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Climate Change:
Lecture + Rebuttal + Refutation = Lawsuit?

WELCOME TO THE 
TALLRITE BLOG

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Ill-informed and objectionable
You poisonous, bigoted, ignorant, verbose little wa*ker.” (except I'm not little - 1.97m)
Reader comments
 
Fortnightly (approx)  muses, commentary and links, on various subjects, 
international, political, economic, quirky, other (with sometime leanings towards Ireland), 
by me, Tony, here in Dublin, Ireland.  Pet Hate: Unlawful killing and harming of humans. 

 

You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com
(Clumsy form of my address to thwart spamming software that scans for e-mail addresses)

Issue #206:
Attitudes Towards Gaza Humanitarian” “AidFlotilla
Issue #205:
BP's Macondo Catastrophe - How it Happened

Each post appears simultaneously in the Archive with the permalink

ISSUE #207 - July 2010


Myspace Clocks, Video Clocks at WishAFriend.com

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 charts.
(Click on them to get the latest version.)

44% total approval as at - 1 July 2010

Rasmussen Daily Poll - 1 July 2010

Posts are now being issued on this page, and dated, as and when I write them, and simultaneously collated into a monthly archive. This is the practice with most bloggers. 

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Climate Change: Lecture + Rebuttal + Refutation = Lawsuit? - 24th July 2010

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Political Guide to Ireland - 19th July 2010

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Soccer Needs Major Overhaul - 14th July 2010

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Macondo Commentary - More Ignorance - 10th July 2010

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Ground Zero Mosque - 8th July 2010

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Ignorance Rules Reactions to Macondo Blowout

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Economic Truisms

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Issue 207’s Comments to Cyberspace [more added July 9th]

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Quotes for Issue 207 [more added on July 7th, 12th, 16th, 20th]

Climate Change: Lecture + Rebuttal + Refutation = Lawsuit? - 24th July 2010

Lecture

Last January, I stumbled upon a 1˝ lecture the previous October in St Paul Minnesota by Lord Christopher Monckton, which tears to shreds the current convention/cult that the world is warming as never before and that it is all the fault of us humans and our penchant for burning fossil fuels.  I referenced it in my blog in a post entitled More Climate Faeces, and conveniently provided the Youtube video, where you can still find it.  In addition, you can download a 7.5 Mb PDF of his 86 slides here.

He gave a shorter but not dissimilar lecture in Australia in February, to loud applause. 

Interestingly, last May the prestigious Oxford Union hosted a debate, with Lord Monckton as one of the speakers, which roundly rejected, by 135 votes to 110, the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis.  Opinion is certainly turning. 

There have been some fascinating developments as a result of the October 2009 lecture, which are likely to lead to a media explosion that will largely demolish whatever faith is left in the climate changeology cult.  It is already limping badly after the Climategate e-mails of November followed by the disastrous Nopenahagen Climate Change Conference in December.

Three events have occurred.

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+ Rebuttal

John P Abraham is an associate professor of mechanical engineering specialising in heat transfer and fluid mechanics, at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, near to where Lord Monckton delivered his lecture.  He has prepared a lengthy, meticulous lecture and slide presentation (126 slides) of his own, which rebuts in tremendous detail most if not all of what Lord Monckton said and displayed last October (though curiously he at no time contacted Lord Monckton to either tell him what he was doing or to seek clarifications.) 

He published his lecture on the internet in early June 2010.

Though the Professor has a drony voice and his presentation style is nowhere near as entertaining as the exuberant Lord's, he nevertheless shoots countless deadly darts at one Lordly slide after another.  I was most disappointed to learn that the Lord was so wrong and evidently as slippery as a snake-oil salesman. 
 

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+ Refutation

However barely a week later, on 10th June, Lord Monckton replied to those darts with a thrilling Exocet of his own: a polite 84-page amply illustrated letter of eviscerating precision to the Professor.  His refutation comprises no fewer than 466 exhaustive penetrating questions, which first seek to clarify each of the Professor's accusations, and then ask whether the Professor was not aware of a litany of mistakes, errors, misquotes, distortions, elisions and other artefacts by which the Prof had constructed his rebuttal.  Believe me, you do not want to be on the receiving end of the Lord's rhetoric. 

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One little titbit that the Lord brings to light is how NASA offshoot the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which provides one of only two terrestrial data sets used as primary sources by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control), processed” raw temperature data in the period 1999 to 2008.  This was in order to show global temperatures “rising” between 1880 and 2000.  In 1999, it had to be “processed” (in some mysterious unexplained manner) because the raw data itself demonstrated no such conclusion. 

But by 2008, the raw data had come even more uncooperative, so the whole data set, not just that of the period 2000 to 2008, was again “processed” to make the global “warming” even more stark.  GISS did this by both raising temperatures post 1950 and lowering temperatures during the previous fifty years.  I have animated the relevant curves here, and you can see it is a case of such blatant scientific dishonesty that you can only guffaw:

         

       Source: Science and Public Policy Institute, via Anthony Watts

Lord Monckton concludes that Professor Abraham has deliberately and malignly distorted the St Paul's lecture in order to destroy through falsehood the arguments made and the professional reputation of the Lord who made them.  The latter therefore demands a retraction, an apology, an investigation, the deletion of the presentations from the University's servers and elsewhere and compensation of US$ 110,000 to be paid to a charity for Haiti. 

After a cooling off period, he published the letter on the internet and broadcast a typically boisterous interview on US television, in order no doubt to raise the temperature and pressure:




 

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There followed some bad tempered letters from the university which maintained that the dispute was no more than an academic discourse, refused Lord Monckton's demands and threatened legal action of its own. 

The Professor then, on 20th June, issued a revised lecture, thereby tacitly (though not explicitly) admitting that at least some of the Lord's complaints were justified, or else why the revision?  But the bulk of the material to which the Lord objected appears to remain, in which case the Professor and the University are digging themselves into an even deeper, hubristic hole. 

The outcome of this affair is not going to be pretty for the University of St Thomas or for the climate changeology movement generally. 

Along with no doubt hundreds of others, I wrote to Father Dennis Dease who is president of this Catholic university, and said the following.

I refer to the dispute between your Professor John P Abraham and Lord Christopher Monckton, comprising

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the latter's lecture last year,

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the former's rebuttal,

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the latter's refutation of that rebuttal and

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the former's revised rebuttal.

This is a battle that Prof Abraham cannot win and therefore neither can the University of St Thomas nor you as its head. This is because the central issue is one of demonstrable fact. On this issue, Lord Monckton is provably correct in virtually all instances and Prof Abraham is provably wrong, and so wrong that deliberate intent and a motive of malice can scarcely be denied. It is absolutely nothing to do with academic differences of opinion.

The longer you choose to prolong the dispute and allow Prof Abraham to prolong it, the more unpleasant the penalties that both of you, as well as the university, will ultimately suffer. Furthermore the longer it festers, the worse will be the case in favour of anthropogenic climate change in the court of global public opinion. After Climategate and the disastrous Copenhagen conference, it surely cannot withstand another global scandal.

Few people had heard of Lord Monckton or his 2009 lecture, but now thanks to the Professor's rebuttal and the Lord's refutation, the world has, and is drawing its own conclusions over the dispute.

Apologise, withdraw the rebuttals from the internet and pay the 110 grand - and you can count yourselves lucky to escape so cheaply.

As a fellow-Catholic, I am sure you also appreciate, as I do, the moral angle to this affair. It is a sin to deliberately lie, dissemble and bear false witness, as Lord Monckton has forcefully demonstrated that Professor Abraham has done. A Catholic University should have nothing to do with and immediately dissociate itself from such behaviour, or else it can hardly call itself Catholic.

Yours truly,

I do not expect a reply.  Nor does even a proper investigation appear likely. 

= Lawsuit

However, having now received the Lord's lengthy refutation letter and implicitly acknowledged, by virtue of the revised rebuttal, that he is at least partially correct, the University can no longer claim the justification of honest mistake.  This can only mean even greater retribution when Nemesis eventually descends, as it undoubtedly will, most probably as a lawsuit.  Or maybe two, with each side suing the other for defamation and libel (though I imagine no betting shop will give odds that the University will win either of them).

Meantime, as mentioned, I expect this issue will go as viral as did the infamous Climategate e-mails, with consequences that seriously compound the existing damage to the cult.   

At least I hope so. 

Back to List of Contents

Political Guide to Ireland - 19th July 2010

Ireland is an island to the west of Britain but Northern Ireland is just off the mainland - not the Irish mainland, the British mainland.

The capital of Ireland is Dublin. It has a population of a million people, all of whom will be shopping in Newry this afternoon. They travel to Newry because it is in the North, where Sterling prices are lower because of Gordon's devaluations.  The North is not part of Ireland or the €urozone, but shoppers from the South still pay in €uros.

Under the Irish constitution, the North used to be in Ireland, but a successful 30-year campaign of violence for Irish unity ensured that it is now definitely in the UK. Had the campaign lasted longer the North might now be in France.

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. It has a population of half a million, half of whom have houses in Donegal.

Donegal, in the west of Ireland, is in the north but not in the North. It is in the South. No, not the south, the South.  All agree it is not in the east. 

There are two parliaments in Ireland.

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The Dublin parliament is called the Dáil (pronounced "Doyle"), an Irish word meaning a place where banks receive taxpayers' money.

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The one in Belfast is called Stormont, an Anglo-Saxon word meaning placebo, or deliberately ineffective drug.

Their respective jurisdictions are defined by the border, an imaginary line on the map to show fuel launderers where to dump chemical waste.

Protestants are in favour of the border, which generates millions of pounds and €uros in smuggling for Catholics, who are opposed to it.

Travel between the two states is complicated because Ireland is the only country in the world with two M1 motorways. The one in the North goes west to avoid the south and the one in the South goes north to minimise the price of drink.

We have two types of democracy in Ireland.

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Dublin democracy works by holding a referendum and then allowing the government to judge the result. If the government thinks the result is wrong, the referendum is held again. Twice in recent years the government decided the people's choice was wrong and ordered a new referendum, which the people obligingly then got right.

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Belfast democracy works differently. It has a parliament with no opposition, so the government is always right. This system generates envy in many world capitals, especially Dublin.

Ireland has three economies - northern, southern and black. Only the black economy is in the black. The other two are in the red.

All versions of the IRA claim to be the real IRA but only one of them is the Real IRA. The North's biggest industry is the production of IRAs. Consequently, we now have (at latest count) the Provisional, Continuity and Real IRA. The Real IRA is by far the most popular among young graffiti writers because it is the easiest to spell.

Hat tip: Dave Parker in Spain

Back to List of Contents

Soccer Needs Major Overhaul

The world cup snoozeroo is over; it is another four years before we will again have to get worked up (or fall asleep) over the next one, in Brazil. 

If ever there was a case for a complete review and overhaul of how soccer games are managed, surely the South Africa event had made it.  It is bad enough that so few goals are scored: I calculated that in 2006 there were 40 minutes between each World Cup goal, and I doubt if 2010 was much different.  It is why it cannot catch on in America, yet this is a problem quickly solved simply by widening the goal mouth. 

But the on-field management of the game is an ongoing train-wreck which continues to drive spectators and TV viewers (OK, me) crazy.  There are a number of serious structural problems, which can nevertheless be remedied easily, cheaply and rapidly, if only there were the will to do so.

Consider the injustice of:

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wrongly allowed goals,

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wrongly disallowed goals,

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cheating rewarded,

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diving,

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missed fouls,

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feeble yellow card,

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barracking the referee. 

Wrongly Allowed Goals
The handball of Thierry Henri last November where he patted the ball over to William Gallas to score the goal that secured France's qualification for South Africa at the expense of Ireland.

Though the referee didn't spot the handball, nor did the linesmen, the TV footage clearly showed it. So Mr Henri and his Fr(h)enchmen were through and the Irish were out.

Wrongly Disallowed Goals
The equalising goal that was clearly scored by England's Frank Lampard in the 39th minute in its knockout match against Germany yet inexplicably disallowed by the referee. 

The English went on to lose 4-1 and get kicked out of the tournament, but who knows how a draw at that crucial moment might have changed the game dynamics?

Frank Lampard's wrongly disallowed equalizer for England against Germany

Cheating Rewarded
The handball save by Uruguay's Luis Suárez of a sure winning goal by Ghana at the end of extra time was spotted by the referee who punished it with a red card for Suárez and a penalty for Ghana. 

Uruguay's Luis Suárez uses his hands to block a certain Ghana goal

Unfortunately, though, Ghana missed the penalty, went on to lose the subsequent penalty shoot-out and so went home dispossessed and early.  Yet Uruguay's profit from its blatant - and observed - cheating was entirely within the rules of soccer.  No wonder Suárez was booed every time he touched the ball in the semi-final which, to general relief, Uruguay went on to lose against the Netherlands. 

Diving
Diving - or pretending you have been knocked over by an opponent in the hope of securing a free kick or penalty - has long been one of the disgraceful features of soccer, and South Africa was no exception. 

Apart from its obvious unsportsmanship, it is distinctly unmanly to roll around weeping on the floor feigning injury when there is none.  Soccer is supposed to be a game for men not schoolgirls. 

Italy's Daniele De Rossi, who crumbled to the ground in seeming agony after the slightest shirt-tug from New Zealand's Tommy Smith, was rewarded with a penalty.  This evened the score and avoided an embarrassing defeat of the 2006 world champions by a soccer minnow like New Zealand (a bit different from NZ rugby!). 

Apparently an "agonizing" shirt pull

As some kind of divine justice, however, Italy never made it to the knock-out stages anyway.  Neither did New Zealand - largely due to that penalty - but unlike Italy it was one of only nine teams which didn't lose a single game, despite being ranked 78th in the world.  So while the reigning world champions left South Africa in disgrace, NZ did so with head held high.   

There were countless similar incidents of diving, many of which the referee also rewarded, though he also often ignored them. 

But diving per se is never actually punished, either during the game or after it.  So you have nothing to lose (other than your manliness and self-respect). 

Missed Fouls
Then there are the fouls which the referee fails to spot.  He is human and the players are clever, so you cannot lay the blame on him providing he's doing his best.   

In the World Cup final, the referee issued a record-breaking 14 yellow cards for various fouls, nine against the Netherlands.  Yet only one player, Dutchman Johnny Heitinga, was sent off.  With its resultant one-man advantage, Spain eventually scored the match's winning only goal in the dying moments of extra time to secure the revered trophy for the first time.

 Spain's goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas lifts 2010 the World Cup trophy

It was a bad-tempered game with fouls aplenty, especially by the Dutch, yet despite the yellow-card count, several more were missed by the ref but broadcast on TV. 

But if the referee doesn't spot your foul, you've got away scot-free. 

Feeble Yellow Card
Soccer's yellow card is a pathetic sanction, as we saw in the Netherlands/Spain final.  The offender plays blithely on and suffers no real punishment (eg a sending-off) unless he is foolish enough to collect a second one (as Mr Heitinger did).  So it is a very feeble deterrent to foul play. 

One of dozen worthless yellow cards

Conversely, the red card is such a harsh punishment that it is rarely issued. 

What is absent is a meaningful medium-level” disciplinary measure that would inflict sufficient pain to constrain bad behaviour at an early stage, but without ruining the game. 

Barracking the Referee
Finally, there is the constant arguing of players with the referee. 

Often he is clearly intimidated, to the extent of being driven back by a crowd of angry young men shouting and waving their arms because they happen to disagree with his decision.  (The photo shows Manchester United doing the barracking.)

Roy Keane and his gang barrack the referee, with impunity

The ref appears to be powerless to deal with this kind of behaviour, and therefore gets more of it. 

In big games it's probably partly because the players are much better paid, more famous and more influential than he is, he doesn't want to blot his copybook for the future and, disgracefully, he cannot count on FIFA's unequivocal support. 

Remedies
So what are the remedies? 

Pretty simple, really.  Learn from other games.

Chip inside Cairos GLT footballŕCopy tennis or cricket:

Introduce goal-line technology. 

If Wimbledon's hawk-eye system is deemed too slow, there is another promising German system known as Cairos GLT (= goal line technology). This involves burying wiring in the goal area and putting a chip in the football which sends an instant goal-no-goal signal via computer to the referee's wristwatch.  It apparently costs just Ł7,000 per stadium. 

No doubt other technology systems are available.

ŕOn discipline, copy rugby:

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A yellow card earns ten minutes in the sin-bin.  The wrongdoer is thereby meaningfully punished but also - to his shame - so is his team.

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Barrack the referee, and each time he advances the free kick ten metres towards the opponent's goal.

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Too much ref-barracking earns a yellow card. 

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Where, but for a foul a goal would definitely have been scored, as in the Suárez handball case against Ghana, award a penalty-goal in addition to the appropriate sanction levied on the perpetrator.

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Where video evidence shows foul play or diving, whether or not spotted by the referee, cite the player after the game and impose suitable punishment.

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The relevant governing body (eg FIFA) should back the referee's decision in all circumstances.  If it is unhappy, the remedy is to not use the ref in future but not to undermine his past decisions. 

These simple and above all proven measures would hugely enhance soccer as a worthy game. 

Soccer badly needs to enter the real world.

Back to List of Contents

Macondo Commentary - More Ignorance - 10th July 2010

I was asked by a colleague to provide some brief feedback on three posts about BP's Macondo blowout and oil spill.  They are written by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, with titles suitably mordant in line with the PCI's own name. 

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Deepwater Horizon - The Worst Case Scenario

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Deepwater Horizon - The Best Case and Most Likely

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A Tepid Plea for Unspecified Change

Mr Heinberg, is a prolific American author of eight books and numerous treatises, as well as a public speaker, all on the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, that peak oil is imminent and that we are all pretty much doomed.   Interestingly, although he gives the impression of being an academic, he doesn't seem to have graduated with any kind of third-level degree from anywhere, his main qualification being that he is a Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute.  The PCI is a small-ish think-tank (eight staff) in California established in 2003, which seems to be committed to promoting the man-made global-warming agenda. 

Answering the fundamental query whether the climate crisis” is real or overblown, it devotes just 160 words ending with an exasperated “End of story”.  Like any zealous religious cult, the PCI clearly has little patience with asinine questions. 

But, unqualified for anything as he appears to be, Mr Heinberg has penned no fewer than 4,237 words in the above three posts, and I have read every turgid one of them (so you don't have to).  Judging from this selfless exercise, I would conclude that PCI Senior Fellowshipness relies not on the content was what is written but on volume, a carelessness towards facts, a rather incurious approach to science and engineering, and a generally flatulent writing style.

For example, Mr Heinberg postulates (without any data) that the casing within the Macondo well might be breached, with reservoir pressure causing the whole well to collapse into a crater.  This is ridiculous science.  With a clear path for the reservoir pressure to escape up the wellbore driving gas and oil into the sea, there can be no differential forces at reservoir level to cause such a crater. 

He happily parrots consultant Matt Simon who says without a shred of evidence that it could take 24 years to kill Macondo (my maximum estimate would be one year). 

Mr Simon is the author of Twilight in the Desert which makes a case that Saudi Arabian oil production has peaked.  In fact, as I wrote four years ago, Mr Simon seems completely unaware of Saudi's huge scope to squeeze much more oil out of its existing fields and to discover more fields.  It simply has to apply the latest technology and accept robust returns on investment rather than the ridiculously outlandish levels to which those spoiled princes have become accustomed.   Mr Simons' analysis and prognostications can be too shallow and should not be accepted at face value. 

Actually, Mr Heinberg is only too willing to anyone who will enhance his doomsday storyline, without a thought for the quality of his source. 

He also repeats multiple errors, for example,

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It's not the Deepwater Horizon spill, it the Macondo spill

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It is by far not the worst spill in US history (not yet); see my earlier post.

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He thinks cargo ships can't operate in oil drenched waters”. 

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He thinks oil price spikes and shortages are bad for the oil industry but in fact they rejuvenate it. 

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He fears hurricanes could delay clean-up and relief well activities - yet they will  probably be equally beneficial in spreading and degrading spilled oil

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He thinks the relief wells must intersect Macondo on the first try, whereas several stabs are routinely needed before hitting the bullseye.

He writes a long, meandering, meaningless essay about the need for courage”.  He seems to mean that Governments should do stuff (green stuff of course) even when they're electorate don't want it, which is normally the prerogative of totalitarian regimes. 

But I can't go on any further; it's all just too boring - but you get the idea. 

Not a word that Mr Heinberg writes should be taken seriously.  From a position of considerable ignorance, he is spoofing from start to finish, sprinkling the occasional fact here and there like some kind of stardust. 

I wouldn't suggest you not bother clicking on the three links at the start of this post. 

Footnote (11th July): I submitted a brief comment at the end of each of the three  Richard Heinberg posts, each stating that my own observations could be viewed on the Tallrite Blog and providing a link to this post. 

Despite 54 other comments appearing, mine have been blocked.  I wonder why. 

Actually I don't.  It is normal behaviour for religious cults to excise all signs of heresy. 

Back to List of Contents

Ground Zero Mosque - 8th July 2010

The idea of building a giant mosque just a few yards from Ground Zero in New York is beyond parody. But it's apparently going ahead (unless Americans can screw up the courage to stop it). 

It seems that many Americans think that objecting to such a mosque is somehow, well, nasty to Muslims, without regard to whether such a mosque might itself be somehow, well, nasty to non-Muslims, especially those connected with the viciously murdered 2,976 innocents on that terrible day in September 2001.

The crescent moon and star symbol of Islam.Yet this is the same country that built, as a memorial to the heroes of United Airlines flight 93, where the passengers attacked and overcame the Jihadist hijackers thereby aborting the mission, albeit at the cost of the lives of everyone aboard, a Crescent of Embrace

One can hardly conceive of a more insulting or tasteless tribute to those 36 upstanding citizens who were violently slaughtered by an Islamic Crescent of Embrace”.   

This one-minute video, titled “The Audacity of Jihad, sets out the case against the Ground Zero mosque.

There are, however, even moves afoot to suppress it.

Late Note (27th July 2010)
Englishman Pat Condell articulates what Americans themselves should be saying. 

                             

The mosque is to be called Cordoba House”, a choice of name which
could hardly be more provocative to Christians and triumphant for Muslims. 

As Raymond Ibrahim, a Christian Arab scholar of Islam recalls,
the Christian city of Cordoba in Spain
was conquered by Muslims around 711,
its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba
— the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque —
was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church.

The symbolism is unmistakeable. 

These are extraordinary times. 

Back to List of Contents

Ignorance Rules Reactions to Macondo Blowout

Surfeit of Ignorance over MacondoThis post underlies an article published in the Irish Times on 2nd July 2010

Undoubtedly, the uncontrolled blowout of oil and gas from the 5,500 metre deep Macondo well while being drilled by BP in 1,522 metres of water is amongst the worst disasters to have resulted in the history of the hydrocarbon exploration and production industry.  Only the most dedicated and skilful of human ingenuity and engineering grunt, without regard to cost, will bring it back under control and make it permanently safe. 

But, despite what “expert” after “expert”, up to and including the White House energy adviser (and top environmental adviser) Carol Browner and her boss have told us, it is certainly not the worst such catastrophe, at least not yet.  Eleven men were killed, which is an untold and never-ending tragedy for each of their families.  But, for example, when in 1988 the North Sea's Piper Alpha platform, operated by  America's Occidental Petroleum exploded (twice) and was destroyed, the appalling death toll was 167. 

We are similarly misinformed that Macondo represents America's worst environmental disaster, worse even than the Exxon Valdez in 1989.  Firstly, though we know the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels of heavy viscous crude because that was its capacity, no-one knows the Macondo flow rate because there is no way to measure it.  Every single figure being bandied about, from 2,000 bbl/day to 80,000 or more is based on nothing other than humans eyeballing the flow as depicted by underwater TV cameras; there is no science involved whatsoever other than measuring the oil that is recovered. 

In any case what is relevant is the environmental damage being done.  The Valdez ran aground and spewed its treacly load just four kilometres from Bligh Island and fifteen from the Alaskan mainland, so all the wild life and beaches were instantly devastated. By contrast, Macondo is 80 kilometres offshore and its crude is lighter and more volatile, so that much of it is simply evaporating in the balmy Gulf of Mexico weather, being biodegraded by wave action and spreading out thinly as it makes its leisurely way towards land or further out to sea.  That is, the oil that has escaped BP's clever ruse of applying dispersant at the seabed.  On top of that BP has contracted an armada, largely from local fishing communities, of 1,400 vessels and 20,000 people to boom and skim and scoop the oil to keep it from the coastline.  Consequently, our TV screens are not depicting mile upon mile of blackened beaches and tens of thousands of oil-covered birds and animals that were such a shocking feature of the Valdez calamity, nor indeed docks brimming with idle fishing boats. 

As for the total amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, Macondo is a long way from the record of 1979's Ixtoc blowout in just fifty metres of water in the Bay of Campeche.  It leaked 3.3 million barrels over a nine-month period before finally being capped, having  despoiled nearly 3,000 square kilometres over 260 kilometres of mainly Texas coastline, and killed up to 80% of marine life. 

It is instructive, however, that thanks to rigorous clean-up and nature´s own recovery mechanisms neither the Valdez nor Ixtoc caused lasting damage to the environment.  Likewise, we can be sure BP is big and rich enough to fulfil its promise to make good all its mess, eventually. 

Just as public figures have failed to put perspective on the Macondo blowout, they have displayed similar ignorance concerning the extraordinary technological efforts BP has been applying in reducing the flow until such time as the two relief wells reach their target.

BP has been working with up to 20 surface ships in close proximity, each held in position by satellite-centred dynamic positioning, most trailing some kind of piping or electric cabling to control a device at seabottom, ensuring activities are co-ordinated and nothing gets tangled.  In the cold, pressurised, lightless, hostile environment 1,522 metres underwater, BP has been using some fourteen unmanned submarines to conduct a series of intricate manoeuvres such as shoving, tugging, manipulating, cutting, grinding, positioning, connecting, observing.  But because few understand the engineering that is going on and it cannot be seen, interest in this astounding activity is scant.  So the ignorant assumption is that it is all a bit amateurish with silly names like topkill and BOP.  But BP has been systematically applying one imaginative potential solution after another, each one carefully thought through with failures and back-ups accounted for in their plans.  No organization could be tackling this massive challenge more professionally than BP and every attempt to distract it reduces its chances of success. 

Nevertheless, BP's highly professional (if unrecognized as such) approach to the problem it has created does stand in stark contrast to the events leading up to it, which indeed are highly questionable.   A lot of evidence suggest disgraceful, last-minute, cost-reducing short cuts at the expense of best practice and proper planning. 

A couple of weeks ago, the day after the US Administration subjected Tony Haywood and BP to a $20 billion “shakedown” (Congressman Joe Barton's word), Mr Haywood appeared before a Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce to be grilled on primetime TV, ostensibly about these events.

Some days earlier it had sent him a fourteen page letter detailing five technical areas where BP had arguably cut corners to save time and thus money on this million-dollars-a-day well. It was superbly crafted, meticulous in its technical detail, leaving very little wriggle-room for Mr Haywood. Yet when it came to the hearing, the search for the truth of what caused the blowout was overwhelmed by the Congressmen's and Congresswomen's overweening desire to demonstrate their toughness.  In  opening statements lasting over an hour, they one by one expressed their horror, fury and disdain in what felt like a public lynching, yet not the slightest modicum of curiosity.  

Once the real questioning began, the aggressive tone continued, yet the questions singularly failed to delve into the acute technical issues so adeptly exposed in the letter.  In turn this allowed Mr Haywood to repeat his mantra that BP was still investigating, he wasn't a technical expert, action would be taken and other evasions.  It was patently clear that the interrogators themselves had not bothered to swot up their subject – or even studied their own letter - and were therefore cautious not to dig too deeply. 

For example, it was pointless to ask Mr Haywood if, were he on the rig, he would have cancelled the “CBL” (cement bond log, an expensive technique for estimating how effectively pipe has been cemented in place).  This simply allowed him to slide away by saying cementing was not his area of expertise.  It would have been far more incisive to demand a straight answer to the question implicit in the letter – why did BP cancel the CBL?  But a coherent response risked the terrifying prospect of exposing the Congressional interrogators' ignorance, so it was safer to emote and grandstand. 

This kind of ignorance meant that the Congressional enquiry, for all its cost and distraction, yielded not a single additional piece of useful information beyond what was in its letter. 

You would think that not just for BP, but for the US Administration and the general public, the most important issue right now is to kill that damn well, make it permanently safe and clean up any damage, and that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of this and every assistance afforded.

Yet the US administration seems to apportion greater priority not to winning this gargantuan battle against nature but to launching enquiries, belligerent “kick ass” blather, criminal investigations.  This is the behaviour of ignorance. 

Once Macondo is solved – and it will be – there will be plenty of years and decades for anger, recrimination, retribution, lawsuits, enquiries, investigations, compensation, fines, prison sentences, sanctions or whatever, and to do it properly.  The future is a long time. 

Meantime, ignorance seems to hold sway.

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Economic Truisms

I love these four econojic truisms that author Gary de Mar recently penned:

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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity

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by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

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What one person receives without working for,

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another person must work for without receiving.

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The government cannot give to anybody anything

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that the government does not first take from somebody else.

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You cannot multiply wealth

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by dividing it.

These are not concepts that find a ready ear among the left.  But you can be sure that Ronald Reagan and his soulmate Margaret Thatcher would have enjoyed and endorsed them. 

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Issue 207’s Comments to Cyberspace

bullet Caging Tiger-think key to Ireland's economic revival
Comment on Irish Times Opinion piece on 20th July 2010
You have argued strongly for more stimulus. But answer me this. A stimulus involves the State spending money to promote growth, which in turn means the State decides where and how to spend the stimulus money. What gives you the slightest confidence that the State (indeed, any state including the USA) knows the best way to spend such money?  The State, because its priorities are so different from those of business, is structurally and systemically incapable ...
bullet Moral trade-off muddies aid or trade debate
Comment on Irish Times opinion piece on 16th July 2010
There is no doubt that aid to feed the starving is ultimately destructive, and indeed feeds not so much those originally targeted but the scale of the original poverty and in many cases terrorism.  If ever evidence was needed about the long-term negative consequences of indiscriminate aid, just look at Ethiopia. In Bob Geldof's Live Aid era (1983) Ethiopia's population was 17m ...
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British Broadcasting Collaboration - added 9th July
Comment in the Spectator-hosted Melanie Philips Blog
You know how the BBC (and, in fairness the other TV channels) mournfully report the loss of each British soldier? This itself represents propaganda for the enemy, because they never report how many enemy men were killed ...

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Food for thought P!
Letter published in the Sunday Times
Minette Marrin asserts that parents feed their children fattening food because it's cheap.  These foods are in fact much more expensive than healthy foods, and the "poor" can afford them only because their poverty is relative not absolute.  A trip to any supermarket will soon reveal that potatoes, meat and water are ...

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Do you think full civil marriage rights should be extended to same-sex couples?
Comment on an Irish Times poll question (64% voted Yes)
No. The state has no reason to extend any marriage-type concessions to any groups whatsoever other than (A) male-female pairings and in particular (B) marriage (meaning life-time commitment).  These alone procreate new citizens [with most chance of] growing into productive, peaceful adults ... 

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Hamas torches children's summer camps
Comment in the Spectator-hosted Melanie Philips Blog
QUOTE: An American envoy is scheduled to meet with Hamas representatives in an Arab country and hand them a letter from the Obama Administration. UNQUOTE.  Why is it no longer shocking, or even surprising, to learn that the White House may be trying to cosy up, in secret, to an avowed genocidal terrorist organization?  When even the American President gives the ...

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Quotes for Issue 207

Quote: You have no f**king soul ... And my soul is screaming because you don’t have one to join mine. You have no f**king soul. You can’t give a f**k. I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground. You and I have none, zero. You won’t even f**king try.

Mel Gibson, divorced, fervid Catholic, Jew-hating
Oscar-winning movie star and director,
displays his sensitive side, as he
engages in a spiritual discussion about souls with his mistress,
the classical musician Oksana Grigorieva. 

Quote [not online]: She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.”

Ginger Meggs, Australian cartoon character

Hat-tip: Graham in Perth (Oz)

Quote:Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naive.” [added July 16th]

President Obama contrasted with Hitler and Lenin

Billboard by the North Iowa Tea Party

They were later prevailed upon (I wonder buy whom?) to remove it
as “the pictures overwhelmed the intended message of anti-socialism”.
Apparently. 

Quote: “Dutch researcher Sara Kinsbergen caused some amusement when she categorised the different types of non-governmental organisations flooding the developing world into

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QuaNGOs (quasi-autonomous NGOs);

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BoNGOs, (business-organised NGOs);

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ENGOs, (environmental NGOs);

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INGOs, (institutional NGOs);

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GoNGOs (government NGOs) and of course the ubiquitous

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MoNGO (my own NGO) – one-off charities set up by individuals.

Columnist Sarah Carey, commenting on a recent conference
organised by Dóchas, Ireland's umbrella organisation for NGOs.

There's a whole new vocabulary we need to learn.

Quote: “I do leave my religion behind me and I genuinely mean that. While we all have our beliefs and our own religions, I don’t think it should cloud our judgment.” [Added July 12th]

The clownish Dermot Ahern,
Ireland's one-time Foreign Minister currently Justice Minister,
doesn't want his judgement clouded by, well, judgement.

He has just forced through a Civil Partnership bill
which for no return to the State
grants the financial benefits of marriage to gay and unmarried partners
- provided they are sex-oriented.
(No room for cohabiting maiden aunts.)

Either Mr Ahern believes in his Roman Catholic religion,
in which case he is deeply sinful for wilfully abandoning its moral teachings
when he goes to work;

or he doesn't, in which case he is a disgraceful hypocrite
every time he walks into a church. 

Either way he is a man without a true moral compass. 

He really should have stuck to his canoeing,
and without a compass of any kind so he could stay missing longer. 

Missing canoeist - Ireland's current Justice  Minister

Quote: We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place [in the event of use of the military option] at the expense of the security of the UAE.”   [Added July 7th]

Yousef al-Otaiba, United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States,
in unusually blunt remarks, endorses an attack on
Iran's nuclear facilities to disable its bomb-making programme.

John Bolton, America's pugnacious ambassador to the UN under George W Bush
reckons Mr al-Otaiba echoes the misgivings of many Arab countries.

Since we know President Obama won't upset his Iranian dictator friends,
it seems only Israel can make the Arab world safe. 
Ironic, isn't it?

Quote: I am convinced that his honour would have ruled differently had he been sitting in the Sderot youth cultural centre, rather than on Brighton's sunny shores.

Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UK, makes a caustic observation when Judge George Bathurst-Norman tells a jury in Brighton that life for Gazans is hell on earth

As a result, vandals who wilfully caused Ł180,000-worth of damage
to a factory fulfilling an arms contract for Israel, walked free.

Update (3rd July)
Melanie Philips reveals that the judge,
who it turns out was born in the Arab town of Jaffa (opposite Tel Aviv),
has form in going easy on anti-Semites those who oppose Israel

Quote Minute 0:55 : We [ie Americans] have killed hundreds and thousands of Afghans and Iraqis.

Alan Grayson, Democratic Congressman from Florida
addresses the House in an appeal to, in effect,
declare defeat in the Middle East and run away.

But what is this ignoramus actually proclaiming?
The vast majority of killings of Afghans and Iraqis
have been perpetrated by depraved Islamic Jihadists
who want to deny Afghans and Iraqis their human rights
including the right to rule themselves. 

The Americans (and Brits et al) are the ones
who are trying to PREVENT this slaughter.

If the Jihadists stopped their killing,
the Afghan war would be over, as indeed the Iraq war largely is.

Quote: An American envoy is scheduled to meet with Hamas representatives in an Arab country and hand them a letter from the Obama Administration.

Roee Nahmias, a journalist with Israel News,
makes a shocking accusation (or revelation). 

Is it true?

Quote: “World sees Obama as incompetent and amateur.”

Headline in US News & World Report to a column by Martin Zuckerman.

For some of us [ahem], this has been obvious since the Primaries in 2008

Quote: “The educational system in America is designed by Whites to mis-educate Blacks not by benign neglect but by malignant intent. The civil-rights movement was never about racial equality.  Instead, It was always about becoming White ... to master what [they] do.” 

The ever reliable Rev Jeremiah Wright,
preacher and mentor to Barack Obama and his family for over twenty years, launches a fresh racist diatribe against Whites.

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PRIOR TWO ISSUES FOLLOW
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See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience

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ISSUE #206 - June 2010 [506+826=1331]

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Attitudes Towards Gaza Humanitarian” “AidFlotilla - 13 June 2010
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We Con the World - Censored!

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Fisked - The Economists' Appalling Anti-Israel Cover Story - 10th June 2010

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BP's Brilliant Management of its Blowout - 7th June 2010

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Issue 206’s Comments to Cyberspace  - More added on 30th June

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Quotes for Issue 206 - More added 10th, 13/14th and 15th June

Attitudes Towards Gaza Humanitarian” “AidFlotilla - 13 June 2010

Millions of words have been written across the world about the recent flotilla which set sail to deliver humanitarian” “aid to the people of Gaza, so my addition here will be brief. 

Those two words in the heading have been put between ears for four reasons. 

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There is ample evidence that Gaza is not short of food and materials to live, for example

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Hamas wouldn't let it in anyway and is itself responsible for much of the destruction of Gazans' housing

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The flotilla's primary objective was, by its own admission to publicise - if not break - the Egyptian/Israeli blockade rather than to deliver materials to Palestinians. 

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Moreover, the Turkish contingent on the Mavi Marmara announced its bellicose intention when it began its adventure with cries of Remember Khaibar, Khaibar oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return and other pre-battle exhortations. 

Mark Humphrys has put out a great summary of the whole flotilla saga. 

I have restricted myself to a little analysis of the letters pages of just one Irish newspaper, the Irish Times, which has hosted a lively discussion on the subject.  I simply totted up the score of anti-Israel and pro-Israel letters over the period Tuesday 1st June 2010 to Saturday 12th.  Here's the result. 

Anti/pro-Israel bias of letters published

There was a total of 79 such letters, of which 70% roundly castigated Israel, 24% expressed support or understanding for Israel's dilemma, while 6% were neutral. 

It is my guess that, sadly, this three-to-one ratio probably mirrors

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not just the Irish Times' anti-Israel (anti-Jew?) editorial leanings

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but also the numbers of letters actually sent to the editor,

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suggesting that this also reflects the general attitude in Irish society at large. 

These could of course be false or distorted conclusions because the Antis are undoubtedly more vocal than the Pros, in Ireland as in the rest of the world. 

But as far as Irish politicians are concerned it is distorted in the other direction.  Of 226 parliamentarians, only one, Alan Shatter, consistently speaks up for Israel.  He is also the sole Jew.  The others, from ministers down, thoroughly enjoy denouncing the Jewish state. 

Update 14th June:
I stand corrected. Fine Gael TD Seymour Crawford is a second Irish politician
prepared to speak openly in support of Israel.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer recently made a very depressing observation

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million - that number again - hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists - Iranian in particular - openly prepare a more final solution [than Hitler's].” 

Sadly, if reaction to the flotilla is anything to go by, this has the ring of truth. 

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Update - 15 June

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We Con the World - Censored!

By now millions of people have viewed the pro-Israel video, We Con the world, Caroline Glick's witty parody of the wonderful 1985 charity song We Are the world, copyrighted by Warner/Chappell Music.

It has proved so popular that Youtube have unilaterally taken it down, supposedly for copyright reasons, even though under the US Copyright Office's own Fair Use Doctrineuse in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied” is specifically exempted from copyright protection.

You can find over 300 other parodies of We are the world” but only the pro-Israel one has been taken down. 

Make up your own mind how anti-Semitic this piece of censorship is. 

Meanwhile since Youtube, owned by Google, don't want you to see the pro-Israel parody, here it is, thanks to ShareCrazy.com and Eyeblast.tv. 

Enjoy.   Especially the key couplet (despite dreadful rhyme)

We'll make the world abandon reason ...
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas is Momma Theresa. 

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Fisked - The Economists' Appalling Anti-Israel Cover Story - 10th June 2010

I am an avid Economist subscriber, have been for decades.  But I have just read, albeit a little late, the latest cover story of the 3rd June edition, and find its anti-Israel tone and so-called remedies appalling.  In effect it seems to be advocating, at best, the capitulation of Israel to the foes that surround it. 

Here is the article, which I have Fisked.  My comments in indented red italics.  See if you agree with me. 

Cover, 3rd June 2010
Israel and the world

Israel's siege mentality

The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker

Jun 3rd 2010

THE lethal mishandling of Israel’s attack on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza was bound to provoke outrage—and rightly so.

Rightly so?  That is your (prejudiced) judgement.  Wrongly so would be more objective.

The circumstances of the raid are murky and may well remain that way despite an inquiry (see article). But the impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily.

Too readily?  You seem to endorse this view.  Yet the violence was begun by the jihadis on the Marmara who beat each Israeli soldier on roughly a four-to-one basis, with sticks and perhaps knives, as they rapelled singly down from their helicopter.  Is there no stage at which it is considered legitimate for the Israeli soldiers to defend themselves?

More worryingly for Israel, the episode is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation.

It is the attacks of neighbours and the world generally which is isolating Israel.  It would be no less isolated were it not to defend itself as you seem to advocate.

Once admired as a plucky David facing down an array of Arab Goliaths

which it is still doing,

Israel is now seen as the clumsy bully on the block.

Clumsy perhaps, but it is weird to call the bully the smallest guy in the neighbourhood, outnumbered as Israel is

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7-to-one (in countries),

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32-to-one (in population) and

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150-to-one (in landmass). 

Israel’s desire to stop the flotilla reaching Gaza was understandable, given its determination to maintain the blockade. Yet the Israelis also had a responsibility to conduct the operation safely.

And safely is exactly how the Israelis conducted their interception on all boats but the Marmara where they were attacked by jihadis.   “Safely” cannot mean that the Israeli soldiers should submit to their own lynching. 

The campaigners knew that either way they would win. If they had got through, it would have been a triumphant breaching of the blockade. If forcibly stopped, with their cargo of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, they would be portrayed as victims—even if some, as the Israelis contend,

and the video and still photographs demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt

brought clubs, knives and poles. As it was, disastrous planning by Israel’s soldiers led to a needless loss of life.

Agreed.  Had the Israelis been prepared for battle rather than crowd-control, there would probably have been fewer casualties but just as great an outcry.

For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions—about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged. 

Surrounded by hostile Islamic states bent on the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jews, Israel is indeed besieged, and not “strangely”.

Losing friends, strengthening Hamas

The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed.

Not very cruel – the Gazans can get everything they need, food, water, fuel, medicines, and even luxury restaurants and hotels.  And not a failure, because Hamas has been unable to import weapons of the efficacy and in the quantities that they desire. 

The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission.

Hard to be starved when you’re not short of food. 

Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed.

Both true. 

Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.

But not the heavy artillery they want and Iran and Syria want to supply.  Nevertheless, to stop the other stuff, Egypt is building a steel subterranean wall to put a stop to the tunnelling.  (Notice how no-one criticises the Egyptian blockade of Gaza?)

Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator.

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Haven’t you seen the steady Islamicisation of Turkey over the past
decade as demographic trends propels into the forefront the
devout high-breeding Muslims of Anatolia at the expense of the
ageing, childless, secularist West-leaning Ataturkish Turks of
Istanbul and environs. 

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Have you forgotten that Iran became Islamicised with the arrival
of Ayatollah Khomenei back in 1979? 

These trends towards Islam have nothing to do with Israel but fully explain Turkey’s and Iran’s growing Jew-hatred.   

It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants. 

Agree. Startling how much of the world draws such a conclusion. 

Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews,

Ah yes, Stalin’s “useful idiots”!

are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s.

Israel is the Middle East’s only mature democracy.  That is why it is constantly changing government from accommodationist  to hawkish and back again (no fewer than eight such “regime changes” since 1983), always trying to find different avenues towards making  peace with Palestinians who don’t want it.  When Netanyahu’s current “hawkish” approach fails no doubt Israel’s electorate will once again change tack in its never-ending search. 

A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans.

Partly a result of the Democrats’ love-affair with Mr Obama and his twenty years of Jew-hating indoctrination in the Rev Jeremiah Wright’s church. 

Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset. 

I doubt the head of Mossad was making a case for surrender, just a sad observation.

That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America’s cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal.

I wonder how you know what Mr Obama’s “motivation” is?  The only people needing prodding to make “a fair deal” are  the Palestinians to make peace, of which the outlines have long been on the table (eg Bill Clinton, 2000). 

He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal.

Rightly?  That’s your judgement.  The real – and only – blockage to peace is the Palestinians’ own steadfast refusal to recognize the right to exist of Israel and its Jews, without which no peace agreement will ever be possible. 

Mr Obama’s greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good — including Israel’s.

This is a bland statement unencumbered by foundation.  Its underlying premise is Jewish surrender. 

Harmony is not just a dream

Israel is caught in a vicious circle. The more its hawks think the outside world will always hate it, the more it tends to shoot opponents first

when they attack it (eg the Marmara)

and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies. Though Mr Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to freeze settlement-building and is negotiating indirectly with Palestinians, he does not give the impression of being willing to give ground in the interests of peace. 

He has publicly stated his willingness to make a two-state agreement and the necessary conditions.  As usual, neither Palestinians nor the wider Arab and Muslim world have shown the slightest interest in following this up.  Destruction of Israel is clearly still more important for them than peace. 

Yet the prospect of a deal between Palestinians and Israelis still beckons. The contours of a two-state solution remain crystal-clear: an adjusted border, with Israel keeping some of the biggest settlements while Palestine gets equal swaps of land; Jerusalem shared as a capital, with special provisions for the holy places; and an admission by Palestinians that they cannot return to their old homes in what became Israel in 1948, with some theoretical right of return acknowledged by Israel and a small number of refugees let back without threatening the demographic preponderance of Jewish Israelis.

This is largely what Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat in 2000 under the auspices of Bill Clinton.  Arafat’s response was to say no, to make no counter-offer and to return to the West Bank and start the Second Intifada.  Your paragraph should be directed to the Palestinians not to the Israelis, who more or less already agree with it. 

And what about Hamas, if Israel is to lift the siege of Gaza? How should Israel handle an authoritarian movement that refuses to recognise it and has in the past readily used terror? One answer is to ask the UN to oversee the flow of goods and people going in and out of Gaza. That is hardly a cure-all,

An understatement.  The UN has become so rabidly anti-Jew, led by such toxic sub-bodies as the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the UN Human Rights Council, that it can never be relied on to police the flow of weapons into Gaza and bombers and fighters out of it.  This would be tantamount to an Israeli capitulation. 

but Hamas would become the world’s problem neighbour, not just Israel’s.

And who cares?  Just look, for example, at the Hamas (and Hezbullah) flags and symbols in anti-Israel rallies across Europe, as well as the “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla.  And when even Gays and Lesbians align themselves with the homosexual-executing fascists of Hamas – as they do – it is clear that few are worried about Hamas so long as Jews are their target. 

The Arab world must do more, pressing Hamas to disavow violence, publicly pledge not to resume the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and revoke its anti-Semitic charter.

Yes

The West, led by Mr Obama, should call for Hamas to be drawn into negotiations, both with its rival Palestinians on the West Bank as well as with Israel, even if it does not immediately recognise the Jewish state.

And what, exactly, will the Jewish state talk about when Hamas’s primary objective remains its obliteration?  The IRA is sometimes used as an example of negotiating with terrorists.  But this happened only when the IRA had been militarily defeated and was at a standstill.  Hamas are a long way from that happy condition. 

It is still the party the Palestinians elected in 2006 to represent all of them. None of this will be easy. But the present stalemate is bloodily leading nowhere. 

Your “solution” would accelerate the disappearance of Israel and its people. 

Israel is a regional hub of science, business and culture. Despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians

behaviour has consequences

in the land it occupies, it remains a vibrant democracy. But its loneliness, partly self-inflicted, is making it a worse place, not just for the Palestinians but also for its own people. If only it can replenish its stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late.

Why do you persist in placing the whole onus on Israel?  Why not call for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims to “replenish their stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late”?  They are the only ones determined to continue with war. 

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BP's Brilliant Management of its Blowout - 7th June 2010

When it comes to BP's Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, no matter which side different media outlets may dress - left, right or centre - there are all playing pretty much the same game, or at least reading the same script.  Yet it is a script of abject Ignorance at all public levels, reaching from the highest echelons of the US Administration, to the prestige newspapers of the world, to TV and radio and down to the man-in-the-street.  But it is worse than ignorance because it is accompanied by completely unfounded confidence in what is being expressed. 

The basic problem is, as I alluded to in my previous post, that outside the small circle of engineering-oriented people (of whom I am one) who already understand the intricacies, technologies and limitations of drilling deep, hot, high pressure wells in very deep waters, no-one can visualise what is going on.  There is nothing to see but a collection of vessels floating on the surface and a large oil slick, or perhaps sheen, on the surface of the sea, plus some blurry video footage of oil spewing at the seabed. 

So let's go through some of the ridiculous assertions that are being made. 

Start with the beginning. 

The drilling rig Deepwater Horizon did not explode.  An explosion occurred, followed by a fire and the rig sank.  The explosion took place because BP lost control of the well, allowing high pressure gas to force its way up the well and into the rig area where it ignited, probably due to a random spark somewhere. 

Oil is not leaking from the rig at the bottom of the sea (other than maybe from its fuel tanks), it is flowing from the well. 

Moreover, the situation is not what White House energy adviser (and top environmental adviser) Carol Browner would have you believe.  (Her ignorant remarks largely explain why Irish bookie Paddy Power are giving 16-1 odds that she will shortly resign).  

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She thinks Macondo is “the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country”. (Wrong - as explained below). 

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She says there is “more oil is leaking in the Gulf of Mexico than at any other time in our history. (Wrong.  When Ixtoc blew out in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979, 3.3 million barrels spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over a nine-month period, with no permanent environmental damage). 

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She may or may not be correct that there is more oil than the Exxon Valdez (in Alaska) in 1989”.  But as explained below this is irrelevant. 

We know how much oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez - its 250,000 barrel capacity.  Furthermore, it was a thick crude and it was spilled close to shore.  Therefore it exacted the maximum environmental damage imaginable on the wildlife and scenery of the Prince William Sound area. 

As regards Macondo, no-one has the faintest idea how much oil is spilling, other than a lot”.  That is because there is no way of actually measuring the flow.  All the estimates are based on the same thing: technologists' guesses by eyeballing black emission from the leaks as portrayed by underwater TV.  And even the eyeballing is based on what measured flows look like on surface, yet who knows whether 5,000 barrels a day flowing from a pipe on surface looks the same as 5,000 bbl/day viewed on TV in 1500 metres of water? That's why guesstimates vary between 5,000 and 80,000 bbl/day

Yet the important thing is not so much the quantity of escaping oil but the damage it causes, and for Macondo there are several other mitigating factors.  One of BP's many brilliant innovations in this catastrophic saga is the injection of dispersant at the sea bottom, which reduces the amount of crude that reaches the surface. 

The crude itself is comparatively light (85% of the density of water) compared to the more syrupy crude on the Exxon Valdez (84%).  The difference is significant because lighter crude is easier to refine which makes it some $5/bbl  more valuable.  It also means that much of the Macondo oil is evaporating in the balmy Gulf of Mexico weather, which is why the slicks are so relatively thin compared with those of the Exxon Valdez.

Moreover, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef which is just four kilometres from Bligh Island and 15 km from mainland Alaska, whereas Macondo is 80 km from the nearest landfall. So there is plenty of

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room for dispersal,

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wave action for degradation,

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time for evaporation. 

This too explains why the Macondo slicks bear no comparison with those of the Exxon Valdez. 

But here is the clincher.  How many TV and newspaper pictures have you seen of birds and animals clogged with oil?  How many beaches turned black with the dreaded sludge of crude?  The answer is very few, because there is very little actual environmental damage, at least so far.  A week ago the Sunday Times included a graphic in the print edition claiming there were 444 dead birds, 200 dead turtles and 19 dead dolphins; seven days later the bird count had soared to ... 600 damaged.  Look, I am sorry if one of those dead or damaged birds is your auntie, but these numbers are derisory.  Every day in the USA, domestic cats alone kill over half a million wild birds. 

The only living things that look polluted are protestors who have poured black paint over themselves. 

Anti-BP protesters pour simulated crude over themselves

President Obama flew to Louisiana to look at environmental damage and all he could find was this pristine beach.  If there was an oil-clogged one, do you think he would not have wanted to be photographed there to show his concern if not his (manufactured) enragement?

Barack Obama fails to find pollution on Fourchon Beach

Another big reason is the 1,400 vessels and 20,000 people that BP has engaged to lay booms to contain surface oil, skim and scoop it up, keep it from the coastline and to clean up beaches and wildlife where oil is found.  Where has it sourced this armada and army?  In a pretty clever PR strategy, they are mostly local fishermen and others, who are apparently now making more money from BP than they would in their usual pursuits, which explains why there have been so few of them protesting.  For example, there's a class-action lawsuit against BP on behalf of Louisiana shrimpers being worked up by ... just two shrimpers - hardly a mass movement. 

So that's most of the environmental nonsense put to bed.  It's not to say that there won't be serious damage in the future, but it certainly has not remotely happened so far. 

Then there is BP's response.  In my previous post, I made it pretty clear that there were serious shortcomings in the way the well was drilled and perhaps in the BP cost-cutting culture which might have fostered them. 

However, my reservations there have been completely blown away by the thoroughness and professionalism of what it's being doing ever since, not to mention it's money-no-object mentality.

It rapidly built up a huge team of experts, not just from within BP but from its contractors and even its competitors to develop solutions to the unprecedented problem it faces.  While there are many techniques for dealing with a wild well such as Macondo, which are throroughly proven on land or shallow water, they have never been attempted in deep water, where currents across the 1,500 metre water depth are unpredictable and different, while on bottom there is no light, the temperature is close to freezing, the ambient pressure is some 160 atmospheres and no human diver can survive.  Every activity must therefore be conducted by remote control. 

BP broke its workforce into teams that systematically developed an array of different options for controlling the well.  These ranged from trying to lessen the flow by poking pipes into pipes to draw off some of the oil, to commencing two relief wells which will each cost about $100 million. 

Over twenty vessels have at times been active on the surface in the vicinity of the well at the same time, most with pipes or wires running into the water.  The water depth is too deep to anchor, so each of them is dynamically positioned, meaning that computer-controlled thrusters keep them on station using GPS, which in itself is a pretty sophisticated technology. 

Simultaneously: 21 vessels; 16 ROV tether lines

For example, each of 14 ROVs (remote operated vehicles, ie unmanned submarines) is controlled by a tether connecting it to surface.  A specific team - perhaps with an air-traffic control background - is therefore allocated merely to manage the positions of the surface vessels and to ensure that submarine cables and pipes don't get tangled with each other.  

As each technique has been tried and failed, the next technique has been brought into play.  Here are a the main ones. 

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Close BOP
Close the BOP (Blowout Preventer), the series of horizontal ram-type valves (item 26 in the diagram below [courtesy Hydril]), which are fixed to the top of the wellhead and whose function is to close off the well, and slice through anything caught in the middle - such as pipe.  When the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank, attempts to close the BOP from surface failed for reasons yet unknown.  So ROVs were deployed to activate the rams manually, pressing buttons on a control panel like the gold one below; the rams would draw power from the energy stored in high-pressure accumulator bottles (item 14). 

But this didn't work.  Maybe the BOP didn't function, or perhaps the ROV was unable to press the buttons properly; we don't know.

BOP stack, which is installed in a frame with support elements

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Draw off oil 
Prior to that, a pipe was inserted into the
riser (item 17) which is the main pipe from the broken upper end of which, lying on the seabed, most of the oil is emanating.  Some 2,000 bbl/day is being collected this way and lifted to a drillship, the Discoverer Enterprise, on the surface, thereby reducing somewhat the impact of the spill. 
 

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Cofferdam
When closing the BOP failed, the next effort was to lower a massive so-called cofferdam, or inverted funnel, over the wellhead in an attempt to catch the oil as it emerged from the well and pipe it back to surface.  This failed however when the cofferdam became clogged with hydrates.  These are solid icy crystals that form when methane comes into contact with moisture under the conditions of high pressure and low temperature that prevail at 1,500 metres of water. 

Methane is the principal ingredient of the natural gas that is bubbling up along with the oil.  Methanol will dissolve hydrates, but evidently BP was unable to pump this down in sufficient quantities to prevent the cofferdam from seizing up with hydrates. 
 

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Topkill
After that, BP attempted the highly complex
topkill” which has been in the news so much.  Its aim was to kill the well by pumping heavy fluid into the well from the top down, such that it would push the escaping oil and gas back into the reservoir and keep them there. 

First BP had to
connect on to the so-called kill and choke lines through which fluids could be pumped into the well.  Such lines are always connected from rig to BOP for just such a purpose.  In this case, once the rig sank, the kill and choke lines broke free from it and lay strewn on the seabed, yet were still connected to the BOP.  After some ROV-assisted refurbishment, the loose ends were cut off and connected via a specially constructed manifold to a pipe suspended from a multi-service semisubmersible called the Helix Q4000”, through which the heavy mud would be injected


For maximum redundancy in case things went wrong, no fewer than four boats full of pumps and mud were lined up to the Helix Q4000, with a total of nearly 50,000 barrels of mud available.  Also available were tons of junk - random pieces of rubber, rocks and other material - to try to clog up the well shaft or preferably the reservoir.

Sadly, although the operational aspects were entirely successful, the outcome was not.  No-one can be sure why, but the challenge always is that while mud is pumped downwards, the lighter oil may simply move to the side and continue flowing upwards, helped by the gas. 
 

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Cut and Replace Riser
So for BP it was on to the next heroic plan, simple in concept but devilishly difficult at this enormous water depth and with almost no visibility because of the cloud of black oil.  This was to cut off the riser from the top of the BOP stack and tie on to the stub a replacement riser which would lead to the surface drawing off most of the flow.  After several attempts, the cut was accomplished with ROVs and angle-grinders, but this of course means that there was no control at all on the escape of oil - it was all rushing out of the stub.  

At time of writing (7th June), BP seem to have succeeded in fitting the new riser over the stub of the old, but with lots of vents through which a proportion of oil can continue to escape, but in so doing prevent water entering the pipe and creating hydrates to clog up the works again. 

It is an imperfect solution but a big improvement over what has gone before.  Some 10,000 bbl/day is being captured.  BP has produced a 490kb PDF file of good illustrations.
 

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Second BOP
If this indeed proves to be successful, then BP may decide not to deploy its final, more risky option, which is to fit on to that riser stub on top of the existing BOP a second BOP.  The latter could then in principle be closed in order to finally either shut in the well or indeed to re-enter it and kill it properly with pipe reaching down to the reservoir.  
 

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Relief Wells
However, if current attempts all fail to effect a complete and permanent kill, the two relief wells will.  They are being drilled to intersect with Macondo at reservoir level, a huge task considering the well is only 12 cm in diameter.  The wells must reach down to a vertical depth of 5,500 metres and a horizontal displacement of perhaps 1,000 metres and be navigated precisely, like a jet fighter stalking its prey, to the tiny target.  (A future post will explain in simple terms how this is done.) 

Once drilled, water will first be pumped down the relief wells to establish circulation into Macondo, then heavy mud to at last kill it, and finally cement to keep it killed. 

You would think that not just for BP but for the US Administration and the general public the most important issue right now is to kill that damn well, make it permanently safe and clean up any damage, and that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of this.

Yet solving Macondo seems not to be in the forefront of the priorities of the President and his cohorts.   They have launched both a Congressional enquiry and criminal investigation in respect of the blowout, meanwhile coming out with meaningless blather like keeping the boot on BP's neck and being enraged.  There will be plenty of years and decades for anger, recrimination, retribution, lawsuits, enquiries, investigations, compensation, fines, prison sentences, sanctions or whatever once the well is safe.  The future is a long time. 

 

But launching such processes now in the midst of this gargantuan battle against nature means that to defend itself BP is forced deploy its most senior managers and hire umpteen lawyers.  And who will brief those managers and lawyers?  Why the top technologists that BP can muster.  The very men and women who should be devoting all their expertise and energy to solving the problem.  You could hardly do more to damage America's interests. 

There seems no limit to the ignorance if not malice of the Obama administration. 

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Issue 206’s Comments to Cyberspace

While I've been lazy in recent weeks about blogging, I have still been harrassing innocent publishers with my witterings online. 

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Ignorance not poverty causes obesity P!
Letter to the Sunday Times on 30th June and (edited and) published on 4th July

Minette Marrin is incorrect to assert that parents feed their children fattening food because it's cheap, quoting biscuits, cakes ... takeaways.  These foods are in fact much more expensive than healthy foods, and the "poor" can afford them only because their poverty is relative not absolute.  A trip to any supermarket will soon reveal that, for example, potatoes, meat and tapwater are not only much healthier but cost far less than chips, burgers and colas, and they are dead easy to cook ...

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Do you think Israel's attack on an aid convoy is 'state terrorism', as claimed by the Turkish government?
Comment on an Irish Times poll question (73% answered Yes)
The Egyptians have a lot to answer for operating a brutal blockade against Gaza and its luxury hotels and restaurants.  Why does the Egyptian dictatorship hate its fellow-Arabs and fellow-Muslims so much that they are augmenting their ugly surface barriers with

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Rights of children vs wishes of gays
Letter to the Irish Independent
Earlier this year the US Congress received a formal report on Child Abuse and Neglect. It found that, in terms of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect, and of education, children fared up to ELEVEN times better when raised by their married biological parents than by any other parenting arrangement. This dramatically underscores the right of all children to their own ...

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Ban on Prostitution
Letter to the Irish Times on 22nd May 2010
In arguing for a ban on conventional prostitution, Tristan Mulhall confidently informs us that women "willingly choose a life of prostitution" only out of "dire necessity".  If that is the case, why does he want to deny women in dire necessity the means to earn their living in a manner they are willing to pursue? ...

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Hiding Faces
Letter to The Economist
Your opposition to the growing movement to ban the burqa in Western societies begs an obvious question.  If it is acceptable for women to hide their faces, it must therefore also be OK for men to ...

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Quotes for Issue 206

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

15th June - Quote and here and here: Don't stand here and say you represent Iranian people ... I don't want to be attacked by these fucking murderers ...Murderer! ... Why did you murder political prisoners? ... Do not touch me. You can't touch me ... What the f**k is going on here? ... Down with the Islamic regime of Iran.

A little bit of Iranian thug politics comes to Ireland. 

Shaho Zamani, an Iranian Kurd seeking asylum in Ireland, shouts his protests
at Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister,
invited to Ireland to address the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin. 

The Minister's own security thugs (believed to be armed)
tussle with the Kurd until the Irish Gardaí intervene
to save him and escort him out of the building.

14th June - Quote:  “The Irish Times ... is ... quite a dangerous paper.”

Irish Minister of State Martin Mansergh of the ruling Fianna Fail party
is unhappy that the latest Irish Times poll puts his collapsing party,
for the the first time, in third place behind Labour and Fianna Gael.

No greater compliment can a government minister pay a newspaper. 

- - - - N E T H E R L A N D S - - - - -

10th June - Quote: More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam -- that is what the Netherlands has chosen.”

Gert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom,
on winning 24 seats in the Netherlands' recent general election. 
His party demands
demands, inter alia,
an end to immigration from Muslim countries
and bans on new mosques and the Koran
 

This makes his party the third biggest
and potentially the king-maker in a coalition.

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

10th June - Quote: I think that the best thing now is not ... to attempt to damage the reputation of a great British company ... but to sort out [the problem].

Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London, responds to
President Obama's childish, anti-British rhetoric over the BP blowout
(fire the CEO, boot on neck, kick ass, British Petroleum etc)

Quote: Follow the Islamic way to save the world.”

The thoroughly nutty Prince of Wales,
future head of the Church of England and future British king,
extols Islam, the CofE's main competitor in Britain,
for its AlGorian environmentalism.

No wonder the 84-year-old Queen won't step down and hand over to him. 
She is obviously hoping to find a way to skip a generation
and pass her throne on to her more stable grandson Prince William.

Quote: “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.

Liam Byrne, Labour's outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
leaves a handover note for his successor, Liberal-Democrat David Laws.

It it rare indeed you get a truthful statement from a Minister,
especially a Labour one.

Unfortunately, pretty soon afterwards
there was no Chief Secretary to the Treasury left either,
when Mr Laws had to resign for fiddling his expenses
.

- - - - - I S R A E L - - - - -

Quote: Remember Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!

Activists get themselves in the mood to greet,
with rods, knives and bottles,
Israeli soldiers as they rappel
down from helicopters
onto the Marama, 130 km offshore Gaza.

The Marmara is a Turkish vessel which was attempting to carry
10,000 tons of
aid” to Gaza along with 600 people to deliver it (600?).

The battle-cry commemorates Mohammed's'
ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arabia in the eighth century

Quote: Shut up, go back to Auschwitz!... We're helping Arabs go against the US.  Don't forget 9/11 guys.”

Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza aid” flotilla,
replies when warned by the Israeli Navy
that it was approaching the blockaded area.

When boarded by Israeli commandos, persons aboard the Marmara
attacked them with rods, knives, catapults and bottles. 
Eventually, in self-defence, the commandos drew their guns
and killed twelve of their attackers.

Quote: “This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it's about breaking Israel's siege on 1.5 million Palestinians.” 

Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of the
humanitarian” “aid” flotilla, makes clear that
the humanitarian so-called needs of Gazans are irrelevant.

Quote: Peace could be achieved in no more than a week if Israel is willing ... Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ministers must understand that peace is in [Israel’s] interest”.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is absolutely right,
except for one small detail. 

It is he and his fellow-Palestinians who must be “willing” -
willing to renounce violence and
willing to accept the existence of a Jewish state in historic Jewish land.

As George Bush famously whispered to Tony Blair,
all it takes is to just get Syria to get Hezbollah
to stop doing this shit and it's all over
.

In other words, stop attacking Israel and a peace accord will quickly follow. 

Israel has demonstrated time and again its willingness to make peace. 
Each time this has been rejected by the Palestinians, most recently in 2000.

- - - - - R U S S I A - - - - -

Quote: Russia is guided by its own long-term state interests ... Those who speak on behalf of the friendly Iranian people must remember this ... Any unpredictability, any political extremism ... is unacceptable for Russia.”

Sergei Prikhodko, a senior diplomat in the Kremlin,
slaps down Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
who had threatened that Russia's actions could
place Russia in the ranks of their historic enemies

I hate to praise an autrocracy such as Russia,
but why cannot the West be equally assertive
in defence of its interests?

Hat tip: Jawa Report

- - - - - U S A - - - - -

13th June - Quote: “[I, Barack Obama am] still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather ... [my] half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and ... [I am] that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.

President Obama confides in Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Ghei
(according to the latter).

It serves as a reminder of a curious statement he made
during an interview on the campaign trail that
John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith”.

See how long it takes the mainstream media to pick up this little gem. 
Not

The president's admission is rather disappointing. 
One of the few things I had admired him for
was his apostasy from the Muslim faith he was born into,
and his conversion
to Christianity via the United Church of Christ,
albeit under the auspices of the toxic Rev Jeremiah Wright. 

But it seems I had formed too high an opinion of him (hard to do).

Hat tip: Tom Carew 

Quote: We're going to keep the boot on the neck of BP.”

Ken Salazar, America's Interior Secretary,
mouths one of the US Government's typical meaningless platitudes
which serve no constructive purpose. 

It should be devoting all its energy to supporting BP
in fighting the Macondo blowout and oil spill

There will be plenty of time for recriminations,
compensation and lawsuits later.

Quote: it is almost at the level of sedition.

Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts
and a big buddy of the US president, on his assessment of
Republican opposition to the Administration's policies

Quote: Obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is

With this fatuous clause, Barack Obama pays tribute
to the memory of Daniel Pearl at the signing of a new
Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act
”. 

Surrounded by still grieving relatives of Mr Pearl, the American Jew journalist
whom jihadists triumphantly beheaded on video in Karachi in 2002,
Mr Obama displays not just his now familiar ignorance and disdain of history,
but an astonishing lack of human sensitivity.

Mark Steyn rightly eviscerates the president.

Quote: What they are doing ... They're sticking our kids with the bill. And that's immoral. That's generational theft.

Sarah Palin is referring to mounting debt and government programs.
Though she means America's, her remark is true for all economies. 

Heaping enormous debt onto a nations'
children, infants and unborn
could also be described as a form of child abuse.

Quote (Minute 4:20): It's racial harassment if we say it's racial harassment. Don't bother us with the facts.

Todd Tucker, author of
Notre Dame vs the Klan:
How the Fighting Irish defeated the Ku Klux Klan
”,
a book which describes a two-day battle in 1924
between Catholic students of Notre Dame University and
the all-powerful Indiana Ku Klux Klan, which ultimately destroyed the IKKK.
Note burning crosses and white-hooded Klansmen 

Mr Tucker is referring to a kangaroo court of the - wait for it -
Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis (IUPUI). 

It had convicted one of its
mature students, Keith John Sampson,
of
racial harassment because he had been seen reading the book on campus. 

The book's cover features burning crosses
and white hooded figures.
Case proven.

The IUPUI president eventually apologised for the injustice to Mr Sampson
but took no investigative, disciplinary or preventive action.

- - - - - K O R E A s - - - - -

Quote: “This was an unacceptable provocation by North Korea ... the international community has a responsibility and a duty to respond.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says the right thing for once. 

It is of course empty rhetoric because
her boss will never allow America to take any actual action
which might upset its enemies.

- - - - - er, F R A N C E - - - - -

Quote: We must know what to tell them in case we get in bed with them, right.

Carla Bruni, aka as Mrs Nicolas Sarkozy,
explains the need, in 1996, for a book
to translate sexy phrases into four languages,
with a number of graphic examples. 

So now we know what the French president
gets up to in the Elysee Palace.
 

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See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience

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ISSUE #205 - 16th May 2010 [423+890=1313]

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BP's Macondo Catastrophe - How it Happened

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Get Out of Irish Banking

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Truthful Terrorists; Lying Democrats

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Obama's Easterless Message

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Calculating Chinese Children

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Scandal! Counterfeit Hair Straighteners

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Bouncing Gore-Tex

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Issue 205’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 205

Coverage of oil slick catastrophe fails to address its causeBP's Macondo Catastrophe - How it Happened

Most of the media coverage about BP’s disastrous well in the Gulf of Mexico has concentrated on the oil slick, the potential damage it can do, the measures being taken to contain it and efforts underway to stem the underwater leaks.  All of this is visible on the surface and easily grasped.  Conversely, the events which led to the catastrophe were of a technical nature, out of sight at depths of thousands of metres, and poorly understood outside the industry. 

Last February, the floating rig Deepwater Horizon” (Oilonline photo), under contract to BP on behalf of itself (65%) and its partners Anadarko (25%) and Mitsui (10%), moved into Mississippi Canyon Block 252 to drill exploration well Macondo at a water depth of 1,522 metres eighty kilometres from shore

Deepwater Horizon; click for a closer view

Built in Korea in 2001 for $350 million, Drilling Horizon was an 8,000-ton state-of-the-art behemoth, known as a semisubmersible because it sat on two huge floats submerged well below wave action in order to minimise movement.  Designed for 2,400 metres of water, far too deep for anchors, it kept station by means of satellite positioning and computer-controlled multi-directional thrusters; in other words it would motor at full speed to go nowhere.  BP paid its owner-operator TransOcean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor, a day-rate of $500,000, which the ancillary activities (helicopters, boats, fuel, specialist services etc) doubled to a cool daily million. 

By April, the rig had drilled Macondo to its 5,500 metres objective where, to great joy, high-pressure oil and gas were found.  The next step was to disconnect from the well with a view to reconnecting later when production facilities were ready. 

Wells are drilled using rotating pipes which circulate a heavy “mud” to cool the drillbit, control pressures, plaster the bore and remove drill-cuttings.  Drilling mud is in fact a highly technical, sophisticated and expensive cocktails of chemicals). 

As the well progresses, a succession of concentric tubes, known as casing, is lowered into the hole, with cement pumped into the annulus between it and the hole to seal off upper layers.  This allows the next section to be drilled at a smaller diameter, also to be subsequently sealed off with a narrower casing, and so on, telescope fashion.  The annuli of the concentric casings are further sealed mechanically at the surface in a wellhead device.  Subsea BOP stack

During drilling a BOP (blowout preventer) is always secured to the wellhead to control unwanted influx from the well.  Weighing 200 tons and standing 12 metres high, it comprises up to six hydraulic valves which, to shut off the well, can clamp around – and if necessary slice apart – any pipe sticking through it out of the wellbore.  Typically, with the annulus sealed off in this way, heavier mud would be pumped into the well to overcome the pressure beneath the BOPs until they could be safely opened and normal operations resumed.  This is a skilled task and like airline pilots, drilling supervisors are regularly re-certified to ensure they master the physics and the practice. 

In deep water, the BOP, activated from surface, sits on the wellhead on the seabed.  The floating rig far above  connects to the BOP by a 50-centimetre diameter so-called riser, which provides access to the well. 

On Macondo, the final 12-centimetre diameter casing was installed stretching from seabed down to 5,500 metres, cemented through a non-return valve at the bottom and up the annulus, and hung off in the wellhead.  This would leave the well ready for another rig to re-connect later. 

On April 20th, once the cement was set, the BOP was closed to pressure-test the cement, the casing, the wellhead and indeed the BOP itself.   This is done by pumping mud from surface down a separate pipeline parallel to the riser to below the BOP. 

Only two steps remained before disconnection: to pump another wodge of cement into the well to provide a plug as an additional safety barrier against untoward pressure from below (it is unclear whether this was done) and to replace the heavy mud in the riser with seawater so that its imminent removal would not cause pollution by mud. 

Once full of seawater, the 1˝ kilometre long riser exerted 200 atmospheres less pressure on the top of the well than when full of mud.  When the BOP was opened, the reduced pressure proved insufficient to prevent an enormous bubble of high pressure gas that had inexplicably accumulated, from bursting into the riser expelling the huge column of seawater out of the riser and seventy metres into the air.  This of course lowered the pressure in the riser even further which sucked in ever greater quantities of first gas then oil from the newly-discovered reservoir over five kilometres down. 

With no wind to disperse it in that calm night, the gas quickly spread across the rig until inevitably a spark somewhere ignited it.  A huge fireball ensued and though the majority on board managed to evacuate, eleven men sadly lost their lives

Fuelled by gas and oil, the conflagration raged for 36 hours until the rig sank.  In the immediate chaos no-one could get to the control panel to close the BOP.  The riser and control lines in due course broke free of the rig and fell haphazardly onto the seabed where it continues to spew the oil that is causing such environmental alarm. 

BP’s efforts are now focussed on using unmanned submarines to try and close the BOP, funnelling the oil into a cofferdam, containing the slicks on the surface and drilling a relief well to intersect Macondo at reservoir level. 

How had gas built up in the wellbore in an apparently sealed casing? 

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Faulty casing?

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Poor cement? 

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Lack of plug? 

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Defective equipment? 

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Inadequate procedures? 

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Insufficient expertise? 

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Organizational dysfunction? 

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Human error? 

These are big questions to which only a formal enquiry will provide definitive answers. 

Personally, I would be surprised if the answers to any of those questions will reflect favourably  on BP. 

There is another issue raised in a Sunday Times article by Tom Bower, which notes that BP have suffered no fewer than four other disasters in the past five years -

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An explosion at the Texas City refinery killed 15 people in 2005 (for which it was fined $87 million)

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After a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, a dangerous 25° list developed in the billion-dollar semi-submersible Thunder Horse floating production platform, almost sinking it

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Two serious oil-spills from pipelines in Alaska in 2006. 

Mr Bower, author of The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century, argues that a culture of cost-cutting pervaded BP which probably contributed to its five catastrophes in five years. 

This line of thinking could suggest that technical requirements and hence safety considerations sometimes took second place.  In this vein, it seems plausible that, among other things, BP denuded themselves of much deepwater high-pressure expertise they now desperately require, by laying off a cadre of highly paid employees with vast deepwater high-pressure experience and specialist skills.  It is my guess that they would have numerically replaced these experts with bright young PhDs on a fast-track to development which entailed much fore-shortened hands-on experience compared to the old-timers, together with excessive reliance on contractors whose skills and interest (rightly) lie in their equipment not the actual hole. 

In the oil and gas business it is always the oil company and none other which is responsible for the hole.  Eleven men died and disastrous oil pollution is unfolding because control was lost of the Macondo hole. 

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Get Out of Irish Banking

The Irish Government, in order to save the country's banking system, is bending over backward to spend billions upon billions of taxpayers' money, whose repayment will extend to future generation upon future generation. 

Without a functioning banking system, all commerce will apparently cease.  Or something. 

A state-owned National Assets Management Agency, NAMA, has been set up to buy the banks' bad debts, the vast majority property-related, so that the banks can resume normal banking.  It is buying the debts at a discount of between 30% and 50%, though the actual housing crash well exceeds 50% everywhere.  In other words NAMA is overpaying.  The reason given is that otherwise the state will have to pour even more taxpayer billions into the banks to recapitalise them.

The process has now begun and already the state is doing both anyway - NAMA is overpaying for the debts AND the government is pouring extra money into the banks. 

The question that the government has never, as far as I am aware, answered is what is the practical effect of not taking such measures.  What does a banking system failure and economic collapse mean for ordinary citizens? 

For the past year or more, it has been borrowing €400 million a week just to pay ongoing costs.  Yes, notwithstanding the evidently bankrupt state of the finances, and last December's “slash-and-burn” budget that trimmed €4 billion pa from government spending, borrowing is still continuing apace.  So presumably with economic collapse, the lenders (who are they anyway? the Chinese?) will stop lending, there will be insufficient money to pay civil servants, dole, pensions, schools, hospitals etc.  So state employees, perhaps a hundred thousand or more, will be thrown out of work and all state payouts will be drastically cut.  Riots and civil unrest will surely ensue, following the example of our Greek brethren. 

But that will not be the half of it.  If (When?) the ever-wobbling Irish banks collapse, they will take with them all or most of their deposits, because we know these don't exist anymore because they have already been disbursed on those property loans that are now being sold off at a discount to NAMA.  Of course the Government has guaranteed those bank deposits.  But it has no money either - that's why it's borrowing that €400 million weekly to stay(weakly) afloat.  The idea of the guarantee, therefore, is to provide sufficient confidence such that depositors do not in fact demand their money; it does not however mean your money is safe should a large number of people choose to call it in.  Therefore, once people get a whiff of the failure of any one the Irish banks (undoubtedly Angli-Irish will be first - see below) , they will stampede their way to their respective banks to withdraw their savings, and only those few at the heard of the queue will get lucky before the money runs out. 

If you think newly redundant civil servants and pension-less pensioners can cause trouble, wait till you see what happens when the vast majority of the population of all ages realises that its life savings have been vaporised. 

Anglo-Irish Bank

All the Irish banks are currently struggling to remain alive on the edge of a precipice.  But Anglo-Irish bank, which lost over €10 billion in 2009 and is on life support thanks to taxpayers' billions, is the zombiest of them all.  Back in December 2008 we were told that it would get one billion €uro from the taxpayers to help it survive, which horrified everyone.  But another €2.4 bn went into the Anglo-Irish pot over the following months, while last March the taxpayers were forced to toss a further €8.7 bn, bringing the bail-out total to €12 bnIn defence, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan says that “finding a long-term solution for Anglo-Irish Bank is by far the biggest challenge in resolving the banking crisis”.  This latest tranche brought the total bail-out money for all Irish banks to an eye-watering €73 bn, or €17,678 per head of population, from infant to geriatric. 

How will they ever pay this in their lifetimes? 

The bailout to Anglo-Irish could even swell further - from the current €12 bn to €22 bn according to Mr Lenihan, who in  almost the same breath makes a case for winding it down - but only over a period of twenty years.  An immediate liquidation would apparently cost the taxpayer €70 bn altogether, but the way the bailouts are escalating I wouldn't rule that option out either. 

Now consider this.  Anglo-Irish, the penniless zombie bank, currently holds (if that's the right term) €27 billion in customer deposits.  How safe do you think this money really is? 

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How long before increasing numbers of Anglo-Irish depositors decide to do the prudent thing and withdraw their money while they can? 

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How long before their numbers swell to a flood and there is a true run on Anglo-Irish like we saw in the UK with Northern Rock? 

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How long before customers of other Irish banks start to fear the modern disease of contagion” and decide to do the same? 

Get out now!

Therefore, and this is the point of this post, why wait until a banking Armageddon scenario unfolds?  In a globalised world, what earthly benefit is there is keeping your savings in a banking system on the brink of collapse?  As well as foreign banks within Ireland, there are plenty of reasonably robust non-Irish banks outside the country in which money can be held and normal banking services conducted, albeit with a bit of inconvenience. 

My advice, dear readers, is to do what I have done. 

Remove all you can from not just Anglo-Irish (of course), but all Irish banks.  Move it to other banks in other countries.  Store it under the bed.  Buy gold.  It doesn't matter.  Just put it out of reach of an Irish banking collapse.  With miserable interest rates for savers everywhere, there is almost no downside that I can think of. 

The Greeks, in an even worse economic situation than the Irish, are beginning to do just this.  They are shifting billions of €uros into foreign banks within Greece such as HSBC and Société Generale and into foreign jurisdictions including Switzerland, the UK and Cyprus. 

The canny Irish should do likewise now, before others get the same idea as they surely at some stage will.  The Irish banking system, like the Greeks', is in effect a giant Ponzi scheme and only the early quitters will get out alive.  Be one of them. 

Form

I have form. 

Back in July 2006, in a post entitled Ireland's About-to-Crash Housing Boom”, I gave detailed reasons why the Irish housing market boom was unsustainable and that a crash was imminent - I predicted this would commence at the end of that year.  In fact it began just three months beyond that, in March 2007

What I said then in respect of the teetering housing market holds true for the probable run on the currently teetering Irish banks. 

The moment that a few people begin to feel that there might just be a little bit of a wobble, everyone suddenly wants to get out while the going is good.”

I am already out. 

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Truthful Terrorists; Lying Democrats

We know that [the Taliban in Pakistan] helped facilitate it. We know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.”

So said US Attorney General Eric Holder last week when he admitted that the Taliban were behind the attempted car-bombing in Times Square.

Initially, of course, the official line, on the basis of little or no evidence, was that the perpetrator was a “white male”, a “lone wolf”, a little bit strange, an objector to Obamacare, a man unhappy because his finance company was “foreclosing on [his] property” and similar preposterous nonsense. But not a word about jihad. 

One reason the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani with naturalised US citizenship, couldn't pay his mortgage was that he had recently spent from five unremunerated months in Pakistan - doing what? - go on, guess. Something to do with training camps perhaps?  Actually, he's already admitted to having received bomb-making training in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan. 

Within days of the bombing attempt the Taliban in Pakistan put out at least two videos claiming responsibility, yet the New York police dismissed all that saying there was “no evidence” that the videos were authentic as if their own statements were backed by any. 

Taqiyya, which permits Muslims to lie to infidels is a central feature of Islam.  Yet if there is one lesson we should have learnt in these past nine years since 9-11, it is that when Islamic terrorists say they have done something bad, they are nearly always telling the truth, taqiyya or no taqiyya.  I have written before that

when totalitarians [which would include would-be totalitarian jihadists] threaten bad things, you cannot afford not to believe them.  It's the one area where they don't tell lies (unlike many democratic politicians issuing empty threats!)

Politicians in western democracies often seem to live in a world of such public mendacity and dissimulation that they cannot conceive of the idea that their enemies, in contrast to themselves, might for once not be speaking with forked tongues, especially when they are claiming responsibility for atrocities or threatening them. 

So when an Islamic terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda or the Taliban claims it was behind Christmas Day's isolated extremist panty-bomber or the Times Square lone wolf car-bomber, the CIA should have immediately used this as hard evidence, not fluff around wasting valuable investigation time and energy with fantasy unsubstantiated stories about mythical right-wing white nutjobs. 

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Obama's Easterless Message

As is customary at major festival occasions, the US president delivered an message for Easter to the American people.  Actually, President Obama called it his Holiday greeting, which in itself is rather telling. 

In his peroration, Mr Obama quoted from a morale-boosting Easter sermon given to US troops by a Christian clergyman just six days after America had conquered the Japanese on the island of Iwo Jima in a ferocious five-week battle with 20,000 casualties on each side. 

But he chose to leave out a crucial passage, which happens to feature the central figure of Easter - Jesus Christ.  Without the latter Easter is meaningless.  Here is the relevant section of the president's speech, with the omitted bits shown [bracketed in bold].  You can listen to 3˝ minutes of the original sermon here

“American dead – Catholic, Protestant, Jew: together they huddled in foxholes or crouched in the bloody sands [under the fury of enemy guns here on Iwo Jima]. Together they practiced virtue, patriotism, love of country, love of you and of me.

[Together they stand before the greatest soldier of them all Jesus Christ to receive the token of our triumph.  For Christ has said greater love than this no man hath than that he lays down his life for his friends. And so our beloved friends have gone from the world of hate to the world of eternal love.]

The heritage they have left us, the vision of a new world, [was] made possible by the common bond that united them [in the drudgery of recruit-training or here in the chaos of bursting shouts].  Their only hope that this unity will endure.”

Removing Christ from Easter in this way was no accident.  It is part of the president's campaign to delegitimize Christianity while continuing to pretend to particular audiences that he is a true believer.  Of course his Muslim audience, nodding and winking over his middle name, are convinced otherwise. 

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Calculating Chinese Children

96 - 38 + 97 - 82 - 12 = ?

Can you reach the answer (61) in the time it takes to read out the figures?  I certainly cannot.  Yet, for a classroom of average six-year-old schoolchildren in Hong Kong, this seems no bother at all.  They just imagine, within their tiny heads, an abacus or their fingers counting, and out pops the (correct) answer in seconds.  Watch the first four minutes of this Youtube clip from a recent documentary about Britain's former colony by Gryff Rhys Jones, and be astounded. 

Not only at these little kids' mental arithmetic capabilities but their command of English as a second language.

The total dedication to learning among the Chinese in Hong Kong is something I became painfully familiar with as a teenager.  I completed my final year of schooling at Wah Yan College in Hong Kong where I was the only white man.  I passed my final exams but only by sitting them twice with two different examining boards and combining the best results from both!   I then went on to study engineering at Hong Kong University where I was once again the only white man.  This time I failed a couple of subjects and rather than repeat the year I left Hong Kong and completed my engineering studies in Ireland. 

What was apparent during two years studying amidst Chinese fellow-students was their total dedication to learning to the exclusion of practically everything else - sports, alcohol, girls, partying, even ordinary friendship.  Seven days a week, you woke, you ate, you went to lectures, you studied (till the early hours), you went to bed.  It was a fiercely competitive environment, which did little to develop the personality but certainly achieved high academic standards. 

I was astonished - and delighted - when I got to University College Dublin at

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how laid back everything and everyone were, with plenty of time for the extra-curricular activities that were so absent in Hong Kong,

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how concentrated study took place only around exam time rather than throughout the year. 

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Oh, and what a low standard of mathematics was expected of and taught to engineering students in their first year (fortunately this toughened up in later years).

So back to those little Chinese kids today.  How many PhDs will they have by the time they grow from six years to 26?

That is the frightening kind of global intellectual competition that modern youngsters here in the West are going to have to face.  And, as the Youtube clip vividly shows, the contest clearly starts at kindergarten level. 

Ireland is steadily falling back in its training of mathematicians, scientists and engineers, the only professions that actually create new wealth.  This seems largely because teachers (and the media) tell youngsters that these technical subjects are too difficult (ie too difficult for the mediocre teachers) and therefore they should take up easier subjects like accountancy, history, media studies, languages.  This is apparently rather a common trend across the developed world. 

In this context, it defies belief to hear Mary Coughlan, Ireland's half-witted Education & Skills Minister and Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) recently demand that universities and colleges accept school-leavers who have failed their “honours” (ie higher-level) mathematics examinations.  Her state-run school system is incapable of educating kids to pass the exams needed to get in to university, so her “solution” is simply to lower the bar.  Yup, according to her, that's the way to create the great engineers of the future.    Pass the problem of under-educated teenagers from the schools to the universities, just as the Catholic Church is roundly and rightly castigated for passing the problem of paedophile priests from one parish to another. 

Look again at those calculating Chinese six-year-old children.  With ministers like Ms Coughlan, does the West have any hope of staying ahead of the intellectual curve?

Late Note (18th May):

Graham in Perth (Oz) writes to say that
Australian schools have a similar problem to Ireland's
New course too hard to teach, screams a headline
in The West Australian newspaper. 

Teachers are too thick, it seems, to teach
a new national physics curriculum
to students in their last two years at school. 

The Ozzies can surely adopt Ms Coughlan's Irish solution
and simply call a fail a pass
and let the would-be scientists into university anyway.   

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Scandal! Counterfeit Hair Straighteners

Heard the one about the Navy rating who was court-martialed for possession of counterfeit hair-straighteners?  What about the sailor in trouble because he had a leak while on board?

Ah the old jokes, they're always the best ones; it's the way you tell 'em. 

What's that?  They're not jokes?  They're for real?  You must be joking. 

Able Seaman Eoin Gray served on the LÉ Orla, a proud Peacock coastal patrol vessel of the Irish Naval Service.  A month ago Mr Gray was court-martialed in Dublin's McKee Barracks because his eight hair-straighteners (yes, I know, today's sailors aren't what they used to be) are all counterfeit How appalling.  How scandalous.  How reassuring, therefore, to learn that there are upright naval officers like the presiding military judge, Colonel Anthony McCourt, to root out the cancer of counterfeit hair straighteners from the Irish Navy. 

Sure, there were a couple of unrelated trivial matters.  A/B Gray was also charged with a snort or two of cocaine and something about leaking of State ships at sea (then why are they at sea?).  But the hair straighteners are clearly the big one.  

If you think the scandal of counterfeit hair straighteners is of little consequence, tremble at the dire warning spelled out in Wales by the intrepid Department of Trading Standards within the Vale of Glamorgan Council:

Fakes ... are not only poorly made and short-lasting but are also very dangerous. Users run the risk of damaging their hair or even being injured from electric shocks or burns.

And in Australia, hair straighteners can get you killed (as columnist Mark Steyn helpfully points out).  So the Navy certainly knows its priorities - stick with the sailors' naturally curly hair. 

Hah! I'd like to see some dastardly foreign naval power try to mount a sea-borne invasion requiring them to take on the Irish Naval Service.  They might be encouraged by the leaks or the white powder. 

But one look at the undamaged naturally curly hair of its ferocious men-of-oak, and they'd soon turn tail.   

I once lost a pub quiz by just one point
back in the days before I knew about hair straighteners.

The question was where do women mostly have curly hair? 
Apparently, it's Africa

Hat tip: Dave Parker in Spain

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Bouncing Gore-Tex

Be careful who you lend your raincoat to ...

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Issue 205’s Comments to Cyberspace

While I've been lazy in recent weeks about blogging, I have still been harassing innocent publishers with my witterings online. 

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De Valera's Constitution continues to serve us well
Comment on an Irish Times article
This is a good article about the need to understand the Irish Constitution before criticising or trying to replace it. However, you could have added one incredible feature. Through this 1937 constitution, Ireland is Europe's oldest constitutional democracy, which in itself tells you that it is a pretty robust document, challenged in longevity only by America (1787). Just think about --- Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Spain ... 

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The Incredible Unlikelihood of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon Disaster
Comment on a post in blog called Debunk House
This was not a
freak accident and certainly far too difficult for it to have been driven by political opportunism.  There is already enough evidence in the public domain to demonstrate that it was clearly caused my serious mistakes.  How could gas have ever built up in the wellbore in an apparently sealed casing? ...

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Obama's Birth Certificate
Letter to the Irish Times on 6th May 2010
Scoffing at the belief of America's so-called “birthers” that Barack Obama has no right to be president because he “wasn’t born in the US”, Frank McDonald asserts that Mr Obama has both a birth certificate from Hawaii and a classified ad in a local paper.  The ad is true, but Mr Obama has only ever produced a computer-generated ...

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Should employers remove staff who are not performing their core job due to industrial action from the payroll?
Response in the Irish Times on 21st April to a poll question
No; of course striking and go-slow staff should not be removed or fired. That would be an abomination. In fact they should get a bonus and tax-break for bravely asserting their God-given human right to slack.  It is part of Ireland's rich cultural heritage to ...

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Partial Birth Abortion
Letter to the Economist
Lexington, in describing the pro-choice credentials of potential Supreme Court nominee Judge Diane Wood, takes the trouble to put within quotes the term
partial birth abortion, which she supports.  It would seem logical, therefore, to briefly enlighten your readers that these words refer to the killing of a live and perhaps viable foetus just before ...

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Do you support the introduction of a ban on hunting deer with packs of dogs?
Comment in the Irish Times in response to a poll question
The express objective of conventional huntin'-shootin'-fishin' is to kill the prey. Minister Gormley-the-Green thinks this is absolutely fine and has said he has no intention of disallowing it. Therefore, it is ridiculous to ban the hunting of deer with packs of dogs, as practiced in Ireland by the Ward Union hunt, when the express objective of such hunts is to NOT kill the prey ...

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Just so we're straightened out
Letter published by
columnist-to-the-world” Mark Steyn
If you think those counterfeit hair straighteners are of little consequence, tremble at the dire warning about them as spelled out by ... the Vale of Glamorgan Council: “Fakes ... are ... very dangerous ...

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Brian Lenihan is no tough guy P!
Letter published in the Irish Independent
So the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades told Finance Minister Brian Lenihan that members' pay of up to €146,000 was
way behind what was on offer in the private sector.  Mr Lenihan's response should have been curt and pointed: Make my day ...

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Do you think the car scrappage scheme has been a success?
Comment in the Irish Times in response to a poll question
The car scrappage scheme is a disgraceful bit of pandering by a corrupt government to one particular favoured industry (which you can be sure is reciprocating the favour to the government in its own way). If taxes are too high, they should be lowered for everyone ...

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‘Mr. Drumm, It’s Charlie Bird from RTE, Can I talk to you?’
Comment to Maman Poulet blogpost
It is extremely dangerous to walk up to someone's house in America because (a) it is quite possible - even probable - the owner has a gun and (b) it is perfectly OK for him to shoot a trespasser ...

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Quotes for Issue 205

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

Quote: That was a disaster. You should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? ... It’s Sue [Nye] I think. It's just ridiculous ... [Gillian Duffy]is just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour.  I  mean it's just ridiculous. I don't know why Sue brought her up towards me.”

Gordon Brown implodes Labour's re-election campaign,
following the mildest of discussions with a Labour voter. 

He had forgotten his TV mike was still switched on. 

The cause of his ire was that Mrs Duffy dared
to mention immigration as a problem. 

Labour of course has spectacularly and secretly
stage-managed mass immigration to Britain in the expectation
that every immigrant will vote Labour
and so help permanently destroy the Conservative party.

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

Quote: Show me the money.

Matthew Elderfield, Ireland's Finance Regulator,
throws down the gauntlet in having put into administration
Quinn Insurance, Ireland's largest indigenous insurer,
because it is insufficiently capitalised to meet claims. 

Sean Quinn the founder claims his company is healthy
but was unable to meet the Regulator's challenge. 

The tough Mr Elderfield was brought in from England
to replace the disgraced Patrick Neary,
who was fast asleep at the wheel throughout the years
leading up to the financial crash.

Quote: The current economic situation is pretty much testosterone driven.

Mary McAleese, Ireland's president, makes another loopy remark,
this time at a sisters' symposium on Women in Philanthropy
”. 

Her last one was the ludicrous assertion,
without a scrap of evidence from the people,
that Ireland “strongly supports” Turkey's admission to the EU.

Quote: The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all credibility.”

His Hairiness Rowan Williams, ArchMullah of Canterbury,
decides to have a go at a rival religion.

No, not Islam - he's all in favour of that
and as much Shariah law as he can get.

No, this rival religion is one that - you know -
actually believes in God and Jesus Christ
and the teachings of the latter
(even if members don't always follow them).

He later apologised.

- - - - - V A T I C A N   M A D N E S S - - - - -

Quote: The current violent and concentric attacks on the church and the Pontiff [over clerical sexual abuse of children] were reminiscent of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household,
digs an ever-deeper hole as he tries to defend Pope Benedict XVI.

With this kind of ridiculous drivel,
it is clear that the Vatican badly needs the services
of a skilled PR consultant, such as Max Clifford

- - - - - S O U T H   A F R I C A   M A D N E S S - - - - -

Quote: Get Security to remove this thingy ... Don't come here with that white tendency ... You are a small boy ... Bastard! ... You bloody agent!

Julius Malema, president of the ANC youth league,
throws BBC journalist Jonah Fisher out of a press conference,
accompanied by some robust racial and other epithets. 

Mr Malema is 29 years old, which is a stretch on the word youth

Worryingly, South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has described him
as a potential future president of the country.

- - - - - E U   M A D N E S S - - - - -

Quote: Travelling for tourism today is a right.

Antonio Tajani, the EU commissioner
for enterprise and industry lectures a group of ministers
at The European Tourism Stakeholders Conference in Madrid. 

He is piloting a programme whereby already beleaguered taxpayers
must subsidise, to the tune of 30%, foreign jaunts for
pensioners, teenagers, the crippled, the poor, the unhappy.

- - - - - U S A   M A D N E S S - - - - -

Quote (p8): Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”

US Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Barack Obama's nominee
for the Supreme Court, does her best,
in June 2009 before the self-same Supreme Court,
to destroy the First Amendment by saying that,
in effect, bureaucrats should decide what speech is to be free or not free.

Great.  A would-be Supreme Court Justice who wants to
destroy the American Constitution's very first amendment. 

Quote: When it comes to foreign policy, it looks increasingly like there are three pillars to the “Obama Doctrine” –

  1. (1) Apologize for America,

  2. (2) Abandon our allies, and

  3. (3) Appease our enemies.

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, spells out some grim truths
to a
Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. 

Her speech elicited some wonderfully incoherent rebuttals,
in the vein of F*ck off, Liz Cheney and
They don't come any nuttier than Liz (go f yourself) Cheney.

I've often remarked that the Left has to be more passionate
than the Right because there is no sense in what it advocates
 and it has no logical response to the Right's flights of reason. 

Quote: It is stupid for a country to treat old friends like belligerents and old belligerents like friends.

Professor Victor Davis Hansen, in reference to
Mr Obama's snubs and hostility to America's allies
Britain and Israel (he could have added Canada),
as compared to his cosying up to the autocratic rulers
of Russia, China, Iran, Venzuela among others. 

Quote: I can understand Obama being touchy on the subject of producing your papers.  Maybe he's afraid somebody's going to ask him for his.”

Radio host Rush Limbaugh finds a new way
to infuriate the president about his ongoing failure
to produce a
Certificate of Live Birth
proving he was born in the USA,
a constitutional requirement for the presidency.

He has made available only a computer-generated
Certification of Live Birth which even Hawaii,
though it issues such certificates,
does not accept as proof of birth in Hawaii.

Obama's Hawaiian “Certification of Live Birth”
Obama's Hawaiian
Certification of Live Birth
Click to enlarge
A Hawaiian “Certificate of Live Birth” in 1961, Obama's birth year
A Hawaiian

Certificate of Live Birth
in 1961, Obama's birth year
Click to enlarge

Quote: The start of spring: otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.”

Ex-president Bill Clinton, who signed the Kyoto Protocol
(knowing it would then promptly be defeated Senate, 99-0),
mocks his vice-president. 

It seems Mr Clinton has now joined us deniers. 

Quote:

Mr & Mrs Obama will be similarly exempt
from the US Congress's forthcoming 10% tax on sunbeds
because according to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi they are already, er, tanned.

Quote (Minute 1:16): My fear is that the whole island [of Guam] will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.

Hank Johnson, US Democratic Congressman for Georgia,
and member of the House Armed Services Committee,
shares with Admiral
Robert Willard, Commander of the Pacific Fleet,
his deep concern about the imminent upending of Guam
due to its small size and big population. 

The Admiral replies, with exquisite politeness and deference,
we don't anticipate that”.

Mr Johnson's laughable explanation confirms his raving lunacy,
The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference
to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern
about the impact of the planned military buildup
on this small tropical island
.
” 

Oh, and he issued the latter statement on April Fools Day.

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Product Details
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,

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part of a death march to Thailand,

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a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma railway (one man died for every sleeper laid),

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regularly beaten and tortured,

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racked by starvation, gaping ulcers and disease including cholera,

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a slave labourer stevedoring at Singapore’s docks,

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shipped to Japan in a stinking, closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men,

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torpedoed by the Americans and left drifting alone for five days before being picked up,

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a slave-labourer in Nagasaki until blessed liberation thanks to the Americans’ “Fat Boy” atomic bomb.

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
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.

+++++

Superfreakonomics
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:

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Drunk walking kills more people per kilometer than drunk driving.

bullet

People aren't really altruistic - they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds.

bullet

Child seats are a waste of money as they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts.

bullet

Though doctors have known for centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection, they still often fail to do so. 

bullet

Monkeys can be taught to use washers as cash to buy tit-bits - and even sex.

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.

++++++

False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World
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

bullet

Why does asparagus come from Peru?

bullet

Why are pandas so useless?

bullet

Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth?

bullet

Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine?

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:

bullet

Argentina protects its now largely foreign landowners (eg George Soros)

bullet

Russia its military-owned businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs

bullet

The US its cotton industry comprising only 1% of GDP and 2% of its workforce

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. 

+++++

Burmese Outpost, by Anthony Irwin
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.

+++++

Other books here

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