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TALLRITE BLOG 
ARCHIVE
This archive, organized into months, and indexed by time and alphabet,
contains all issues since inception, including the current week.

ISSUE #199 - 25^th October 2009 [225+1472=1697]

Just for fun, the latest Rasmussen poll on President Barack Obama's popularity will
from now on be published at the head of the Tallrite Blog. The date is on the chart.

Don't Lower the Drink Drive Limit

Everyone understands that alcohol in any quantity impairs your judgement and reaction times and therefore agrees with the principle that if you drink then don't drive. 

Yet distractions abound that also impair, for example, 

There is therefore a certain level of alcohol impairment that is no more malign than these other acceptable diversions. 

We do not know what this level is [but see Late Note of 16th April 2011 below], but most jurisdictions have settled on a maximum blood-alcohol level that is legal for driving, for example -  

In Ireland there have been commendable efforts over the past decade to enforce the law by (semi-)random breath-testing, upping the annual arrest rate for drunken driving from from 11,000 to 18,000 and applying penalty points licences.  See this chart covering the period 1999-2008

According to a study by Lane Clark & Peacock, a respected international actuarial consultancy, this has helped reduce by about a third the road death rate per population and per vehicle, as this chart running from 1980-2007 illustrates (both are from an LCP study into road deaths in Ireland).   

Evidence from all over the world indicates that the thing that deters criminals more is not the severity of sentence for a given crime but the likelihood of getting caught.  A strong chance of getting apprehended followed by a light sentence is a greater deterrence, apparently, than a lengthy sentence but only a remote chance of arrest. 

By the same token, the sure way to deter drink-driving is to increase the enforcement rather than worsening the punishment or indeed lowering the blood-alcohol limit.  

However, in Ireland (and probably elsewhere), there is a problem with being truly grim about enforcement.  Statistics published by Ireland's HSE (Health & Safety Executive) confirm what everyone instinctively knows: that most drunks crash their cars at the weekend ...

and during the hours of darkness, with a peak at 3 am ...,

in other words driving home after an alcohol-fuelled weekend night out in the pub, club, disco or restaurant. 

Since that's where the problem clearly lies, that's where the enforcement should concentrate.  Breath-testers should be waiting outside such establishments late at night at weekends to pounce on patrons as they stagger out and into their cars. 

But this would naturally cause uproar, not only on the part of the thousands of drunk drivers who would find themselves fined, penalty-pointed or banned, but among the entertainment establishments themselves whose patronage would drop off dramatically. 

That's why politicians - Irish ones at any rate - are hugely reluctant to oblige the boys in blue to properly enforce the 80mg drink-drive limit. 

It's also why they much prefer to introduce new legislation (also to be under-enforced) so that they at least appear to be “doing something”.  Hence the Irish government's current proposal to reduce the limit to 50mg.  Yet to everyone's surprise, backbenchers have stopped this wheeze in its tracks because of the effect it would have on rural pubs and on the fabric of rural society centred on going to the pub. 

I say “wheeze” because that's what it is.  The reason advanced for the proposed reduction is twofold.  

Firstly that Continental Europe have largely adopted 50mg (so what?). 

Secondly because, according to the HSE, eighteen drivers were killed in 2003-05 with blood-alcohol levels of between 50mg and the current 80mg limit.  Indeed, when the backbenchers stymied the new law earlier this month, one front-page headline screamed that “10 will lose lives”, having seemingly divided eighteen by two to get an annual figure.   

The source of the eighteen is a report, published last December by the HSE, which tabulates drivers killed against differing levels of alcohol within their systems.  I have reproduced the table below, highlighting the relevant bits. 

The fact that eighteen men died in road accidents with a BAC of between 50 and 80mg by no means proves that this range of alcohol caused their deaths. 

Look more closely at the table: if this conclusion were true so would be another. 

The fact that no fewer than 165 drivers were killed with zero alcohol in their system equally “proves”, equally wrongly, that sober drivers are 60% more dangerous than those with up to twice the current legal limit (103 killed).  Moreover the HSE earlier reported that 65% of all road deaths in 1990-2006 were unrelated to alcohol.  Is driving sober that hazardous? 

The truth is that no-one has ever demonstrated any increase in accidents attributable solely to reducing the blood alcohol limit from 80 to 50mg. Indeed, you only have to peruse accident reports in newspapers (eg here) to see that alcohol levels are invariably described as being several times over the legal limit. Never marginally above, let alone below.

It is extraordinary that most drivers only learn they are over the limit when stopped and breathalysed. It’s like inadvertently breaking the speed limit when you have no speedometer.

A ready means for drivers to measure and control their own inebriation, coupled with more focused enforcement of the existing alcohol limit, will do far more to reduce alcohol-induced road accidents than any amount of tinkering with legislation designed to dodge hard decisions.

The threat to life and limb of drunken driving is too serious to contemplate any action unless it has a high likelihood of reducing alcohol induced road accidents.   

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Fifteen Laws Broken in Eleven Minutes

No sooner had I finished typing my ignorant diatribe above about drunk driving when I stumbled over a story about a guy in St Gallen, Switzerland who committed fifteen traffic offences in just eleven minutes, thereby breaking some kind of world record surely worthy of recognition by Guinness.  And not one of them was alcohol related.  So he is evidently part of the 65% of non-drunk drivers who cause mayhem on the roads, though in his case one of the fifteen was failing a drugs test. 

His litany of violations were that he

1. raced past an unmarked police car doing 150 kph (94 mph) in a 100 kph zone while

2. driving too close to other cars and

3. too close to the kerb and

4. weaving across the white dividing line in the road, while

5. failing to stop for police sirens, and

6. at a road block and

7. at a set of red lights, then

8. driving at 130 kph in an 80 kph zone and

9. endangering life through

10. reckless driving then

11. driving on the hard shoulder while all the time

12. driving under the influence of drugs,

13. failing to drive with due care and attention,

14. driving a car with no MOT and

15. using a mobile telephone at the wheel.

The Swiss police must, in that law-abiding place (if you don't count white-collar international tax fraud and money-laundering), be leading a very dull life.  With no chain-saw massacres or Bonnie-and-Clyde-style bank robberies to deal with, a spokesman droned on that  “I can't remember a case this serious.  It's remarkable”.  No wonder they are so excited about having bagged that paedophile Roman Polanski. 

The driver was an Italian of course, aged 47, and the St Gallen fuzz are hoping to ban him for years (until “Halley's Comet makes its next appearance” according to one of them [ie 2062]) and with luck have him cast into prison as well.  There is nothing police like more than throwing the book at a foreigner (provided of course it's a he, he's middle-aged, he's straight, he's white and he's a nobody).  

My own record-breaking traffic violation took place in Italy where I was living as a callow youth in my mid-twenties and driving my beloved red Fiat sports car (what else?).  Spotting a speed-limit sign of 15 kph on a straightish stretch of road at dead of night, I couldn't resist.  I deliberately floored the pedal until I reached 150 kph.  Miraculously I emerged unscathed, uncaught, unpunished, unrepentant. 

And I have never heard of anyone ever managing to exceed a speed limit anywhere by a factor of ten.  That wimpish non-callow Italian in Switzerland didn't manage even to double it.  I bet that Formula-One guy Lewis Hamilton has also never come close. 

Something else for the Guinness Book of Records perhaps. 

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Issue 199’s Comments to Cyberspace

Two comments this time, on drink-driving and Obama, some people's favourite topics, whether for or against. 

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Quotes for Issue 199

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

Quote: “It feels just unbelievable, it’s like as if the past 3½ months have been like a dream.”

Nightmare more like.  Sharon Commins,
an aid worker with the excellent Irish charity GOAL,
upon her release 107 days after being kidnapped in Darfur,
along with a Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kawuki. 

Amongst other abuses, the young women
were subjected to frequent mock executions. 

The rumour - hotly denied - is that the Irish government,
via the Sudan government,
paid a $150,000 ransom for their freedom.

“We know them by name, clan and tribe,
so they will never escape punishment,”
said Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister
Abdul Bagi al-Jailani of the kidnappers

- - - - - J I H A D - - - - -

Quote: “What is a ‘proportionate’ attack against an enemy dedicated to exterminating your people? A dedication to exterminating all of his?”

Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times,
writing in the Guardian's “Comment is Free” column
about about Israel's' recent war in Gaza. 

He generated an enormous stream of entertaining vitriol,
all along the lines of -
“how dare he say anything in defence of Israel and
how dare the Guardian publish such tripe”.

Quote: “What Vice President Cheney calls ‘dithering’, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs
responds to Dick Cheney's charge that
the Obama administration is “dithering” over
General Stanley McChrystal's request for a surge of
40,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

- - - - - U K - - - - -

Quote: “My father served in the RAF during the Second World War
- yours spent it in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler.”

Nick Griffin, chairman of the much reviled British National Party,
responds pugnaciously to the charge of Nazism
by Jack Straw, Britain's minister of justice. 

They were sharing a platform on the BBC Question Time programme.

But it's a bit pathetic for a grown man to say
“my daddy is braver than your daddy”. 

The BBC had hitherto refused to invite the BNP onto this forum,
until it won two parliamentary seats
in the European election in June 2009.

Mr Griffin won 132,094 votes in that election. 
That's nearly three times more democratic votes
than all the other panellists combined (Jack Straw 17,562,
Sayeeda Warsi 11,192, Chris Huhne 19,216, Bonnie Greer zero).

- - - - - I T A L Y - - - - -

Quote: “I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent.”

Silvio Berlusconi, 72, tries to put down Rosy Bindi, 58,
a former minister (under Romano Prodi),
during a TV argument he was losing.

Ms Bindi feistily replied
“I am not one of the women at your disposal”.

This exchange woke up 98,000 Italian feminists who declared
“It is by now well evident that a woman’s body has become
a major political weapon in the armoury of the prime minister.
He sees women as physically seductive, pretty young things,
totally submissive to the Big Boss’s will.
We protest against this cretinisation of women, of politics and of democracy.
This man offends women and democracy.  Let’s stop him.”

So there.

ISSUE #198 - 18^th October 2009 [386]

Just for fun, the latest Rasmussen poll on President Barack Obama's popularity will
from now on be published at the head of the Tallrite Blog. The date is on the chart.

Nemesis Stalks Pre-Emptive Rewards

It used to be that if you did something, eg a week's work, you then got rewarded for it (eg wages).  And if you achieved something extra special (eg single-handedly destroyed an enemy gun-nest, doubled your employer's share price, won the US Masters), you got a special reward (eg a bravery medal, a bonus, a Green Blazer).  The key sequence was always that the act came before the award.  This is for the very simple reason that if the award is bestowed pre-emptively, the act may not get delivered. 

But with the advent of the Obamessiah, the rule seems to have changed, at least for One. 

Working on the academic staff of the the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s, he conducted not an iota of research and published not a single piece of academic work.  Yet the University mysteriously awarded him a professorship.  As far as I can ascertain, no-one in the West is ever appointed professor without an impressive portfolio of published, peer-reviewed research to his/her name, to which he/she is expected to add in the subsequent years.  But Professor Obama has faithfully maintained his research-free status up to the present day (despite my helpful suggestion that he study red élitism).  UCLS's pre-emptive award demonstrates my point about non-delivery.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party followed by the American electorate then seemed to take their cue from UCLS.  Of all the people available in a mighty and developed nation of 300 million people, it would be hard to find one with a thinner résumé (community organizer? university lecturer? one-term Senator?) and less qualified than the Obamessiah for the Democratic nomination, never mind to be president.  Up till January this year, he had run absolutely nothing other than his presidential campaign (which it must be said was superb).  Even his election to Senatorial office in Illinois was marked by skulduggery to nobble opponents rather than campaigning.  Yet the Democrats decided to reward him with their nomination and not long afterwards the electorate rewarded him with the Presidency, all in the hope that he would deliver a performance that would make him worthy of their confidence. 

So far we are still waiting -

In so many ways, the award of the Presidency has not met with any substantive successes that might warrant the people's trust. 

Indeed, taking no for an answer seems to have become Mr Obama’s “presidential trademark”. He asks and asks, but always gets the same answer.

This is one way that satirist Fred Armisen expressed it on the US comedy TV show Saturday Night Live (which - hilariously - CNN then “fact-checked” for truthfulness):  

And now, mirabile dictu, the once sane and noble Nobel Foundation has awarded to the Obamesssiah its 2009 peace price “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.  Given that nominations closed on 1st February, the five-strong committee had only twelve days of the Obama presidency to assess those “extraordinary efforts” coupled with customary non-achievement, but that apparently was enough for those canny Norwegians. 

Reports say their intention is “to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism”.  In other words, this is another pre-emptive award for the Obamessiah.

Of course, the Nobel Peace committee has form when it comes to awarding its prizes on the basis of lunacy: 

As Daily Beast blogger Peter Beinart remarks, “Perhaps next they’ll start giving Oscars not to the people who have made the best movies of last year, but to the people who have the best chance of making the best movies next year”. 

Naturally there was no Nobel peace prize

People's individual freedom is far, far down the list of priorities of Oslo's self-preening Nobel “peace” committee, comprised as it is of left-leaning politicians. 

So there you have it.  If you are cool enough the normal rule of act-followed-by-reward need not apply to you.  Without a single relevant achievement to your name, you can be awarded, entirely on a pre-emptive basis

And once you have them in your hot sticky hand, you need feel no compunction to deliver anything at all ever to merit them. 

What a blessed life you lead if your name is Barrack Obama. 

But what does the Goddess Nemesis of ancient Greece ultimately hold in store for you as you wallow in your pre-emptive rewards?  For she never sleeps; she stalks perpetually; she waits patiently for her opportunity; it always emerges eventually. 

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Stigmas and Taboos Play a Constructive Role

Thirty years ago, many kinds of human behaviour here in the West attracted opprobrium, in the form of social stigmas and taboos, in a fashion rarely seen any longer. 

All this has changed. 

About the only thing that is taboo these days is the concept of taboo.  Nothing must be forbidden.  Everything is OK.  No-one must make a judgement about the behaviour of another person.  No-one's life-style choices are superior or inferior to anyone else's - a concept that has acquired its own modern expression, “moral equivalence”.  All of this seems to be rooted in a desire to be seen to be “nice”, “caring”, “compassionate”, without thought for whether the new approach is in fact “nice, caring or compassionate” in its effect on others, particularly the young and vulnerable. 

And are we (or they) better off for all that? 

Perhaps it's a bit like being “nice” to your children by always letting them off their homework.  But how “nice” is this when you are knowingly encouraging them to grow up and enter the adult world ignorant both in knowledge and of self-discipline? 

Similarly, you have to look at the world around you and ask how better or worse off people have become as a result of the lifting of those stigmas and taboos. 

This table contrasts “then” and “now” scenarios in several high profile areas. 

Those stigmas and taboos may have had unpleasant effects on individuals finding themselves on the wrong side of them, but there is no doubt that their erosion has had even worse consequences for a far greater number of human beings. 

Experience over the past few decades have abundantly illustrated that stigmas and taboos play a constructive role in society. 

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Terror of Cliff Diving

I've never seen it, I've hardly ever heard it, I've never done it; cliff diving that is.  And I can think of no way to work this Youtube clip from Discovery Channel into a coherent post.  But it's thrilling and frightening so I'd love to share it.  Judge for yourself. 

There are plenty more, filled with equal terror, where that came from. 

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Issue 198’s Comment to Cyberspace

A single submission this week, based on my previous issue's lead post about the respectability of statutory rape. 

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Quotes for Issue 198

Quote: “I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel commission.”

President Barack Obama on learning that
he has “won” the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize having so far
achieved absolutely nothing in the field of peace.

He is not half as surprised as everyone else,
from every persuasion, at this lunatic award. 

Quote: “We’re going to treat [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent.”

Anita Dunn, the White House's communications director,
puts the Obama Administration on a war footing
against one of America's major news networks,
the only one not sufficiently obsequious to the Obamessiah.

“Every time they do it [criticise us], our ratings go up.”
remarks Bill Shine, Fox’s senior vice president for programming.

Quote: “What has become of America, when Chicago can't steal an election?”

Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana, when - 
despite special pleading by Barack and Michelle Obama
in person in Copenhagen - 
the International Olympic Committee voted down Chicago
for the 2016 Olympics in favour of Rio de Janeiro

Quote: “A Ceann Comhairle, I regret to say this, but I consider that your position is no longer tenable.  I think you will either have to resign, or I think you will have to be removed from office.”

Eamon Gilmore, leader of Ireland's opposition Labour party,
does something that is rarely if ever seen
in the famously unaccountable world of Irish politics. 
He calls for the resignation not just of a Minister but of
John O'Donoghue, the Ceann Comhairle (Speaker of the house). 

Mr O'Donoghue's sin was to fritter half a million €uros
of tax-payers money on luxury junkets around the world
during four boom years (2002-07) as Minister of Arts, Sports and Tourism,
followed by €200,000 over the past two recessionary years as Ceann Comhairle.

Within a day Mr O'Donoghue had agreed to resign.

Interestingly, it seems that the previous Taoiseach,
the corrupt Bertie Ahern, had,
when demoting Mr O'Donoghue in 2002 from Justice Minister
to Minister of Arts, Sports and Tourism,
told him to enjoy himself with lavish jaunts by way of compensation.

Quote: “I never transgressed any procedure, guideline or regulation. I never committed any offence.  I am not guilty of any corruption.  I never took money or abused my office for my own enrichment.”

In a half-hour resignation whinge, Mr O’Donoghue makes plain
that he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong,
only how to keep within the (ridiculously lax) rules.

Quote: “Dunphy's a rat, a skinny little rat!”

Stephen Hunt, an Ireland soccer international,
rather accurately portrays soccer pundit
Eamon (“Worzel Gummidge”) Dunphy,
who had branded as a
“travesty, a terrible performance, shameful”
his country's performance against Italy
in a world cup qualifier. 

Yet unfancied Ireland had come within a whisker of
defeating the world champions,
conceding a 90th minute goal that saved Italy's blushes
by bringing the score to 2-2. 

ISSUE #197 - 4^th October 2009 [293+373=666]

Just for fun, the latest Rasmussen poll on President Barack Obama's popularity will
from now on be published at the head of the Tallrite Blog. The date is on the chart.

Growing Respectability of Statutory Rape

It used to be that one crime was heinous above all others: the rape of children.  The horror of this crime would be shared across the spectrum of civilisation, from socialist to capitalist, from rich to poor, from young to old, from gay to straight. 

The Irish Catholic clergy is the butt of all kinds of odium because of the appalling way some of its clergy maltreated children in their care in the 1970s and earlier, as documented earlier this year in what has become a notorious chronicle of child abuse, including rampant sexual abuse.  Similar abuses occurred in the US, Australia and Canada and were not exclusive to the clergy of the Catholic faith, or indeed clergy.  All such behaviours have attracted universal horror and opprobrium. 

But last June, David Letterman, host of America's most popular chat show, mocked the hated and feared Sarah Palin in one of his stand-up comedy routines.  Nothing wrong with that; she's a grown-up politician who has put herself into the limelight.  However his jibes also included the following (last two minutes of video clip):

“Sarah Palin went to a Yankees [baseball] game yesterday. There was one awkward moment during the seventh-inning stretch: her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

The only daughter accompanying Ms Palin was Willow, 14; Mr Rodriquez, 34, is one of the Yankees' stars.  So the nub of Mr Letterman's joke was the impregnation by an adult of a fourteen-year-old girl.  Statutory rape of a child - what a laugh.   He later, between sniggers, apologised to Willow pretending that be meant her 18-year-old sister Bristol. 

However the mass media were extraordinarily reluctant to report on the issue in any detail.  They preferred to tolerate the idea of paedophilia then expose a story that was other than mocking of Sarah Palin and her family. 

And over the past month, there have been two more notorious cases involving the rape of thirteen-year-old girls, yet elements of society (take a guess, Left?, Right?) seem to consider this to be a far less serious offence than that perpetrated by those who have been trying to do something about it. 

First there is the scandal of ACORN, an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. 

ACORN, funded in part by the US government, is ostensibly an organization which provides assistance to poor people and minorities and also helps mobilise them to vote - for the Democrats.  Community organizer Barack Obama used to work for and with ACORN and arrange donations to it.  ACORN in turn made an important contribution to getting out the vote for his successful election to the presidency, albeit partly through massively fraudulent voter registration (of repeat, dead and non-existent people); it also donated money to his campaign.  In gratitude, he promised to invite ACORN to the White House to help him formulate policy.  He also appointed Patrick Gaspard, a longtime ACORN operative, as his political director in the White House where he has become one of its most powerful figures (as did Karl Rove who held the job under George Bush). 

A few weeks ago, James O'Keefe (25) and Hannah Giles (20), a couple of rookie journalists working for syndicated columnist Andrew Breitbart, mounted a sting against ACORN.  Mr O'Keefe posed as a would-be pimp and Ms Giles as his girlfriend, a provocatively dressed hooker.   The pair visited an ACORN office in Baltimore, Maryland, where Mr O'Keefe identified himself as a businessman with plans for pimping and his girlfriend as a prostitute.  He asked for assistance in setting up a brothel to be staffed by fourteen-year-old girls who would be illegally brought in from San Salvador.  Far from calling the police, the two ACORN ladies manning the office provided every kind of advice: 

But the young couple were filming the whole thing by secret camera, and then released the results on Youtube. 

The Youtube clips went viral, and Americans have been outraged at the thought that their tax dollars have undeniably been funding activities that are not just blatantly against the law, but in facilitating child sex are demonstrably evil. 

But not all Americans.  Not pro-Obama Democrats.  Apart from token support for the summary dismissal of two ACORN staffers involved in the sting and the curtailment of some Federal funding, they are more concerned with nailing the two rookie journalists than condemning and stamping out the child-sex-promoting culture within ACORN.  ACORN plans to sue the investigating pair and others involved, because they “recorded the staff members without their consent, which is illegal [in Maryland]”. 

Child-sex clearly takes a lower priority than protecting the Obama aura. 

Not unlike that other child-sex story on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Undoubtedly, movie director Roman Polanski had a difficult start to his life that none would envy.  Born in Paris in 1933 to a Polish Jew and a Russian half-Jew, the family moved to Krackow a few years before Hitler invaded Poland.  As Jews, the family was in due course herded by the Nazis into the Krackow Ghetto in 1941; father and son survived the war but in 1942 mother was murdered in Auschwitz. 

Moving back to Soviet-occupied Krackow after the war, Mr Polanski launched himself as an actor and director of movies.  As his film success grew, he moved progressively to France, England and America in pursuit of greater opportunities.  In 1968 in the US he married a beautiful young actress, Sharon Tate.  The same year, his movie reputation really took off in Hollywood with Rosemary's Baby, his career never having really looked back since then.  However in 1969 his wife, then 8½ months pregnant, was brutally murdered at home by Charles Manson and his drug-crazed gang of fellow psychopaths. 

So with these personal traumas, anyone should cut Mr Polanski a bit of slack. 

But not unlimited slack. 

In 1977 then aged 44, he pleaded guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”, thirteen-year-old Samantha Geimer, in other words what would today be called statutory rape.  This was a plea-bargain in order to escape additional charges, which included rape, sodomy (twice), child molestation and giving alcohol and drugs to a minor, in the home of his friend Jack Nicholson.  Such a package would probably have attracted incarceration for life. 

The sordid details can be found in the victim's own testimony to the Los Angeles Grand Jury, none of which Mr Polanski contradicted before his guilty plea, and which includes more sexual violations by Mr Polanski than those mentioned above.

However between his guilty plea and receiving his lesser jail sentence, he skipped bail and fled to France.  He has been living in Europe ever since, making great movies, travelling all over the world (except America), being universally feted and collecting countless awards. 

And there's not much evidence of remorse from this self-confessed paedophile rapist either.  In 1979 he bragged to Martin Amis

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see.  But … f**king, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f**k young girls. Juries want to f**k young girls. Everyone wants to f**k young girls.”

But last week, after more than three decades on the run from the US, he showed up in Zurich for one award too many: the Swiss locked him up on foot of an international arrest warrant issued by the Americans who are still doggedly seeking his extradition. 

So has the world applauded the Swiss for finally apprehending a convicted paedophile rapist?  No, not exactly everyone is cheering. 

The movie industry and others are working themselves into a lather of indignation over the arrest.

The media in general refer coyly only to “what happened” to Mr Polanski in 1977.  There is little mention about the heinous crime this monster perpetrated: that he raped a child barely in her teens.  The lack of outrage over this minor detail is palpable.  (How might the media have reacted had his name been Father Polanksi?)

So it seems that child rape - whether as a “joke” (Letterman) or planning a brothel (ACORN) or actually doing it (Polanksi) - is becoming just a further expression of the West's rich cultural heritage. 

At least Islam is more honest and open about embracing the same foul practice, widespread in many Muslim countries.  Mohammed set the pattern when, in his fifties, he married six-year-old Aisha and deflowered her at nine.  In 1979, one of the first acts of Ayatollah Khomeini - himself a paedophile - was, in evident homage to Aisha and Mohammed, to lower the age of consent in Iran to the same nine years.  

But we Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists in the West like to think we are morally superior.  Many of us, it appears, are not. 

The statutory rape of children is becoming respectable in certain quarters on both sides of the Atlantic. 

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Worshipping the Beloved Leader

Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, Kim ... what have they got in common with Barrack Hussein Obama?

They all believe that school children should be indoctrinated into singing the praises of their beloved leader, preferably using a patriotic melody.  You expect that kind of stuff from totalitarian dictatorships.  But in the world's greatest democracy? 

Judge for yourself.  This was recorded at the  B Bernice Young elementary school in New Jersey earlier this year. 

Unlike the unfortunate semi-brainwashed American children, I am rendered dumbfounded. 

Here are the nauseating words of the two hagiographic songs the kids are forced to sing.

Eeugh!

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Conspitulations to China's Communist Party on its 60th Anniversary

As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates the 60th anniversary of seizure of power in China on 1st October 1949 , let us not forget ... 

The appalling crimes of President Hu Jin Tao's Communist Party dictatorship,
which continues to illegitimately rule China after six long decades, are by far the most evil of anyone or any entity anywhere on earth, since the beginning of time. 

Thank God the degree of State criminality and inhumanity within China has hugely decreased since the death of the Party's foul founder Mao Tse Tung, but it continues nevertheless. 

To emphasise the Party's ongoing reverence to Mao, Mr Hu dressed up for the 60th anniversary celebrations on 1st October in a Mao suit, which says it all. 

This is a regime which all humans beings
should spit at, not congratulate.
Conspitulations from the Tallrite Blog. 

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Pride of (Phil the Fluter's) Brussels

Last week Ireland staged its second referendum to consider whether to ratify the execrable Lisbon Treaty. 

In June last year, the Irish with a 53% turnout soundly rejected Lisbon by 53.4% to 46.6%.  The reaction of the horrified Irish politicians was to immediately rush to Brussels to apologise profusely for the people's impertinence, to grovel for a few titbits and promise to do better next time. 

Well, that and the fear induced by the country's subsequent (though unrelated) economic collapse, did the trick.  Last week in the result was reversed.  59% of voters voted Yes by 67% to 33%. 

So we Naysayers, who (according to Ireland's pro-Lisbon Commissioner Charlie McCreevy) unlike in Ireland constitute the vast majority of populations across the EU were they only to be asked, have to rely on the Czech and Polish presidents and a British general election to save us from Lisbon. 

Of course natural justice would demand that the Irish now hold yet another referendum, so as the ultimate result would be determined by the best of three.  Yeah, right. 

But enough of the whingeing. 

During furious correspondence raging in the Irish newspapers and online, I stumbled across this little anti-Lisbon gem by a commenter who identifies himself as “Brian in Dublin”.  It needs to be sung to the tune of Phil the Fluter's Ball, which for those who have forgotten sounds like this. 

The Pride of Brussels

Have you heard of Little Biffo, sure the man was out of luck  
The times were going hard for him, he had the country broke  
So he sent an invitation to the gentry one and all,  
As to how he'd like their company to prop up Fianna Fáil  

And when writin' out he was careful to suggest to them,  
That if he lost the Lisbon Vote they’d all be out the dure,  
The more they joined in, whenever he requested them  
The better would their chances be to keep themselves secure.  

Sure they don’t give a hoot, And they diddle on the fiddle, O;  
Hopping in the middle, like a herrin' on the griddle, O.  
Up! Down turn around we’re heading for the wall  
But they don’t have to worry, they’re in bed with Fianna Fail.  

Well, they came from every corner of the country with their wads  
Credit cards were flashin’ between the winks and nods  
Civil Society were totally aghast  
At the thought of losing all their perks if Lisbon wasn’t passed.  

What will we do said Biffo to the gatherin,  
We’ll have to promise somethin’ to get them on our side  
If they vote NO again we’ll all take a batterin  
With NAMA comin’ down the road they’ll surely have our hide.  

Sure they don’t give a hoot, And they diddle on the fiddle, O;  
Hopping in the middle, like a herrin' on the griddle, O.  
Up! Down turn around we’re heading for the wall  
But they don’t have to worry, they’re in bed with Fianna Fail  

When they all heard this they were totally distraught  
No more trips on private jets or jaunts to foreign parts  
But the Big Boys of Business put the smile back on their gobs  
“Sure we’ll scare the daylights out of them, then promise them all jobs”.

Well they all leapt up with the greatest joviality  
Jigs were danced, Biffo leppin’ like a hare  
Hands were grasped with great conviviality  
To be the Pride of Brussels – was their one and only care.  

Sure they don’t give a hoot, And they diddle on the fiddle, Oh  
Hopping in the middle, like a herrin on the griddle, Oh .  
Up! Down turn around we’re heading for the wall  
But they don’t have to worry, they’re in bed with Fianna Fail

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Issue 197’s Comments to Cyberspace

Five submissions, none of them reaching the printed media, but all managed to “scratch my itch”. 

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Quotes for Issue 197

- - - - - A F G H A N I S T A N - - - - -

Quote: “Can I say how much more confidence I have now in my chain of command than I had after Prime Minister Gordon Brown was here a couple of weeks ago.”

Flight Lieutenant Victoria Anderton of the RAF speaking bluntly
at the International Institute for Strategic Studies to
General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. 

Flt Lt Anderton will be deployed next year to Kandahar

- - - - - O B A M A - - - - -

Quote: “Is Obama a communist or a democrat?”

Chinese Uighur prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, speaking to visiting reporters. 
They also held up offensive messages that included references to Hitler.

Completely coincidentally, President Obama,
in the spirit of the greater openness and transparency
much touted during his campaign,
has drastically curtailed the programme of visits by reporters
to Guantanamo that was set up by his disparaged predecessor.

Reporters are being punished for the (embarrassing) sins of prisoners.

Meanwhile two Uighur prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay
are being resettled in Ireland,
renowned for its shortage of home-grown terrorists.

Quote: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity towards President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is an African American.  In the south ... and the rest of the country ... racism ... still exists and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of the belief of many white people ... around the country that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance.” 

Without producing a single shred of evidence,
that blatantly anti-Semite old fraud ex-President Jimmy Carter
brands as racist all white people who dare object to
President Obama's healthcare and other plans. 

Shame on the TV interviewer for not asking Mr Carter
whether he was expressing feelings or facts,
and if the latter what evidence they were based on.

Quote: “The goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security -- a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.”

President Barack Obama, speaking the to UN
at the opening of its General Assembly
in New York on 23rd September. 

Short of digging a 36 km tunnel,
Gaza and the West bank can become a “contiguous territory”
only by bisecting Israel into non-contiguity. 

This is a new demand by America,
that places Palestinian contiguity above Israeli contiguity. 

Is this the same man who declared,
when campaigning last year before American Jews (AIPAC),
that Jerusalem (never mind Israel) “must remain undivided”? 

Quote: “It's just unambiguously a bad decision.  Russia and Iran are the big winners. I just think it's a bad day for American national security.”

John Bolton, pugnacious former US ambassador
to the UN under George Bush,
castigates the Obama administration
for appeasing both Russia and Iran
by cancelling America's plans for
anti-missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic.

While Russia now fearlessly mounts
provocative war games titled “West 2009”,
Iran can continue happily developing its
long-range missiles and nuclear warheads. 

Now it's only those dratted Jews who stand in its way.

- - - - - I S R A E L   &   J E W S- - - - -

Quote: “If not now, then when?”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
quotes the Jewish leader Hillel,
who lived in Jerusalem in Roman times.

He is referring to putting a definitive stop
to Iran's nuclear weapons programme,
which is a growing threat of the utmost gravity
to the very existence of the Jewish state and its population. 

Quote (minute 28-30): “The Jews say they never killed Jesus ... well it wasn't the f**kin Mexicans ... These Jews, these f**kin Jew c**ts come up to me, f**kin Christ-killing bastards.  F**kin six million of them - I would have ten or twelve million out of that, no f**kin problem.  F**k them.  Two at a time they would have gone.  Hold hands, get in, leave us your teeth and your glasses.”

Tommy Tiernan, an Irish “comedian”
displays rabid 1930s-style Teutonic anti-Semitism
of a sort that had supposedly disappeared
save in the depraved atmosphere of Islam.

Of course St Paul kicked off the Christian calumny
about Jews having killed Jesus Christ
when, in his first letter to the Thessalonians (2:14-15)
during the first century, he wrote bluntly and falsely that,
“the Jews … killed … the Lord Jesus”.  

They didn't; the Romans did, under the instructions of
Rome's colonial governor Pontius Pilate. 
Therefore all Christian anti-Semitism through the centuries
should have been directed instead at the Italians.

Mr Tiernan's rant should not, as some advocate, be censured.
Rather, his career should be destroyed
by people avoiding his shows in disgust. 

- - - - - I R V I N G   K R I S T O L - - - - -

Quote: “World government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion.”

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009, a towering American intellectual,
dubbed the “godfather of neoconservatism”. 

Clearly, those who by voting Yes to the Lisbon Treaty
pave the way to the interim solution
of an all-Europe government,
would not agree with the late Mr Kristol.

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home

Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least alive.

BLOGROLL

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My Columns in the

 What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

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

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. 

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
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

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.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

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.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment. 

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.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics. 

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. 

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

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.

+++++

 
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scores, points and rankings.

After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze.  Fourth is host nation France.

No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes