| |
Unpublished
and Published [P!]
Letters to the
Press and Cybercomments, during 2011 |
For
letters and cybercomments in other years,
click on
2006
or
2007 or
2008 or
2009 or
2010 or
2012 or
2013 |
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
To Top of index |
December 2011 |
Technocratic, unelected governments are the ideal
Online comment (p1) on 28th December to an Irish Times article by
columnist and broadcaster Vincent Browne+
“I have come to believe
technocratic, unelected governments are the ideal.”
+
“The purpose of politics [is]
to make a reality of equality or substantive equality – equality of
outcomes.”
Vintage Vincent! Vintage socialism! Keep the Red Flag
flying high. The people must not be trusted. Everyone must have an equal
outcome regardless of effort or ability or entrepreneurship. No-one is
entitled to his own property if it is more than someone else's.
As failed Communist regimes across the world have shown,
individuals beg to differ and therefore these Utopian conditions cannot be
met without a brutal police state to enforce them (Cuba anyone?).
Damn that Thatcher and Reagan for fostering growth and
wealth. And why oh why did the the world's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il leave us
so precipitously, shorn of a Vincentian role model? Sob.
Reply from
Conor Burke
@ Tony Allwright, your concept of what socialism is,
is as flawed as your logic that Regan and Tatcherite neo-liberal
policies have some how brought growth and wealth , take a look around,
this is the inevitable consequence of the wealth inequality that those
policies have fostered . since the 70s the gap between rich and poor has
increased dramatically decade upon decade , and what happens when wealth
inequality reaches a certain level , Capitalism collapses and can only
be saved by the sacrifice of the working class , Socialism makes the
argument that why should those who's labour is exploited by capitalism
for the profits of the few save a system that treats them so . Socialism
at it core is about democratic control of the means of wealth creation
for the needs of the mass of the people and not the profit of a small
elite.
Reply from Frank Jameson
Can't see how you think Reagan and Thatcher were
socialists.
[No, I don't know what this means, either!}
Reply from
Michael O'Byrne
Who had the wealth, TonyAllwright? The Thatcher and
Reagan era's have been classified were dominated by the philosophy of
greed and the self-gratification of the individual. But as a former
sympathizer toward socialism and communism - an admirer of the supposed
" workers' paradise " of the Soviet Union and the other communist
dictatorships of Eastern Europe and the continuing autocratic rule in
Cuba - I acknowledge that there was nothing valuable achieved by any of
them. Quite the contrary was the result in humanitarian terms. But
unfettered capitalism does not have the answer either. The dogma shared
by Thatcher and Reagan appealed to the baser instincts of human nature -
the very same dishonourable and discredited doctrine embraced by the
PD's and their non-member Charlie McCreevy and embraced by the Fianna
Fail-led governments we had to endure from 1997 to 2011. The fervent
disciples of that unChristian gospel - the bankers, builders and others
- embraced it gleefully as it gave them the freedom to run riot in a
regulation free financial environment. However the result from which the
great majority now suffer are the smouldering ruins of the Irish economy
and the loss of Irish sovereignty - now we are subject to the diktats of
Germany and the unelected officials of the EU. How responsible are the
former citizens of the once independent Irish Republic and now as mere
natives of the EU province of Ireland and subjects of the German
dominated EU for the situation in which they find themselves? I would
think they must accept a great degree of the blame since they didn't
recall the famous maxim, " If it sounds to good to be true then in all
probability it is to good to be true "
To Top of index |
Charities need regulation to maintain public's trust
Online comment (p1) on 22nd December to an Irish Times article by
Patricia Quinn, CEO of chief executive of
Irish
Nonprofits Knowledge ExchangeNo-one has a
clue, really, about how well charities are run. Yes, we know how they
collect money, but how do they spend it? Do they have procurement policies?
Do they acquire goods and services via open tender that ensure only the
lowest bidders get their business? I have no idea. Their lack of scrutiny by
either shareholders or government is unique to the charity sector. It is
therefore, inconceivable, that without such gimlet-eyed oversight by third
parties they will ensure they always get best value for their contributors'
money. Such ongoing self-imposed discipline is beyond the capability of
ordinary human beings. This is a major flaw in the charity sector.
To Top of index |
It's a funny old game when it comes to corruption
Online comment (p1) on 15th
December to an Irish Times article by David Adams about football
refereesThe huge discrepancy between wages paid
to players vs referees helps explain the intimidation of refs by players
that you so often see when there is an unpopular decision. Not only does the
ref put up with it, without for example upgrading from a yellow card to a
red card, but he knows that he - a cash nobody - will not be supported by
the FA against an expensive crowd-pulling player like Messi.
This is the real corruption: players because of their star
status influencing decisions by underpaid referees.
To Top of index |
Free Speech and BNP Leader
Invitation
Letter to the Irish Times on December 5th)Sir, /
How ironic and pathetic that
“Trinity Against Fascism”
and its supporters should favour the Fascist ploy of banning speech they
happen to dislike (BNP
leader invitation, Letters, December 5th). The world's oldest (328 years
and counting) debating society and a bastion of free speech, the TCD
Philosophical Society, had invited the British National Party's Nick Griffin
to speak at a debate on immigration last October. But at the last minute he
was banned because people such as those in TAF don't approve of what he says
(“England
for the English”
etc).
Free speech is pointless UNLESS it applies to people you
disagree with or dislike or are offended by. Anyone - even the most fiery
mullahs of Iran and Saudi Arabia - can agree with free speech so long as it
conforms to the current orthodoxy, evidently the TAF position. / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
November 2011 |
Preparing for the
budget
Letter to the Irish Times on 27th November
Sir, / Your correspondent Liam O'Mahony of ILP,
presenting some imaginative ways to reduce the deficit to "€9
billion or €10 billion", concludes "problem solved" (Preparing
for the budget, Letters, November 25th). Would that were so. The
Government tells us that the deficit has been
around €20 billion for the past two years. So both his plan and the
Government's own paltry austerity budget of €3.9 billion will still
disgracefully add an eleven-figure sum to the existing debt of
€117 billion to be settled by today's innocent children and the yet
unborn/unconceived.
This should make young people demand more austerity
not less. / Yours etc,
To Top of index
|
No escaping fact that rich continue to get richer
Online comment (p3) on 17th
November to an Irish Times article by Vincent Browne about wealth
disparity
Vincent, you perpetually make two heroic assumptions, and
this article is no exception - + That it is instrinsically wrong that some
people are extremely wealthy + That "inequality" is intrinisically wrong.
Neither stands up to any dispassionate rational scrutiny.
They are impulses grounded solely on prejudice, emotion and envy, seasoned
with economic zero-sum illiteracy. If you earn an extra €100 it does not
follow that someone else has had to lose that €100.
Were you to say "poverty" is wrong, and defined "poverty"
as having little or no money and few or no material possessions and not
being able to feed, clothe or house your family, then I would agree with
you. But there is none of that in Ireland. No-one goes hungry or naked, and
social housing (albeit often of poor quality) is available for all who ask
for it. Even homeless people on the street can avail of hostels. The
individual, not society, is responsible for raising his/her own standard of
living.
But you always talk about "relative poverty" which is,
frankly, an oxymoron and an irrelevance.
To Top of index |
Just try imagining there was no EU
Online comment (p2) on 15th
November to an Irish Times article by Fintan O'Toole about the €uro
crisis
Fintan, your analysis of the two undo-able options being
mooted is spot on. But your "solution" boils down to more spending.
Yet spending is what the problem has been all along, as in
spending more than you take in. The only solution, long term, is to stop
spending, to stop loading ever larger lifetime debts on the yet unborn. It
is wicked, morally repugnant behaviour, in effect a vicious form of child
abuse, which current generations are perpetrating.
Yet no-one, and certainly no politician, wants to articulate
the basic truth that we must simply stop spending. Tough? Of course. But
tough on the current generation who are the cause of the crisis, instead of
being tough on the innocent future generations.
To Top of index |
Notes not the answer
[P!]
Letter
published in the Sunday Times
on 6th November
(available online but behind firewall)
Economist Matt Cooper writes "the
EU must dismiss fears of inflation and follow the example of Britain and
America by printing more money" ("It's payback time, at least for some of
us", Comment, 30 Oct 2011).
What has he been taking? Inflation is the inevitable
result of printing more money, because it automatically devalues existing
money, thus requiring more of it to buy the same stuff. It's why Britain and
America are both in its grip. But Governments like printing money, because
it inflates away their debts, at the cost of every citizen's income and
savings. Let's not encourage them in such
confiscatory folly.
To Top of index |
October 2011 |
Race for the Áras
Letter to the Irish Times on 25th October |
From Tony Allwright |
From Bernadette Edgeworth |
Sir, Bernadette Edgeworth lists six reasons why Sean
Gallagher
“has none of the qualities necessary to become the president of
this country”
(Letters,
Oct 25th, see right). As distinct from ... |
Sir, – Facts about Sean Gallagher: |
1. A participant, actually a leader, in a real, dirty war.
|
1. A participant in a reality TV show. |
2. A member, actually a leader, of a terrorist organization
that was responsible for the majority of 3,000 needless sectarian murders
(and also countless bullets in knees). |
2. A member of a political party at a time when that party
brought the country to its knees. |
3. A man who never founded any legitimate business nor met a
payroll, but fostered countless criminal businesses about which we have very
little information. |
3. A man who founded many businesses about which we have
very little information. |
4. A man whose innocent, smiling face features on countless
lampposts. |
4. A man who says he put up no posters, yet his face
features on many posters on rubbish bins! |
5. A man who has not at any time served the people of this
country, indeed has apparently allowed them to be killed them in large
numbers. |
5. A man who has not at any time served the people of this
country. |
6. A man who has experience in State affairs, but only in a
foreign jurisdiction within a legislature deliberately rigged to ensure his
sectarian party cannot be ejected by voters. |
6. A man who has no experience whatsoever in State
affairs. |
Such a person has, according to some, all the qualities
necessary to become the president of this country. |
Seán Gallagher has none of the qualities necessary to
become the president of this country. |
Hydraulic Fracturing [P!]
Letter
published in the Sunday Times on 9th October
(available online but behind firewall)Many
misunderstanding surrounds the technique of hydraulic fracturing that you
discuss ("Explosive argument", Comment, p16, 2nd October).
Fraccing (to use the oil industry's spelling) is by no
means a new technology - it's been around for half a century. It is
simply a matter of pumping fluid
(usually water) down a borehole and
into rock formation at sufficiently high
pressure to cause it to fracture open and increase the paths
by which oil and gas can
reach the borehole. Material such as
Sand (known as proppant)
is often also pumped in
order to keep prop up the
fractures and keep them
open. Chemicals can be used to reduce friction;
or help suspend the proppant in the fluid when being pumped.
no explosives are ever involved.
To suggest that this technique can pollute ground water,
affect building foundations or cause other environmental damage is way off
the mark.
To clarify,
Aquifers occur are found
at depths of a hundred or so
metres at most. The shales in Letrim that would be fracced are at 1500
metres, so there's more than a kilometre
of solid rock between them. With standard well-engineering practice, there
is no way that anything done to gas-bearing shales at 1500 metres can have
any effect whatsoever on aquifers, foundations, flora or fauna. Moreover,
wells drilled horizontally means wellheads can be clustered within a few
small unobtrusive pads.
Nevertheless, experience with Corrib, where objections
have tripled costs and tripled the
delivery time, show that Ireland presents one of the world's politically
riskiest climates for oil and gas investments. So fraccing in Leitrim,
already gathering protests, will probably never go ahead. Indeed,
with prospects in Iraq, Africa and other hotspots offering less political
risk, it will probably be a generation before anyone dares make serious O&G
investments in this country again.
Full disclosure: I worked for
Shell for thirty years.
Note: The above shows deletions from the original
text
by the Sunday Times letters editor
To Top of index |
August 2011 |
Ignorance about
Hydraulic Fracturing in Leitrim
Letter sent to the Irish Times on 27th August
Sir, / Last week RTE ran a crazy
Prime Time discussion [as from minute 15] about producing gas in
Leitrim by hydraulically fracturing shale, crazy because it involved three
spokespersons whose grasp of the technology was clearly very shaky (to be
polite).
A representative from
“No
Fracking Ireland”
pushed the idea that fraccing (to spell it correctly) would cause
environmental damage and introduce pollutants and flammable gas into the
water supply. She was appalled to then hear that the energy company Tamboran
Resources would not be pumping toxic fluids. For their part, it was clear
that the two Tamboran spokesmen had very little technical grasp of what they
proposed to do in Leitrim, and moreover that fraccing has been around for
over 50 years. With people like this speaking out, no wonder ignorance of
fraccing is widespread, as is evidenced by, for example, Deirdre Lillis's
letter of 27th August (“Energy
for the future”).
To clarify, acquifers are found at depths of a hundred or
so metres at most. The Leitrim shales that would be fracced are at 1500
metres, so there's more than a kilometre of solid rock between them. With
standard well-engineering practice, there is no way that anything done to
gas-bearing shales at 1500 metres can have any effect whatsoever on aquifers
or indeed house foundations. No-one made this utterly obvious point, which
destroys all rational objections. Moreover, wells drilled horizontally means
wellheads can be clustered within a few small unobtrusive pads. / Yours etc
To Top of index |
'Botox Bob' dilemma for men of a certain age
Online comment (p3) on 26th
August to a tongue-in-cheek Irish Times article by Brian Boyd about men's
tribulations over ageing
This is a great article, very entertaining, especially
because of all the whining comments it elicited - 10 out of 13 [so far]!
Whingers - you sound more ridiculous than you accuse Mr
Boyd of being. To quote one of you (that means you Ted Sheehy), just
“grow up”. There,
that's an eleventh moan.
To Top of index |
More power to us if we choose nuclear option
Online comment (p1) on 25th
August to an Irish Times article by environmentalist John Gibbons advocating
nuclear powerGood to see you back in the Irish
Times, John, if only for the rich pickings you provide! This time it's your
statement that
“On the other hand, at least three million people will die this year as a
result of air pollution. That’s more than 8,000 people every day. The
principal source is airborne particulates arising from the widescale mining
and burning of fossil fuels. It blights the lives of the tens of millions
more who live with chronic respiratory disorders from breathing polluted
air.”
First, such a preposterous statistic - 3m dead - needs to be sourced.
Secondly, even if true (!), it is meaningless unless offset by the untold
improvement to people's lives and longevity arising since the industrial
revolution from the use of fossil fuels. Take away fossil fuels and that 3m
figure would rapidly become not an annual figure but more likely a weekly
one.
That said, I agree with your overall thesis - nuclear energy should be
embraced not shunned. Provided it is economic and the economics take into
account waste disposal and eventual decommissioning.
And, of course, not a cent of (non-existent) public money should go into it.
If the economics stand up, the private investors will come. But the state
must guarantee a nuclear-investment-friendly environment, which Corrib
(three times over budget and over time due to protests) has shown to be
absent for fossil fuel investments.
David Healy writes:
Tony Allwright says "such a preposterous statistic - 3m dead - needs to
be sourced." The enormous global mortality due to air pollution has been
recognised for many years. Here's a recent estimate (quite a bit more
than 3million/yr):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944076/
To Top of index |
Legal system provides no guarantee of justice
Online comment (p2) on 22nd
August to an Irish Times article by Michael Casey, in IMF board member,
excoriating the Irish judicial systemAn
excellent and shocking analysis.
But the author is completely misguided when he complains
about
“all the trappings of a
royal court – wigs, gowns, prayer bands, tipstaffs, being ordered to stand
when a judge enters a room. These symbols have no place in a republic; they
represent privilege rather than justice”.
These so-called
“trappings”
etc represent Ireland's continuous legal inheritance and tradition dating
back 800 years to Magna Carta, one that is honourably shared by the
Anglophone world from England to America to Australia to South Africa to
Nigeria to Jamaica. These trappings signify the supremacy of the people over
the ruling elite, not the other way round as in the days of King John before
he was forced to sign the charter in 1215.
We tamper with them at our peril.
To Top of index |
Let's make Norway joint owner of our oil and gas
Online comment (p7) on 17th
August to an Irish Times article by Fintan O'Toole proposing giving 50% of
Ireland's (non-existent) oil to NorwayThis
article is unbelievably infantile! Firstly, Ireland does not have
“reserves of 6.5 billion
barrels of oil and 20 trillion cubic feet of gas off the western seaboard”.
This is just a wild futuristic guestimate of what might be there in the
rosiest of scenarios.
“Reserves”
is a term meaning the oil/gas has already been PROVEN to be present and to
be ECONOMICALLY EXTRACTABLE at current prices and using current technology.
It is interesting that Mr O'Toole compares Ireland's
licensing conditions to Cameroon's.
Ireland's terms may be generous compared to other
countries, but consider this. Corrib will have taken 12 years to develop
instead of four, and cost €2.4 billion instead of €0.8 billion. In other
words the time and cost have TREBLED not because of problems with technology
or finance, but solely because of local difficulties. In the business this
is known as
“political”
risk, akin to the risk of war, regime-change, expropriation
etc which we might expect in developing world economies such as Cameroon's.
Future would-be investors in Ireland's oil and gas are not
stupid and will have studied Corrib. They will have to factor in a political
risk premium of 200% in an already highly dubious geological environment and
technical conditions offshore which are among the most demanding in the
world. There are plenty of less financially scary oil and gas investment
opportunities than those in Ireland, such as in Iraq, Libya, Russia,
Cameroon, so why does he think Norway would be interested in 50%? No wonder
Ireland has to offer easy terms.
If Mr O'Toole doesn't like this situation, perhaps he
should talk to
“Shell
to Sea”
and its many friends in the media and elsewhere.
To Top of index |
The end is nigh and it's all because of single mothers
Online comments (p3) on 15th
August to an Irish Times article by Anne Marie Hourihane about mass lootings
in EnglandMs Hourihane, your hysterical
diatribe in defence of single motherhood is in fact deeply misguided. No
serious commentator is criticising single mothers per se. The issue is the
absence of fathers and the seriously deleterious effect of this on children
raised in family arrangements other than that of the biological married
parents - see overwhelming evidence at
http://www.tinyurl.ie/oq.
Do you hate children? I ask because your article seems to rejoice in the
fact that so many children lack their fathers, as if in your opinion fathers
(and there will be tens of thousands who read your piece) are totally
irrelevant to their children's wellbeing.
Above deleted by moderator. This toned-down
depersonalised version was published:
No serious commentator is criticising single mothers
per se. The issue is the absence of fathers and the seriously
deleterious effect of this, in general, on children raised in family
arrangements other than that of the biological married parents - see
overwhelming evidence at
http://www.tinyurl.ie/oq.
Oblivious to the wellbeing of children, this article seems to rejoice in
the fact that so many kids lack their dads and the view that fathers
(and tens of thousands of them will have read it) are irrelevant to
their children's wellbeing.
To Top of index |
“Merely a study document”
Letter to The Economist on 9th August
Sir, / You wrongly and misleadingly say that the Vatican
dismissed child-protection procedures set up by Irish bishops in 1996 as “merely
a study document” (Church
and state, July 30th 2011). The actual letter of 31st January 1997 from
the Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland where this phrase appeared (http://tinyurl.ie/merely)
is clear. The phrase in fact refers to the letter itself and the letter
specifically declares that it is “not an official document of the
Episcopal Conference”. / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
July 2011 |
Why is Vatican so miffed at reaction to Cloyne report?
Online comment (p4+) to an Irish Times article by its religious affairs
correspondent Patsy McGarry. But censored
out by the Moderator (perhaps due to too much honesty in using the word “dishonest”!)You are dishonest,
Mr McGarry.
You allege that Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who was
responsible for the 1997 letter to the Irish bishops, dismissed their 1996
Framework Document as “merely a study document”. Had you
bothered to actually read that 1997 Vatican letter you would have learnt
that the phrase
“merely a study document”
in fact referred to the letter itself and that the letter specifically
declared that it was
“not an official document of the
Episcopal Conference”. See
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01133/Vatican_letter_1133661a.JPG
If you don't get your facts right you do your
anti-clericalism no service.
To Top of index |
Vatican did not try to obstruct abuse inquiry
Online comments (p5) on 25th
July to two an Irish Times article by Breda O'Brien
It's worth reading the Vatican's actual 1997 letter which Mr
Kenny disparages, not least for its gobbledook nature -
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01133/Vatican_letter_1133661a.JPG
Somebody should really teach those Vatican guys to write
proper, simple English. Their convoluted phraseology makes them their own
worst enemy.
However the one clause that stands out in terms of its
uncharacteristic clarity, is also fundamental: "The above-mentioned text is
not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study
document". This makes the Taoiseach's attack on the letter look rather
silly.
To Top of index |
Tackle Shatter on male circumcision P!
Letter published in the Irish Independent on 21st July
Kevin Myers points out that a Jewish Minister for Justice may
introduce a state law governing private Catholic sacramental practices such
as the seal of the Catholic confessional, and contrasts this with Rabbinical
circumcision [“There's
never been a safer time for children”,
Opinion, July 19, 2011].
What radio or TV interviewer will now be brave enough to
follow up this article by asking Minister Alan Shatter his views and
intentions concerning such religion-based male genital mutilation in the
context of child-protection? So far, no-one.
To Top of index |
Human
Harvest P!
Letter published by the Sunday Times (subscription only) on 17th July
Brenda Powers refers to the book
“Never
Let Me Go”
by Kazuo Ishiguro and says that
“in his world, human clones
are crops to be harvested for their organs”(“With
organ donors and transplants, there's not
time for euphemisms”, Comment, last week).
Powers goes on to say that this is
“far-fetched stuff”.
Would that it were. The Chinese communist has
engaged in the systematic harvesting of organs including of Falun Gong
practitioners. They are the only prisoners who are given a medical
examination upon arrest apparently for tissue matching purposes.
Details are available on the
Tallrite Blog here.
To Top of index |
Palestinian push for state
status
Letter to the Irish Press on 15th JulySir, / The
alphabetically endowed Brian Dineen BCL (Int) III asks "Must history
repeat the same mistakes? The best solution to the current impasse is the
recognition of a provisional border along 1967 lines" (Letters,
July 15th).
Actually, the best solution is for the Palestinians simply
to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. This has been
the sole obstacle to peace in the area for the past hundred years.
Yours etc, Tony Allwright BE MEngSc MEI SPE I
To Top of index |
Anti-Murdoch Harangue
Unpublished letter to the Irish Times on 13th July 2011;
inserted instead as an online comment (on p2) on 14th JulySir, /
Columnist Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe begins his piece by telling us
that he used to work for Rupert Murdoch, then follows with an entertaining
800-word anti-Murdoch harangue laden with hysterical epithets (“Murdoch's
US interests vulnerable to UK woes”, Opinion, July 13th).
Murdoch’s output is variously described as a “sickening
stench”, “sleaze”, “slime”. His staff are “hyenas”
(who curiously “bleat”) and “peripatetic bosses with English and
Australian accents” (which can sound both sexist and racist).
As for Murdoch himself, he is apparently “a tax-dodging
foreigner” with a “reptilian smirk”, and is likened to the late “Slobodan
Milosevic” who was indicted for genocide and war-crimes.
Of course everyone enjoys playing the man rather than the
ball, but with such venom you have to ask about the circumstances in which
the Murdoch empire and Mr Cullen parted company.
Anyway, I can only assume the Irish Times libel lawyers
went through the article carefully before publication! / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
June 2011 |
Mission aims to loosen illegal grip on world's largest open-air prison
Online comments (p2) on 30th
June to two opposing Irish Times contributions by Mick Wallace (for the Gaza
flotilla) and Richard Humphreys (against it).In
any case, the argument may be moot. Israel seems to be having enormous
success with a campaign of "Lawfare" against the latest flotilla,
orchestrated by the legal firm Shurat haDin. Already, the number of boats
has been whittled down from 15 to 10, and activists from 1500 to 350.
An Irishman is one of 14 such activists against whom two
Israeli soldiers are bringing a private prosecution in connection with the
2010 flotilla, which seems to be having a chilling effect.
Surely everyone who was outraged at last year's deaths on
the Mavi Mara should applaud this year's non-violent method of resisting the
flotilla.
Details at
http://melaniephillips.com/the-flotilla-and-the-third-intifada
This second comment the
“moderator”
refused to publish - he/she deleted it no fewer than THREE times. I can't
see why.
People may be interested to know that Richard
Humphreys is an ardent supporter of human rights in the wide sense, as
his piece clearly demonstrates. Mick Wallace merely re-iterates the
boilerplate anti-Israel claptrap that is the dogma of today's Left and
indeed much of the Right (much of it apparent in this thread).
You will, however, rarely find an Irish politician
prepared to openly defend Israel's right to resist its own
extermination.
Have a look at what Mr Humphreys says, starting at
Minute 1, at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882aK1LPkT4
To Top of index |
Golfer drives home the message of social justice
Online comment (p3) on 22nd June to an Irish Times article by Vincent Brown, in which he
hijacks Rory McIlroy's phenomenal success in winning the US Open to drive
home a raw socialist message.Great to see Vin
the Red back to his fighting best. Up the Revolution!
To Top of index |
Relieving Gaza
“Siege”
Letter to the Irish Times on 3rd June
Fintan Lane of
“Irish
Ship to Gaza”
says the objective of his colleagues and him is
“to non-violently break the
siege of Gaza and to deliver much-needed materials that are banned or
heavily restricted by Israel to the ordinary people there”
(Controversial
Gaza flotilla, Letters, June 3rd).
Then why not, at much lower cost thus freeing up more
money for aid, simply waltz through the Rafah border with Egypt, which the
new Egyptian regime has kindly
opened,
permanently? Moreover, with this border open there is, inconveniently,
no siege anyway.
This letter
was not published, in favour of a
wittier one making essentially the same point:
“Now the
Egyptians have opened the border to Gaza why carry on with this Gaza
Flotilla nonsense? If Mr Lane wants to shop in the newest mall in
Gaza he can fly to Cairo first and then get a bus.”
To Top of index |
Political stunts not the way to end Gaza conflict
Online comment (p4) on 1st
June to an Irish Times article by Ruth Zakh, deputy ambassador at Ireland's
Israeli embassy
David Smith and others say that the Jews have no right to be in Israel,
though they have lived there continuously for at least 3,000 years.
|
The Jews got it (via UN Mandate) from the British in 1948, |
|
who took it in 1917 from the Ottomans, |
|
who took it in 1517 from the Egypt-based Mamluks, |
|
who in 1250 took it from the Ayyubi dynasty (descendants of Saladin, a
Kurd ), |
|
who in 1187 took it from the Crusaders, |
|
who in 1099 took it from the Seljuk Turks, |
|
who ruled it in the name of the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, |
|
which in 750 took it from the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, |
|
which in 661 inherited it from the Arabs of Arabia, |
|
who in 638 took it from the Byzantines, |
|
who in 395 inherited it from the Romans, |
|
who in 63 BC took it from the last Jewish kingdom, |
|
which in 140 BC took it from the Hellenistic Greeks, |
|
who under Alexander the Great in 333 BC took it from the Persian empire,
|
|
which in 639 BC took it from the Babylonian empire, |
|
which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC took it from the Jews (the Kingdom
of Judah), |
|
who - as Israelites - took it in the 12th and 13th centuries BC from the
Canaanites, |
|
who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were
dispossessed by the Israelites. |
There is no evidence that today's Arab Palestinians are descended from the
Canaanites who were completely wiped out in ancient times. Arabs come from
Arabia, an entirely separate area.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11607
To Top of index |
May 2011 |
Flotilla aims to turn tide on Israel's Gaza policies
Online comments (p2 and 4) on 31st
May to an Irish Times article by Claudia Saba, Palestinian spokeswoman for
Irish Ship to Gaza–
Ms Saba writes:
“Describing the myriad
harassments to which the Palestinian population is exposed – be they bombs,
hostile checkpoints or imprisonment – sounds like something out of a Kafka
novel; it is almost too sordid to be real. It is exhausting to keep up with
a seemingly never-ending conflict. The unfortunate reality is that the
plight of the Palestinians is a dramatic one. It is a history of military
occupation, statelessness, extrajudicial killings, detention without trial
and law-enshrined discrimination.”
Well if you as a Palestinian don't like what Hamas and
Fatah are doing to Palestinians, stop voting them in. As long as you support
them, they will continue to oppress you. And when necessary throw you off
the tops of tall buildings.
Raymond Deane: It was to be expected that the usual Israel-firsters
would clock in to spill their bile about Ms Saba's tremendous article.
Tony Allwright, as usual, is all wrong: "stop voting them in (i.e. Hamas
or Fatah) and they won't oppress you." So the oppression is NOT caused
by the Israeli occupation, and Palestinians supposedly live in a polity
where oppression can be imposed or deposed depending on whom they vote
for - although if they could vote for Allah himself, they would STILL be
under the jackboot of Israeli occupation.
Similarly, various people talk about what "both sides"
must do, as though we were dealing with two equal opponents. Nonsense!
This is a brutal, belligerent occupation in which one side is above the
law and the other apparently beneath it.
As for qwerty51, the fact that Egypt has partly opened
its border to some Gazans will undoubtedly make some difference, but
makes NONE WHATSOEVER to the fact that an illegal maritime blockade is
still in force, and essential construction materials to enable the
Gazans to rebuild homes smashed during Israel's criminal "Cast Lead"
massacre STILL cannot be legally imported.
Tony: For once I agree with Raymond
Deane when he (albeit sarcastically) declares that "the oppression is
NOT caused by the Israeli occupation".
He's got it in one. Palestinian misery is entirely the
result of the actions of their leaders. For 63 years their leaders and
the rest of the Arab world have waged non-stop hot, tepid and cold war
on Israel with the singular objective of eliminating it. All the misery
of the Palestinians is the direct result of this and nothing else.
It would stop tomorrow if the aggressor (yes, the Arabs) stopped
aggressing and accepted the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
I would challenge even Mr Deane to declare such an
acceptance. I bet he won't dare.
To Top of index |
Argentina's 2001 Default: 'I lost my job and my wife left
me taking our son . . . the crash cost me my family'
Online comment
(p2) on 16th May to an Irish Times article
The main message from this Argentina story is to get your
money out now from any bank with the word
“Irish”
or
“Ireland”
in its name. Send it abroad, put it under the mattress, buy gold; it doesn't
matter. Just don't leave it where the State can grab or freeze it. The State
has already made a grab for private pension funds; don't think it will stop
there.
To Top of index |
Need to protect Muslims in Ireland from extremism
Online comment (p2) on 8th May to an Irish Times article by
Sheikh Umar al-Qadri, who is imam at Dublin's al-Mustafa Islamic Cultural
Centre
"The Irish Government needs to work very closely with the
Muslim community here in order to ensure that such ideas [ie radicalism and
extremism] do not deeply penetrate Irish borders."
Hel-l-lo-o-o-o! It's up to the Muslim community, most of
whom are guests in Ireland and not natives, to keep out these radical ideas.
They should stop expecting the Irish Government to do Muslims' work. It is
their responsibility to integrate into Irish society, not the converse.
To Top of index |
April 2011 |
Visit by Head of State
Letter to the Irish Times on 20th AprilMadam
/ How churlish of Clare Bourke to ask "Can we afford the visit of President
Obama?" (Letters,
20th April). Oh wait, she said Queen Elizabeth. So that's OK then. /
Yours etc.
To Top of index |
Shell and the Argument from
Morality
Comment on 13 April on a post moaning about Shell's development of
the Corrib gasfield off the west coast of Ireland
This democracy thing is a pain.
You vote for people to make laws on your behalf. They make
them. And then they apply them. And if you don't like them, tough, you have
to put up with them until you can persuade the elected politicians that they
should be reversed or you get a fresh set of politicians elected who will
reverse them.
That is Shell's sin over Corrib: conformity with the law.
They (and their predecessors) obtained the licence to develop the gas field
under Ireland's democratically constituted laws, and everyone freely signed
binding contracts. Shell's development activities have likewise conformed to
all the planning and other regulations that the democratic state has put in
place.
If you don't like it, stop whingeing and get the laws
changed, including - incidentally - laws that prevent lawful contracts from
being unilaterally and retrospectively rescinded.
Or go live in Somalia where the law is whatever you want
it to be, provided you are the one with the gun.
Declaration of Interest: I worked for Shell for 30
years. That doesn't invalidate what I have said.
Later contribution (by me):
Interestingly, offshore oil and gas installations
(including wind turbines and subsea pipelines) have one major, if
counterintuitive, effect on marine life: they attract and foster it.
Molluscs, vegetative life, corals etc soon attach
themselves to the warm steel (heated by the oil and gas flowing through
it) and start growing. Then small fish arrive to nibble and hide and
breed, bigger fish predate the smaller fish and so on. The agglomeration
of healthy fish is a really tempting target for fishermen, so offshore
operators have to create exclusion zones to keep them away lest their
nets and lines damage the installations or interfere with diver or
subsea vehicle interventions.
This exclusion of humans makes for an ever cosier
environment for the wildlife - not unlike the central reservations on
many motorways where humans rarely tread.
To Top of index |
Critics who demonised Israel should say sorry
Online comment (p4) on 12th April to an Irish Times article by
Boaz Modai, Israel's ambassador to IrelandThis
comment thread represents a great debate, for which the Irish Times is to be
congratulated. It is especially interesting that there is so much support
(perhaps 50%) for Israel rather than Palestine, because if you relied solely
on Irish journalists and Irish politicians you would conclude the score in
Ireland was 1% to 99% against Israel.
Some people argue that, notwithstanding his admissions of falsehood, the
Goldstone Report nevertheless remains largely intact, since his admissions
apply to only parts of it, much like the curate's egg.
But a better analogy would be the mixing of a few spoonfuls of urine in with
a bottle of fine wine. The entire bottle is destroyed, because no-one can
now know which other bits of the Goldstone report to believe and which bits
are false. The whiff of falsehood permeates everywhere.
Goldstone's recantation destroys his entire report. All those who were
overjoyed by the report should accept this with humility.
Meanwhile, the Irish Times has always been excellent about giving air-time
to the Palestinian viewpoint, so let's wait and see.
To Top of index |
Mel Gibson's battery-charger
Letter to the Irish Independent on 17th March
Sir, / That was certainly a curious headline you ran on St
Patrick's Day,
“Mel
Gibson booked on battery charge”.
What kind of whizz-bank e-phone is Mr Gibson using that
requires him to get a booking before he can charge the battery? Yours etc,
To Top of index |
March 2011 |
Japan's avoidable accidents make folly of nuclear energy clear
Online comment on 15th January to an Irish Times article by
John Vidal, the Guardian's Environmental Editor
This article is just not good enough, Mr Vidal. You must at
least desist from making stuff up just to scare people.
You say that
“in
just one generation it [the nuclear-power industry] has killed, wounded or
blighted the lives of many millions of people and laid waste to millions of
square miles of land”.
Huh? Who were they, where is it? What hat did you pull these particular (and
uncited) rabbits from?
“There
are 100 other safer ways ... to light up a bulb or to reduce carbon
emissions.”
Huh? Perhaps you could name, oh I dunno, say, just the first half-dozen that
could replace the power generated by the world's 440 commercial nuclear
plants.
Better to save your propaganda for the Guardian and stop trying to ride
Japan's tsunami of horror.
To Tony Allwright, on your request for suggestion of how can the 440
nuclear plants (worldwide) be replaced.
("There are 100 other safer ways .. Perhaps you could
name, oh I dunno, say, just the first half-dozen that could replace the
power generated by the world's 440 commercial nuclear plants. ")
The costs of nuclear are currently externalised to the
rest of community, either those who live close by, or the national
community, who have to pay the hidden subsidies/ the clean up costs/ the
storage of waste costs; or the worldwide community, who accept,
willy-nilly, both the risk of damage (*Chernobyl- Three Mile Island
style) and the actual costs of mining and transport of base ores.
Also, nuclear generated electricity is intrinsically
inefficient (Low temperature steam) which is only slightly important,
and is a continuation of the central generation/ remote distribution
model, which has its own loss inefficiencies, and is a continued drain
on the money wealth of individuals/ communities who partake of this
model (very important).
We need to rethink our energy usage, reduce waste,
need less, spend less money as a portion of income. That is achievable
with a more 'distributed' energy collection matrix, including grid
connection, but with a major part of an individual's or family's needs
coming from as locally as possible. Small(ish) wind generators, solar
heat collection, intensive effort on heat insulation, heat engines
driving other needs (air conditioning, refrigeration, electricity
generation), solar PV, wood & brush biomass, anaerobic digesters. More
local food consumption. Revised transport models.
It only takes 6 months to set up solar or wind farms,
6 years to build transmission lines and 17 years to build nuclear power
plants in the United States.
Nuclear doesn't 'work'. You can't build them fast
enough. A standard nuclear facility might be of 1 GigaWatt capacity, and
more than $2 Billion to build. A solar thermal farm of equivalent
capacity, and generously oversized to account for the hours of darkness,
is of comparable price. But has a low environmental impact, in relative
terms. A wind farm, out at sea where the wind energy is steadiest, will
cost between €800 million (210 of 9 MW turbines at 50% availabilty) to
€1.4 Billion (350 of 9 MW turbines at 30% availabilty)
The material & environmental & money cost may be
amortized over 20- 40 years. Lowish maintenance costs, and zero fuel
costs, zero pollution risk, zero contamination, low to zero security
costs.
Richard E Smalley in his paper 'The Terawatt
Challenge', pointed out that if you could build a new nuclear plant,
EVERY DAY, for 27 years, you would not quite reach the goal of 15
Terawatts energy generation capacity. (You would have 10 Terawatt
capacity)
http://cohesion.rice.edu/naturalsciences/smalley/emplibrary/120204%20mrs%20boston.pdf
Nuclear doesn't 'work'. It doesn't work financially,
or economically, without large subsidy.
To Top of index |
Merkel and Corporation Tax
Letter to the Irish Times on 14th March
Madam, / To justify a demand that Ireland increase its corporation tax in
return for a reduction in the interest on its EU bail-out, Angela Merkel
declares that
“it is simply fair to say
we can only give our commitment when we get something in return”
(“EU
corporate tax base”,
Editorial, March 14th).
If she want fairness she should be fair to German industry
by reducing Germany's own corporation rate, and be fair to Germany's
taxpayers by maximising the chances that Ireland will eventually repay them,
at least in part, thanks largely to the healthy revenues generated by its
competitive corporation tax. / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
Germany and €uro rules
Letter to the Irish Times on 10th March
Madam, / Angela Merkel's admonishment that “if we have a common currency
like the euro it can only be stable if all follow the rules” is ironic (“Merkel
warns of need to stick to euro zone rules”,
March 10th).
Someone should remind her that under the euro's Stability
and Growth Pact, demanded by Germany in 1997 as a condition of supporting
the euro, no country may run a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, under pain of
fines of up to 1% of GDP.
Yet in 2002/3, it was Germany itself and its partner
France who were the first to flaunt this provision by exceeding the 3%. But
because of the weight of the Franco-German behemoth, the other €uro members
were too scared to insist that the fines he applied.
So these two countries long ago set the precedent. Subvert
the rules as you like. Yours etc,
To Top of index |
February 2011 |
“Jew! Jew!”
Letter to the Sunday Times on 21st February
Sir, / Marie Colvin's report on the brutal sexual attack on
CBS reporter Lara Logan in Cairo said the mob shouted
“Spy”
and
“Israeli”
(“Mob
stripped and beat CBS reporter”,
News, p10, 20th February 2011, behind online paywall). But you curiously
omitted the most ominous epithet,
“Jew!
Jew!”,
which adds an entirely new, anti-Semitic angle to the assault, even though
Ms Logan is not a Jewess. / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
Gender-neutral language
Letter to the Irish Times on 11th February
Madam, / Ted Mooney (Letters,
February 10th)
“had hoped that the new
missal would show a willingness to espouse inclusiveness in relation to
women — a fond hope, the third person singular is invariably male throughout”.
He displays ignorance of English grammar. In the absence
of gender-neutral nouns and singular pronouns, the use of male terms —
“man”,
“mankind”,
“he”
etc has always, where the context so requires, included the female sex, as
we all learnt many years ago at school. The modern attempts to invent words
like
“s/he”
and, worse, to bastardise and bowdlerise ordinary grammar by pluralising
singular expressions, eg
“themself”,
in supposed deference to the emotions of hyper-sensitive women, are nothing
less than pathetic.
In any case, one can always find a different way of
writing a sentence, eg by pluralising it, which would sidestep the
conundrum. However, this would require some — what's the word? — oh yes,
effort. Yours etc.
To Top of index |
January 2011 |
Micheál Martin, Hamas &
Castros
Letter to the Irish Times on 22nd JanuaryMadam, /
Now that [Ireland's ex-Foreign Minister] Micheál Martin is no longer
running Ireland's foreign affairs, can we take it that there will be an end
to this country's kowtowing to the dictatorships of Hamas and of the Castro
brothers? . Yours etc,
To Top of index |
Did bankers breach
anti-monopoly legislation?
Letter to the Irish Daily Mail on 16th January
Note: This newspaper has no online edition
Sir,
/ Jason O'Toole's exclusive interview with Anglo's ex-CEO David Drumm is
both fascinating and incredible (“The
Drumm Files”,
14th January, relevant extract attached). He describes how as Anglo CEO he
visited the executives of AIB and of the Bank of Ireland, three publicly
quoted corporations, to get them (unsuccessfully) to invest in Anglo. As
such, these men seem to have been meeting in private to conspire against
their investors and depositors, which looks like a serious breach of
anti-monopoly legislation. Imagine the CEOs of Shell, Exxon and BP holding
such a secret meeting, or of Tesco and Superquinn.
I trust you have turned over the relevant data in your
possession to the Gardaí to facilitate an investigation leading to a
possible prosecution. / Yours etc,
To Top of index |
Time to take the tough decisions on oil and gas
Comment on 4th January to an Irish Times article by
Fintan O'TooleThis is probably Fintan O'Toole's
most ignorant article! The posts of the evidently erudite "sexitoni" "brendan",
"Brian Flanagan", "Peter C", "hughsheehy" demonstrate this with great
clarity.
I would only add that the enormous delays and cost
overruns of Corrib caused by the carry-on of a handful of locals with
spurious "safety" concerns has only added to the political risk with which
would-be oil and gas investors now view this country. "Political risk"
translates to a need for higher potential returns.
Mr O'Toole's plan would at a stroke kill all such
investment for a generation.
The moderator chose to delete this message while
accepting 32 others
To Top of index |
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Neda Agha Soltan;
shot dead in Teheran
by Basij militia |
Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least
alive.
FREED AT LAST,
ON 18th OCTOBER 2011,
GAUNT BUT OTHERWISE REASONABLY HEALTHY |
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What I've recently
been reading
“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy
Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told
through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a
household lemon tree as their unifying theme.
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as
See
detailed review
+++++
This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in
the Gulf of Mexico.
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous
acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless
cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term
technical sustainability.
Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in
refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in
Russia.
The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that
had become poisonous and incompetent.
However the book is gravely compromised by a
litany of over 40 technical and stupid
errors that display the author's ignorance and
carelessness.
It would be better
to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying.
As for BP, only a
wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will
prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once
mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.
Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo
in
May,
June, and
July 2010
+++++
A horrific account
of:
|
how the death
penalty is administered and, er, executed in Singapore,
|
|
the corruption of
Singapore's legal system, and |
|
Singapore's
enthusiastic embrace of Burma's drug-fuelled military dictatorship |
More details on my
blog
here.
+++++
This is
nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s
incredible story of survival in the Far
East during World War II.
After recounting a
childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen,
Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on
Germany in 1939.
From then until the
Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr
Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall
of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror.
After a wretched
journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless
garrison.
Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in
1941, he is, successively,
|
part of a death march to Thailand,
|
|
a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma
railway (one man died for every sleeper laid), |
|
regularly beaten and tortured,
|
|
racked by starvation, gaping ulcers
and disease including cholera, |
|
a slave labourer stevedoring at
Singapore’s docks, |
|
shipped to Japan in a stinking,
closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men,
|
|
torpedoed by the Americans and left
drifting alone for five days before being picked up, |
|
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”
This is a rattling good tale of the web
of corruption within which the American president and his cronies
operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both
a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and
sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.
With 75 page of notes to back up - in
best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing
allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with
the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife.
Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett,
Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris
Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book.
ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community
organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine
it is.
+++++
This much trumpeted sequel to
Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment.
It is really just
a collation of amusing
little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour
and situations. For example:
|
Drunk walking kills more people per
kilometer than drunk driving. |
|
People aren't really altruistic -
they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds. |
|
Child seats are a waste of money as
they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts. |
|
Though doctors have known for
centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection,
they still often fail to do so. |
|
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.
++++++
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
|
Why does asparagus come from Peru? |
|
Why are pandas so useless? |
|
Why are oil and diamonds more trouble
than they are worth? |
|
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:
|
Argentina protects its now largely
foreign landowners (eg George Soros) |
|
Russia its military-owned
businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs |
|
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.
+++++
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 |
Click for an account of this momentous,
high-speed event
of March 2009 |
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the Rugby World Cup
scores, points and rankings.
After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA
England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze. Fourth is host nation France.
No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes
Over the competition,
the average
points per game = 52,
tries per game = 6.2,
minutes per try =
13 |
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the final World Cup
scores, points, rankings and goal-statistics |
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