whose cause gets attributed to, outrageously, “human error”, especially when the particular “human” has been obliging enough to have died. A few egregious examples.
Preponderancy to jump to the first convenient Here is the true story of that other fatal accident from which the true lessons were never drawn because of the slipshod, “blame human error” nature of the investigation. Names and dates have been changed to protect the guilty; the facts are correct. Sunshine was a huge offshore drilling rig, almost half the size of a football pitch, and the pride of its Arab owners. No expense had been spared in its construction which cost a record $85m. It was a “jack-up” rig whose modus operandi was to be towed floating on its hull to a drilling location, where it would jack down its three legs until they touched the seabed, and then continue jacking until the hull was raised up above wave levels, as in the photo. The derrick would then slide out on a cantilever to enable the well to be drilled. Sunshine had worked only a few months in Arabia when it won a major contract in West Africa. Two days after arrival, having hired African crews from local villages, and in water depth of 80 metres and 100 km out to sea, it began to drill an exploration well. 36 hours later, in the middle of the night, disaster struck. At a depth of only about 200 metres, the rig drilled into a pocket of so-called “shallow gas”, a phenomenon that was rare for the area and which had not been planned for. Special procedures had nevertheless recently been written for dealing safely with just such an eventuality. Within minutes, gas blew up through the derrick and caught fire (probably due to a spark). Flames soared up through the derrick, where the “derrickman” stood, two-thirds of the way up, whose job was to help manhandle the drilling pipes from above. The unfortunate man was killed instantly in the conflagration, burnt to a crisp. Meanwhile, down on deck, panic ensued everywhere as people tried to evacuate into the safety boat that was standing in readiness nearby, 24 hours a day, in case of any emergency. In the chaos and flames, no-one was able to launch the rig's own lifeboats. People climbed down the scramble nets hanging down the side of the hull, so that they could jump into the water, but others were climbing back up again out of fear of the leap into darkness. The two groups obstructed each other and many fell haplessly into the water. Some simply jumped off the deck with their life jackets on - and two of these broke their necks when they hit the water, as their lifejackets snapped back up under their chins. Many in the water couldn't swim and so, in their panicky efforts to get to the rescue boat, clambered over each other and pushed other people underwater. Two more drowned in this pandemonium. The Sunshine burnt down and collapsed onto the seabed, a total write-off. In all, five unfortunates lost their lives. Unnecessarily. Big bosses flew in from Europe and Arabia to conduct the investigation, and concluded that the drilling supervisor (equivalent to the captain of a ship) was to blame for the disaster. He was fired. They then flew home. Yet they had completely missed the three massive learning points that cost those five men their lives, lessons that if not learnt were to jeopardise more lives. Communication It turned out that the geologists - who had chosen the location at which to drill - knew that there was a high likelihood of encountering shallow gas there. But they never told the drillers, and the drillers didn’t ask. This was part of a long-term institutionalised feud between the two groups of specialists in which each despised the other, leading to many other breakdowns of communication. In this instance, it meant that the drillers had under-designed the well to withstand shallow gas.
Procedures An excellent shallow gas procedure had been written just two months earlier. The scale of the tragedy would have been avoided had it simply been observed. But it was merely mailed to recipients - with no roadshow, no training, no assurance that it was being put into practice. As a result, it just collected dust on a shelf, unread, unstudied, unapplied.
Training Crews, drilling rig, support services – all were new. Yet no survival (or other) training/exercises whatsoever had been conducted. For example, no-one was taught anything about evacuation, launching of lifeboats, use of life-jackets, how to safely jump into the water, swimming, joint manoeuvres between rig and safety boat. As a direct consequence, all was fear, pandemonium and death in the middle of a black night.
_____________________
These and similar such lessons are not rocket science. In fact they are so blindingly obvious that it should not take five fatalities to learn them (yet again).
Yet in heavy industry they are what often make the difference between whether a worker lives or dies.
Communication, Procedures, Training - and of course Supervision. It is rare indeed that a serious accident is not the direct result of failures in one or all of these areas, areas which are strictly and exclusively the responsibility of management.
You can be sure that the dreadful Titanic-scale sinking of the Al Salam 98 in the Red Sea earlier this month is no exception.
When
I saw this picture in an article about Muslim protests He is taking part in Ashura, the Shi'ites' annual commemoration of the death of their most revered personage, Imam Hussein, who was the grandson of the prophet Mohammed. He was killed in the Battle of Karbala in AD 680. Ashura involves a parade in which men cut and beat themselves until the blood flows. However as illustrated in the photo, they also encourage their sons to do the same. And for the even smaller children, and even tots, the cutting is done for them, despite the screams, as depicted in this gruesome video (which is not for the faint-hearted). Other faiths also have blood-letting ceremonies. For example in the Philippines on Good Friday, certain devout Catholics have themselves nailed to a cross to commemorate Christ's crucifixion, some of them year after year. Self-flagellation is also popular. Hindus also have bloody ceremonies. As far as I'm concerned, adults can do what they like to themselves - they own their own bodies. But can you imagine a more overt and depraved form of abusing children than what the Shi'ites do to theirs during Ashurah? Yet it is done in public and proudly and in front of cameras. Uuugh.
Those Cartoonish Protests Reinforce Anti-Islam Prejudices Over the past week, the TV, print media and bloggers have been almost as busy propounding various ideas about those notorious cartoons as the protestors have been burning down embassies. The cause of Islam has been enhanced not a whit. A number of issues caught my eye. Why Now? Last week I was one of many who asked, “what took the objectors so long?”, since the cartoons had been originally published back in September. I came across two plausible-sounding explanations, which may however be no more than idle speculation.
Have there been any more cartoons? Not as far as I am aware, but there has been an outbreak of jokes about cartoons, and cartoons about cartoons, and all of them a lot wittier than the originals. But none of them depict or satirise Mohammed. Did you know that “the Danes don't do insults, but if they did they would probably be the best insults in the world”? Want to see about a hundred cartoons about cartoons? Click on the one below.
Who has published the cartoons? The original Danish cartoons have been published by a select few (very few) media outlets in Australia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Fiji, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, Ukraine and Yemen. More interesting, however, is the weasely words used by the majority Western publications that have chosen not only not to publish the (puerile) unfunny images, but not even to tell readers where they can find them. Their explanations switch between
But not one has expressed the true reason for the reticence. As Mark Steyn pithily puts it, what these publications are really respecting is the Muslim wild men's “ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage”. In other words it is cowardice and appeasement that keep them silent - and dishonesty in trying to hide this explanation. Nothing else can explain why they keep under wraps the central issue of a huge global story. I can forgive them the cowardice and perhaps the appeasement, but not the dishonesty. Those who don't have access to the internet generally have no idea what the fuss is about. Not even the protesting Muslims. Whom do the protestors represent? With a few moderate exceptions, the media have reported on only the more vocal, visible, radical and violent Muslims demonstrating, placarding, desecrating, burning and in some cases killing. Though the protestors give the impression that they are acting out the feelings of Islam in general, are they? Is there perhaps a silent majority that utterly deplores the reaction? Certainly, and creditably, some Muslims have mounted peaceful demonstrations within the West, deploring the violence. But finding out what the majority of Muslims want or feel is, of course, something scrupulously suppressed by every regime in the Middle East - bar Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. This is for the simple reason that the respective dictatorships do not want confirmed what they already know: that they are thoroughly hated by their people. So actually no-one has any idea how representative the protestors are. Thus we should not rule out the possibility that the moderates in fact predominate. Does Islam really forbid imagery and humour? The demonstrators and their spokesmen are claiming, long and loud, that it is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and that the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. This has been said so vehemently and loudly that it has become the accepted wisdom, at least among great swathes of ignorant infidels such as myself. But is it true? Amir Taheri, learned columnist of the Wall Street Journal, Tech Central Station and others, says it is not. The apparent injunction against images dates from the invasion in the eighth and ninth centuries of Muslim Arabs into Christian Levant, where they encountered Christian images in abundance. As part of their Islamisation campaign, Muslim theologians therefore issued a fatwa against any depiction of the Godhead, but as an act of politics and war, not of religion. You will find no such injunction in the Koran, which is why pictures of Mohammed have appeared in countless Islamic documents through history. As for laughing at Islam, this has also never been proscribed, and has been commonplace. Indeed, Muhammad himself apparently pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him. Moreover, says Mr Taheri, Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy. Muslims take the word of infidels Robert McHenry, a columnist with Tech Central Station, makes a couple of interesting points. Firstly, the outraged Muslim world believes that the cartoons are depictions of Mohammed only because the cartoonists say they are, and based on no evidence whatsoever. In other words, Muslims are freely and inexplicably choosing to swallow claims concerning their religion, as made by a dozen infidel Danes. Secondly, the taking of insult - and the magnitude of that insult - are actually free choices by the insulted. Their choice may bear no, some or a strong correlation with the intent of the insulter, and indeed the insulted often may have no idea of the original intent. But taking insult puts the insulted in a morally superior position, at least in his/her own view. In other words, the protests are entirely a matter of choice that bears little or no relevance to the actual cartoons. The protesting Muslims are actively going out and wanting to be insulted, so that they have something to protest about. ___________________ One thing that has arisen out of these events is the confirmation and reinforcement, in the eyes of the non-Muslim world, fairly or unfairly, of all the worst prejudices that they may have held about Islam, its followers and apologists. Moderate Muslims have been drowned out in the cacophony. The protestors have done their universal image and the cause of Islam no good whatsoever. In the West, they have strengthened immeasurably the hand of those who would
As you would expect in a unified European Union, its members each have their own stereotypical and totally different version of what constitutes a security threat and the appropriate response level. Gone are the good old traffic-light days of green-yellow-red. The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorised from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance”. The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666. Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Surrender” and “Collaborate”. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability. It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing”. Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides”. The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs”. They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose.” Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
Week 117's Letters to the Press Here are the past week's two letters, one of which was published, and a forgotten one from January.
Quote: “The cartoons [are] a scandal, particularly as they came from those who champion civilisation and free expression [and are] part of a conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran's democratically unmandated
Columnist Kevin Myers in the (subscription-only) Irish
Times -------------------- Quote: “I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed of oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter. You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere.” Henry Biggelsworth writes back to Harvey Bennett “I have always thrown bottles in the sea. In the age of e-mails and satellite phones, I think it is such a wonderful way to communicate.” Harvey Bennett, a US Coastguard, responds
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ISSUE #116 - 5th February 2006 [254] |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I hate anti-religious hatred. By that I mean I hate the behaviour of those who allow their hatred of religious hatred to boil over into violence. But there is a God/Allah/Jehovah after all, and His sense of humour and skin are robust enough to withstand plenty more jokes and ridicule at His expense, at least in Britain. I have been a great supporter of Tony Blair over the years, but have felt contempt for most of his Labour Party (top of my C-list being that shallow prima donna soon-to-be one-term prime minister Gordon Brown). For once though, my sympathies are the other way round. Last week, Mr Blair proposed to overturn brakes that the House of Lords put on his new religious hatred law, but was narrowly defeated in the Commons - by his own party. So cheers for the party (and the Lords) and boos for Mr Blair.< |
Back
in August 2005, Jacques Barrot, a Frenchman with a grey beard, straps on a
pig's snout and big piggy ears and enters the annual French Pig-Squealing Championships in Trie-sur-Baise.
Someone from Associated Press photographs him in colour; the photo is
widely published in a jokey 
Who
was this Chico Simone who stares out at us in this picture? 
conclusion
and
failure to seek out root causes mean that lessons will not be learnt,
and more catastrophes of a similar or related manner will
occur. It is essential to look beyond the obvious. For
example, what is this a picture of? Don't trust your original judgement.
Think. Look again. 
against those
cartoons, I assumed the child had been injured in the chaos.
Wrong. He is ritually cutting his own head with a cut-throat razor
held in his right hand, which an adult will have given him. 