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Unpublished
and Published [P!] Letters to the Press in 2006 |
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December 2006
November 2006 October 2006
September 2006
August 2006 July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006 January 2006 |
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| December 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To
the Irish Times on 27th December 2006
Madam, - Minister Seamus Brennan is right to emphasis the importance of integrating immigrants into Irish society and that the responsibility for this lies equally with both the native population and the incomers (Ireland, December 27th). But he is wrong to raise the spectre of what is now widely regarded as the French initifada, with its hundred car-burnings per night, year round. This is an Islamic phenomenon provoked and sustained by Islamic extremists among immigrants, who have created no-go areas in the banlieus where only Sharia law, implemented by imams, prevails and more moderate Muslims have to keep their heads down. The obvious way to forestall such an outcome here is to restrict Muslim immigration. - Yours etc |
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Published in
the Irish Times on 21st December 2006
Madam, - The denunciation, by Amnesty International's Sean Love, of Augusto Pinochet's 17-year reign of terror, which killed or "disappeared" over 3,000 people and imprisoned and tortured many more, is admirable (December 19th). I would hope he reserves even greater vituperation for Fidel Castro who in his 47 years of power has killed 70,000 people(*) so far in his prison state, jailed and tortured many more and wrecked Cuba's economy. At least Pinochet's capitalistic policies left Chile the strongest economy in South America. - Yours etc
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Published in
the (subscription-only) Economist, 19th December 2006
Sir, -
______________________________ A very similar letter was also published in Mark Steyn's Mailbox during Christmas week 2006, ranked 14th on the list (down from third and first place over the past year or so!).
Re: Talking turkey In fact, long before Europeans discovered America, English merchants in Turkey had discovered the çulluk, a most delicious bird to eat. They began exporting it back to England, where it became very popular, and was known as a “Turkey bird” or simply a “turkey”. Then, when the English came to America, they noticed large edible birds which looked like big versions of çulluks, so they called them “turkey” also, which has stuck to this day. Yet there are odd names for a turkey in other languages as well, where the bird always seems to have come from somewhere else. In Turkey itself it is known as hindi (meaning from India); in France dinde (also from India); in Italy tacchino (peacock) or pollo d'India (India again); in Brazil and Portugal it's peru; in Greece gallapoula (French girl); in Arabic an Ethiopian bird; in Persian it's buchalamun (a chameleon). And in India, it's a turkey. By the way, the December 19th issue of the Economist seems to agree with my version. |
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To the Irish Times on 1st December 2006
Madam, - You don't have to pay €120 for your own (clunky) breathalyser as John Mugan suggests (Letters, December 14th). Over the internet, you can buy from the UK a tiny one that fits neatly in the palm of your hand or your top pocket or purse for only £21 (around €40 including delivery to Ireland). It is more than accurate enough for determining whether you are well within the legal limit, and is ideal for carrying with you at all times. Without your own device, it is like trying to keep to the speed limit without a speedometer. Moreover, for little cost, pubs, clubs and restaurants could fit coin-operated wall-mounted breathalysers (also available over the internet), to enable customers to measure themselves. In Australia, such machines have long been widespread and provide an additional revenue stream. - Yours etc, This letter is drawn from a
post, |
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To the Irish Times on 1st December 2006 Israel and the Palestinians: Disputed vs Occupied Land Madam, - I don't know where Raymond Deane of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign keeps getting the idea that the land disputed with Israel is not “disputed” but “occupied”. (Letters, December 1st). It remains under dispute for the sole reason that every time the Palestinians have been offered it as a Palestinian state their leaders have turned it down - in 1937, 1948, 1967 and 2000. As such, it is no more Palestinian land than it is Israeli land. You can therefore as readily conclude it is "occupied" by the Palestinians as by the Israelis. - Yours, etc. |
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To The Economist, 1st December 2006 The Americans' Lawful Mission in Iraq Sir, - Your leader (The test in Afghanistan, November 25th) contains a glaring and uncharacteristic error, which reads, “In Afghanistan, as distinct from Iraq, there should be no quarrel about the lawfulness of the mission. NATO is in the country under a UN mandate, operating in defence and at the behest of an elected government”. So is the American-led coalition in Iraq. - Yours etc, |
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| November 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To the Irish Times on 28th November 2006
Madam, - Frank Golden betrays himself when he joins the chorus that likes to mock what he calls Donald Rumsfeld's “illogical unknown unknowns” (Letters, November 28th). When Mr Rumsfeld uttered this in June 2002, his central point was that in war you need at least to allow for the existence of bad things happening that you haven't thought of. But the same concept applies in many business contexts as well. For example, the oil industry talks about :
Inasmuch as an oil company's long-term future depends on continually finding new oil - hence oil exploration - it is essential that how to deal with undiscovered oil (“unknown unknowns” in Mr Rumsfeld's lexicon) should constitute a strong element in strategic planning. Furthermore, no responsible company will fail to have plans in place for tackling other unknown unknowns such as future undreamt-of business catastrophes. It seems that many people listening to Mr Rumsfeld were hearing about the concept of different types of knowns and unknowns for the first time, were finding it complex (it is) and couldn't understand it. Therefore, they would conclude, it must be something bad and deserving of mockery. - Yours etc, This letter is drawn from a post I wrote back in August 2002. |
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To the Irish Times on 23rd November 2006 Death Penalty on Saddam Hussein Madam, - Anthony Redmond quotes the Vatican in support of
his contention that Saddam Hussein should be spared the death penalty (Letters,
November 23rd). The Vatican, in its inexplicable endeavours to keep the
tyrant
As for the trial itself, whatever its flaws, both the prosecution and defence were able to put their cases in open court and a guilty verdict on the Dujail massacre was reached, which no-one could claim is unjust. Iraqis tried an Iraqi in Iraq for crimes against Iraqis. This was in marked contrast to the fiasco of a trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. This dragged on for four long years, without an outcome, and then Milosevic died - the court couldn't even keep him alive. As for the death sentence, the court acted under the auspices of the sovereign Iraqi government freely elected last December by an astonishing 77%** of the adult population, pursuant to a constitution ratified by the Iraqi people two months earlier. The Coalition forces are not, as Mr Redmond infers, undermining Iraq's sovereignty; they are helping to support the struggling young democracy at the invitation of the legitimate government and under a UN Mandate. I agree that the judicial death penalty is wrong and abhor its liberal use in places like China, Saudi Arabia and the USA, but at least it seems to be applied sparingly in Iraq. If and when Saddam is hanged, it is to be hoped his body is cremated and his ashes secretly scattered, to ensure no Yasukuni-style shrine is created. - Yours etc,
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To the Sunday Times on 22nd November 2006
Sir, - So, professional atheist Professor Richard Dawkins wants to flood schools with atheism propaganda (“Godless Dawkins challenges schools”, November 19th). He perpetually gets away with his special kind of agitprop because he is charming, mellifluous and articulate, and fits in well with the modern, post-Christian leftishness much beloved of the bien-pensants. Meanwhile, his interlocutors, whether by accident or design, are nearly always either in awe of his views and professorial demeanour or else ridiculously deferential. Even Jeremy Paxman seemed slightly intimidated when he interviewed him on BBC Newsnight recently**. Last month, however, Prof Dawkins encountered, for perhaps the first time, a thoroughly aggressive yet knowledgeable debater, journalist David Quinn, who systematically demolished everything he had to say and made his arguments look ridiculous. He needs more challenge like this. Readers can listen to the radio interview as from Minute 8, by clicking on http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thetubridyshow/1109112.html. - Yours etc, |
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To the Irish Times on 13th November 2006
Madam, - In Mary Fitzgerald's interesting review of the new Al Jazeera English TV channel (“Al-Jazeera's energy lost in translation”, November 16th), she contrasts it with the “rabidly right-wing” Fox News and the “sombre, earnest and careful” BBC. Why does she omit the epithet “left-wing” from the BBC's description, being its most abiding characteristic? - Yours etc, |
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To the Irish Times on 13th November 2006 Shannon Airport's Contribution to Iraq Madam, - I would hope that when Roger Cole, chair of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, “makes an issue” in the next general election of the use of Shannon Airport (Letters, November 13th), he spares a thought for the twelve million Iraqis (an astonishing 74% of adults) who only last December bravely voted for a new, liberal, legitimate, democratic Iraq, and who so proudly displayed their purpled fingers to the cameras. For ranged against them are a deadly minority of Saddamites, Ba'athists, Sunni and Shi'ite gangs, local and foreign jihadists, common criminals and no doubt various hangers-on and dead-enders. They seek to restore Ba'athism or to impose Taliban-like rule, with, of course, power in their own hands alone - and permanently. Only the West's military help, at the continuing invitation of the democratic Iraqi government and under a UN mandate, is keeping these these evil men from success. Shannon is a noble part of that military help. To withdraw support from those twelve million Iraqi democrats would be the equivalent of handing post-war Germany back to the criminal Nazis or Eastern Europe back to the criminal Soviets. - Yours etc, See my earlier attempt to get a similar letter published |
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Published in
the Sunday Times on 12th November 2006
P!
A killer father such as Gavin Hall may indeed see himself as a victim, but society, the media and the courts do not, and there is no compunction in locking him up for the vile crime he has committed. In Hall’s case that means life, and one might expect that the Greek courts will hand down something similar to John Hogan, who jumped off a balcony with his children in his arms, resulting in his son’s death.
For example, Danielle Wails, who burnt her son to death
Deletions from my original text were
made by the letters editor. The letter is based on my recent post
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To the Irish Times on 3rd November 2006
Madam, - Peter Pallas of Ennis finds it “inexcusable” that the native people of An Daingean/Dingle voted to retain the name of Dingle (Letters, November 3rd). Such arrogance. Those townspeople think they own the place. They should obey the desires of their betters in Ennis, Leinster House and the rest of the country. - Yours etc,
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To the Irish Times on 1st November 2006 Anti-War Movement Seems Pro-War Madam, - You report that the Irish Anti-War Movement has invited to Ireland Ibrahim Mousawi, who is "a prominent member of Hizbullah ... from the pro-Hizbullah television station al-Manar" (World, November 1st). According to Mr Mousawi, Hizbullah will welcome Irish troops so long as they stick to their mission, which he says is "to help the Lebanese army to defend the Lebanese people". However, UNIFIL's remit under UN Resolutions 425, 426 and last August's 1701, is much more specific than this. UNIFIL is mandated to assist the Lebanese Government and Army to disarm all other groups south of the Litani river, which of course includes Hizbullah. So Mr Mousawi is, in effect, saying that the Irish troops are not welcome if they do their UN mandated duty. This is the same Hizbullah who provoked the recent war in Lebanon by invading Israel, killing and kidnapping its soldiers and launching rockets into its civilian areas. In addition to Hizbullah's social side, it is a military organization openly committed to the obliteration of Israel and is supported, militarily, logistically and financially by Iran whose president likewise openly seeks to wipe Israel from the map. In its obvious support for Mr Mousawi and hence Hizbullah, the "Irish Anti-War Movement" should rename itself. It appears not to be anti-war at all, but pro-war on the anti-Israel side. - Yours etc, |
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| October 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
To the Irish Times on 20th October 2006
 Madam,
- Your striking
front page photograph on October 20th features a veiled person
identified as
“Aishah Azmi (24), a Muslim teaching assistant”.
How do you know? - Yours, etc, |
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Published in the Irish Times on 20th October 2006
P
Madam, - In supporting the 60 Irish academics passionately calling for a boycott of Israeli
academic institutions, Cathal Kerrigan (October 17th) cites the example of
his friend Simon Nkoli, a black gay South African who, shamefully, was
tortured and imprisoned for his anti-apartheid activities .
The irony is that pretty much the only place
in the Middle East where a black gay such as Mr Nkoli can today live
openly and at peace, without fear of attack or prejudice, is the hated
Israel, and certainly not the areas known as Palestine. In fact, Israel
outlaws
discrimination on the basis of race or sexual orientation.
It is odd, therefore, for Mr Kerrigan to favour Palestine.
Incidentally, I am still awaiting a response
to a challenge I twice posed in these pages on
6th and
13th October 2004 to "name a Middle East state other than Israel ...
with the freedom to establish bodies which are openly ... pro-gay".
This is the second time in a month
that publication
of See also Academics Call for Ban on Israel below
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Published in
the Irish Times on 14th October 2006
Madam, - Joe Murray, co-ordinator of the NGO Afri (October 11th) repeats known untruths about Shell . Ken Saro Wiwa and eight colleagues were arrested and - after a rigged trial - executed in 1995 by Nigeria's brutal military dictatorship of the day, not for "trying to protect their people and land" [from Shell], but for inciting the murder of four elders from their own Ogoni tribe who did not agree with their (largely anti-Shell) activities. Shell had no hand in their fate, and was horrified by it. To suggest collusion is, quite simply, a grievous calumny. The Irish legal system jailed The Rossport Five for contempt of an injunction to stop interfering with Shell's lawful construction activities; Shell did not call for their imprisonment, only for the exercise of the injunction. Moreover, numerous expert studies have all concluded that
the pipeline is not "dangerous", no matter whether the protestors may think
it is. (I may think the world is flat, but that doesn't make it so.) Shell's commitment to human rights, especially in Nigeria, is huge. If Mr Murray thinks Shell "has never been known to allow human rights to stand in the way of its pursuit of profit", perhaps I should explain why Shell's oil production in Nigeria, which was once 1.2 million barrels per day is currently only 700,000. The half-million shortfall arises because Shell has voluntarily shut down dozens of its Nigerian oilfields attacked or threatened by militants, rather than risk violence by calling on the - lawful - protection of the security forces, for fear they will use lethal means. Shell's concern for the human rights of Nigerians is causing a large loss of profit for its shareholders. Shell's activities do not lead to the wanton loss of life in Nigeria ; neither will they in this country. - Yours etc, Declaration of interest: |
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| September 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To the Irish Times on 25th September 2006
Madam, - The courts have ruled, in the case of the Jehovah's Witness who was forcibly given a blood transfusion contrary to her religion and her will, that religious beliefs must now be ridden over roughshod, for the sake of the health of the patient, even where the subject is a fully compos mentis adult. This is excellent news, because if it applies to an adult it must surely apply to minors. From this moment on, therefore, all (but medically necessary) circumcisions of boys and girls below the age of eighteen should be proscribed. Religion is no longer a defence for the centuries old barbarity of wantonly chopping bits off babies and children. Hospitals and back-street circumcisers beware. - Yours etc, The story is outlined here |
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To the Sunday Times on 20th September 2006
Sir, - That's a nice letter from Major Philip Sturtivant explaining that he left the army “when the Iraq war was imminent” because he thought it was “ill-conceived” (Dying in the military folly of Afghanistan, September 17th). I am sure his colleagues who did not quit and bravely went to fight in Iraq would agree that this was no reflection on the Major's courage in the face of war. - Yours etc, |
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To the Irish Times on 16th September 2006 Academics Call for Ban on Israel Madam, - No fewer than sixty eminent academics have used your Letters page (September 16th) to call for a moratorium on joint collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, which they evidently hope will encourage Israel to make peace with its neighbours. There is another way to create peace, instantly. Israel's neighbours have simply to cease attacking Israel. That's all it takes. - Yours etc, See also Call for Boycott on Israel above |
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Published in
the Irish Times on 11th September 2006
Madam, - Vincent Browne attempts to place himself on the high moral ground by complaining that the lack of "equality" in Irish society is evidence of "corruption", and advocating that "State power" be exercised to redress this (Opinion, September 6th). His piece reveals, however, that what he is actually after is not equality of opportunity for all, but the use of state power to enforce equality of outcome for all regardless of effort or ability. Where is the fairness in that? Lenin and Mao would be proud. - Yours, etc. Vincent Browne is a regular columnist and broadcaster |
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Published in Mark Steyn's Mailbox
on 5th September 2006, as third on the list. However this link will degrade in a week or so when Mark publishes a fresh set of letters on the same URL. You must be delighted with Phillip Adams'
spirited demolition of you in
The Australian of August 22nd 2006 ("Boom, boom"). After all
the adulation, I imagine it was the highlight of your antipodean tour to be
called mad and likened to Goebbels. Thus it is very difficult for the Left to develop a coherent basis for countering policies that are guided by such flights of reason. That is why they must resort, with heartfelt emotion, to waffly arguments such as what is “fair”, what is “compassionate”, what is “hurtful”, the implication being that everything of the Right represents the heartless side of these adjectives. Mr Adams merely reinforces all the anti-Left prejudices I laid out in an earlier piece called "The Passionate Left and Logical Right". Do please keep driving them nuts in your inimitable style! Your comedy on top of the logic is just too much for them to bear. |
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Published in the Irish Times on 1st September 2006 'Poaching' of Academic Staff P! Madam, - In deriding the desire of UCD's president, Dr Hugh Brady, to maintain a competitive market for the expertise of academics, Dr Peadar Kirby of DCU tells us that "most academics, in my experience, do not view their expertise as a commodity to be possessed for private profit but as knowledge to be shared with colleagues and students" (Letters, August 31st). To test this, let Dr Kirby answer one question: provided he could continue to share his knowledge with colleagues and students, would he be willing to have his remuneration halved? Only if the answer is yes can one conclude that he indeed views his expertise as being unworthy of private profit for himself. One could, indeed, conclude that Dr Kirby is simply fearful of international competitive pressure in academia, and it is interesting that he expressed wariness of globalisation in Prof Joseph Stiglitz's recent lecture "Making Globalisation Work" (Finance, August 31st). Every educator deserves his/her financial reward and it would be unjust to deny, through a cartel, better rewards to better educators. - Yours, etc, Dr Brady's remark which attracted the derision is here |
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| August 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To the Irish Times, 25th August 2006
Madam, - There is no doubting the heartfelt sincerity of Quakers in their pacifism, which as Gillian Armstrong points out in her letter of August 25th has, over the centuries, sometimes resulted in their being imprisoned for their rejection of arms and conscription. But they should recognize that their pacifism is respected and tolerated only in free societies such as ours here in the West, and that such freedom has been bought and maintained only at the expense of guns and/or blood. How else were the totalitarian, militaristic and atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Soviet Communism, that strove to sweep Europe, to be vanquished, and for that matter Japanese imperialism? And how else will the march of radical Islam be kept at bay? Quakers are effectively free-loading on the military efforts of others, though they are not alone in this. - Yours etc, This letter is based on my post
Free-loading Quaker Pacifists |
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To the Irish Times, 24th August 2006
Religion and the Roots of Terror Madam, - Paul Carroll attempts to show that the wickedness of radical Islam, as evidenced by the behaviour of people such as suicide bombers, is matched by the wickedness of Judaism and Christianity because Israel and America drop bombs which kill civilians (Letters, August 24th). He misses two central points. Radical Islamists target civilians and rejoice when they succeed; Israel, America and Britain target military objectives and regret when civilians are killed. There is yawning chasm between the morality of these two intents. More importantly, the central figure of Islam urges (in Suras 2:187 and 9:5) Muslims to “slay them [non-Muslims] wherever ye shall find them”, with the result that radical Islam can argue that it is merely obeying this call. By contrast, the central figure of Christianity never killed anyone and never advocated killing anyone. Neither does Judaism advocate killing. Mr Carroll can blame Messrs Olmert, Bush and Blair for the mayhem and deaths in Lebanon and Iraq if he wishes. But there is no basis for placing the blame on their respective religions, whatever they themselves may say to the contrary. - Yours etc,
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To the Irish Times, 23rd August 2006
Madam, - So, “History has shown that, in the end, conflicts can only be solved on a deep and lasting basis when dialogue recommences and mutual respect is manifest” according according to David Marlborough (Letters, August 22nd). Perhaps he should study some recent (and ancient) history. Were Germany and Japan converted to representative democracy by "dialogue" and "mutual respect"? Or by their utter destruction through military means, thereby providing a clean, albeit rubble-strewn slate on which the (perennially hated) Americans could build a new order that has brought sixty years of justice, peace and prosperity to their peoples? Mr Marlborough seems to belong to the facile school that believes that all disputes can be solved by jaw-jaw, never by war-war. It sounds warm and honourable, because no right-thinking person wants death and destruction. But just as it requires two to tango, it needs two to jaw-jaw and both parties must be sincere. Jaw-jaw with Hezbollah and Hamas, terrorist organizations sworn to destroy Israel and all Jews? Hardly. Jaw-jaw with Iran, sharing the same objective and building a nuclear bomb to carry it out? Iran has shown it is willing to jaw-jaw for as long as it takes to complete its bomb. Hardly sincere.
Sometimes - if rarely - war-war is the more honourable and
successful option |
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To the Irish Times, 18th August 2006
Madam, - It's good to hear that Veolia Transport Ireland, the Luas[*] operator, confirm that co-operation with Israeli technicians involved in setting up the Jerusalem light rail system has been halted only for operational reasons (“Dispute over Israeli link to Luas”, World, August 18th). Submitting to political objections from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Siptu and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions might have branded the company as anti-Semitic. - Yours etc, [*] The Luas is Dublin's very successful light rail system |
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