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| May 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #41 - 25th May 2003 {248] |
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Celebrity Politicians and Anti-Zionism Memri recently drew my attention to Abu Dhabi's respectable-sounding “Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow Up”. Set up in 1999, it describes itself as an independent political organization operating under the umbrella of
It is clearly pro-Arab pro-Palestinian anti-Jew anti-Israel which, I guess, is fair enough. People are entitled to hold such views. Since the 9/11 atrocities, the Zayed Centre has published a lot of material which has pretty much defined how it feels on these issues. It various papers and invited speakers have :
Dr Umayma Al-Jalahma, professor of Islamic Studies at King Faisal University in Al-Dammam wrote an anti-Jewish article (in Arabic) in the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al-Riyadh in March 02, which included the classic line “Jewish vampires partake in the ritual of spilling young gentiles' blood for pastries”. The same lady spoke at the Zayed Centre in April 03. The Centre has also collaborated with Europeans such as the Holocaust deniers Roger Garaudy and David Irving. So there is no disputing where it stands as regards Jews, Zionism and Israel. It hates them all, makes no secret of it and doesn't care about the integrity or otherwise of the information it publishes or the people it hosts. In the age of free information in cyberspace, virulent misinformation of the type provided by the Zayad Centre is to be expected.
Objective readers, observers, surfers should look at the extremes as well as the centre ground in order to form their own views. But the surprising thing about the obviously heavily partisan Zayed Centre is not its extremism but the respectability it seems to enjoy. Many senior European leaders and officials have been praising the Zayed Centre for its work. You might expect this from well-known anti-Semites such as Kurt Waldheim (WW2 Nazi, ex-UN secretary-general, ex-president of Austria) and the Austrian right-wing politician Joerg Haider. But it is surprising to see among those sending letters of thanks and congratulations to the Zayed Centre :
And its not just Europe's “celebrity politicians”. High-ranking US government officials, former presidents, and other notable personalities have also briefed the Zayed Centre or cooperated on projects. The list includes :
I had always thought these celebrity politicians had professional advisers and witch-doctors to keep their noses clean, but I'm clearly wrong. Nevertheless, perhaps some understanding about the true nature of the Zayed Centre is at last emerging ... Earlier this month the Boston Globe reported that Harvard Divinity School is poised to return a $2.5 million gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates after questions recently surfaced about his ties to “a controversial Arab think tank with alleged anti-Semitic and anti-American leanings”, meaning the Zayed Centre. The money was intended to fund a new professorship in Islamic studies. In reply, the Zayed Centre itself vigorously denies it is anti-Semitic or anti-West. It's publications and many of its guests say otherwise. Loudly. But the celebrity politicians seem to be deaf as they blithely associate themselves with this sinister think-tank. I for one will be watching it more closely in future and will report back.
We all remember the stirring tale of 19-year-old US Private Jessica Lynch, rescued from an Iraqi hospital, where she was being treated for war wounds after her squad were killed or captured in an ambush. Having been tipped off as to where she was being held, US special forces arrived by helicopter, stormed into the ward, grabbed the young soldier and whisked her to safety. She is now recovering back in the US and Hollywood are considering a movie. But this story has spawned two unlikely further tales.
So if Hollywood were to build into the original rescue story the incompetence and chicanery of America's finest newspaper and Britain's finest broadcaster, then indeed “The Jessica Lynch Stories” would make a great movie.
Some called his words Churchillian; others likened them to Shakespeare's Henry V's speech on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. They drew praise from the Prince of Wales and President George Bush. But reality seems not to have matched up with the rhetoric. Firstly, Collins and his regiment never saw combat. They spent most of the war protecting the Rumaila oilfields in southern Iraq and prisoners of war. Now allegations are emerging of unsoldierly conduct - including war-crimes - by the colonel and his troops both during and before the war. The claims include :
The Ministry of Defence is conducting a far-reaching inquiry into the Royal Irish Regiment, to include the above complaints. So, first a hero, then a villain. But now he seems to be a hero again because he has left his regiment in preparation for promotion to full colonel in a new post yet to be announced. I am confused by these twists and turns, as you probably are. Some say it is a plot by people (American people, of course) jealous of the adulation wrought by his pre-war oration. Whatever. It can't be doing much for the morale of the Royal Irish. Collins himself says, “I'm astonished. I am confident my good name will be restored.” One would like to think so.
Sixty years ago, in April 1943, an American Liberator (B-24) bomber, nicknamed the “Lady Be Good” after a 1924 Broadway musical, set out from Benghazi in Libya on her first combat flight to bomb Naples harbour, located due North across the Mediterranean. It had a crew of nine, aged between 21 and 27, including a woefully undertrained navigator. The plane never found Naples, which was in the dark, so turned back toward home, but again got lost. When it eventually ran out of fuel, the crew bailed out believing they were over or near the Libyan coastline and would soon be safe. But in fact, due to poor navigation exacerbated by a strong tail wind, they had flown no less than 385 miles inland. One crew member died because his parachute failed to open; the other eight landed safely in the desert and the aircraft made its own crash landing some miles away.
They had arrived at the “Calanscio Sand Sea”, a broad plateau so formidable and lifeless that not even Arab nomads on camel-back dared enter. For the next eight nights, the eight men trudged northwards seeking safety, believing they were close to the sea. They were sustained by nothing more than a few rations and half a canteen of water, and during the blistering heat of the daytime (55ºC / 130ºF), they would rest beneath the shade of their parachutes. We know this because the co-pilot kept a diary. They covered an extraordinary 75 miles before six of them finally succumbed; and the diary tells us they welcomed the release that death brought. Incredibly, the seventh man advanced a further 20 miles and the eighth another seven miles more - making a total of 102 miles, on just one cup of water per day. But in the end, none survived the terrible ordeal. Meanwhile, the US Air Force searched in vain for the plane, and concluded it must have crashed into the Mediterranean with all hands lost. However, sixteen years later in February 1959, a BP oil prospecting team came upon the “Lady Be Good”, crash-landed but marvellously preserved by the hot, dry, sterile air of the desert. In her fuselage were canteens of still drinkable water and coffee, edible rations, weapons, ammunition, official documents, personal correspondence but, of course, no trace of her crew. Nevertheless, unopened navigation charts and idle doodles by the navigator attested to his unsuitability for the job. A year later, another team of BP geophysicists found seven of the eight bodies, mummified, along with the diary, so that finally the whole tragic story could be reconstructed. I recall the outlines of this tale - by then almost a legend - being talked about when I myself worked in the oil business close to the Calanscio Sand Sea in 1969-70 (until Gaddaffi's coup). Three decades were to pass until I had the opportunity to meet the original finder of the “Lady Be Good”, an Irish geologist called Don Sheridan. His full account is included in his excellent book, “Fahud - the Mountain Leopard”, from whose cover the above illustration is taken. Once the wreck of the “Lady Be Good” was found back in 1959, numerous parts from her were returned to the US for technical study. Ominously and rather surprisingly, some of the parts were then re-installed in other aircraft - which then experienced their own unexpected difficulties.
The lady was bad.
I recently flew Ryanair from Dublin to Stansted in London for precisely one €uro-cent. But when the Government taxes were added, the fare rose to €uro 16.22. This is still pretty cheap for a one hour flight on a clean plane that left on time and (unlike the “Lady Be Good”) did not crash, so I'm not really complaining. But a tax of €uro 16.21 on a fare of €uro 0.01 is a tax of - wait for it - 162,100 percent. Is there any good or service for sale anywhere in the world with a tax rate higher than this ? A free CD, “Selection for 2003”, to the first person to send me details (write to hitax@tallrite.com).
Deck of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy This is getting to be a habit. Last week I wrote about the new Deck of Weasels with Jacques Chirac as the Ace of Spades. This week, someone's come up with a Deck of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the term invented by Hilary Clinton for those who didn't feel her husband made a worthy president. The phrase was meant to be disparaging, but has become a badge of honour. The VRWC is “wanted” for :
Dick Cheney gets the top spot as the Ace of Spades slot, with poor old George Bush relegated to Ace of Clubs.
For more years than I care to remember, the Eurovision Song Contest has been played out and broadcast across Europe, “Europe” stretching from, well, Europe to Turkey, Israel and Russia.
Viewers in each competing country vote by phone or text for each song (except for their own country's) and the song with the most votes wins the contest. By tradition, the only entertainment from the dire evening is provided by Terry Wogan, the BBC's irrepressible Irish Eurovision commentator, with his steady stream of banter, witty observations and double-entendres. Another tradition is that viewers award their votes based mainly on national preferences, and only if they have none do they consider the merits of the song. Thus, the Scandinavian countries all vote for each other; Ireland attracts a lot of UK votes due to the Irish diaspora (though the favour is not reciprocated); Greece doesn't vote for Turkey and vice versa. This year, however, the Eurovision Song Contest, hosted by last year's winner Latvia, became an instrument of European foreign policy.
Full results here. There'll be some real fun next year if America is allowed to join - after all, it's as European as Israel.
Quote : “I am optimistic that in time, and it may take thousands of years, humanity will come to the viewpoint that it would be better to live in a communist society where people really were equal.” George
Blake, British former double agent, now 80,
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ISSUE #40 - 18th May 2003 [133]
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France's Curious Democratic Process The French elect their president and parliamentary representatives in conventional and irreproachable democratic elections. But that's not how they practice democracy and public debate, for that is the function of the city streets. With its ageing population, strong employment protection and generous pension provision, especially for the massive State sector that employs one in three workers, France is heading for an economic fall unless it does something drastic. The necessary medicine, which no-one can relish, is well known -
One year into the job, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has bravely drafted a law to tackle just the first of these - he proposes to raise working life (to earn a full pension) from 37½ years to 42 by 2020. The result of the horrified populace has been predictable - a huge, 36-hour strike from 12-14 May, with
A further protest is planned for 25th May just before the cabinet will next discuss the proposed reform. The last time the French tried to reform their pension system, In December 1995, the strikes it triggered eventually brought down the rightist government of Prime Minister Alain Juppé. This forced President Jacques Chirac into five years of unhappy cohabitation with the socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who didn't dare touch pensions. Everyone knows that the current pension system is heading for bankruptcy and is unsustainable. Yet the decisions about it will be taken based not on what is argued at cabinet, nor on the deliberations of parliament. The main debate will be conducted using shoe leather on the cobblestones of France, or indeed hurling the cobblestones if deemed necessary. What the protesters demand, the Government will, as they always do, deliver. And that will mean abandonment of serious pension reform in the hope that the problem will just go away. It won't. It seems a curious way to make decisions. But who is to say that this process is any less democratic than methods applied in other democracies ? The people demand and the people get. And the people, ultimately, must live with the consequences.
Ireland is an extraordinarily homogeneous country. Discounting the flood of immigrants that have entered during the past five years of Celtic Tiger times, the Irish are overwhelmingly white and Christian, born of parents and forebears that are Irish as far back as can be traced. Pick up any Irish phonebook and as you plough through pages of Byrnes, Kellys, Murphys, Nolans, O'Reillys, Sheehans, Walshes, you will be struck by the dearth of non-Irish names. And if you phone up those few non-Irish names, you will almost certainly hear a non-Irish accent. If you are one of those (like me) with a non-Irish name and/or non-Irish accent, you are constantly questioned about your origins, not out of rudeness or suspicion, but because you are something of a curiosity. No other EU country would pass such tests of ethnic homogeneity. Irish nationalism is about a belief that such Irishness should pervade the island, north and south, and in particular that Britain should not rule Northern Ireland. Whilst most nationalism is peaceful, a violent minority has found expression via the activities of the IRA (in its various guises) which has, in one form or or another, fought a terrorist war with Britain - and loyalist paramilitaries - for many decades in the (vain) hope of dislodging it from the North. Espionage is an intrinsic part of any war and the IRA have in recent months suffered two similar and serious spying setbacks.
Rupert the American ? Scappadicci the Italian ? How can the most extreme nationalist of nationalist organizations in the most sectarianised nationalist part of ethnically homogeneous Ireland have taken two such obvious foreigners to their bosom, trusting them and sharing with them their innermost secrets ? Yet both were traitors to their erstwhile colleagues in exchange for large sums of money. It will probably be a long long time before the IRA, or for that matter their unionist terrorist counterparts, place trust in anyone who does not
But meanwhile, you have to ask how many more paid informers, foreign or home-grown, are still embedded within Ireland's various private armies. Reports are already emerging that the Provisionals contain four more of even more importance than Scap. Recent events have surely destroyed an awful lot of mutual trust, with everyone suspecting everyone else. Morale must be at rock bottom.
A recent article by US talk-show host Jerry Bowyer assesses the cost of the recent Iraq war. This was in response to Congress's Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Queen of Diamonds in the Deck of Weasels) who when Baghdad fell said “We could probably have brought down that statue for a lot less. There are much cheaper ways to tear down a statue”. Are there ? The Iraq war apparently cost $62.6 billion, which sounds a lot but amounts to only 0.6% of America's current GDP and is thus pretty affordable. Mr Bower then compares this with the affordability of other US wars such as the American Civil War (105% of then GDP), World War 2 (130%), the Vietnam war (12%). Whatever else your objections to deposing Saddam, it was certainly a cheap operation. The first Gulf War was even more affordable at only ½%.
Positive About Negative Interest There is a paradigm, constantly put about by learned economists and business publications, that “interest rates cannot be negative”, most recently by The Economist, twice in the same (subscription-only) article. The background is that, as economies falter, it is desirable get money moving again by lowering interest rates. This tends to release pent-up money by discouraging saving, which thus makes fit available for spending or for borrowing for investment. The “real” interest rate, say 2%, is equal to the nominal interest rate (5%) minus the inflation rate (3%). The real interest is therefore the interest adjusted for inflation. A big problem arises however when inflation turns to deflation as it has done in Japan and threatens to in Germany. For if inflation becomes minus 3% (ie deflationary), the nominal interest rate would have to be minus 1% to maintain a real interest rate of 2%. A minus interest rate is what the learned economists say is impossible. But
why not ? When I put my car in someone else's garage, I pay for the But two things are certain.
It had to happen. First the US Army's deck of cards, featuring Iraq's “Most Wanted”, with Saddam himself as the King of Spades.
They include Gerhard Schröder, Michael (“Stupid White Men”) Moore, Barbra Streisand, Teddy Kennedy, Kofi Annan and many more. Each is shown wearing the beret of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and includes an explanation of why he/she is featured. The Ace of Spades is, of course, none other than French President Jacques Chirac, Saddam Hussein’s partner in crime of 30 years, and includes his most infamous quote. The Washington Times’ new revelation that France helped Saddam’s top aides to escape adds to the poignancy.
Here is the complete list.
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As the Iraq war commenced, 43-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Tim
Collins of Britain's
Royal Irish Regiment drew worldwide admiration for his 
Now
NewsMax, a US online news service, has produced a "