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TALLRITE BLOG 
ARCHIVE
This archive, organized into months, contains all issues prior to the current week and the three preceding weeks, which are published in 
the main Tallrite Blog (www.tallrite.com/blog.htm).  
The first issue appeared on Sunday 14th July 2002

ISSUE #75 - 25th April 2004 [134]

Realities on the Ground

George Bush shocked the world when he announced a couple of weeks ago that he supported Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank whilst consolidating Israel's grip on (annexing ?) other settlements in the West Bank.  Curiously, no-one expresses joy at the unilateral withdrawal yet everyone condemns the consolidation part.  

Hitherto, the accepted wisdom has been that Israel should retreat to approximately its 1967 borders in exchange for Arab guarantees for peace, as (unbindingly) demanded under UN Resolution 242.  

37 years later there are no such guarantees extant or on the horizon, therefore no such withdrawal.  As a consequence, Israel has felt free to build settlements on their captured land (which since the Palestinians have rejected every attempt to grant them their own state is technically not “Palestinian” but “disputed”), and many of the West Bank settlements have grown into substantial townships.  

Mr Bush justifies his imprimatur by saying he is simply recognizing “realities on the ground”.  It's been blindingly obvious to everyone for a very long time that Israel was never going to hand back the major settlements.  No more than it would allow the return into Israel of hundreds of thousands of refugees and their descendents, since this would create “realities on the ground” of a different nature by turning the Jews into a minority.  

As always, the world measures Israel using a different yardstick from everywhere else.  

So from a dispassionate viewpoint, it's hard to see why recognizing Israel's “realities on the ground” is any different.  

What it does do, of course, is pitch the Middle East issue at a different, more realistic level.  And makes plain that the longer the Palestinians fail to find an effective leader and fail to negotiate seriously, the less they're going to have to negotiate about.  Just listen to Yasser Arafat saying that the latest development “means clearly the complete end of the peace process”, as if his own pro-terrorist behaviour had not ended it the moment he stalked out of President Clinton's Camp David 2000 talks and launched the current intifada.  Israel has nothing to lose.  

I remember attending a negotiating skills course many years ago when we learnt that one technique to harry your opponent into reaching agreement is to progressively withdraw your previous concessions.  It doesn't make you popular but it can work.  

Having offered 94% of the land the Palestinians demanded in those Camp David talks, progressively withdrawing concessions is what Israel is now doing in acting on its “realities on the ground”.  

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Hunt Museum and Nazi Looting

The magnificent Hunt Museum in Limerick is one of Ireland's leading repositories of art.  

Gertrude, a German, and her Anglo-Irish husband John Hunt, an antiques dealer, moved to Ireland in 1940, in the case of Gertrude to escape the strictures of Nazi Germany. For the rest of the war, this gentile couple devoted a lot of effort from their new Irish home to helping Jews escape from Germany.  

After hostilities ended and for the remainder of their lives, they then set about assembling over two thousand antiquities and fine and decorative objects, including Picassos, Gauguins and a Leonardo da Vinci sculpture.  In due course they bequeathed their collection to the Irish nation, which resulted in the establishment of the Hunt Museum.  

In 2003, Ireland's president presented it with the Irish Museum of the Year Award.  

Then, out of the blue last February, the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal centre in Vienna issued a withering letter to the president of Ireland inferring - 

It proposed that all items be placed on the internet so that would-be claimants could lodge demands to get them back.  

And yet, the Wiesenthal centre has up to now provided not a shred of evidence to support its grave allegations in respect both of the character of the now deceased and thus defenceless Hunts and the provenance of their collection.  

The Irish Times scooped the story, and in such high esteem is the Wiesenthal centre held that it quickly spread across the world's print, TV, radio and internet media.  Little double-checking was done and in many cases the reports were embellished by references to Ireland’s war-time neutrality and to what accusers have called “the murkier aspects of (Ireland’s) relationship with Hitler’s Germany”. 

However, as Brian O'Connell, Chairman of Shannon Heritage which has responsibility for some of the exhibits, recently pointed out, every major museum in the world, including the National Gallery in London, has found looted art in its collections, even though it may have acquired such items in all good faith. Only when all items in a collection are properly archived, checked against databases of looted art and then put on line is it possible for any museum anywhere to assert an untainted provenance.   Few can.  

Viewed in this context, the Wiesenthal assault looks like nothing more than a scurrilous kite-flying exercise.  

Nevertheless, to defend its reputation, the Hunt Museum has felt obliged to launch a major independent inquiry by a distinguished panel comprising a Supreme Court judge, a Jewish international specialist on looted art and an antiquities expert from the British Museum.  It is in effect undertaking, at considerable cost, the research that the Wiesenthal centre should have done before launching its tirade.  

Do-good outfits often face a familiar dilemma.  Whether as a result of their own efforts or other factors, they sometimes find the problem they were created to solve diminishing or gone.  They are then faced with three choices : 

In a desperate attempt to keep the donations coming in whilst avoiding the unknown, too many opt for the latter and fall into disrepute.  Just think of how Greenpeace exaggerates global warming fears, Amnesty objected to Britain's use of its Iraq human rights abuse data to justify a war, charities befriend corrupt regimes, Human Rights Watch distort inconvenient data that shows human rights abuses are being successfully tackled.  

So it probably is with the Wiesenthal centre, which Simon Wiesenthal, now 96, set up in 1977 in order to hunt down Nazis, at which he has been heroically successful, Adolf Eichman having been his star prize.  

However there are very few Nazis left - they're dying out fast, as are their Jewish concentration camp victims.  So the centre is looking for fresh sources of outrage and thus donations.  Seeking redress for the (often wealthy) descendants of Jews whose art was looted by the Nazis is one.  In fact this is a line of business that could run and run.  

But it should really do its homework first.  

If the Hunt Museum's panel of experts gives the Museum a clean bill of health, it should launch a hefty lawsuit against the Wiesenthal centre for wanton defamation.  

Read the fascinating follow-up article here.

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Paramilitary Violence in Northern Ireland

What a great, ventilating document the British/Irish Independent Monitoring Commission produced on 20th April, innocuously titled “First Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission” (pdf, 195 kb, 55 pages), into paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland.  

Worth a hundred Google searches for the uninitiated, it first of all explains the origin and organization of the main paramilitary groups, their political wings and their alphabet soup, viz the 

It then reviews and compares paramilitary activities since 1998 by so-called “Loyalists” (the British could do without such loyalty) and “Republicans” (desiring no republic recognizable by any Irish democrat).  Whilst killings have decreased since the Good Friday Agreement, ferocious attacks have gone up, and in both cases the “Loyalists”  are twice as active as “Republicans”, however are much less intimate with political parties.  

And lest we be blinded by statistics or romantic notions of national liberation, the IMC also reminds us of the viciousness of assaults, eg - 

Political objectives of these groupings have largely taken second place to organized crime  (cigarette smuggling, drug dealing, robberies, extortion, illicit fuel, counterfeiting), which has become the main activity of the paramilitaries. It is enforced by the use and threat of violence, and earns enormous sums.  

It is chilling to read, for example, that “the PIRA is engaged in the use of serious violence”, that “the UVF and RHC are heavily engaged in major crime and in punishment attacks” and that both retain the capacity “for more widespread violence”.  

The IMC also claims that on the political front, leaders of the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party exert appreciable influence on the paramilitary UVF and RHC, while Sinn Féin leaders have even greater influence on PIRA decisions.  These parties are therefore held at least partly responsible for the criminality of their paramilitary protégés, and as a result somewhat modest financial penalties were imposed.  (You know the charges ring true by the volume of squealing from Sinn Féin leaders when the report was published and the fines announced).  

In all, the report is a towering indictment of the hypocrisy that surrounds paramilitary exponents and their apologists, all acting selflessly in the interests of the ignorant Irish masses north and south of the border.  

Well worth downloading the whole report.  The IMC plan a follow-up report in six months time.  

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Vectorial Elevation

You know how, ever since Mexico City pulled this stunt as part of its Millennium celebrations, you sometimes wake up in the morning just aching to design enormous light sculptures in the sky over a European capital city, using as your paint brushes a couple of dozen robotic searchlights beaming out 150 kilowatts of lumen ?

Help is now at hand for your chronic condition at www.dublinelevation.net.  

To celebrate the admission of ten new countries into the European Union during Ireland's presidency, it's laid on a free, do-it-yourself light sculpturing business, which it calls Vectorial Elevation.  What you design gets projected for fourteen seconds over the skies of Dublin, visible from fifteen kilometres away, and your efforts get acknowledged with a personal web page.  

The instructions for making your design are totally mystifying and you have no idea what you have produced, but this is probably all part of the cunning scheme.  

You can view my pathetic attempt at light-sculpture here.  See if you can do worse.  

But maybe it's better just to roll over and go back to sleep.  

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DG for the BBC

The timing was perfect.  

The DG is dead.  Long live the DG.  

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Quote of the Week  

Quote : “The PIRA remains active and in a high state of readiness, is engaged in the use of serious violence ... and possesses the range of necessary skills [for] much more widespread violence ...   

“... The UVF and RHC are ruthless and reasonably well controlled organisations, heavily engaged in major crime and in punishment attacks. They retain a capacity for more widespread violence in which they would not hesitate to engage if they judged the circumstances made it appropriate.” 

From the “First Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission” 
into paramilitary activities in the North of Ireland, 
under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement

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#74 - 18th April 2004 [202]

Right to be Right

If there is one universal term of derision propagated in much of the media and so-called liberal organizations, it is that someone is “right wing” as an explanation of all that is wrong with the person and the values he/she embraces.  The term conveys a sense of 

Broadly, a right-winger favours laissez-faire Capitalism and free markets, whereas a left-winger opts for Socialism and fair play.  

It's worth looking at these concepts a little more closely.  

Capitalism is about individuals free to use their skills and money to produce things that people want to buy in free markets, and enjoying the profits that this activity brings.  More profit goes to those who do this better, less to those who don't.  

Socialism is about ensuring, through central planning and control, that the available wealth is shared equitably among all, regardless of ability or effort.  

On a first reading, both sound reasonable and honourable, though clearly Capitalism produces losers whereas Socialism doesn't.  

Or does it ?  

Look around the world and where are the economic winners and losers ?  Without exception the winners are the entities, eg the US, Europe, Australia, Japan, that have adopted Capitalism, whilst those that have embraced Socialism always lose, most notably the Soviet Union, but also places such as Cuba, most of Africa, North Korea, Syria.  Remarkable for the effect of transition from Socialism to Capitalism is China, where an explosion of new-found wealth (60% growth in five years) is occurring in response to the introduction of a limited amount of Capitalism.  

It's when you ask why Capitalism always produces winners and Socialism losers that things become interesting.  

Capitalism is predicated on millions of individuals making countless free choices in a never ending quest to better themselves, and in general making good ones because they quickly learn that bad ones spawn bad results.  

It is a virtuous, wealth-generating circle that derives directly from individual freedom.  The sole reason that some people fare worse than others under Capitalism is that they happen to possess less ability and/or are less energetic, not that they are kept down by the actions of others. (This inability to blame others for your own shortcomings is a main reason left-wingers hate Capitalism.) 

In addition, the freedom to innovate and invest cannot fully prosper except in an ambience of free political choices, where free people may freely choose their own leaders.  Capitalism and democracy are thus inextricably intertwined around freedom.  

Socialism, on the other hand, is predicated on the decisions of the central planners, who decide how industry, employment and wealth are to be distributed.  They are few in number compared to the whole population, and are necessarily the authority in the land as otherwise their decisions cannot be enforced.  The populace on whom these decisions are imposed have no freedom to make different choices.  And since the central planners do not themselves usually suffer directly the effects of poor decisions (the hoi-polloi do), there is little incentive to improve on such decisions.  So you have a climate in which 

Moreover a repressive regime is essential not only to enforce the central decisions, but to suppress criticism and ideas lest they threaten the beleaguered but arrogant central planners as they slide into self-perpetuating incompetence, accountable to no-one but themselves.  

No wonder economies and peoples under the thumb of Socialism are the most miserable in the world, whilst the richest, healthiest and happiest live under Capitalism.  No wonder it is Capitalist countries that asylum-seekers and economic migrants seek.  

Left-wingers, or Socialists, favour massive State intervention with its inevitable inefficiency plus the crushing of personal liberties.  This has proven to be a truly wicked philosophy which found its true soul in the Soviet Union of Stalin and in Mao Tse Tung's China.  These two individuals'  death toll was some eighty million (Stalin 43m, Mao 30-40m).  

Right-wingers, or Capitalists, simply favour freedom to act for all coupled with free markets, with minimal State interference in people's pursuit of wealth and contentment.  

That's why it's wrong to be Left and right to be Right.  And why it's an honour not an insult to be labelled right-wing.  (And it's not for nothing that this is the Tallrite Blog.)

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A Tale of Two Islamist Peace Offers

Two peace offers from Islamists this past week.  

A tape by the (the late) Osama bin Laden, or should I say RoryBremner bin Laden, has Al Qaeda offering a truce with Europe if it stops “attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs”.  Undoubtedly this hope of troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan was encouraged by Spain's craven appeasement following the Madrid Massacre.  Yet how heartening that not a single European country has caved in.  

Even more heartening, in a sense, is the offer itself, for it shows that Coalition actions are hurting Al Qaeda, making it difficult for them to function, otherwise they wouldn't be offering concessions.  This defies those anti-warriors who proclaim that attacking terrorists just makes them stronger.  

Meanwhile the 30-year-old madman Moqtada al-Sadr, who has been leading a Shi'ite revolt against the Americans in Iraq, seems to have had a bitter taste of reality.  

He and his rag-tag Al Mahdi army gave the Americans a stiff fight in Faluja, but despite killing 70 Coalition soldiers, they suffered massive losses (700) of their own.   Mr al-Sadr retreated to Najaf in the belief the Yanks would not dare attack such a holy city, and from there issued blood-curdling warnings and brave statements of his eagerness to die a martyr's death.  But the Americans surrounded Najaf making it abundantly clear they have every intention of attacking in order to capture or kill Mr al-Sadr. (If they could take all of Iraq in three weeks, Najaf would be a matter of days, albeit with casualties.)  

At this point, the enigmatic Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's senior Shi'ite cleric, stepped in.  He was concerned at being upstaged by the upstart, but his real fear was that a widespread Shi'ite conflict with US forces might jeopardise the chances of the majority Shi'ites winning power in the new democratic Iraq.  It makes sense for Shi'ites to keep the Americans onside.  So he told Mr al-Sadr to behave himself.  

The result was that Mr al-Sadr, indicted for complicity in a murder a year ago, sent an envoy, Abdul Karim al-Anzi, to strike a deal with the Americans.  Surrender is a better word, for the message is that 

Political resolve plus military might plus moral authority.  A winning combination that might yet 

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The Passion, The Movie

Despite my reservations, I went to see Mel Gibson's “The Passion of the Christ” during Holy Week (ie the week before Easter).  

Overall, I found the movie to be a convincing representation of what the four Gospels portray (“It is as it was” as the Pope apparently remarked), but a few aspects struck me as odd.  

These childish constructs detract from the central story.  (Yet curiously, after Veronica wipes Jesus' face, the movie declines to depict his image appearing on the towel.)  

Notwithstanding these complaints, I found the film to be a very moving experience which deepened my sense of religion.  

And seeing what Jesus endured, willingly, for our sins, reminded me of the true meaning of martyr.  A martyr is someone who “voluntarily suffers death as the penalty for refusing to renounce [his/her] religion” (WordWeb dictionary).  It is a gross affront to bastardise the term to describe someone who commits suicide in order to slaughter other people.  

As for anti-Semitism, I detected none in the movie.  You certainly end up 

But the movie makes no inference at all that abhorrence for the Jews who participated in the death should mean odium for all Jews for ever more.  As indicated earlier, it was Saint Paul who falsely invented such a conclusion, disgracefully ignoring the eye-witness evidence of the Gospels.  

Moreover, if anyone should be hated through the ages, it is surely the Romans/Italians who didn't even have a proper reason for what they did.  What an irony, therefore, that the Vatican in the heart of Rome should today be the home of the Catholic Church.   

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Chernobyl Twenty Years On

What does Chernobyl look like today, two decades after its nuclear reactor blew up due to sloppy construction, operation, maintenance and management ?  

Well, a brave (reckless ?) Ukrainian biker has recently completed a freelance tour armed with little more than her leathers and a radiation counter.  Elena has created an intriguing online diary, arranged into 27 chapters, with many poignant pictures accompanied by brief, pithy commentary.  The Chernobyl disaster, with its malign effects that will continue to pollute an area the size of Britain plus Ireland for centuries to come, is yet another example of the evil that happens when Socialism is given free reign.  

See for yourself, and my thanks for the link to the Defiant Irishwoman, newly blogrolled on the right.  

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Graham's Sporting Week

I've added a new feature.  

Graham, a colleague in Abu Dhabi, has for some time been preparing a weekly review of the juicier sporting events around the world, and has agreed to let me publish it on this site.  This week's offering, for example, includes the Masters golf, Super 12 and Heineken Cup rugby, cricket in the Caribbean and Zimbabwe, and round-the-world yachting.  

Click here; I think you'll enjoy it.  It's also been added to my blogroll as “Graham's Sporting Week”.  If you like/dislike it, perhaps you'll add a comment below.  

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Winning Beer

His name is Beer, he loves boozing, he's Welsh, he's 27, he's a comedian, he works with children.  Oh and he's a poet.  

So what's a British, communist-style State-enforced State Monopoly, that extracts money from the poorest largely to subsidise the frivolities of the richest (eg opera fans) and zaniest (see below), to do ?

Simple really.  Give the poet £2,500 (equals one thousand pints of beer) to “go out and get wrecked”, to use his own, er poetic, phrase.  Apparently Karl Beer writes his best poetry in this besotted condition, and any change after paying for his beer will go towards poetry workshops for children in an effort to produce a book and CDs “for the community”.  

I'm not making this up.  This is one of the projects being supported by proceeds from Britain's national lottery.  

This is the same lottery that squandered £600 million on London's £1.5 billion Millennium Dome without the faintest idea what to do with it beyond throwing a Millennium Eve party.  So it sat idle for 2½ years before being given away free to an American in 2002.  (It's still idle and costing taxpayers £250,000 per month to maintain).  

Ah, those central planners (see Right to be Right above).  

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Quote of the Week

Quote : “The [Bush] administration's actions in Iraq [are] one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I've been in public life ... 

“... Right now, what I would do differently, is, I mean, look, I'm not the president and I didn't create this mess so I don't want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven't made.”

John Kerry, US Democratic Presidential challenger, 
decrying George Bush's actions in Iraq and 
explaining to CNN what he would be doing differently. 

Like all the anti-war brigade, 
he is incapable of coming up with plausible alternatives

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ISSUE #73 - 4th April 2004 [147+126 = 273 ]

Common Sense from Muslim Leaders

I have long argued that Muslims, unlike Christians with their hierarchies of pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, suffer from a serious lack of leadership structure.  As a result, we hear no loud and concerted refutation to the obscene claim that outrages such as 9/11, the Bali Bombing, the Madrid Massacre etc, are perpetrated in the supposed name of Islam.   From this silence, non-Muslims, and no doubt many Muslims, are left to conclude that this must indeed be the formal Islamic position.  This in turn has led to widespread feelings among non-Muslims that every Muslim they see in the street, other than their personal friends, is a potential terrorist not to be trusted.  Nothing can do more to divide society and alienate Muslims living in the West. 

It is therefore a great and welcome surprise that last week Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain wrote a letter (pdf file, 107 kb) to a thousand British mosques and Islamic organizations quoting the Koran, 

"He who killed any person, unless it be a person guilty of manslaughter, or of spreading chaos in the land, should be looked upon as though he had slain all mankind, and he who saved one life should be regarded as though he had saved the lives of all mankind."(5:32),

and urging them to remind their flocks that it is their Islamic duty

Tony Blair was spot-on when he said the council’s unprecedented letter made clear to Muslims (and the rest of us) that terrorism had “nothing to do with the true message of Islam”.  (At least I hope he was.  Some have doubts.)

The Muslim Council of Britain is, fortunately, not the only Islamic voice of reason that is beginning to be heard.  (Though not by everyone - in London militant Muslims publicly ripped up copies of the letter.

Meanwhile, however, Ahmed Nassef, editor of Muslim WakeUp! in California rejects Hamas’ violence and urges that Palestinians not launch a new wave of terror in the wake of Sheikh Yassin’s assassination.   This is not through pacifism but because