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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| November 2004 | |||||||||||||
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ISSUE #88 : 28th November 2004 [143]
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Barroso's EU Convicted Commission First there was Italy's Rocco Buttiglione, would-be EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security. Under cross-examination by MEPs as part of the Commission ratification process, he declared his belief that homosexual behaviour is a sin but that he would not regulate against it. Left-leaning MEPs were outraged that a Catholic should admit his Catholic convictions. His new boss, Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso loyally offered his full support (“Mr Barroso maintains his confidence in the whole team, which, of course, includes Mr Buttiglione”, said a spokeswoman), but subsequently dumped him anyway when the MEPs would not be mollified. Then it was the turn of France's Jacques Barrot, would-be EU Commissioner for Transport. When he was cross-examined by MEPs, he hid the fact that he had been convicted back home in 2000 for criminal fraud; he hid this also from Mr Barroso, who nevertheless offered his “100% support”, which by then we knew means nothing. When, thanks to an outing by the UKIP party and the non-French press, MEPs learnt that they had just been tricked into approving a convicted fraudster, they were outraged. They demanded an immediate explanation, and when they heard it they swallowed it whole, giving Mr Barrot the thumbs-up. It turns out that President Jacques Chirac had granted his buddy Mr Barrot an amnesty, which means that the conviction was expunged - legally it never happened. Just like the Catholic annulment (which bastardised his two daughters) of John Kerry's 27-year pre-Heinz marriage. And since the conviction never happened, the French press are forbidden from reporting it, even that it never happened ! The upshot of this sorry tale is that conviction Catholics are barred from high EU office, convicted fraudsters are not. How morally inverted can you get ? And how incompetent is Mr Barroso to play host to two Commissioner problems before even taking office ? It all bodes ill for the Commission. But one the bright side, the loss in public confidence in the EU that this display of hubris entails may help to kill off, via national referenda, the pernicious EU Constitutional Treaty.
I've spent most of my life as a guest in other people's countries, all over the world. To make an outrageous generalisation, one of the paradoxes that I've observed is that racism frequently seems to be proportional to the darkness of the skin. That is, the darker a person's skin the greater his/her racist behaviour and views. Thus, you tend to see the greatest attention to skin colour and associated prejudice in Africa, where people's blackness often determines their place in society. Lighter-skinned Arabs from the north (of Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia etc) look down on their blacker brethren; the black southerners look down on those of their number who are even blacker. There is little of the embarrassment or attempt to suppress or at least hide such feelings that you encounter in lighter-skinned parts of the world. Robert Mugabe is an extreme example, though of course his racism is directed primarily at whites (notwithstanding his massacre of 7,000 Matabelelanders in 1980-88). I was reminded of this when some months ago Harry Belafonte, the singer of Jamaican descent, derided Colin Powell, the soldier-diplomat of Jamaican descent, as a “house nigger”, a term of abuse that it is inconceivable that a white person of comparable celebrity would utter in public. Yet, only because he was himself black, Mr Belafonte got away with it, despite the undeniably unpleasant and racist nature of the remark.
He also calls her a “murderer”, and this epithet is endorsed by Julian Bond who is the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for goodness sake. Meanwhile, a lead article in Black Commentator has called Dr Rice “the purest expression of the race traitor. No polite description is possible”. This, like the other examples, is in fact the purest expression of racism - no polite description is possible. To such people, Dr Rice and Mr Powell are unacceptable as Republicans for one reason only - because they are black. Racist attitudes are about hating people because of their race and/or skin colour. Blacks, historically on the receiving end of such inexcusable behaviour, often do this better than anyone.
Depraved Northern Ireland Demands More English Taxpayer Handouts Over and above what is collected in Northern Ireland taxes, residents of the province already get £2,500 per person per year in subsidies from the British State. “British State” in this context means “English taxpayer”, since the Scots and Welsh also have they own hands out and thus contribute none of their taxes to NI. Now the low-life politicians of the DUP and Sinn Fein are now demanding the gift of another one billion pounds, or £600 per inhabitant, from the English taxpayers as blackmail money to form a Northern Ireland government. For infrastructural purposes they say, such as improving the sewage system. But visit NI from the South and what do you notice ?
That is the result of the beggar mentality that pervades that diseased carbuncle. They don't need more Christmas presents from Englishmen and Englishwomen to form a government (a body by the way that will accomplish with fourteen ministers and several committees what is currently done with just two part-time Westminster MPs). They need the will to implement the Good Friday Agreement, endorsed overwhelmingly, North and South, in an all-Ireland referendum in 1998. They call the £1 bn ransom demand a “peace dividend”, based on being able to reduce the British military presence if the paramilitaries scale back their activities. There is no sense that such a dividend should go back to the English taxpayers in return for their forbearance over so many decades. English taxpayers should rise up and say enough is enough. But then, since only the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have their own parliamentary assemblies, they have no democratic forum for doing so.
Quite a while back, I described some of the then latest developments in airport scanning technology - the mind-reader, the blush-detector and the naked body revealer. Lurking in the 15th November edition of the (subscription-only) Aviation Week, I've finally found a bit more information about the last of these devices, which seems to be pretty effective. Costing $120,000, it's called the Rapiscan Secure 1000 backscatter X-ray imager and it scans the body uses low-level radiation, ie less than 10 microRem per scan compared to typical background radiation of 300 microRem per day in, say, Miami. The device detects non-metallic weapons and plastic explosives hidden on a person's body, including ceramics, graphite fibres, plastic containers, plastic weapons, glass vials, syringes, packaged narcotics, dynamite, bundled paper currency, and even wooden objects. Apparently, a hundred of the machines are already in operation in prisons and airports around the world, including Heathrow Airport where a trial is currently ongoing.
The main privacy safeguards are
But if you believe all that, you belong with the fairies, especially when Pamela Anderson checks in for her flight. Nevertheless, I think there's no doubt that this is the scanning technology of the future, so we better get used to the idea. By the way, that's some C-4 he's proudly got on display ....
Dear Abby, My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job four years ago he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does is buy cigars and cruise around and bullshit with his pals and play golf, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I am a lesbian. What should I do? Signed, Clueless
Thanks for this, Eileen
Quote : “I refuse to die without a chance to live” Kerryman Billy Burke, 27, a victim of cystic fibrosis, when launching a campaign in April to secure a lung transplant denied him due to bureaucratic rules. Despite the energy, articulacy and popularity of his efforts, sadly he was unsuccessful and died of the condition last week.
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What I'm
N E W ! The book is meticulously researched, magnificently structured, beautifully written - and drips innocent Chinese blood from almost every one of its 971 riveting pages. Moa Tse Tung was obsessed with simply killing as many of his countrymen as he could by whatever means in order to maintain the remainder in such a permanent state of terror that the idea of turning on him would never even cross their wretched minds. He also starved peasants in their hundreds of millions in order to confiscate the food they grew to pay the Soviets for a gargantuan armaments infrastructure. Most terribly, Mao was absolutely right. He proved that terror is the most effective way of retaining power. Too many despots have tried to emulate him, but none with the same single-minded ferocity. Disgustingly, people name restaurants in his honour +++++
In that role, as Hitler's trusted operative, he recounts much derring-do, such as rescuing Mussolini from mountain top captivity, bluffing the then Hungarian strongman into surrendering, wreaking covert havoc on the Allied invasion of France.
Particularly moving is his account, from the German viewpoint, This page-turner of a book concludes with a forecast of the role of Special Forces in future conflicts, which has turned out to be surprisingly prescient. It was written in 1954.
The purpose of this
It
does so, But the book is spoilt by the introduction of a storyline which is sentimental and distracting. Much of it is frankly boring. You might enjoy the sex which is detailed and graphic, but it's unnecessary.
Also, the interminable, repetitive description, going on for over 40
pages, of being About 200 pages should have been edited out. +++++ 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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