as good as it gets

The British Empire is over -The Falkland Islands - Are they British?

2012-01-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

The british have again laid claim to the legitamacy of the Britishness of the Falkland Islands . When Argentina claimed the Islands in the early 80s the british sent a fleet into the Southern Atlantic to reclaim what were little more than a cluster of craggy patches where sheep farmers eeked out a meagre living .
The Times ran an editorial to substantiate the Tory claim yesterday .
The following comments ensued ( among many others ) Mine are those headed ''Don '

Don says
The war was Thatcher's ''Churchill-moment ''.
She wanted a war to confirm that she was as Iron as her soubriquet suggested , and her Ministers confirmed
Best forget about the Falklands now.
The British invasion of the island of a few scattered sheep in the southern Hemisphere -( before the war ) was as inglorious as the sinking of the hospital ship Belgrano. Sunk while it was in retreat in neutral waters .
Besides what difficulty did Barroness Thacher ever have in non accommodating brutal dictators. What about Pinochet ?
The personal sense of triumph which the war undoubtedly brought to Thatcher will always be linked to her
ravenous appetite to be remembered as being as bellicose as any man .
Then she went on to dismember British Society , saying there was no such thing as society - Yes . In a different context - She and Reagen agreed on the liberation of the markets allowing them free reign .; but at the same time abandoning central Keynesian economic philosophy , which was all about society.

Mike says

January 20, 2012 4:52 PM

What the hell does that have to do with the rights of the Falkland islanders to self determination or the current threat posed by the Argentinians to obtain sovereignty over them and to try blocade them into submission !

Don Says

Mike ,
You come from the generation which believed that there was a ''Right of Conquest ''- Colonialism . Britannia

Rules ,and all that rot .
Sorry , But they've discovered that its an oxymoron , or something .
But yours Mike is the land of Alf Garnett - Till Death Do Us Part-
Alfred Edward Garnett. was reactionary, self righteous mean-spirited, selfish, bigoted, anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, Jingoistic racist, , who only disliked Mrs Thatcher because he believed a woman's place was in the kitchen , "chained to the bloody kitchen sink!" ..
The war had nothing to do with protecting residents of the Malvinas .
It was to secure in her time the great British Empire , and meanwhile diverting public attention from her unpopularity at home . Good -time- to release- bad -news strategy.( familiar ?)

But Mike ..Ahh THe Empire .!!
What Ho Mike ..Ye Olde Empire.
But riddle me this . Why did the sun never set on the Empire ?
Because God didn't trust the Brits in the dark .
And now what have we have .. well ... a kingdom ? a disunited one perhaps.and we have OBE's and stuff even if the '' E'' is no longer for Empire , but Excellence
But maybe they should send those self same soldiers north and knock some sense into those Scottish Celts who just dont know how bloody good things are for them...too late for Wales I suppose . Well , we still have the Prince of Wales , whether the Welsh like it or not ..More mule pigheadedness from more thankless Celts.
The residents of the Malvinas have the right to self determination without any assistance from Britain or should that be England ? And when they do vote on the issue they can themselves determine what they wish to be ,through the auspices of the UN - exclusively .
Now what would Alf think about that ?

Mike had many other comments on other peoples comments which is why I introduced the Alf Garner character .
Despite claims made by the British ( esp Tory party- Who knew what Blair was ever thinking other than stacking up facts for his memoirs and after dinner speeches at 100 Grand a whack ?)
Ultimately it must come down to a referendum. But my guess that any Brit borne in the 90's has no idea what the Falklands war was about or where in fact the Falklands are located .
But the new interest is not motivated from any sense of loyalty to a former colony . Now there's the whiff about the Islands , and that is what is making them British . The three most powerful words in geo-politics O.I.L.
There is the added urgency that with the threat by the Iranians in the Straits of Hormuz , the British source of cheap oil would be jeopardized , as N sea Oil is running out rapidly .

Look out for more of this Jingoistic Oxbridge rants in the coming months , and think of Alf , who despite his fictitious background as being low working class is a Tory supporter. He would now be a member of the National Front of course . His son would be married to a coke addicted hooker . He would be tattooed from forehead to toe with God Save the Queen , and I LOVE LINDA on his forearms , and I LUV MUM on his fingers

Norris and the Irish Presidency ; Empathy expressed with perpetrator of Paedophelia - little understanding or concern for victim of child rape

2011-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

We have 7 candidates lined up for election to the Irish Presidency .
The salary is about € 300,000 / annum.
Among them we have ;
A song contest winner
A gay activist
An ex IRA Commander .
David Norris is the Gay representative . HE is an acedemic ; a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin. He claims to be a Joycean Scholar.
Just listen to him doing the impression of a wave following Joyce's '' text'' in Finnegans Wake.
Norris's problem is that he sent a series of letters to petition the Israeli authorities for his jailed lover, who raped an Israeli boy.
Norris claimed that the letters were not available to the media because of legal issues. When pressed on this by legal experts here he resorted to saying he couldn't
disclose the letters because of advice he is getting from Israel. He doesn't say when he received this advice, or whether it is from a professional lawyer.

Norris gave an interview to Magill magazine some years ago, This might put in perspective his view on pedophilia . He talks about the classical love between a man and a boy , without penetrative sex. ( pederasty ) . But is is the ease with which he talks of this love - a love which he himself would have enjoyed as a child- he doesnt seem to give any thought to the boy's feelings which chills the reader .
It is a most disconcerting interview , and it is my belief that it is tendentious . And it displays a laxity of scruples regarding the innocence of the boy .
It is my view that unless Norris discloses all the letters of petition he wrote on his lovers behalf, and subjects himself to scrutiny as to where exactly he stands on the

love - classical Greek or otherwise , between an adult and a child who is not his son. That love he speaks of is to my mind a flagrant expression of empathy if not
advocacy of pedophilia.
If Norris does this soon , he may retrieve some of his credibility. But this is one area where the invasion of the person is justifiable in the greater public interest - the OLd Latin Adage - Pro Bono Publico springs to mind.

Mr Norris's arguments without either disclosing these letters to the media will run to the Reductio ad absurdiam. His patronizing cods wallop about the ''Plain People

Of Ireland '' stands for nothing unless he comes clean with these intelligent decent people he keeps harping on about as if it were just the media who want to know the disposition of a future President towards pedophilia .

To quote what Norris often refers to as Blooms obduracy in Ulysses , one of the characters . He holds a straw in front of Bloom and says ; '' Lookit Bloom ..Its a straw .. I declare to me ant macassater that he would talk about it for an hour so he would. And talk solid .
Lookit David - Its just s straw !! Isn't it ? What is the problem.

Do You approve of open love between a man and a boy who is not his son - irrespective of the physicality of that love or the expression thereof.
You have the name of being witty , charming , engaging , garrulous , loquacious - and of course a Joycean scholar.

Talk for an hour or so and talk solid. But keep it solid for the Plain Peole of Ireland !!

Expansion in occupied territories continues

2011-09-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

In the face of the Palestinians , in the coming weeks , going to the UN to apply for part or full membership , Israeli Premier Benjamen Netentahu has accedded an extreme right wing Jewish lobby to the construction of a further 1100 units in East Jerusalem.
Bear in mind that this Jewish expansion into Palestinian territory is a continuum of the violation of the UN rule of law.
As if it is calculated to provoke the oppressed Palestinians into retaliation in defense of her already compromised territory , Netenyahu will put this proposal before Israeli planning authorities to give validation to these constructions .
In even entertaining such an application for further constructions in occupied territory ie ; territory taken by force by the Israelis during the 1967 war Netenyahu is again showing not just disdain to the UN but loathsome contempt for the UN , the International Court of Justice (ICJ)

In another development the Israelis have just released an al Jazera news reporter who was held for 6 weeks on trumped up charges by the Israeli Shin Bett .
Samar Alawi , admitted under coercive physical and mental pressure that he was acting as an agent for Hamas .
On payment of a $900 fine and 6 weeks incarceration by Israel he was released having made the confession , which he immediately repudiated .

Following a funeral of an Israelis father and son who perished in a car accident , allegedly caused by a Palestinian throwing stones at the car , a Rabbi has called for '' collective punishment '' against the Palestinians saying '' there are no innocents in war ''
In any other society this would be regarded as an incitement to hatred .

That it is incitement there is little doubt and that hatred exists there is none.

But this is all part of the retaliation before the provocation strategy on behalf of Israel , which are occurring in the West Bank , in the run-up to the Palestinian application for statehood with the UN.
Why the Israelis even bother with this provocation at all is an enigma as Israel do not adhere to the notion of co-existance , much less the rule of law by the ICJ .
At least the EU representative Catherine Ashton has made her objections to the Israel authorities . Needless to say Tony Blair has made none on behalf of the Quartet .

Israel / Palestine - 2 State Solution or Pretext for War ; What's the West done to help? Tony Blair as '' Special Envoy '' Blairs for Blair period

2011-09-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

As the date for the Palestinians to declare their Statehood to the UN draws neigh ,it is unfortunate that we know that the USA will use her veto to keep the Palestinians out of the Security Council.
That the USA are taking this initiative in order to show her unequivocal support for the State of Israel is a cause of great concern for the Palestinians .
That they have lived in the region for over two millennia counts for nothing . But that this aggressive attitude should come after the Israelis have broken 2 UN resolutions , calling for them to cease building further settlements on Palestinian land , and their refusal to return to their pre- '67 birders .
Not only did Israel choose to break the peace with Palestine by resuming the illegal constructions but that they choose to do so on the very day VP Mr Joe Biden arrived in the region was surely to give the two fingers to her main sponcers ( USA) . This diplomatic insult was calculated only to singularly embarrass and demean Mr Biden . Yet Mr Obama has declared that he will use the power of veto to thwart Palestinian membership to the Security Council.
Why ?
The powerful speech which Mr Obama made in Cairo was inspiring ; it lifted the hopes of the Arab world that maybe after all this time the a new USA administration could at last deal the Arabs a decent hand . But it was not to be .
Now they look with distrust and suspicion again towards the USA . All of the dreams and hopes they held dear after the speech were dashed when the Israelis played their emotional blackmail card .
Now the Palestinians will be relegated to applying for membership to the General Assembly of the UN.
They may have to settle for less than full membership of the General assembly and enjoy a much more emasculated form of admission- one similar to the Vatican State enjoys .
But at least they will have access to the ICHJ - Courts of Human Justice- aka -The World Court or ICJ) . This is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the The Hague.Its main functions are to settle legal disputes submitted to it by states and to provide advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by duly authorized international organs, agencies, and the UN General Assembly.

At least now , the Palestinians can invite UN observers to officially report on the progress of the illegal constructions in the West Bank.

Why have the Palestinians been reduced - or have always endured- the existential state of second class citizenhood ?

The Israelis have every reason to complain that they were abandoned by Europe during WW2 - but because of the atrocities perpetrated against their race leading to the appalling Holocaust - is this sufficient reason for them to exercise such oppression over the Palestinian peoples - The Palestinians have seen their farms carved up by the illegal security wall ; seen their border crossing access points grievously restricted , and in Gaza - her port opened at the whim of the Israeli Naval services .

.

Background and development

As if the Palestinians are not already beleaguered and besieged I quote from Harriet Sherwood of the London Observer

In Qusra, deep among the terraced hills of the West Bank, fear is on the rise ,according to Harriert Sherwood .Settlers come down the hill from the outpost, mostly on foot, but occasionally on horseback or in tractors or 4x4s. They carry Israeli flags, and sometimes bring guns, shovels and dogs. There may be as few as three or as many as 40. They taunt the local villagers and sometimes attack them. Often the Israeli army arrives and trains its weapons on the villagers.
On Friday, violence between settlers from the outpost of Esh Kodesh and around 300 Qusra villagers ended in a haze of teargas and bullets fired at the villagers by Israeli troops, two of which struck Issam Odeh, 33, killing the father-of-eight.

Qusra set up a defence committee earlier this month after one of the village's four mosques was vandalised in a settler attack condemned by the US and the European Union. Up to 20 unarmed men patrol the mosques from 8pm to 6am every night, and Abu Reidi claims they have already foiled at least one attack. Other Palestinian villages have followed suit.

This week, photographs were published on a pro-settler news website, Arutz Sheva, showing women from Pnei Kedem, an outpost south of Bethlehem, learning to shoot. In Shimon Hatzadik, a Jewish enclave in the midst of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in east Jerusalem, settlers are preparing to invoke a law allowing self-defence against intruders. "We are talking about shooting at their legs and if that doesn't work, and our lives are in danger, we won't be afraid to shoot straight at them. Most of the residents here are armed," spokesman Yehonatan Yosef told parliamentarians two weeks ago.

Preparation for war?
Israeli settlers have become more militant even defying the orders they receive from the Defence Forces. They fear that the Israeli military will restrain their antagonism and confrontation with the Palestinians . Provocation , were it to be successful would spark a retaliation from Palestinians , possibly from the extreme Islamists - possibly the Hezbollah . And this would bring world attention to the area , apportioning blame on the Palestinians for precipitating the conflict and scuttling the talks.

Demands of either side

At the moment the talks seem in a state on entrenchment . The Israelis will not agree to basic minimums to facilitate Abbas's agreement to his minimums.
The settlement talks require the Palestinians to recognise an Israeli State with Jerusalem as its Capital

The Palestinians demand that the Israelis return to the pre 1967 borders - borders which were imposed by the Israelis and are in contravention of UN law , which declares void the claim to land taken by conquest .
The Palestinians in demanding the pre 67 border position are by association demanding a removal of the settlements , and equally the removal of the Separation Wall
They are also demanding recognition of Palestinian Statehood , with Jerusalem as its Capital.

The Quartet

The '' Quartet '' which is made up of the US UN EU Russia - arguably the most balanced and powerful organisation in the world , have as its representative one Tony Blair .
One can only pause for a sharp intake of breathe here . What a choice . A man who followed the USA into two ignominious wars . One who had access to the private dossiers of the unfortunate scientist Mr Kelly , who repudiated the fact that Saadam ever had WMD’s or who was prepared foor world war within 30 minutes- Who said his own documents were ‘ sexed up’ to advance the case against Iraq , and who ( we are told ) then took his own life .
Mr Blair has been making contacts for his own ends during his tenure as ''Special Envoy to the Quartet ' A Panorama programme last night showed how he ( and his staff ) lived in a luxury hotel in Jerusalem , occupying one entire floor at the cost of € 1 million / yr .When he learned that the Panorama team were on to him he moved to a moderately less luxurious hotel. He has spent less that ½ of any year of the tenure in the region .
He has visited Gaza on two or three occasions .
But most of his time he has been feathering his own nest - Tony Blair Inc. He gives lectures at the princly cost on €100.000 minimum. He is currently involved with Russian oil and Gas Oligarchs , and inveigled his way into many more industries involving vast amounts of money .
Mr Blair - Special Envoy to the Quartet .!!
It makes me want to puke , but watch the Panorama programme or read about it in London Observer 25 Sept.2011

With this kind of assistance it is easy to see how the settlers are arming themselves , and the Palestinians are getting more frustrated than restive .
With this kind of self interest - Blair for Blair . USA for Israel , should we be really surprised if there is yet another outbreak of violence in the region.

Worst Fears
I fear that there will be another Israeli incursion into as yet unoccupied territories, and perhaps even into Lebanon again.
Another 6 day war may be looming .And we in the west are presiding over its incubation

For my New Reader

2011-09-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

Well , it is nice to be back; back in this cloistered monastic cavern of my own. where only the shards of light are sucked in . This is not a discussion stie . More of a Saadam or Gaadafi podium .
No one argues here .
Uno voce !
I will abide no contrarian opinion. I will treat any such to ''Reductio ad absurdum ''
Some of the things - possibly all - here are dated, and I take no responsibility for them !
I'm weary of these sites howeever as this week alone , my email was hacked into sending mesages all over the place - I abandonded trying to write one common apology , but i do believe it is possible to do this.
Next my ID to acces my bank a/c was foiled- you get 3 tries, when the second try failed I contacted my bank who ' oversaw ' my 3 rd go; this also failed. All of this required that I had to get a new ID and password. Then I noticed that the Norton software was not affording me complete pprotection , so I followed the links and downloaded a patch to fix the problem . THe patch wouldnt run .
I contacted my server. There seemed to be something lacking in the spontaneity with which she replied to me " what I'd like you to do Don....- pause for 3 mins '' - ''' are you still there ''
I asked her where she was ringing from - the Philipines . Then she took over the running of my computor. - no hands .. my mouse skidded this way and that , save-click- run click...
then she told me she could take over the rest from there and I could hang up.

It was curiouser and curioser the more I thought about it. ant the confluence of these 3 things.
Am i being managed from abroad.?
What do you think ?

I could tell you all about the passing clouds and the changing light and what I had for breakfast etc but you too have clouds , and skies and have had a breakfast and or dinner , so I will desist from writing about the mundane world of my vapid thoughts -

Did you ever read '' country notes '' in the Guardian london) - you can download most of the paper free from here at least . try it.
I sent CP a piece I wrote in her 'voice'- did you read it ?

Whats your blog .
We can read one another when I am less afflicted with inertia .

How did you find me - I thought it was '' grumpy old men '' - but as good as it gets hits much the same spot at my age .

CATHOLIC CHURCH- STATE RELATIONSHIP ON PRESPICE OF CHANGE

2009-12-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

Introduction;

The Catholic church in Ireland has been indicted for its complicity in its collusion in non disclosure of material which was sought by a State appointed commission to investigate the degree of this non cooperation.
The State sought documents from the Vatican pertaining to the extent and type of child abuse perpetrated by priests. The violation of children has been utterly depraved .
The Murphy Commission requested documents from the Vatican in order to determine the degree of the non -disclosure of documents by bishops to the commission. The Vatican did not acknowledge the requests . The defence of the Vatican has been that the Commisssion did not go through the proper diplomatic channells . It maintained that it should be treated as a state and as such documents the orthodox channels should have been used .
The Catholic Church has enjoyed a special position in Irish political life . It had at one time been afforded a ''special position ''under the Irish constitution.
One Bishop has resigned , Bishop Murray of Limerick.
5 other Bishops stand indicted in the public conscience for the same offense which Murray was guilty of ie refusal to cooperate and disclose to the police the names and identity of the offfending priests . Their depraved sexual abuse of children has been tryly shocking.

One priest has been hauled from the courts this week in shackles , to prison for life . There are others who must follow.
But here I address the reason why the bishop in my own diocese must resign.

******************

Should Bishop Drennan of Galway resign or Must he be retired

In a word yes . Immediately.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly .
Should Dr Drennan wish to wallow in the self satisfying delusion that he is better serving his congregation by staying he should look at today 18 Dec .2009 poll on the Galway Bay FM Radio web page . 77 % wish him to go.; 23% wish him to stay.
Despite this Dr Drennan has spoken this morning about the many calls from well wishers and those pleading with him to remain. This is curious perspective in the light of this poll.
But perhaps more well wishers ring the palace than those silent majority who were hoping at least until this afternoon that he might have chosen to act honorably and go gracefully .
They will have been disappointed that he has not done so . Many will startled by the bishop's trenchant obduracy, most especially now that he has attacked Diarmuid Martin , whom Drennan believes has disparaged him.

Dr Drennan does not have a user friendly personna . He comes across as cantankerous , curmudgeonly misanthrope .He has little charm or warmth about him. He exudes a lofty haughter ; an aloofness which not simply alienates - it is hectoring and scarcely what he sees an an outrageous chalange to his authority And he has been less that magnanimous in his own defence .
He has offered no solace ; no comfort; no piety , repentance or contrition.
He is ruthlessly doctrinaire ; a fundamentalist who has manifestly lost the drift of the message of his founder , the gentle Nazarine carpenter .

The common denominator running through the defence of the remaining bishops is the one famously used by Bart Simpson
'' I didn't do it . Anyway no one saw me ( me do it)''

The absence of a single genuine utterance of true remorse is deeply upsetting to the congregations. The remorse they do express seems sadly to focus more on for themselves
In seeking forgiveness they are only asking the remaining faithful to secure for them their tenure in the comfort of their palaces. - '' I have only a few years to go ...'' - an utterly asinine excuse .'' .and ''.if I thought that I would better serve their interests by going I would .go instantly.''
And this disguised platitudinous self centered pity plays to the most fervent and pious of their congregations , most particularly the elderly , who have invested a lifetime in their sincere personal faith in their pastoral carers , and who are loath to accept failings in men they believe are conduits to their God.

These utterings now , especially Dr Drennan's are an unworthy display or hubris . They are worse ; they are an affirmation that their lust for power eclipses all else .

This seems to be a well rehearsed strategy. Deny , remain obdurate ,obfuscate denunciate the vileness perpetrated on the children - but then back off.- NOT ME .
I was not involved .I knew nothing. They have nothing on me.
If the Church through its religious and secular representative , the Papal Nuncio ,is not now called in by the Minister for Foreign Affair to account for the bishops betrayal and abandonment of the common law , this would be an indictment of Minister Martin in his capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs .
If through the Byzantine channels of communication , which the Vatican has sought to use in order to thwart further the legal process the Pope through his own diplomatic channels fails to respond , and his servants ( employees) fail to cooperate with Stait Eireann in providing to the legal custodians of this state , every document which is relevant to the systematic abuse of children- not just those documents which are specifically known to exist - but those documents which are pertinent , Germain , relevant ( as these terms are used in common parlance in the English Language and without availing of the absurdity and demeaning defence of '' mental reservation'' - to the entire case then relationships with the Vatican must change utterly and formally so. The Vatican in these circumstances would have to be regarded as a hostile state .

Ultimately people will have to face the courts for the criminality which the church engaged in in concealing by collusion the evidence which they held and withheld from an Gardai , for that is what the Murphy Commission was all about ; the church's failure to cooperate with the state's own investigating authority .
This is not an exercise in revenge . It is rather more what a '' confident and mature Independent secular state should insist in doing with errant and aberrant members of its citizen ; who if convicted are common criminals.- (but not ODC's)
To haul the convicted elderly men away from the courts in shackles , which seemed to be the case last week - that seemed wrathful and an unnecessary display of bravado , which only serves to confer martyrdom status on them ,when they should be simply reviled and put away.
This is the mature execution of punishment for crime .
Old Testament Justice is not required here ; the laws of Aquinas will suffice.
Cannon Law has been made redundant the very instant that the Vatican insisted on the ruse of obfuscation insisting on the use of diplomatic channels in engaging with an investigating authority commissioned by this State .

''Roma Loquitor , Causa Fineta ''- This no longer applies since the Vatican have elected to be treated as a State rather than a religion .

''Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's ''-
That is the road the Vatican have chosen to go .

And as for Drennan - He must listen to the voice of the people . It is not difficult to hear the silence of the angry rumble ; and if he is still in doubt he could have a look at the Galway Bay FM Web page .
The voice of 77 % of the people should surely warrant his attention and should assist him focus in this , his time of '' reflection''

The Sons of Abraham > The Middle East in Bible Prophecy

2009-02-09T17:28:00.001-08:00

The Sons of Abraham > The Middle East in Bible Prophecy

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THE CASE AGAINST BRIDEY IN BRIDESHEAS REVISITED

2008-09-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

Bridey is the anthisis of Sebastian ; he has to be both to give tonality to the family assembly; he is monochrome where sebastian is all luminous and like a brilliant bubble from a pipe - exudes for an instant the exquisitenesses of a rainbow and then opuff and its gone- Anthony Blanche.Blanche later described Bridey as a sort of a great LLama heading of to the endless and pointless destiny of his predictable life.
He is happy after all to take over the meaningless continuiyty of the feudal systaem and has no vision or concience to see the inequality his forbears have foisted of the farming community. the Wealth is assumed ; it is not earned nor is there any thought given to any altruism of the spirit. He prays dutifully - but disdains Catholicism and Christianity; he is not a reformer - that is repugnant to his nature; neither will he end up as a monk dying alone in an abbey never to be reconciled to god or to his family , because he has no spiritual attachment to either - He is ritualistic and predictable ; for him noblesse oblige and preserving the family escutcheon is all ; But nothing matters because he is so soul

On reflection I think Bridey was the character who best personified Waugh himself. Waugh had an indifferent relationship, was fastidious and petty minded inmany things . He aspired to discovering an aristocratic lineage , and having failed to do so in the UK he retired to Ireland and bought a castle where he tried to life out his pretentious imaginings.
But he disdained the indigent Irish who had little interest in blue blooded ancestry , much to Waugh's exasperation . He eventually abandoned the project. If we are to believe what is written about him he was a pretentious ,intolerant and insufferable snob.He also , let it be said , wrote at least one masterpiece in Brideshead, which remains one of my favorite books and will remain in the canon of English literature , and Waugh's own name is firmly placed in the pantheon of major 20th century writing.

Booksie

2008-08-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

BooksieBy way of preamble I would like very briefly to relate some of the circumstances, which led to my decision to pursue my career in the Defense Forces.
These motivations were a mixture of personal experiences over a 7 yr period during which I had sought but failed thus far to discover a sense of professional security or personal satisfaction in my career.
I do not propose to elaborate here on this particular strand of my experience but the allure of the army however may have had a more subtle, subterranean but potent psychological influence on me given that both my father and my uncle had served with distinction in most of the major campaigns during the second world war
. My Father served as a dentist in world war 2 from the battle of El Alamein- the defeat of Rommel; through Italy, and again on the D-day landings.
He was also one of the first dentists sent in to Dachau death camp after the war to assist in quantifying the dead from dental forensics.
But to return to my own narrative. Having spent 7 post graduate years on a seemingly aimless odyssey – in surgery , medicine , psych , casualty obs etc during the winter of 1979 at the age of 30 I saw an advertisement for doctors in the Irish Army.
My impression of the Army at the time was fused with images of bulls wool. Boots, high barrack walls and booze ; of broken down trucks manned by frozen soldiers with cyanosed faces on St Patrick’s day parade , but I was also aware that their involvement in the Congo had changed the Army ; had shaken the mothballs and laid down a challenge for them to participate in the UN mission in the Congo, and that they had responded this challenge with valour.
I was immediately attracted to the world of the Mid Oriental glamour that service in the Lebanon might provide ; that dual sense of revulsion and seduction coupled with the sense of adventure into the exoticism of the middle east seemed to evoke in me an irresistible appeal. I was also lured by the hope that I might finally find some definitive destiny and purpose in my chosen career.
I was commissioned in Feb 80 and my first posting was to St Bricins Military Hospital. The post was ill defined. I was a kind naïve novitiate in this strange new world of military medicine ..
The first time I attended the surgical OPD was indeed a revelation to me . The surgeon – a Prof of Surgery in Mercers hospital was reviewing his post op cases. These were first inspected by my commanding officer, and he in turn instructed me how to present the case to the surgeon in military fashion,
. I was like a kind of a minor acolyte in what was beginning to look to me more and more like something bordering on comical farce The case was an excised ingrown toenail. I joke you not -They both looked at the toe quite ponderously, then turning to me the surgeon said – a thing of beauty is a joy forever’ . At that dark moment I had that sinking feeling that I was becoming an unwilling participant in a of a bad pantomime , out of season.
But there I was an innocent on the precipice of something propitious; a beholder of the prodigious marvels of this giant of surgery.
But then quite to my surprise, this quaint and avuncular old professor came up with one astonishing epithet which I have cherished to this day. After the laborious day in OPD reviewing toe nails and other mind boggling surgical triumphs he called me aside and told me there were 2 kinds of patients I would meet in the army – Those who wont stand up and those who wont lie down.
This was to be come quite manifestly clear to me very soon , and it would endure the span of my military career .’ Those who wont stand up and those who wont lie down-It was so prophetic and precise that I always doubted if this later day surgical pioneer could have conceivably coined the phrase. It was axiomatic and almost Wildean in its satiric wisdom .
I was soon posted to Costume Barracks Athlone where I was to learn more about Byzantine structure of the army chain of command . This is quite unfathomable to comprehend. Suffice it to say that by comparison the HSE module is one of dazzling clarity. In the army , the pyramidal structure is so ordained that the higher up the chain you go the less responsibility you take ; It also ordains than when any cudos attaches to some initiative , the traffic is all one way to the top; and where blame attaches the traffic goes all the way to the bottom.
The most benign way of describing it is to say that the Army has a time honored code, which says that divided responsibility is diminished culpability. This keeps the top guy at the top and inures him from any usurpery , competition or challenge from those lesser creatures beneath him.
By 1980 the destiny of the Army had already been determined The weather vane of all militaries had changed and that arrow which was slewn in the Congo in the 1960s had drawn the army into a new and consequential era , and now the Defense Forces were involved in the changing geopolitical landscape of the Middle East
I arrived in Lebanon just after the Israeli war. The Israelis had retreated to a UN brokered line in Southern Lebanon .The UN had been sent in to the buffer zone between Israel and Southern Lebanon. But now the Lebanese were engaged in a civil war .This involved a power struggle between the various sectarian factions- largely Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and smaller Christian and Druze community . At one time or another each of these groups aligned themselves to the other 2 for political supremacy.
So within the buffer zone the civil war was raging ; and to the south the Israelis were poised to reinvade if their Northern territories were imperiled again by the PLO.
It was here in this buffer zone that the Irish battalion was deployed. The medical platoon comprised 2 doctors and 18 medical orderlies. The mission was referred to by the acronym UNIFIL - the united nations interim forces in Lebanon. The interim part of the thing is curious given that the mission lasted 23 years.
We occupied a hospital about the size of Portiuncula in the 60s in the mountain town of Tibnine – about 40 miles East of Beruit
Due to the vagaries of the civil war the attendance of the resident medical staff was irregular and unpredictable. We therefore had to provide hospital in patient care in medicine, surgery, paeds most of the time for the surrounding hinterland.
In addition to this we were tasked with the providing clinics outside the UNIFIL- where the villagers were deprived of even the basic medical services for weeks on end.
My first call out was a road side execution.
There at the side of the road was a young man with his hands tethered with electric cable and a bullet through his head There was and a note attached to his clasped hands. We were cautioned never to touch the bodies lest they be booby-trapped. The body had to be turned with a grappling hook - The note read – those who chose to play with fire will pay with fire. He was about 16 yrs of age.

My second call out was after a dawn air raid – the houses of a suspected terrorists had been targeted and blown up by an Israeli Air strike. The mercenary had escaped leaving 2 dead children in the carnage. I can never forget the image of their 2 beautiful faces – undamaged as we put their small bodies into adult body bags, tagged them , and bought them to the hospital fridges. The hardest soldiers were touched by this pitiful sight, as most had children about their ages: a boy and a girl about 10-11 years of age
We were called back to the same village some 2 hrs later.
There was a flurry of activity around derelict house. Hope dawned in that something could be salvaged from the carnage. We were soon to discover that there was a mule trapped inside the smoldering shack. After the initial shock the farmer who owned the shack and the father of the dead children realized that he could have another family, but he couldn’t harvest his meagre tobacco and olive crop without his mule.
And while this seemed repugnant to our sense of values, as most of these mountain people were living on subsistence farming his rationale was very real to him. So you had accept the realization that this was Lebanon- life was at the same time both sacred and cheap, but survival was everything.

We also catered for a Norwegian Transport Company of about 400 soldiers within our area . One morning I was called to the yard, where a mechanic had blown himself up while welding a petrol tank. His clothes were still smoldering when we got there and the smell of burning cloth and flesh still lingers. He had massive 3rd degree burns, well in excess of 50%
We infused him with plasma , plasma expanders and morphine. He went into shock and had a cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated and when he was stabilized to some extent he was airlifted by helicopter to Naqura – the UNIFIL field hospital on the coast between Israel and Lebanon, My only worry in transit was that he would have another arrest in flight .You hear nothing with a stethoscope in a helicopter.
As we approached the field hospital I spoke from the air with the chief surgeon explaining the extent of the burns. I suggested we request permission to take him over the border into Israel – to Rambam medical hospital in Haifa, He agreed and assured me that he would arrange permission for us to cross the border without landing . He was to arrange this with the Northern Command of the Israeli Defence Forces who controlled the border. There was a mechanism whereby these airlifts , Missions of Mercy could usually be readily negotiated with the Israelis , who almost without exception responded positively and expeditiously to such requests .The pilot then got clearance to go and as we approached the border just over the cliffs at rosh an enqura they opened fire on the helicopter. The rounds were tracers mostly it later transpired, but the Israelis later insisted that they hadn’t been forewarned of an air lift and as they had been aware of an imminent air attack by the PLO , and thinking this was it they took preventative action by firing on the helcopter.
We landed on the rooftop of the hospital and delivered the patient to the care of the Israeli doctors. We had dealt with Israeli doctors on many previous occasions . Most of their doctors were , like their military American trained. Miraculously the patient survived; the Israelis had been at the cutting edge of the management of extensive burns at the time . So a week went by and against the odds the pt had survived . then a fortnight ,then a month. At this stage there was a great yearning by the Norwegians to bring him home as the Norwegians were also developing new techniques for the management of burns – This involved treating the pt untouched in a bath of olive oil and using bilaminate skin and biologic self-skin replacement. So the patient survived for a further 2 months and died in Norway just short of 100 days post injury.
On reflection had he died on the spot or after the first cardiac arrest, things might have been more humane.
Lazarus
Reflecting on many of the memories which in turn both haunt and humour me now , on reflection I see they have a common thread ; the of lack of communication.
This is certainly the case in another incident.
This was a case where at an outlying clinic I was asked to see an old man who was bedridden. On examination it seemed to me that he had Congestive Cardiac Failure, and I arranged to bring him back to the civilian hospital in Tibnine, which was now under military control. I knew the Col in charge of the hospital and explained to him that I would look after the patient . In the morning the family arrived at my surgery in a very distraught state to tell me that their father had been transferred to Tyre hospital on the coast. I went immediately to the Col who confessed that he had ordered the transfer on account of the old man’s political baggage – he was a PLO fighter and any overt sympathy shown by the military in charge of the hospital could invite retaliation .
Because of further suicide bombings on the coast road the family had been denied access to the Tyre hospital.
On the following day I received a call from a French Major – an NGO officer to tell me that my patient had died during the night and that he was delivering the remains back to me later that day.
I then went to break the news to the distraught family. When the hearse / ambulance arrived in the village square the major came directly to me with the papers – his manifest - I went in to the ambulance to identify the remains before the family might see him to see to my initial horror, there was the old guy sitting up on a stretcher, his stick still in hand – He winked at me and bade me- Marhabba ( good day )
Shocked and stupefied I went to the grieving family across the square who just wanted the body back. I explained that there was an error and that their father was in fact alive. I was knocked aside in the stampede, and they whisked their father away never to trust me again.
I just could not comprehend how the French Officer could have accepted a corpse believing it to be so without checking. He was outraged simply because in his opinion his office had been misled. It never occurred to him that he might have inspected and identified his manifest – No, he was adamant –He had followed proper procedure and he insisted that he was given a death certificate in Arabic and that it was completely outside his remit, and his Gallic affront could not be appeased. It transpired that the ‘death certificate ‘ were just the personal details of the old man. It made no reference to his health let alone his demise.
The family later forgave me, but after some humble contrite imploring on my behalf and later I came to befriend the old man… but they never let him out of their sight in my presence ever again.
We helped out in other battalion areas. I remember having to go to stay in the Fijian area after their doctor had dropped dead out jogging one morning. he was just 40 . The Fijians sent just one medical officer per battalion – considering that they have only 4 battalions in their army their contribution to the UN was proportionally quite enormous.
But the workload was far too much for one doctor in a stand alone situation, particularly when just some months previously the Israeli Defence forces launched an aerial bombardment on a tent within the Fijian compound where the local civilians had taken refuge.
There had been warnings of retaliations on suspected members of the Hizbulla in the town of Quana. The Israelis launched what they referred to as operation Grapes of Wrath. The Air strike was precise. Despite the blue flag of the UN and the Red Cross they struck the tent with precision killing 150 women and children.
Again we were confronted with the merciless barbarity of war in all its evil manifestations- more children in more body bags, and the mass burials before dawn.
This particular episode more than any other highlighted for me the many shortcomings of the UNIFIL mandate. We had failed all the refugees seeking protection in a UN compound, under the Red Cross and the blue flag and had witnessed an incident of ethnic cleansing which we were powerless to prevent.

Don Tidey Kidnapping
Between tours of duty things were still unsettled at home. The IRA was still active and the main function of the army at home was to aid the civil powers and to subdue any internal threat to the structures of the State.

In Late December 1983 the business man- Don Tidey, had been kidnapped by the IRA)

I had been stationed in Finner Camp in Donegal and had gone down to Dublin for the Medical Corps Annual Dress dance. I was in the middle of the jubilations when I was called to the emergency phone in St Bricins. The 4 western Command had been put on stand by; I was ordered to return to Finner.
I was given 4 hrs to recover from my revelry then get into my car and drive to Finner.
I arrived in Finner where there was an escort waiting. I didn’t have time to change. I was told to follow on so I turned the car – and was led into the heartland of IRA Country – Ballinamore. There was a siege mounted around Dadara wood. They were expecting the IRA to break cover at any time. A Garda and a soldier had been killed just before I arrived.
I immediately set about establishing a medical aid post in the belief that a shoot out was imminent.
There was only one request I made, Just provide me with a room to treat any injuries, Every 6 hrs we had a briefing and a debriefing – sometimes with the Gardai sometimes without. At each briefing I asked about the possibility of getting a room in a school house. There was a reluctance to entertain this request which baffled me initially. It then became apparent to me that the local parish priest was a sympathizer and had refused the request, I thought it was simply a question of knocking down the door but it shows you that even then the army didn’t want to cross swords with the clergy; besides my superiors reasoned, hadn’t I 3 ambulances at my command, and an army helicopter at my disposal- one of the 4 helicopters in the air corps -dedicated for evacuation of wounded. What more could I possibly want – A room just to stabilize the patients, I
reasoned. I tried to explain that a helicopter is like the worst possible kind of ambulance except it was in the sky – I needed somewhere to stabalize patients before they could face being evacuated by helicopter ; But there seemed to be this indelible belief that if you got your wounded into a helicopter all would be well – after all that was the way it was in the movies .
For 4 days and nights I stayed in the ambulance in Ballinamore Square . By the end of the 2nd day my hopes for a shoot out were fading. On the 4thrd day O Hare was shot in an ambush in Cavan. He survived and Don Tidey was rescued.
The Cordon of steel around Darada wood was wound down and on Xmas eve I handed over duty to a colleague. But by then the IRA had long escaped through a maze of tunnels and undoubtedly with some not insubstantial local support.
A TV documentary was later made about the kidnapping and the siege and the rescue. It brought home to people how much the Army were resented in the area at the time.
It was alleged that soldiers were refused service in some shops which was denied by the local representatives- but I saw my own staff being refused cigarettes and minerals in at least one shop. Such was the feeling of IRA support in these republican enclaves around the country in the mid 80s and there e was a reciprocal antipathy to the Army and Gardai in these areas.
As 2000 ended I had declined to go forward for interview for promotion. Twice. The thought of returning to Dublin and all that entailed was something I just could not countenance.
Now the Lebanon was over and I was returning to a microcosmic world of peacetime – army life.
A life of petty jealousies, of small tyrannies , where the classic tensions of command structure vied with comradeship and collegiality.; where the ruthlessness of self promotion above personal loyalty were hard wired into the cultural ecosystem. Where the compensation culture had become endemic; where I seemed to be seeing more and more of those soldiers who would not stand up, and fewer of those who would not lie down , and where my personal sense of compassion was waning with all of these regrettable changes..
Lest I have given the impression otherwise, I should acknowledge that I have also been privileged to work and serve with the very best of Irish soldiery ; and it would be gravely unjust if I were to close without marking my personal respect to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace.
And for all the other soldiers who served as noble ambassadors in Lebanon and elsewhere; who give of their service, but much more – who give willingly of their magnanimity and their personal affection for those less fortunate than themselves. These I also applaud and revere.
But for me .the hum drum of barracks life was beckoning and a gloom seemed to be descending on army life for me
Army in peace time is like unscripted amateur drama. Prima donnas and pretentiousness, the pettiness of barrack life - ,the boots , and booze and the vacuous boastfulness and heroics lived out only in a delirium of spurned opportunity.
I could see myself slinking ever earlier in to the officers mess as the sun slid over the barrack walls , over the polished unplayed piano , along the freshly waxed corridors , through the squinting windows -and seasons would pass , the world would turn and old barrack room warriors would live out their delusions at the bar to a captive audience of timorous junior officers.
And so in 2002 I decided to retire and unlike General Mc Arthur I decided to just fade away .
Je ne regret rien.

THE LAST OLIVE TREE

2008-08-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

From the mountain the rolling dusty hills rippled under the dappled light all the way to the coast. Here deep against the slopes the village was perched like an eagle landed furtive, timorous
The moods of the changing seasons seemed to mirror those of the villagers – from the stolid and wistful in winter yielding to a jauntiness in spring followed by the languor under the torpid summer sun; Now it was autumn and the fruit hung heavily on the olive trees, the tobacco leaves a vivid yellow in the slanting sunlight.
. The people had been invaded conquered, oppressed in turn by the Greeks, then the Romans. Each had tried to impose with an implacable force the ideals of their empires; their justice and law, their art and their culture Both had failed and had at length abandoned their missions; they deemed these people indolent and unworthy. But these people were of an older race; The Phoenicians whose own creed was as ancient as it was resolute.
Bountiful harvest following on a good blessing, justice following on wisdom rather than mercy. Their most prayer invoked a belief that one day’s justice was worth a thousand days prayer. But despite their prayer both peace and justice had long eluded them; yet they were resilient and accepted their fate with a resignation and fortitude which the cynic saw as surrender, but the which wise as an expression of nobility.
But now things had changed.
Abdul Hassan Nabbi was among them He was a lowbred thug from the other side of the mountain; He had fled to the south when the Israelis first bombed the mountain villages. There he was recruited in to the Israeli backed militia, and now he controlled the region with his band of craven vagabonds. Because of the ill-defined ambiguous nature of their mandate the UN forces were powerless to restrain them. Nabbi exploited every opportunity of this ambiguity and was thus inured from restraint.
He had pillaged the villages as he choose. Taken a young boy here, a girl there; had taken anything of any value from each home. Sometimes the captives were returned when they failed to amuse him any more. But some rather that face the shame on return had taken their own lives.
Since their young men had fled to the north and only the elderly and the very young remained Nabbi had humiliated and terrorised the mountain people with impunity. Each evening after prayer he came to the village square in a convoy of battered Mercedes cars. He would alight from his car with a pretentious splendour. He was dressed in the uniform of Colonel and carried a swagger stick with a silver cap as he strutted among the frozen people emerging from the mosque. He would sit in regal court in the village square and speak to them in hectoring tones about the young men who had fled, how the UN soldiers had to dig the graves, which now awaited each of them. Some of the villagers would approach him and plead his mercy for a son, a daughter.

Nabbis militia had taken control of the bridge leading to the coast and he was accruing a substantial income from the taxes he imposed on the trucks carrying the tobacco to Tyre. But just yesterday the Un had taken the bridge and tried to disarm his men. They had refused them armed passage across the bridge. They were allowed cross if they surrendered their arms, which would be returned to them on the other side of the occupied enclave. This was the first confrontation of its kind he’d had with the UN. Such was his fury at the affront that even now his own henchmen now knowing his wrath feared his volatility. They had seen him angered in the past and knew his retribution to be ruthless merciless and unpredictable.
But he seemed oddly mild mannered tonight as he sat in the square in the falling light He listened in a manner which seemed almost obsequious; a sort of mild mannered patrimony which erstwhile might have suggested concern and when he spoke he did so with an odious calm, his menace hidden by the shaded glasses.
He told them they would each join his militia and march on the bridge in the coming days. His men would train them the rudiments of marching and carrying arms. Only the housebound would be excused. The training would begin this evening.
Leelia listened to his monstrous speech with a wide-eyed innocence. She was vulnerable. At 17 she was the last one left to care for her grandfather, who now bedridden with a cancer which was slowly eating him up. He bland expression showed not the smallest suggestion of her inner revulsion at this vile man. She hated him with a passion, which she knew was sinful. The UN doctor was now caring for her grandfather. A kindly man but who was given to the weakness of arak . The smell was always on his breath. He came at odd times to her house to see the old man and the two though separated by language and culture had developed a friendship, which was strange. Her grandfather scarcely tolerated the UN for not holding a stronger position with the Israelis who every day broke the agreement they had made with the Un by remaining in the demilitarised zone.
To tell him now that the people of the village were being marched to the bridge by this thug would be like a scorpion in his heart. He had fought from Jerusalem, to Beirut. He would never accept the new borders. His homeland was in Palestine. His family had lived just outside Jerusalem and he considered the Israeli the invader – the Occupier.
Leelia thought quickly. She would have to get to the hakim tonight. He had explained about the medicines. How often the old man was to take each. There was one for pain, one for sleep, one for. Hiccoughs and others for the several afflictions he endured now in his last battle – the one he could not win.
When she came home he was sitting out in the twilight, under a vine her father had grown.
He asked her about all the news from the village and then
- The hakim – he did not come today.
- No Papa he could not come today; there was much bombing in Shakra – they were with the wounded all day. He will come tomorrow.
Unlike him her grandfather complained a lot that evening. Then she discovered that he had not taken his medicine today. He had got a bottle of Arak, which he was going to drink with the Hakim when he came. He liked him and would like to drink with him; just the 2 of them. She could see the disappointment even through his pain and it hurt her more than he could possibly ever see. At last she persuaded him to take his medicine now and to rest. He protested a little but this was more from habit than from hope.
When he was in bed she came gave him a measure of each of the syrups the hakim had made up, as the old man could not swallow tablets anymore. She waited until she saw the pain ebb from his face.
She slipped out quietly. Ahmed was waiting in the dark under the vine. He had with him an old suitcase. He asked if she had everything she needed. Just one other thing she asked. Could he bring her to the Hakim that night? Ahmed looked at her bewildered.
- Tonight with all Berry’s men.
- -No they have gone now. They wont be back until morning. Do this one thing for me Ahmed.
She had known the boy all her life. He could scarcely refuse her. She got into the car and directed him to take a route that avoided all the checkpoints. This puzzled Ahmed, as the UN would be the only ones at the checkpoints now.
Finally they drew up outside the medical aid post. She instructed Ahmed to wait and went to the gate. The soldiers knew her as her sisters used to interpret for the MO at the clinics and while it was late they let her in.
When he came out of his room his face was flushed and bloated. What a waste of a mans life she thought as he came to her with a smiling frown.
- It is papa. I hate to come so late. But he is very sick now.
He looked at her with concern
-Leelia, do you want me to go to him tonight,
- No not tonight. But maybe you come tomorrow.
- Yes of course, I was supposed to go today, but I suppose you heard about Shakra
- Yes I hear, Can you please give me strong injection for papa for tonight. I give it to him. You show me how.
- Yes I know you know how, but I have to tell you Leela he is a very frail man. Any more than just as much as he needs for the pain would. well... be too much
- Yes you tell me this before. Please just for tonight
- I really should se him you know. I could
- No no please not come tonight, road very dangerous. You not hear..? Yes maybe they boom boom our village tonight, not safe.please.
He thought aloud –it’s not the right way, but there is nothing anyone can do for him now you know … it’s very delicate. Only so much medicine. Any more.... ..He trailed off then sobered from his reverie and asked
- How did you get here? How will you get home?
She assured him she knew the safe road and he could come in the morning. Reluctantly he went to the medicine cupboard and took out a vial a syringe and some swabs. As they were walking down to the gate he asked about her brothers. No news of them. It was better that way .He had heard something about the trouble on the bridge and this man Nabbi .Yes he is very evil man but no trouble. She said nothing of the plan he’d made to march the villagers on the bridge. It was simply too complicated.
When she looked in the old man was asleep. She took out the measures and filled each one again, and going to the bed she gently roused him.
Papa, she told him in his delirium. We have forgotten the medicine tonight. He protested but without conviction. She fed him the syrups one by one again. He had long accepted his confusion with time and took the medicines with the contorted face children made. She eased him back to bed and waited. He was asleep again within minutes. She then took the vial and filled the syringe. She waited in the light of the paraffin lamp until she saw his breathing grow shallow and the anguish dissipate as the medicine coursed in his feeble veins .She went to the bed and gently drawing back back the sheet she injected his withered buttock. He barely flinched as she withdrew the needle.
Though it was not yet dawn she knelt to the east and prayed. She then took the suitcase and assembled the corset as she had been shown. She had 2 measures of the syrup ready and now she threw each back. Very soon both anger and joy were fusing in her soul, she was an olive tree with silver hands reaching to all the people of the valley, legs and arms and golden clouds swirling and she stepped on to the road. The cars drew nearer. She walked on, just a bit farther to where there was reason or anger but a burning conviction beyond these; where reason and anger had merged. Nothing was, as it seemed .It was the right thing to do. There was no argument in reason, and no sense in being, no point in the politics – there was only the least worthy of passions in her soul as the cars pulled up beside her. The last thing she thought proudly about was the image of a single cedar tree she’d seen somewhere in a brochure .
Then slowly but firmly she pulled the cord.

-

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED- THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC

2008-04-10T06:13:00.001-07:00

THE FOLLOWS ON FROM A DISCUSSION GROUP..OF SAME NAME ..

Bridey is the antithesis of Sebastian ; he has to be both to give tonality to the family assembly; he is monochrome where Sebastian is all luminous and like a brilliant bubble from a pipe - exudes for an instant the exquisitenesses of a rainbow and then puff and its gone- Anthony Blanche.Blanche later described Bridey as a sort of a great Lama heading of to the endless and pointless destiny of his predictable life.
He is happy after all to take over the meaningless continuity of the feudal system and has no vision or conscience to see the inequality his forbears have foisted of the farming community. the Wealth is assumed ; it is not earned nor is there any thought given to any altruism of the spirit. He prays dutifully - but disdains Catholicism and Christianity; he is not a reformer - that is repugnant to his nature; neither will he end up as a monk dying alone in an abbey never to be reconciled to god or to his family , because he has no spiritual attachment to either - He is ritualistic and predictable ; for him noblesse oblige and preserving the family escutcheon is all ; But nothing matters because he is so soulless.

On reflection I think Bridey was the character who best personified Waugh himself. Waugh had an indifferent relationship, was fastidious and petty minded in many things . He aspired to discovering an aristocratic lineage , and having failed to do so in the UK he retired to Ireland and bought a castle where he tried to life out his pretentious imaginings.
But he disdained the indigent Irish who had little interest in blue blooded ancestry , much to Waugh's exasperation . He eventually abandoned the project. If we are to believe what is written about him he was a pretentious ,intolerant and insufferable snob.He also , let it be said , wrote at least one masterpiece in Brideshead, which remains one of my favorite books and will remain in the canon of English literature , and Waugh's own name is firmly placed in the pantheon of major 20th century writing.

This was a book written by an atheist about an English Catholic Aristocratic family.
The family had resided in the family pile dating back to the battle of Agincourt.
They are resolute in their slavish fanatical ethos of their faith. The church forbids divorce ,and much of the book fringes on the periphery of theLord Marchmaain's dalliance and his escape from the strictures of catholicism. On his death bed he asks his daughter if it were not somehow acceptable to escapeas he did. No she says Im afraid not father , leaving the old man to die allienated from the family he presides over.
The English attitude towards catholicism was quite different to the Irish . The Irish attitude to their religion , which is almost an extension , or was, of the Irish Free State . De Valera consulted widely with the church regarding state policy regarding divorce , abstention , birth control , drinking. DEvalera's Ireland was a vision -almost an evangelical message he received from a higher power -a deity- he looked into his soul to see the yearnings of the Irish -as did Louis 1VX
He saw visions of a happy contented community with comely maidens dancing at the cross roads- whether he actually said the latter is disputed . There is something very risque about the concept now.
De valera and the Church had a profound impact on the governance of the practice of obstetrics to the extent that gynecologists in the late 50- early 60's were practicing symphysiotomies; where the pelvic joint is severed to facilitate further childbirth; this practice inflicted untold suffering of their unfortunate patients in later life- incontinence, pain etc.
This practice is now almost considered an assault of the person , such is its barbarity and clinical redundancy.
But suffering was considered an ennobling thing in childbirth; opiate medications were often withheld in the face of extreme pain.
This was also practiced in religious led hospitals; the feeling was that the suffering of the dying cancer patients in the agony of their last mortal torment could be debited as it were from the inevitable purgatory .
The piety of the 30- 50's Ireland was a contrast from the early monastic scholars of the 7th century , who paid little heed to Rome ; they took mistresses and continued their lives in prayer , worship,adoration study.
They brought their studies to the continent - to Rome itself - The Irish College still remains-The minks brought their learning back to the UK and established the first settled places of advanced learning in the humanities; hence the older colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge.

The Irish abandoned religion in the 80's - the last generation to attend to the faith were the baby boomers.
The Celtic tiger devoured not only adherence to faith , but also encouraged the abandonment of civility and courtesy . The Paris Hilton / Naomi Cambell role model is the adopted format and this is manifest in the drug and drink culture- seee main streets of any Irish town on a weekend night.

IRISH TROOPS DEPLOYMENT WITH EUfor

2008-02-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

EUFor- Irish contribution - Chad Mission

Of all the Eu countries , we have least interest in engaging in a EU military mission in a post colonial situation. ; The French have colonial interests in Chad ; the Chinese have more immediate economic interests in Sudan , with their ever increasing thirst for oil . We have no colonial interest anywhere. We just emerged from British colonialism , and some would argue - not quite completely To be seen now to prop a post colonial regimen by sending in Irish troops is a gross error. We have served with distinction from the Congo to the Lebanon , East Timor Namibia , Liberia etc.
To think that the rebels will distinguish between a EU for force and a French force is naive . It is as much an absurdity to reason that they will either look at the colour and texture of the uniform or the flag , than to expect our blue eyes to inure our troops from enemy fire ; They have declared that they will treat our troops as enemies - there is no ambiguity on the rebel's behalf.
Moreover , and more hideously while the French general in charge of 'Indigenous ' French troops will be based in Chad , the Irish general in charge of the EUfor troops will be based in Paris.

* It is ill judged, based on a supercilious notion of military grandeur associated with our ineffable belief that since our new found wealth we are are masters of European destiny - that our hour has come to show Europe that we are indeed worthy to be considered as equals .
* We seem preoccupied in convincing Europe that we are no longer the feckless indigents of a time we seem obsessed to erase from our collective memory.

We have come a long way since our old fashioned cap-in-handedness ; so much the pity on this account.
We are entering a new and dangerous arena by associating ourselves with former colonialists. We have preserved our independence and mantained our neutrality often against adversity;
It was not universally deemed so ultra noble of Ireland to remain neutral during WW" .
My own late father server with val our as a dentist ; he fought alongside thousands of honorable Irishmen in El Al AAMain .
They returned home often to face hostility from their countrymen who choose to see WW2 as being '' England's difficulty is Ireland 's opportunity.
Needless to say these public house bravadoes were too selfish , introspective , indulgent to care about the deliverance of Europe from the Nazi tyranny. Many of them have spawned a generation of hedonistic idlers , sybarites you couldn't trust to save their own mother's very honor.These same soulless malcontents had the temerity to poke derision and scorn at the returning soldiers.
Houses were marked - cars watched ; movements recorded ;always a lurking cowl of squinting windows ; an ever present threat of implicit terrorism.
And Irishmen did this to their brothers.
It was a travesty that so many more Irishmen sacrificed so mush during WW1 ; in the belief that Ireland would be granted Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers volunteering to serve in British regiments.
The sad Irony about WW1 was that it was purportedly all about the protection of small nations.
Yet here we were on the western reaches of Europe still under British occupation.
An occupation we were trying for generations trying to be rid of.
The perfidiousness of Lloyd George wast vastly underestimated.
Collins saw one way of dealing with oppression and even he was outmaneuvered by the canny Welshman.
But to return to EUfor ;
We will regret this jingoistic blunder.
Our tears and remorse may come much sooner than any expected kudos or scintilla of international admiration.
When the first body bags are brought back we might then reflect on this monstrous miscalculation .

MC CAIN - THE ' Conservative'

2008-02-06T06:08:00.002-08:00

From this side of the pond it is all too easy to see Mc Cain as an avuncular benign conservative . This is 'conservative ' sans neo.
He must shed the wretchedness of the neocons and yet remain an attractive candidate to the GOP faithful.
But his POW status notwithstanding is it sufficient to reward a man who was probably heroic in Vietnam , with the Presidency just because he does'nt appear to have any skeletons in the cubbard.
There are some murmurings about shady dealy but they seem far too nebulous to make manifest allegations against him.
But from hear I'm hearing a language which speaks with some derision about the white flag.
If the war is a failure and they have to leave as ignominiously as they did after the fall of Saigon it would be far more noble and compassionate for the servicemen in Iraq that they at least negotiate a truce and withdraw with some degree of honour.
But will they do that and leave the big capitalists there , and moreover lose control of oil in the Middle East , which is what it was always about.
MC Cain comes from a military family , something he is not afraid to trumpet as if it were that he was handed the keys of the kingdom ; the heir of his patrimony .
We like to think of him as 'a bit Irish , even if he does'nt make the claim as overtly as he might.
Mr MC Cain has made his position on Iraq clear enough to forewarn the electorate.
What about Iran . Would he show the restraint to nuke or otherwise interfere there.?
What about the road to Baghdad being through Jerusalem , ;the implication here being that if the USA were seen to be honest brokers in establishing dual statehood for Israel and the Palestinians ; would he be as partisan towards the Israelis as the Bush administration has been ?
Remember that while Bush visited the region for the first and only time in recent weeks , that even when he was talking about realigning historical borders , at that very time the Israelis were actually continuing with their carve up of occupied territories; dividing farms , denying farmers from access to their olive groves ;
diverting the water from these farms .; strangulating the occupied territories from essential supplies ,
I have served as a doctor on 6 missions with the UN , have visited these farms , have had discussions with young Israelis about their alleged hegemony and military supremacy. Most are conscious of their ( Israeli) disproportionate war in Lebanon - which was mostly against Lebanese citizens and destroyed an economic and infra- structure the Lebanese had struggled so hard to reconstruct.
I have seen the devastation in Northern Israel ,caused by Hamaz rockets launched from Southern Lebanon .
I have also seen the resullt of operation Grapes of Wrath , launched by the Israelis on civilliant sheltering in the Fijian battallion HQ and the memory will neber ever leave me.
I have visited the Holocost Museum and was equally revolted .
The mutual distrust is manifest in everything everyday.
The situation there and elsewhere requires a less belicose voice than Mr Mc Cain's .
It requires the vision , imagination , compassion of someone like Obama.
One senses that despite his relative inexperience , his mind is suffeciently open to be that honest broker.
He would certainly refrain from any designs in Iran.
Maybe mine is a naive hope , but we all look to the USA for a renewed international integrity . We depend on the US for stability in world economics.
I would plead with the uncommitted American voter to take pause .
This is the most defining time for the US sense of equality , freedom , and the right to pursue happiness. ,
Could the avuncular Mc Cain succeed in this very fragile area while he still talks of disdaining the white flag.

2008-02-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

bukll

RAQ - THE BRITS ; RETREAT OR BETRAYAL Ed

2007-09-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

IRAQ - Redeployment or betrayal

The recent withdrawal of troops from Basra can only be seen as a betrayal . Even the term is a typically British slight of hand . The real and only meaningful term was retreat . But this is considered repugnant to the British phlegm , and to accommodate their National vanity they insist on 'withdrawal'
The perfidity of carrying this out in the dark of night to avoid the media spotlight had of course nothing to do with military secrecy and everything to do with deflecting the ignominy of having a Vietnam vista after the fall of Saigon broadcast around the world .
This would not auger well for a new Prime-minister who is so desperately trying to divest himself of the clothes of Blair who chose to conduct his regimen on a presidential footing.
The most lucid reasoning for the necessity of departing Iraq now for a resurgence in Afghanistan was articulated by Col T. Collins Officer Commanding the Irish Rifles.Collins has been cautioning against the deluge of opiate traffic - cocaine , heroin flooding in to Europe and causing catastrophic societal rupture. This is manifest in the ghettos of Liverpool , Manchester and more recently on the streets on cities in the Irish Republic . This traffic he argues is funding the warlords in Afghanistan , and thus perpetuating the war effort .
The Brits also realise that their frugal budget there has had an incapacitation affect on the soldiers in Afghanistan .
Mr Bush's unexpected visit to Iraq may have been the stitch in time to salvage the slumping morale among the US troops . The fact that it was one of the shortest speeches he has made on Iraq contributed largely to its undoubted immediacy and the fondness of its effect.
General Petraeus is soon to report on the efficacy of the troop surge . Has Mr Bush used all the good news lines from this report or is there perchance some genuine positivity contained in this report . We will know as soon as the press decode the text and arrest the spin .
But the most disturbing aspect of the British withdrawal must be the contemptuous ease with with the PM can shift the remaining 5500 troops back to an airport , so that he can present to the upcoming Labour conference the new and defining direction of his Premiership ; Why leave these 500 troops within the gun-sights of the insurgents all this time , if the simple vagary of a political guru can so deftly and finally determine their fate .
We shall also see quite soon how meaningful is the deployment of the 5500 troops in an ambigously defined overseeing capacity .Or are they revving up the troop carriers on the runway.

FROM KYOTO -TO CANCUN TO TNE CANCAN

2007-03-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

As the count down for the realisation of the Kyoto Protocols approach,and as the various states of preparedness are being assessed assiduously all over Europe; one Nation watching the other to see who the best Europeans are, we in Ireland have invented a new strategy.

The new government think tank had pulled a rare rabbit from the tall political hat this time.

Aha !! they exclaim you see 1990 was the wrong time to start from; or to use as a base from which we are supposed to use as a benchmark... and all that.. Unfair for Ireland they say. Germany France and the old enemy UK were all fully industrialised at that point, but the orphaned island to the west of Britannia was not nearly at its full capacity by 1990. It took another ten years before we matured to such profligate waste capacity ; a capacity to generate sufficient CO2 to be considered as even the meekest offenders. only the smallest little blemish of an offence - a venial sin;

Any way the new buzz slogan is 20:20

Its like bullshit bingo – if you know the buzz words / expressions – going forward; tipping point; in the public domain; axis of evil etc etc. – if you can parley in this Euro babble – or maybe its global babble well you are deemed sound and well rehearsed and conversant with all that’s relevant; if you don’t use the lingo you are deemed less than erudite – you re considered an asshole.

Any way its not Kyoto anymore – its 20:20 – someplace – ahh yes

Cancun, Mexico. Outlined here are the key proposals for new agreements, the agreements that are currently under negotiation and a summary of the changes being demanded to previous trade round discussions.

New agreements
The European Union, with the tacit support of the US, is calling for four new agreements – on investment, government procurement, competition and trade facilitation. They are all designed to facilitate the growth of the world’s largest corporations. At Cancun, governments must decide whether or not to start negotiations on these issues. Negotiations would inevitably lead to new agreements. ………….

And so on. But what a masterstroke poor impecunious and penurious Ireland came up with

I think after Kyoto and Cancun .. it should be the Can Can... and we can whistle Dixie to the atmosphere

2007-03-14T06:59:00.001-07:00

GLOBAL WARMING - MYTH . MYSTERY , CONCOCTION,DELUSION ;CHARADE

Posted By: donkylemore at 2:47 AM GMT on March 11, 2007
Updated: 1:12 AM GMT on March 13, 2007

The most popular thesis fro glabal warming currently is od course Co2 emmissions as a consequence of human endeavours ; in all their diverse manifestations from industry to human and animal metabolism but there is a believe which whether we think it to subversive ior just naive it is a counter theory with regard to regard to the dictum which would hold that our common breathing ,industry,to agriculture etc - all human generated activity or all biological organic and inorganic activity which human beings generate and participate in causing Co2 and thus cause global warming ; factored in to this Co2 emmissions is the is particle pollutant causing the insulation effect.
These two it is commonly held among the scientific community are responsible fro the entire effect we have monitered ib climate change most especially over the past 2 decades .

But less pleasing is the notion thatb global warming and thus our mortality as a speciec is occuring dor reasons not of our making ; that these factors are inevitable and thus fatalistic somehow offends the human psyche .
There are 2 counter theories to these and they are to a degree also counterintuitive,
1 that the earth is actually dimming from lack of solar radiation penetrating the atmosphere because of particle occlusion - pollutants in the upper and lower atmosphere- less penetration of sunlight /energy- which should cause global dimming thus cooling .
2.The reverse of this is that all of the polutants , from Co2 to CFC s and a litany of others cause the canopy / umbrella effect causing warming.

The theory which i'm grappling with at the moment is the one which suggests that global warming /cooling is unrelated to Co2 or human interference but ratherthat it is caused by cosmic radiation. If I have this correctly the theory would suggest that the sun and its magnetic field is in a state of flux; constantly changing both the strength and force of its magnetic field , but changing with a periodic regularity.In the quiescent phase the mangetic field is less active and therfore is incapable of deflecting cosmic radiation which enters the atmosphere causing ionic particles ( chlorine )which eventually coalesce and form the substrate for droples of H2o - ; hence clouds are formed and these deflect the suns rays and cause the earth to cool; the obverse occurs when the suns magnetic field is more active - the cosmic radiation is attracted by the sun's gravitational

force , less ioned particles enter the atmosphere and less cloud formation ensues and the earth , uprotected - gets h

This theory , so its proponents would hold , is supported by the dendrologists who it is sugested support this in terms of alternating spurts of growth and dormancy which they observe in the the rings of trees,and they attest that these periods of extended and retarded growth correspond with the Sun Spots.
The theory holds that the sun displays black spots on a regular and periodic frequency , and that these spots represent solar magma errupting from the centre of the sun causing a powerful change in the force of the suns gravity and a reversal of the magnetic field in the region of the sun spot.( Black Spot)
We are apparetnly now emerging from a period of activity -less black spots-less interference /deflection of cosmic radiation so the earth should be warming.
The theory holds that more black spots ( increased magnetic solar activity ) = more deflection of cosmic radiation = less ionisation = less cloud = less occsulion =Global Warming
The proponents of this theory would suggest that the last Mini Ice age occured as a consequence of a change in the Solar magnetic fields .(inactivity.) many of them over it's vast surface causing less deflection of cosmic radiation - more ionisation- more H2o percipitation..more cloud..more occlusion .. cooling.
This Mini Ice age is depicted in Dickens with people skating on the Thames which is frozen over ..
Some would go so far with this theory but come to the reverse conclusions ie more black spots = less solar radiation =less heat/ energy reaching earth =cooler earth ; So no one is really convinced that this is a viable thesis other than to admit thatcosmic radiation exists and that solar wind exists and that a degree of ionisation does occur from cosmic radiation , but the results of any reasearch seems inconclusive and as yet unconvincing.

So there's my quandry .GW - who dunnit !
But Ive left out the Ghia belief which holds that the earth is just a single organism - like a coral reef - in which we ( humans ) are just participants ; And this belief holds that the earth has a capacity , as do all living things , to reorganise itself , regenerate and heal.And that it ochestrates these biological expediencies for its own protection. For example it is suggested that the earth 'allows ' certain marine organisms to proliferate - the red tide- to cause release of gases to - and here I'm vague - is it to augment the depleted ozone layer and protect these organisms form ultra violet radiation and additinally allow the organisms to thrive , cause Co2 release , cloud to cause cloud formation or to cause Co2 formation - cloud - cooling etc.Then again would not the greenhouse effect prevail and cause warming?
Like all theories once you posit it you have to take the flak of subjeting it to scrutiny and analysis ; imperical evidence is scanty .
It seems that here more than anywhere else that the Chaos Theory ( forget macro enocomics)prevails and nothing utimately can be predictable because all of the contributing factors and their interactions and the sequellae of these reactions and interactions are unknown or as yet undetermined , or are perhaps unknowable and thus utterly unpredictable.

So whether GW is due to our collective breathing , farting , burning , working , manufacturing , farming or whether its just an inevitable cyclical thing related to a state of flux in the suns magnetic fields or whether Ghia will nurse itself back to rude good health again despite continuous anthropomorphicly perceived insult - its all to play for and indeed pay for.
I would welcome any inforamtive view on any opf this . I am inured to ridicule or satire but if you must ..

There would have to be a counter theory to all of the above and to quote the greatest and most lovable of chaoists - Groucho Markx - the reverse of all of the above could of be equally true .
And then of course there's God , the perfidity of the human condition; original sin , third secret of Fatima ..GW Bush..CIA FBI ..BBC..BB Kink Matt Buzby ..and Digg it.. digg it.. Dorris Day..- John Lennon

FAITH - DYLAN - WEATHER

2007-03-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Part of the problem with a strict interpretation of science is vanity or delusion. This is also the problem with religion- any religion.
Faith based religion (is there another kind?) is just that; based on blind faith. I will hold with any holder of a belief system as long as he believes ;or at least I'll walk part of the road with any one who has one (or none as the cliché goes)
. At the end of this enchanting journey we will either differ or agree; but we should each enjoy one another's company and enjoy the view as we go. Because all we, all; any of us have is part of the walk to go and only a miniscule part of the view.
But I'll leave the last word to Dylan - 'You don’t have to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows '
But then I reflect. Mr Zimmerman borrowed his very name from the poet Dylan Thomas.
So I'll put it another way; when the last neutrino fades in to the last singularity. and we all dissappear into where we were before 10/ -27seconds -( fondly referred to as the big bang ) and as God chuckles to himself I think he wont be playing Baach.. but perhaps the words of John Lennon when they played live to the first Telstar intercontinental TV broadcast... Nothing you can know that isn’t known.. All you need is Love . Love .. Love is all you need .

Has the strict chastity of profound learning cudgelled of your pursuit - deprived you of humour , imagination . the expansiveness and profligate exuberance of youth and all its utter irresponsibility .
Don’t be so dam sober . someone ( who features in my work ) said to me recently . ‘ we haven’t long left .. none of us ..’ – we were at a funeral , where all lies and realisations collide and truth and fancy parley at last and do a three hand jig with one another –that’s death .It brings me to life in a macabre sense ..so do tombstones graveyards .. obituaries. But I say to myself ..I’m only here to be a scourge on others. and then I returned to one of my favourite books .. the Wind in the Willows..

And so today I bought myself a speed boat..
And tomorrow I shall b weToady of Toad Hall and the day after , remorseful and .. well thinking about those fucken chimneys
If that I were that age again when I was so troublesome to my parents I’m afraid id do it all again .. same way.
I still don’t know for sure what happens if you threw a live cartridge into a homely fire ..I tried I tried. but domesticity and an impending threat of expulsion from the Jes emasculated my progress ..but funnily I met the prof of chemistry in the boat club last week…put it to him .. he wasn’t sure..Seamus was his name… he has the biggest arsenal of guns in the country ..told me he was doing a study of how a bullet could pierce a skull..pigs I had stolen his ladder.. he having a capitalists boat had t the ladder. Told him I had seen results of same .on human skull . He said ah . took his ladder back.. and I thought
‘ happiness is a warm gun’

GLOBAL WARMING - THE MYTH AND THE FEEBLE FACT

2007-03-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

GLOBAL WARMING _ GORE _AND THE POLAR BEAR

2007-03-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Whatever system you chose to accept as being responsible , and there is quite a range to chose from , the most discouraging thing about it all is that we are allready probabally past the point of no return,
Industry , airlines , corporations , and a multitude of others line up to defend their positions ; and some do so mere convincingly than others.
Evryone seems to be fired up by Al gore's movie; why did he not make an issue of this when he was running for VP. He was after all deeply involved in the manufacture of extreme end material for exterme weather condidtions- goretex ; This was his father's company as far as I can determine.It was used in the manufacture of angling gear and was in contention for the title of the most expensive fishing gear on the market with a company called 'musto' My unhappy experience with the latter was that whatever about the most dapper angler on the lake the angler kitted out in musto was never the driest.
So Mr Gore would have had at least a nodding acquaintance with weather and all its vagaries.Did he mention any of this in the movie.
The most convoncing evidence from the less tabloid scientists at present is that temperature gooes through cycles of warm and cold spells and the Co2 trails this warming by about 800 years.- ( the CO2 elevation lags behind the temperature and therefore could not be caused by it but rather be the result of it )the there was suffecient evidence in the Gore camp to suggest this but I gather he omitted to make the point in the movie.Where the Co2 goes when the temperature goes in the reverse direction ; ie cools - it is absorbed by the massive sinks of the earths oceans.
But the gloomiest projections come from the proponents of Ghia who hold that the earth has the capacity to repair itself- they now have concluded that the damage allready caused is a step too far.
I am reminded of that famous quote from Tip O Neill who said ' all poolitics are local as my own political representtatives - all ministers are heading off to the 4 corners of the earth this Patricks day for the annual binge But the grotesque thing this time is that they've been instructed to use the theme of global warming for their addesses - in China , Australia, all over the USA - CAnada -JApan :Russia ; we Irish are a magnanampus race when it comes to St Patricks Day.When Paddy parties ; evryone parties - no party poopers here . No Sir.
It hasnt seemed to occur to our politicians that the collective carbon footprint they will leave is absurdly cynical and hypocrritical and just utterly profligate.
This year is election year ; we are due to go to the polls in May. So the politician's antenna is up ; his ears perked ; tail awag - he sees that green is the new way to go. So from squandering millions on decimating areas of special conservation - preservation of unique snails. pearl mussles .and a wide range of biodiversity , they now have chosen to embrace the tree huggers who they have lampooned for the past 4 years.
As a nation we are now the second worst offenders in terms of carbon emissions in Europe .
We have exceeeded our targets for Kyoto by 25 % as of now, yet the ministers tell us all is under control; we will be 15% below the best of Europe by 2020.- We , who having secured a place at the UN Security Council on foot of a promise of 2 % of our GDP to world aid , renaged on the deal when the place was secured ; we made this excuse on the basis that our economy growing at such an unexpectedly high rate . We were committed to donating 2% of GDP to world aid - but no this was deemed excessive and unafordable because oor national wealth was greater than expectations. |And they sold this half baked excuse to the peolple - to our national shame.
And now they have embraced green politics in the rapacious greed for power.

But to return to Mr Gore before I close I am urged to suggest that he , Mr Gore, may have been selective in the evidence he aduces in support of his noble project .If he withheld evidenct which would have confirmed that Co2 elevation followed and did not precede global warming , he is guilty of a flarant lie , or perhaps more kindly a lack of understanding. To quote a prosecution council at the Watergate trial- he took an emancipated view of the facts- or less prosaicly - why spoil a good story/ theory with the facts . CO2 may not be the only culprit - see blog re ; sunspots - solar wind .It is a respectable position to assume a green ambience right now.In fact it is almost beatific. But who really cares suffeciently to drive less, in a lower powered car ; scrap the SUVs , curtail jet travel , use dimmer light bulbs; tolerate less showers , less air conditioning , less oil fired central heating in Winter.
But I'll finish on an upbeat note - the Polar Bear survived the Holocene Period , when global temperatures were at their height , and he is still with us .
Now I am inclined to reflect that all of what Ive read about the Gore movie is little more than what they call in polite circles as excrement of the male cow - But I shall have to see the movie

2007-02-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

Bush 's yearning for war with Iran.
As a social theorist rather than a historian the academic of tomorrow will look and wonder how America went blindly into Iran.
It is searingly obvious that as each day passes their president is pulling more demonic rabbits from the hat; yesterday is was that Iran had nuclear arsenal ; today it is that Iran supplied the insurgents in Iraq with weaponary to shoot down US soldiers.
The irony is probabaly thet the weaponary which has thus far slaughtered most US combatants is US made , having been supplied to Saddam when he was the putative puppet , and his was the regeimen thought to cause most menace in the Middle East in the US 's favour.

Future generations will judge us all less kindly as we in the West have presided over this disturbed president and his deluded machinations . It is within the grasp of Congress , one hopes to at least refuse to finance any overt move against Iran; we can only pray that they will be more resolute in their determination and decline to facillitate Bush's latest percieved mission .
But the wory escalates by the day ; Now Bush is turning to Lebanon again to aportion blame for the unrest there on Iran; it may well be that Iran has it's many sympathisersw in the Shiite community ; so much the pity but the Lebonese elected the Hammas party to rule ; and this must be factored in to any political resolution; Even the Saudis appreciate that to take the Bush line and keep taggeting Iran in Lebanon is just tautology .
It is more ; it is tendentious .
It is the mercilless beat of the war drum .
Could Israel be persuaded to carry out a preemptive attack ? It would be convenient for the administration , but with Israel still smarting from its recent debacle in Lebanon it would seem to be an unlikely development .
With a Russian Putin desperately trying to throw up a smoke screen over his alleged involvment in the killing of his former spy Litvinenko with polonium in London it seems probable that he will supply Iran with some hardware ; most likely planes in order to counter US air supremacy in the region.And this in turn may feed in to the president's paranoia , which may for a time seem justifiable.
Again and again we must face that axiom that war is the failure of politics, diplomacy , civilisation.
But this time we are edging closer to a conflict which will spread far beyond the Midddle East , will destabalise oil supplies, and in turn world economics.
It may even be of such a scale as to eclipse the concern about global warming for a generation.
Who said '' I dont know what the next war will be fought with ; but the one after will be fought with bows and arrows.''

Publish

2007-01-23T16:48:00.000-08:00

A fruitful clime is Eiré's, through valley, meadow, plain,
And the fair land of Eiré, O!
The very "Bread of Life" is in the yellow grain
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Far dearer unto me than the tones music yields,
Is the lowing of her kine and the calves in her fields,
And the sunlight that shone long ago on the shields
Of the Gaels, on the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

Donnacha Rua Mac Namara

Mac Namara Family tree

It is difficult to know where to start a project like this .

I am tempted to take the scenic route , but the more tortuous one is probably the more honest . I am reminded here of our visits to Mullagh in the late 50’s with Auntie Nelly and Tomas and all of us heading off in a Volkswagon Beetle ;The choice then was between the corkscrew hill or via Lahinch .They usually choose the corkscrew for some perverse reason . My joy was unconfined when we reached the top of the hill , for as the Percy French line has it .. all the rest is downhill. It is similar with this journey ; you could choose the scenic or the scholarly route .

Essentially I wanted to trace the family tree, but the more I looked the more I saw the forest that it is .

As one gets older the distant past seems to become more important as it drifts away from us ; away to a place we can never revisit other than in the capsule of collective memory ; this is often more colourful than perhaps were the facts at the time ; even the stories of doting grandfathers however well intended tend to be embellished ; made more heroic ; more ennobling more sacrificial ; more enduring than they actually were. We can never be sure . We can take comfort only from the fact that they were told to us but can we ever be sure of the past.

As you listen to the news today , you may hear the reporter of the most recent story give the gushing essence of his story before adding '' and the background to this story is ...'' and that’s where history begins ; but you must first ask 'who wrote the background.' if it is unchallenged then the history is not even that it is just a narrative of selected facts which collated in a particular way could even be tendentious , propaganda , or just dam lies.

An so it tends to be with this narrative .

Already there’s a problem ; A king in the 3rd century..; a son who forms a clan ; they from a sort of cabal in East Clare and team up at some time with Brian Boru to defeat the Vikings , (but the history such that it is suggests that they only fought for Scattery Island )

Then we take a quantum leap forward to the 16/ 17 century . Here we meet some seemingly noble if confounding and confounded souls.

But now the characters seem more real ; they fit in to a picture of history.

The Rising of 1691 and the battle of Vinegar Hill are recounted in folklore and famously in the eponymous haunting ballad .Here it is said that Fireball fought , survived , went to France . joined the French army and pursued a career of glorious battle until , at some quiescent period , there being no battle raging which moved him sufficiently , he took to duelling . Being a marksman he killed many of his adversaries when his honour was sullied , but he eventually was hanged for his excesses and is buried in Quinn Abbey ,which was built for the monks by his forbears. His is the stuff of legend , of pride and shame at the same time ; a rogue a swash buckling cavalier , ill-tempered thug , and a fearless soldier ; a man with the temperament of martyr saint and despot

I see for example many of the notorious flaws of Fireball so manifest in myself and to a lesser degree in other members of my family ; I would desist challenging a man to a duel over a dog as Fireball once did. I would consider that a bit rash . My fantasy might take flight to a world where I might slay my vexatious adversaries but I am a coward .

Neither would I have had the faith nor the conviction of Donnacha Rua who changed his religion to widen the scope of his teaching , before reverting back again to his former creed .This requires commitment . But more than any comitment it requires a degree of passion, which is both laudable and laughable at the same time .

However embarking on a journey such as this I am prepared to meet in my past at least as many undesirables and rogues than I am nobles lords. Earls, kings etc.

Though the family name thrives in Clare and in the past hundreds of years they built many fine castles it would be fanciful and downright dishonest to trace the family back from the castle rather than take the family and try to come forward from the oldest recorded relative or backward from the current generation. Whether these lines will ever meet is as improbable as Stanley finding the heart of Africa.

Unlike other cultures we burned most of our most treasured family records during the bombing of the Customhouse during the civil war; you could say that during our civil war managed to perpetrate the most uncultivated and uncivilised attack on our public records. We now as so often before for so many things to turn to the church for the parish records of births deaths etc.

And then we leap into another unknown . The origins of my own family. My Father was borne in Balymackea , Mullagh . West Clare in 1911, his father was also borne in this house. My grandfather was borne about 1880 , and his father in 1840 ..

But Here is some data from internet research . here is where I’m at just now ; take particular heed of the links…so from here on its all plagiarised

The earliest relation of the sept was Aulomm (Oilliol Olum), ancient king of Munster, included: Éogan Mór, a quo (from whom descend

Olum was kinh of munster in the 3^rd cent Dalcassion) the race of Cas, the sixth in descent from Cormac Cas, son of Oilioll Olum, King of Munster in the 3rd century. Through this line they are connected to Cashel and the other great families of the province of Munster. This great clan of Thomond (North Munster), holds several distinguished families including the chief family of the name, the O'Briens. The clan of the noted high king, Brian Boru.

Cormac Cas was King of Thomond around the fifth century and he spawned a tribal grouping known as the Dál gCais or Dalcassians which dominated Munster until the final suppression of the old Gaelic order in the seventeenth century. Twenty-three generations later and in direct descent from Cas we find Cumara, Chief of Maghadhair in county Clare. Cumara is a contracted form of Conmara - hound of the sea. His son, Domhnall, who died in 1099, adopted the surname Mac Conmara, or son of Cumara, thus becoming the very first MacNamara. The name has survived relatively unmodified as MacConmara in Irish and Mac (or Mc) Namara in English, to this day.

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/people/fireballmac.htm

Plenty of info on him there.

You can try for Donnchadh Rua also, though you will need to try several

different spellings. There is a bit on him here under Donagh Rua McNamara:

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/education2.htm

though there must be a lot more. THere is also a bit here:

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/literature/clare_poets/donnchadh_ruadh_mac_conmara.htm

Sons of Ail ill Aulomm (Oilliol Olum), ancient king of Munster, included: Éogan Mór, a quo (from whom descend the) Éoganachta (of Munster); Cian, a quo Ciannachta of Eile (in Tipperary), Breagh (in Meath) and Glinne Gemhin (in Derry); Cormac Cas, a quo Dál gCais in Déis Tuascirt (in Clare). Tigernach, a quo Cenel Cerdraige.

Take a blessing from my heart to the land of my birth,
And the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
And to all that yet survive of Eibhear's tribe on earth,
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
In that land so delightful the wild thrush's lay--
Seems to pour a lament forth for Eir6's delay--
Alas! alas! why pine I a thousand miles away
From the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

Me;

(timothy ) donal Mc Namara b. Galway ireland 1949. my father Maj James(jimmy) b Mullagh Clare 1911 married Kathleed joyce Kilcinnell galway 1946 4 children My grandfather Timothy b1877 married Meade - 4 sons 2 daughters; great grandfather Pasy M Kitty O shaugnessy Patsy was b 1840 and was the son of Thady McN and Mary Murrihy Ive been trying to start some kind of narative of the family tree but the lines run into the sand. partly the problem is that during our civil war twe destroyed many of the documents relkating to births deaths and marriages - these were then held in the custom hse . dublin which was gutted .only church and parish records remain. there is of course the somewhat less reliable and sometinmes fanciful sourse material which can be derived from tradition and lore; here it is impossible to decipher fact from fantacy and history becomes blurred in the retroscopic myopia of self interest ; or a sort of collective family vanity. Take Fireball mac n - who bought at the battle if vinegar hill - 1798 rebellion ; was a fearless soldier; a flamboyant bully ; a duelest of note who having had nelson plead his case was hanged for his excesses and is burried in the graveyard in Quinn abbey , which had been built for the monks by his forebears. or Donnacha Rua mmc n ; a poet , mystic ; teacher scholar, who stidied in rome changed his religion to expand his teaching and give vent to his yearning ; he was finally excomunicated before writing one of the most famoaus and moving poems of his generation Ban Chnoin na h eireann - the fair hills of eireann ; this poem is a keening lament ; writtten in Irish / gaelic and as such loses much in translation ; also much of what is written and does survive translation is allegorical - it is essentially a withering commentary of the tyranny of the brittish and its opression which he as a scholar most keenly and acutely fely. it should be also read in the context of the ancient bardic mode of the harpers of ireland - this would fit into the lament or the suantri mode , as distinct fro the suantrai or geantri - the music of the dance and the lullaby so which ever way you turn in the narative of the mcn 's i fear you will meet this maze where there are many fire breaks and a sort of scorched earth impass in between - jusy to mangler a few metaphors.

These were sometimes crude and rablasian in their context . The old ireland is often represented as a witch and the liberated or liberating ireland as a virgin ; but an eager virgin ready to reward thoe who acquitted themselves on the ballte field . Other allegories are less gentle ; In the haunting air an buachaill chaoill dubh - roughly translated as - the long dark haired unstraightened lad - the allegory is obviously a vividly sexual one . even this translation doesnt stand up as it were .

So with many of the laments , the soulful ballads the country is represtnted as 4 green fields ; or the rocks of ban - and the impossible toil of trying to make fertile this rocky divided barrenesss is recounted to an aspirant son of the soil .

The bardic harpers were a special breed ; they dined with the gentry ; wrote songs in their praise - referred to as plankstys by O Carolan 1670-1730

The harpers preserved the 3 bardic modes - the songs of happinesss - the songs of sadness - and the songs for soothing sleep ( suantrai Seontrai , geantrai ) and many of their airs were collected at the Buntings Belfast Harp festival and for ther first time were written down in musical notation. Most of the harpers were blind , often from birth and as in O Carolans case from small pox . They were often taken in by a wealthy family who acted as their patrons - a sort of Celtic de Medici arrangement . In O Caroland case his de Medici s were a mc dermott

-roe family from roscommon

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Iraq - The War and the Execution

2007-01-02T16:20:00.000-08:00

THE WAR AND THE EXECUTION - IRAQ

The classsical idea of a just war demands that aim is moral;
Classical scholars defined war as an ethically appropriate use of mass political violence. Many credit Augustine with the founding of just war theory but this is incomplete. As Johnson notes, in its origins just war theory is a synthesis of classical thought .Many would accredit to Aristotle, Cicero and Augustine this refined and redefined validation of war – The Just War Tradition- Many of the rules developed by the just war tradition have since been codified into contemporary international laws governing armed conflict, such as The United Nations Charter and The Hague and Geneva Conventions. The tradition has thus been doubly influential, dominating both moral and legal discourse surrounding war. It sets the tone, and the parameters, for the great debate.
Just war theory can be meaningfully divided into three parts, which in the literature are referred to, for the sake of convenience, in Latin. These parts are: 1) jus ad bellum, which concerns the justice of resorting to war in the first place; 2) jus in bello, which concerns the justice of conduct within war, after it has begun; and 3) jus post bellum, which concerns the justice of peace agreements and the termination phase of war.
That the likelyhood of success is positive, that the means are proportionate towards that end.

The invasion of Iraq fails on each of these tenets. An outraged US President desperately seeking a perpetrator for the attacks on the Twin Towers declared it. When an obvious target in the form of an obvious aggressor could not be found, the State of Terror was invented, and later Iraq was dressed up to be the manifestation of that State. The US invaded without the mandate of the UN.
The Shock and awe strategy to bomb a city into submission prior to the land invasion was brutal, barbarous and yes murderous. It was indiscriminate and slaughtered thousands of civilians. It was on a scale of carnage and in equal ignominy to the bombing of Dresden in WW2 .
The leadership was topppled and the regeimen changed .The Americans used a con man (Chabli) to usurp / install a favourable leader. They succeed in installing a leadership as crass and fundamentalist as the one they deposed. The despot was tried in a courtroom where his protestations could be switched off and his remonstrations be screened off at the touch of a button by an unconcealed vengeful judge. He could have pleaded that the Anthrax which he used against the Kurds was supplied by the US, he might have referred to his former relations with Rumsfield, and the US support in his was against Iran but the charges against him were selective in that they had no material basis for US or UK collusion. These were Saddams own killings in revenge for the attempt on his life.
And so after a hearing which appeared at times like some slapstick judicial romp; a farce of truly theatrical proportions he was not surprisingly sentenced to die. He pleaded to be shot as a soldier (which he was not); this was denied
And so he was hanged by a taunting jeering mob as he prayed for the deliverance of Iraq from the Persians and their allies. And this was filmed on cell phone to give us the grisly reminder of the macabre horrorof an18 centaury execution. I have watched this with some sense of, loathing revulsion and disgust.
These last recorded moments of Saddams life as recorded on this cell phone are chilling and one feels a voyeur for looking at it.

If in his last moments Saddam showed contrition, or remorse or asked forgiveness we can never know ;only a knowing God can know and adjudicate. But what can one say of his executioners – if they believed in a hell need they have taunted and goaded him – he was in their urgings going there anyway but and if they believed in deliverance through a Devine mercy by any deity ; Allah ; God – any supreme being – how could they torment him even as the trapdoor opened.

Now consider the paradox that would surely have been if the British had captured Saddam and he immediately sought asylum in the UK because of his perceived fears of a trial culminating in the death sentence - a system which is not countenanced in the UK, I believe in these circumstances Saddam would have argued for such protection and have succeeded as did Pinochet.
The problem is that now are exposed the fault lines between the allies in the ethics of warfare and its sequellae. There is already an evidential wish for the British to distance themselves from what was a dark, brutal, gruesome and unseeingly hasty execution.
A new hatred between Arab cultures has been fomented by the invasion of Iraq – that between Sunni and Sheite ; it has been exacerbated by this trial and execution to an untold degree.
As the Bush administration seek to justify a new surge of troops in a country already in a state of civil war, where the Houses on record at least should oppose such a venture Bush seems destined to sink to depths of unpopularity not even known to Nixon.

Pity the Soldier in Iraq

2006-12-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

I have some small small experience of the conflict in the Middle East - between 80- 99 -I learned there that soldiers dont hate one another . officers might . countries maybe - politicians pretend - but they lack the sinceerity of true hatred as a driving emotion. when a soldier sees up close the devastation his bullets can inflict - , which is incidently quite rare -he sees his victim dead , then sees him as a man , with a family , doing what he thinks right , providing food and sustenance for his family -has a vision for his country , his society - and now he's blown him away in a most gruesome and thoughtless act ; then he realises for the first time that he had nothing against this man;the man he has just likked ; that his values , his ambition , his hopes for his family are so m uch the same as his own - that the officer who ordered the firing has a whole different perspective and value system
There has been a class dimension to all wars - most vividly evident in WW1-
but the common denominators which soldiers have are much more numerous than those that separate them - sociologically or idealogically
i think this comes across in ''Munich'' where the israeli meets the plo guy and he asks him what he's fighting for- is it the dusty road and the dingy huts- Yes - the plo guy says -Yes!
its an unfinished moment in the film , one i think spielberg wanted to develope on but either couldnt or wouldnt . but he put it in to give some sort of compassionate dimension to the psychopathic nature of the israeli killer.
I think the scene of this same guy listening to his newborn baby gurgling down the phone doesnt work , and spielberg realises that; it should work ; its not inconsistent with the psychopathic personna- a term which had been abandond by the psychuatric community , but has been restored again , as the socio- pathic term was inelequent and inadequete ..
they are now saying that only a fraction of soldiers who fired their weapons in WW2 , actually aimed them at an enemy target - most of the killing was done by the bomb / tank/ mortar etc.
i wonder if this is true in Iraq ; i think it is probabally not so . i think perhaps the way the whole mission has now been seen to be defiled , with rumsfield gone, and now bolton, the utter vileness of the war is becoming apparent to the unfortunate soldiers - there is no great victory here- future generations will look back and shrug. and the guys out there know that there is no glory, no idealism . no culture to defeat - or that should have been interfered with at all .
That this may becoming daily more aparent to the US soldiers serving in Iraq is and should deeply disturbing to us all. We have all failed them . not just rumsfield and bush and chainey , and bolton and however many others - but that we , the west have failed them. that we have exposed them to a futile and ignominious confrontation where there can be no completion of their ill defined and mission , and so resolution , restitution or makeshift pandering to military vainglory.
We should try to bring them home now. The cost has been too high. too high for a just cause and sinfull for an unjust one .
Egos will be sullied and so they should be ; their hands are bloood stained .Politicians will bluff and bluster about never cutting and running - but they are not there to count their dead ; pack the listless body bags ; count their blessings for today and hope for deliverance tomorrow . And all this while .. while the politicians demur , and fillibuster , looking for a way ; any way to spare their blushes .
Enough .

Looking Backward at the Universe

2006-11-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

The newest astronomy telescopes are up to 30 metres in diameter.
they are limitted only in their size by a physical law which determines that there is a ratio between the diameter , and the magnification ( brightness) and the resolution ( clarity )
whichever they can now look directly back in time towards the big bang;
One of the paradoxes this throws up is the daterministic aspoect to the past.
Thke the light which is currently coming from the star Deneb in Cygnus
This light is said for allegorical reasons to have set out from the star when the emperor Nero was a boy. Could we then see with a suffeciently powerful telescope , and if Nero were on Denab , would we see him playing the fiddle ; we should if all this holds up.
Now consider the oppisite ; if we could turn the telescope in the oppisite direction could we see things which has not yet happened .
I cant get my head around this one -
Help

THE ESSENCE OF THE BRITTISH

2006-11-25T16:06:00.001-08:00

There is much talk about how the Americans discovered pop music. How facetious can that be? It is surely as absurd as to suggest that the Americans discovered gravity or the origin of the universe, or more lately the electric guitar.
Let us stand our ground here I say.
Were it not for the Empire none of these would have been brought to the civilised world.
Take pop music. Harry Webb -aka Cliff Richard -in 1954 brought out the classic ' H-Block Boogie '
This was the forerunner to the pretender from Tennessee with his warbling about the county jail.
Harry, a modest lad from Shropshire had a sound grounding in the classics before he embarked on his later, perhaps unwise career. He had spent most of the War in India, as a captain in the royal 5 th dragoons, and was only tempted to yield to the more base instincts of the American allies when he, in the presence of HM the Queen, politely asked Her Majesty if he might introduce a format more convivial to the former colonial subjects. Hence along with the aforementioned he sang ' tenderly shall I love Thee ' which of course was also plagiarised by the Americans - Love Me Tender I believe was their enfeebled response.again the usurper ftoom Tennessee - The Pelvis - really!
You see my point essentially is that, well; one could never quite trust the Americans after their treachery in the Suez affair.Perfidious lot Americans - all for world order and all that rot but quite incabable of delivery - a race with the national conviction of candy floss .
But I am full of bonhomie for our brethren across the sea (which we discovered) -all in the interest of a sort of cultural detente, if you understand. Let it be, I say - with the characteristic phlegm, which has forged our Great Nation.
The other point, which constantly irks is the buffoonery surrounding the invention of the electric guitar.
It can scarcely escape even the most feeble minded historians attention that said guitar was fashioned by one, P. G Fink-Nottle, a blacksmith from Sheffield, who when reclining in his bath noticed the peculiar motion which had caused his the duck to bob hither and thither when the house maid to topped up the comely tub . Apocraphyl or otherwise it is told that on seeing the peculiar wave motion which emanated from said duck, he stood erect and declaring for king and country he covered the essentials and announced ' by Jove I have it Sir, I have it!!
He went instantly to the forge where he had fashioned three distinct anvils whereupon striking which with his stout anvil. Played a crisp c sharp, in the diatonic scale of G Maj- and said ' a coil Sir, a coil, that is all I need a simple revolving copper coil around which the magnets would travel,
P.G was interrupted thereupon by a call to the crusades and fell proudly with a medallion of HRH in his hand. In the Battle for Jerusalem. His last recorder words were'' Madam , Its a clean machine '
Of such things are empires made.
You see its all a matter of history and conjecture. Before the Americans had their frivolous Marilyn Munroe , We had Doris Day , and before their nauseous marlon Brando we had Sir Gielgudd - need one say more.
But let us end with this thought; who may one politely ask, in fact discovered Iraq
No. I say never. We must stand as proud and erect as WG did before his humble servant. Strike , I say with all the chivalry that makes us great , and with that great weapon which it has been our proud privilege to hold , that weapon which will make the will minded foreigner , lay down and bend .
God Save Our Gratious Queen.
Tarra ahh ahaa haaa ..God Save Our Queen

DKY

BA - right to ban the crucifix

2006-11-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

BA – are right to ban the bearing of crucifix

The decision of BA to ban the wearing or bearing of the Christian crucifix is based on the stout resolution of the Airline which best upholds the empire and all she cherishes. BA has always been in a position to reflect globally all that is best in our democracy – It is a microcosmic representation of all that is great about Britain.
We did not fight wars to be dictated to by avante garde liberals who want to pander to the whims of pansies .the management have spoken; causa fineta.
How dare they challenge their betters? Since the war the underclass have been let get away with murder, they have got far above their station. All people neither are nor created equal. We have a monarchy, which attests to that, and our anthem espouses that very ethos lest we ever forget. We have sadly lost our empire, and the world is a poorer place because of it. When Britannia ruled there was justice, civilisation, propriety and a keen sense of feudal spirit.
We taught America how to create a country; we taught them the rule of law, and the very law itself. She has not always shown her loyalty to us, most notably during the Suez crises, which by any analysis was little short of a frank betrayal. We however in the true spirit of the phlegmatic nation that we are showed tolerance in their hours of amnesia; Britain is magnanimous, compassionate, understanding and most pivotal to any nascent civilisation – democratic.
This is why BA is so utterly correct to ban the bearing of the crucifix. Anyone who believes otherwise is either a pinko or is a subversive. Look always to your betters we say; and BA has done this nation proud in being the flagship of her majesty’s airline throughout the world – what was our world and as we say, a better place then.
History will record the unique civilisation we brought to untamed savaged in every continent; Britain was as fundamentally necessary to the uninitiated, baseness of the colonies as was Rome and Athens.
In carrying across the nations the emblem of BA, the airline bears the proud echoes of a tradition, which was forged in war and tempered in wisdom;
No crucifixes; BA says no.
NO NO .

2006-11-24T05:59:00.001-08:00

SUV- Owners

They sit in their suvs each day - frosted out from the real world - impervious and oblivious to anything outside their self-absorbed conversations on their pink mobile phones. They have fashion mags on their laps - Paris Hilton and some other airheads
Their children come squabbling from their private school. Fat, unfit, screaming ugly.
They are double-parked -but screw that - get a life you asshole.
And these people who are as guilty of asbos as drunken teenagers who urinate and fornicate on our streets are tutoring and nourishing another generation of children who will be an indulgent and as self centred as themselves; their mothers will insist on it as their right; not for them the notion of summer jobs, or opening doors or any of the other shackles of subservience; these are the inheritors of the earth; the dot com spawn - the chosen people; the new Israelites of this global tower of Babel.

2006-11-24T04:41:00.000-08:00

Middle East.
The idea of resolving the ME crises is naive if it is to be structured on the basis of a skewed and lopsided situation in Israel. The very notion of a wall to create a fortress nation is absurd in a state, which purports to be a democracy. The changing demographic in Israel are stark and real. The Palestinians will in time outnumber the Israelis; of this there is no doubt,
but reflecting on the chosen people; when Moses led them out of the land of the pharaohs into the promised land, they arrived not in a new and hitherto undiscovered utopia, but in the land of the Canaan people; the people of the Mediterranean coast who were to give us language; Bibles on the northern coast is the home of all writing as we know it.
Moreover the state of Israel in more recent history, post WW2 was 'given' to the Israelis by the US and the Uk. And even this was flawed as the Brits disembarked their then protectorate on the eve of the unilateral declaration by the Israelis of their State. The State was not recognised by the UN until 1948,
further back we can only reflect again on the perfidy of perfidious Albion when she guaranteed both Israelis and Palestinians a state after ww1 - and this guarantee for statehood was to be in the same histo- geographical area.
Is it inconceivable then that the Brits could be deemed to be honest brokers in negotiating a truce in the 'disputed territories surrounding the Jordan valley - or the USA who contentiously ignore the hideous and monstrous separation wall.