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Sir, - Matt Cooper talks about "the Catholic feast of Lent" (No place for faith in state classrooms, 31 August, page 1-14, Irish edition**).  He must have been looking out of the window during his religious education classes at school.  Lent is a season of fasting and abstinence emulating the forty days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness on retreat, prayer and reflection.  It is no more a "feast" than is Islam's current month of Ramadan, which is of course a copy of Lent.  - Yours etc,

**not available online

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Is the conflict in Georgia a sign of renewed Russian aggression?
In an online poll, 61% answered Yes

This is not only a case of Russian aggression. It is the first step in no less a project than a new expansion of Russian Imperialism under Czar Putin (whether he calls himself president or prime minister).

And it's not merely Russian pride that is driving this new empire.

Russia is a dying country, losing nearly a million people a year due to age, ill-health, vodka, net emigration, abortion and an abysmal, population-destroying fertility rate of just 1.3 babies per woman. It has very nearly reached the non-reversible stage.

So it desperately needs more people, and the easiest way to get them is to conquer and annex neighbours with large Russian populations.

First they came for South Ossetia and Abkhazia and I did nothing.
Then they came for Crimea and I did nothing.
Then they came for Moldova and I did nothing.
Then they came for ...

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Barack slips away as ‘Obama fatigue’ sets in

Has anyone any idea what "community worker" and "community service" actually mean?  Apparently this is what Mr Obama did before he became a senator.  To me it sounds like just hanging out. 

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Position harmful to children P!

At least we know now that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) does not believe in a child's right to a mother and father where possible. Nor does the Free Legal Advice Centres, nor the Irish Penal Reform Trust.

On July 29 ["Attack on UN rights body just doesn't bear scrutiny"], the heads of the three above organisations attacked David Quinn for having the temerity to criticise their view on human rights ('How dare the UN take us to task on human rights', Irish Independent, July 18).

Among other things, Mr Quinn pointed out that by supporting gay adoption, etc, the ICCL and its allied organisations implicitly deny a child's right to a mother and father. This is highly controversial.

In their reply to Mr Quinn, they confirm this by also attacking Professor Patricia Casey, who has written elsewhere in defence of a child's right to both a mother and father. Prof Casey bases her case on the growing body of evidence which shows that having both a mother and a father is of benefit to a child.

In support of her case, Professor Casey cited reports by Anna Sarkadi of the University of Uppsala [“Fathers' involvement and children's developmental outcomes: a systematic review of longitudinal studies”] and by Unicef [“Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Wellbeing in Rich Countries” UNICEF Report Card 7, 2007] highlighting the importance of fathers. Prof Casey logically concluded that every child should have a mother and father, where possible, and that the State should support heterosexual marriage, because married fathers have more contact with their children than non-married fathers, on average. 

It's true, as Mr Quinn's critics point out, that both Unicef and Anna Sarkadi attacked Prof Casey for drawing this conclusion, but her logic is inescapable. If fathers matter, then every child should, where possible, have one, and presumably a mother also.

In any event, Mr Quinn's critics have proven his point: namely that there are competing views of human rights; and one flashpoint concerns the right of a child to a mother and a father. The ICCL, etc, are firmly aligned with the radical side in this particular debate, a position that is distinctly -- and self-evidently -- harmful to the interests of children. - Yours etc.

To the Economist on 18th July 2008

No Regret or Sympathy for Ahmad Batebi

Sir, - It was moving to learn of the tribulations, torture and eventual escape to America of the courageous young Iranian student Ahmad Batebi after his photo appeared on the cover of your issue of July 17th 1999 protesting against the regime ("Silent no more", July 12th). 

But you were ungracious to express not a word of either regret or sympathy to reflect the part you played, however honourably, in his suffering. - Yours etc,

Poverty in Ethiopia

Sir, - Kevin Myers’ observations about Ethiopia and the ineffectiveness, if not reverse effectiveness, of the decades of aid that has poured in there (and elsewhere in Africa) are perspicacious if unpopular (“Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS”, July 10, 2008). 

Michael Buerk, the BBC reporter who first reported the Ethiopian famine of 1983-5 and inspired Bob Geldof and Live Aid, returned 20 years later for a TV follow-up.  Though average annual income per head had by then dropped from $190 to $108 (it's now $100) and the number of heads had doubled to 68 million (now 78m), he described the (still current after 17 years) Meles Zenawi regime as “saints compared with” the preceding 17-year brutal reign of Mengistu Haile Mariam.  This was because it was “ideologically, even romantically, focused on the peasants ... It genuinely wants them to have a better life”, regardless of the untold death and misery that its policies were actually fostering.

And what were those policies?  Essentially Marxist, which is no doubt why Mr Buerk, living up to his name, felt unable to criticise them. 

The one approach that the “making poverty history” adherents who profess compassion for the poor never advocate is “making the poor rich and thus self-reliant”.  Because this would mean applying the same policies that made the rich rich, namely Western liberal democratic free-trade capitalism, whilst tearing down the West's own protectionist barriers. 

Many in the poverty industry are so mired in left-wing ideology, as exemplified by Mr Buerk, that the thought of fostering capitalism is abhorrent to them.  But much aid money will remain counter-productive until such attitudes change.

As you could conclude from Kevin Myers' article, aid usually prolongs the misery of those unfortunate to live under the thumb of vile regimes for which poverty is their lifeblood. - Yours etc,

Comment on 10th July 2008 in a climate-change site called Think or Swim by occasional Irish Times columnist John Gibbons

Still singing the same sad old [climate-change denying] song

I would question your disparagement of the two writers.

Bjorn Lomborg is a scientist of considerable weight. The way you write of him, I have to conclude you haven’t read his books, certainly not the Skeptical Environmentalist. It is built on the most solid of scientific foundations, with every statement backed up with references to the research on which it is based. There are wonderful illustrations, and deductions which are hard to argue against. That’s why Denmark’s Global Warm-mongers tried to get him silenced for his apostasy. But when he challenged them to find anything scientifically incorrect in his book they were rendered silent.

You are suffering from the same ailment. You slag off Prof Lomborg but provide not a single piece of evidence to show he is an author of, in your words, “science fiction“.

And you do something similar with Kevin Myers, who is not a scientist, just a lowly newspaper columnist - like you (and me, for that matter). He provides easily verifiable facts that challenge the orthodoxies of global warm-mongering. But you make no effort to either disprove them or draw different conclusions from them. You also lie about what he actually wrote: he never said “a cold April ‘proves’ that global warming can’t be happening“, just pointed out the inconsistency. Your idea of refutation is to tell Mr Myers to keep taking the pills. Is that the best you can do?

Your opening paragraph starts with “wave after wave of science fact gradually washes away the last stubborn traces of our excuses for inaction“. Unless you and those who agree with you are prepared to deal scientifically with the “wave after wave of science fact” that denies man-made climate change, you’re going to continue to lose the argument. Ad hominen attacks just don’t cut the mustard.

Good luck!

Madam, - There should be no surprise that Proinsias De Rossa MEP is running around screaming in fury at and about his dastardly fellow countrymen for daring to shout no to Lisbon (Letters June 28th and elswhere).  This is the man who last March voted, along with 448 other MEPs in the European Parliament, to specifically disrespect the outcome of the Irish referendum, a thoroughly shameful motion that was carried almost 4:1.  In another era, behaviour such as his might have been regarded as verging on the treasonous. - Yours etc,

Comment on 9th June 2008 in the Irish Independent site in relation to a column by columnist Kevin Myers

From a few tiny beginnings the American Dream is born

Great post, and like "IEH" I never saw it coming either, despite the give-away title.

But poor old Barack; he doesn't stand a chance, and not merely because some whites, and nearly all Hispanics and Asians, will never vote for someone blacker than themselves.

For Obama is someone with no achievements whatsoever in his past by which his character and capabilities may be measured. So you can know him only by the company he keeps and takes money from - Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn , to mention just the handful of lunatic racists, business fraudsters and unrepentant terrorists that we know about. You can be sure the Republicans have a few more up their sleeves and are keeping their powder dry.

And that's not to talk about his avowed intention to run away from Iraq as fast as he can, regardless of military progress.

The Geriatric must be salivating at the tussle ahead.

Comment on 9th June 2008 in the Irish Independent site in relation to a column by columnist Ian O'Doherty

Is anything sadder than anonymous web cowards?

Very good piece, and amusing - except for your inexcusably appalling grammar. You're a journalist for God's sake; writing English is your stock in trade. Why then do you repeatedly mistake the singular for the plural in, for example,

"any hack who says they don't want people writing about them is telling fibs."

"nobody has to declare their identity in what they post on-line"

"where is the fun in insulting someone when they won't know it was you who did it?"

If you are too terrified to use "he" to include both men and women, and find "he/she" or "she/he" too clumsy, then try pluralising the subject or some other way round to hid your embarrassment.

Just don't don't abuse the language.

By the way, I am owning up to this criticism using my true name and you can moreover find my blog at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm. No anonymity for me!

Saudi Arabia: Woman Changes Sex, Dreams of Driver's Licence

Doodzy wrote: “OMG, where do u get this nonsense from?  And Mohammed was a PEDO!? There's Non-Muslims historians commending him as being one of the most protective and generous men EVER! He married them so that they wouldn't get harmed and have food and sustenance in his house because some of their husband's had died at war. Nothing to do with lust at all.”

Hmmm. Well, how do you explain the fact that Mohammed married his (favourite) wife Aisha when she was just five years of age, but with great self-control did not copulate with (rape) her until she was nine years. Ayatollah Khomeini also married a nine-year-old, and lowered the age of consent in Iran to nine years, which stands to this day.

Does all this make Mohammed and Khomeini and no doubt many devout Iranians Pedos? 

Make your own mind up!

Can someone please tell me wtf the Lisbon Treaty is all about?

Your analysis, Sarah, amounts to vote YES to Lisbon for just five – mostly very thin – reasons.

1. Enlargement means new rules are needed because the EU is becoming unwieldy – though all the evidence is that EU legislation-making has become MORE slick not less since enlargement, so no new rules are in fact needed. See for example this Charlemagne article in the Economist,
2. It reduces our commissioner-count but we’ll be no worse off than anyone else. Why is it nevertheless good to reduce our commissioner-count?
3. No need to worry about harmonisation of direct taxes, defence, abortion, neutrality or agriculture. It’s great that retention of two vetoes defends those tax and defence worries. But if retaining two vetoes is so valuable, why is it also supposed to be great to surrender no fewer than 32 other vetoes?
4. A prosecutor will chase up fraud issues – and this from an outfit whose multi-billion €uro accounts have not been audited for fourteen years because the EU is rife with institutionalised crookery. I wouldn’t expect much from the fraud-chasers.
5. New laws and institutions will prosecute cross-border trafficking in drugs and humans – very laudable but we don’t need a Lisbon treaty for that.

The (insuperable) task the YES advocates face is that the onus is on THEM to make the case for change, and they simply cannot do it, as you yourself demonstrate in your five-item shopping list. Moreover, the deliberately obscure language is designed to prevent the case being made because it is obviously so dodgy.

It is not up to the Naysayers to disprove Lisbon – they are innocent until proven guilty.

If the YESsirs can’t make a convincing case, any mature person will vote NO. NO to Lisbon, but this is at the same time a big YES to the EU as currently constituted.

NOTE: This response generated further heated discussion,
to which I added a second and third comment

A Buried Truth (about the value of biological parenthood)

Many people regularly dispute the claim (self-evident truism) that “kids have a better chance in life if reared by their married biological parents”.

So I collated a number of pieces of evidence for this here, which others might find useful.

Madam, - Jim Roche of the “Irish Anti-War Movement” (along with others) maintains that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was talking only about the removal “of the Israeli regime, and not the country or state of Israel” (Letters, “Iranian threat to Israel”, May 5th, 2008).  The president must therefore be delighted that since Khomeini's day the Israeli regime has been removed no fewer than seven times.  That is the beauty of Western liberal democracy - the people can remove the regime when they don't like what they're doing.  Just ask Ken Livingstone. - Yours etc,

Clinton threat to ‘Obliterate’ Iran  P!

Madam, - It is not a “factual error” that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to “wipe Israel from the map” (April 25th).

This threat has been widely reported, including by Al Jazeera (eg http://tinyurl.com/36yv6c), since he uttered it to 4,000 students on Wednesday October 16th 2005 at a conference in Tehran entitled “The World without Zionism”.

If it were a mistranslation from Farsi, as Coilín Ó hAiseadha suggests, Mr Ahmadinejad has had over two years to make a correction, not to mention those 4,000 students. He has not, and neither have they.

 - Yours, etc,

It's down to us to halt curse that is the Lisbon Treaty

Eóin Lynch asks Kevin, “how can you be against something you have not read?”. This is the wrong way round. It is up to those who want the change to put the case for ratification. They have hardly even tried to.

Yet when so-called “neutral” taxpayer-funded bodies, such as the National Forum on Europe, choose to facilitate a debate, they make every effort, in best Mugabe fashion (but without the violence), to rig it to favour the Yes side.

Just last week, NFE staged two so-called “open discussions” where they invited a couple of unwelcome foreigners (a German frump and some slick Portuguese guy) to interfere in this Irish constitutional process by instructing the Irish to vote Yes. Not only were the staged "discussion" sessions copper-fastened to ensure there were two pro-Lisbon speakers for every opponent, but the two interloping pro-Lisbon foreigners were, extraordinarily, permitted to give both the opening and the closing addresses.

Hey and where is that other celebrity foreigner, the rabidly anti-Lisbon Jean Marie LePen? Ah yes, much as he would love to get involved, he is staying out of Ireland in order not to be an “external interference in a national debate”.

How come this brutish guy has a better grasp of diplomatic niceties than Angela and José?

Terror in academia

My narrow escape from an ambush by the liberal left

Kevin [Myers], you start off with “We know what ‘anti-war’ and ‘peace’ mean in the current argot: it means Yanks out”.

Well, I for one don't know this, and disagree with your diagnosis except to the extent that “Yanks out” is a symptom not a pathology.

In the current argot, anything or anyone sporting ‘anti-war’ or ‘peace’ in its name or speech, means only one thing: pro-war pro-the-anti-democrat's-side. They most certainly do not want peace in any conflict zone; they want a war that results in the defeat of democrats, so that the tyrants and murderers can prevail. Only this kind of war equates, in their Orwellian minds, to peace.

It so happens that the US is among the democrats and tries - however ineptly - to support democracy. Hence the ‘Yanks out’ epithet.

Notions of gender have been corrupted by sexual politics

Frankly I couldn't care less how freakishly people choose to behave, so long as it is by and/or between consenting adults.

But this Thomas Beatie has crossed the line. He has deliberately and knowingly brought an innocent child into the world in such a way that it will be denied knowledge of its own father (and vice-versa), and will be denied even a father figure during its upbringing.

And why? Purely to satisfy the desires of a selfish individual.

No-one has ever demonstrated that in raising a child a father is, effectively, surplus to requirements. Until someone can do this convincingly, no-one has a right to deliberately exclude the father from a child's life. It amounts to a social experiment to satisfy the vanity of the adult at the expense of the child's fundamental human rights. This adds up to child abuse.

Ditto for those who would deliberately exclude the mother.

The Club of Tyranny

We should not be surprised that the UN has become a despots' club - only 42% of its member-stages, each with an equal vote, are proper democracies and many of those are just "dots" like Andorra.

Head2Head: Should the permitted level of blood alcohol for drivers be lowered?

YES 40% NO 60%

Seán Coleman is right to point out many reasons to punish the illegitimate Communist dictatorship ruling China for its appalling human rights record. However I agree with Pat Hickey that traditional Olympic boycotts don't work. But there is another way; another more democratic way involving personal empowerment. Let the games go ahead. Let no athletes be denied their chance to prove they're the world's best. Instead, it is the spectators who should boycott the games. For, from the Chinese perspective, worse even than a few countries not showing up in Beijing will be TV pictures, beamed across the world, of empty stadiums whilst the contests proceed, and everyone knowing why. Personally, I have cancelled my plans to attend.

Spectators Should Boycott Beijing Olympics

Sir, - Boycotts of the Beijing Olympics, as mooted by Michael Portillo and others, will punish the unfortunate, innocent athletes but, as we saw in Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984), do little to change the behaviour of the host government (Tibet: the West can use the Olympics as a weapon against Beijing, March 23rd).

But there is another much more democratic way.  The games should  go ahead as planned, but it is the spectators who should be doing the boycotting, and in their droves. 

From the perspective of the Chinese politburo, nothing could be worse than TV pictures, beamed across the world, of empty stadiums whilst the contests proceed, and everyone knowing why.  And a sea of Oriental rather than Caucasian faces would not change the world's perception: everyone would conclude they were Chinese stooges not genuine spectators. 

This would be the ultimate, unthinkable humiliation for the undemocratic hence illegitimate politburo in China, where “face” is such an important part of national culture, history and psyche.  And it would be made grimmer by the knowledge that no Government had done it; just ordinary free people with honourable principles.  If the Chinese leadership become convinced that a popular boycott of the Beijing Olympics is in serious danger of happening, they will move heaven and earth to prevent it. 

Otherwise, they will continue happily suppressing Tibetans and their culture, supporting fellow-dictators in Burma and Sudan, and routinely harvesting organs from healthy Falun Gong prisoners for the transplant tourism business. 

Each of us potential Olympic spectators has a personal choice.  I have cancelled my own plans to attend. - Yours etc,

Violence in Gaza

Madam, - The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign is absolutely right to condemn the violence in Gaza, saying “enough is enough”.  So is its chairwoman, Marie Crawley, when she calls on the Irish Government “to condemn what is happening in Gaza in the strongest possible terms and to break with the criminal negligence of EU foreign policy” (200 Palestinians protest against violence in Gaza, March 3rd).   

For too long, the Government and the EU - not to mention the media - have ignored the daily, unilateral rocketing of Israel by Hamas militants in Gaza, at rates of dozens per day.  The negligence of politicians to take any action to stem this unwarranted violence has meant that it has been left to Israel itself to try to curtail it. - Yours etc,

FF Was in the Red but Ahern Kept Raiding its Finances

Madam, - In Fintan O'Toole's excellent article, “FF was in the red but Ahern kept raiding its finances” (Opinion, February 26th), he talks about the so-called B/T account in the name of Tim Collins, from which £30,000 was withdrawn as a loan to Bertie Ahern's life partner. 

Surely "B/T" couldn't possibly mean "Bertie/Tim"?  Nah, of course not! - Yours, etc

Israel and the Palestinians

Madam, - Theo Dorgan makes an eloquent case against what he calls the “collective punishment” of Palestinians due to the blockade of Gaza (Letters, February  12th). 

But he misdirects his ire.  For it is their fellow-Arabs in Egypt who actually hold the key to their incarceration, and whose security forces brutally injured 90 of them when the Egypt/Gaza wall was recently breached.  The Egyptians have now rebuilt it to keep the Gazans in again, yet they don't even have the excuse that their Palestinian brothers are trying to kill them with a daily precipitation of cross-border Qassam rockets. - Yours etc,

Unsubstantiated Nazi Charges against the Hunts

Madam, - Four years ago, Dr Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, in an act of stunning impertinence to an elected head of state, demanded that President McAleese withdraw an award she had made to the Hunt Museum, on trumped-up inferences that the Hunts were, in effect, closet Nazis and the museum populated with art looted by Nazis from Jews.  Apparently abetted by a trio of Irish persons with seemingly their own agendas and catalogue of tricks, he was nevertheless unable to present a single iota of evidence to support this outrageous position.  Yet the Museum found itself in the odd position of having to demonstrate the innocence of itself and its now-dead benefactors of unsubstantiated charges and suggestions. 

In fits and starts, and with a number of wrong turns, the Museum eventually hired the world's leading expert on looted Nazi art, Lynn Nicholas, who duly vindicated the Museum and Hunts of the essential charges.  She did criticise aspects of behaviour of the Museum and the Irish Government, but she reserved her main ire for Dr Samuels, who signed the original letter, has fronted the anti-Hunts campaign ever since and refused to co-operate with any attempt to verify or refute his allegations.  Ms Nicholas wrote,

In this context, when the President last week pointed out that the charges of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre - a lobbying body with no connection to Simon Wiesenthal other than renting his name - had been “baseless  ... unfounded ... a tissue of lies ... mean-spirited” and had “diminished” the reputation of its namesake, she was being both apt and restrained. 

It is notable that the response of the SWC to the demolition of their central argument has been to attack Mrs McAleese, a lady it knows will not respond.  Yet it whispers not a word about that other esteemed lady, Ms Nicholas, the one who has demonstrated the falsity of the SWC's charges, for she is well able to both respond and refute everything it might care to say.  

It is time to ignore any future fulminations by the SWC or its director.  There are worthy of no further space in the Irish media. - Yours etc,

Gaza/Egypt Apartheid Wall

Madam, - What an extraordinary photo on the front page of the Irish Times (January 24th).  I had never realised that the infamous apartheid wall, declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice, which imprisons Gazan inhabitants in their ghetto and was a key element of the recent blockade in response to sustained Hamas rocket attacks, was in fact built in order to keep Palestinians out of Egypt.  Good for the latter for knocking it down.  It's time the democratic Egyptian entity learnt to embrace its enemies. - Yours etc,

Pay Increase for State CEOs P!

Madam, - So, chief executives of commercial State bodies are to get “significant increases” because a consultant says their pay is 14 to 20 per cent behind the average in the private sector (Salary rises approved for heads of commercial State firms, January 9th). 

But this observation is valueless unless accompanied by statistics showing that CEOs are fleeing state enterprises to join private sector.  They are not, and I would suspect that is simply because in their present jobs they are cosily protected from the rigours of shareholder ruthlessness.  Fourteen to 20 per cent sounds like a reasonable trade-off to me.  - Yours etc,

Courage Misplaced P!

Sir, - It is not the Labour party that requires the “courage” to table a private members' bill in favour of abortions, so much as the unborn children who need the courage to face the resultant abortions.  (Courage on abortion, Comment, January 6th, p1.16 - not available online). - Yours etc,

Fluoridation and Water Pollution

Madam, - My elderly dentist father, now retired but an international pioneer of fluoridation in his time, remarked when he read Mary Hilary's letter moaning about fluoridation, “bloody dentists blamed for ruining the environment; bloody fluoromoans trying to ruin kids' teeth” (Letters, January 3rd).  That about sums it up. - Yours etc,

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home