Snippets

Last update: Friday 11 August 2006.

Short items found on the web.

• George Orwell prize
• Reality disconnects
• Insulting our intelligence
• Hypocrites
• Food for Thought

George Orwell prize

War is peace – 1

During Operation Iron Fist – the US military attack on several towns in Iraq – Marine Col. Stephen Davis told the residents of one town, who had been subjected to the usual forms of occupation-type harassments, “Some of you are concerned about the attack helicopters and mortar fire from the base. I will tell you this: those are the sounds of peace.”

– New York Times.

War is peace – 2

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

– George Bush, Washington, D.C. June 18, 2002. White House Transcript.

Stupidity is intelligence

Facing recruiting shortages brought on by overseas conflicts, the Army will accept a greater number of recruits who score near the bottom of military aptitude tests, the secretary of the Army said Monday while insisting that did not mean lowering standards.

– Newsday.

Reality disconnects

Richest 1%

“According to one survey, a staggering 19% of Americans think they belong to the richest 1% and another 20% think they will get there in their lifetime.”

– Guardian.

US divided on whether Bush is a 'uniter'

“Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe George W. Bush is a "uniter", according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday January 19, 2005. Another 49 percent called him a "divider", and 2 percent had no opinion.”

– CNN.

The American world view

• 64 per cent of people questioned for a recent poll said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution in schools, while 38 per cent favoured replacing evolution with creationism.
• 40 per cent of Americans believe God will eventually intervene in human affairs and bring about an end to life on Earth, according to a survey carried out in 2002. Of those believers, almost half thought this would occur in their lifetime with a return of Jesus from heaven.
• One adult American in five believes that the Sun revolves around Earth, according to one study carried out last summer.
• 80 per cent of Americans surveyed by the CNN TV news network believe that their government is hiding evidence of the existence of space aliens.
• 70 per cent believe it likely that Saddam Hussein was involved personally in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

– Observer.

No sense of irony

“… we support the aspirations of the Lebanese people to build a future based on democracy and to regain their sovereignty. And that requires any foreign occupation of … Lebanon to end.”

– George W. Bush, 04 March 2005.

Insulting our intelligence

Israeli spying halted in 1985

“The Israeli government has vehemently denied that it spied on the United States. Israel says all such activities were halted following the 1985 arrest of Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, who later was convicted of selling US secrets to Israel.”

– Knight Ridder.

'The honest broker'

“The US, which has traditionally acted as a broker in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, has attracted criticism in Arab countries for its apparent bias towards the Jewish state.”
– BBC. [My emphasis]

'Not really an occupation' – 1

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi told CNN that Palestinians were "enraged" by the agreement and believed it did nothing to end what they see as Israel's occupation of their land. – CNN. [My emphasis]

'Not really an occupation' – 2

The BBC's John Simpson described Iraqi insurgents on Panorama as “opponents to what they see as the foreign occupation of their country”. (Panorama, BBC1, Simpson in Iraq, January 30, 2005) – Spin Watch. [My emphasis]

'Not really an occupation' – 3

[Hamas] said it was up to Israel to change, by ending what Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organisation by the US and the EU, calls its occupation and aggression. – BBC. [My emphasis]

'Not an occupation at all'

The UN has been supporting East Timor ever since its decision to break away from Indonesia and become an independent country in 1999. – BBC.

Appearances can de deceptive

“In earlier weeks, the demonstrations often deteriorated into violent clashes between stone-throwing protesters and baton-wielding soldiers and police officers, whose use of stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas made it look as if Israel was repressing dissent.”

– New York Times, 08 October 2005. [My emphasis]

No link between invasion of Iraq and Islamic radicalism

“While western diplomats at the meeting were unwilling to accept a link between western military intervention and Islamic radicalism, he [the BBC's Jonathan Kent] says, it remains one widely believed across the Muslim world.”

– BBC.

Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked.

“Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked.”

– The Times of London.

'Dioxin may be harmless!'

Agent Orange was named after the colour of its container. The active ingredient was a strain of dioxin that stripped the jungle bare.

In time, some contend, the dioxin spread to the food chain causing a proliferation of birth defects. Some babies were born without eyes or arms, or were missing internal organs. A group representing alleged Vietnamese victims says three million people were exposed to the chemical during the war, and at least one million suffer serious health problems today.

– BBC. [My emphasis]

Some people also contend that a burst of machine-gun fire to the head may be harmful to an alleged victim's health.

Possibility that the US supports Israel!

The prevailing political culture in the United States may appear to favour Israel.

– BBC.

Hypocrites

Brigadier General Obed Tira

This Israeli officer gave advice to the Israeli government on removing the illegal settlements from Gaza:

Evicting someone from the home they've lived in for 20 years isn't a simple matter. To remove a family from its home is embarrassing and difficult, and that is why the removal needs to be done with a lot of love and a lot of wisdom.

US President Bill Clinton

This is what Clinton said after the massacre at Columbine High School:

We have to take this moment once again to hammer home to all the children of America that violence is wrong... And parents should take this moment to ask what else they can do to shield our children from violent images and experiences that warp young perceptions and obscure the consequences of violence – to show our children by the power of our own example how to resolve conflicts peacefully.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Secretary Rice commenting on the meeting with Russian president Putin:

On the independent media, we obviously have some definitional differences about what constitutes independent media, but we'll continue to have those discussions. And they are in – they point to the considerable variation that is there, particularly in the print media, but also in the electronic media. And I think our view is that it's a variation within a fairly narrow range and that something needs to be done about that.

US President George W. Bush

Bush in a radio address on 11 October 2003:

Saddam Hussein… built up a massive war machine while neglecting the basic needs of his own people.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

Jack Straw had said it was up to Iran to reassure the international community about its intentions. "The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community confidence that its nuclear programme has exclusively peaceful purposes," he said. Mr Straw said Western trust had been "sorely undermined by its history of concealment and deception".

Israeli MP Arieh Eldad of the National Union Party

Israeli troops clashed with crowds of demonstrators resisting the evacuation of a Jewish settler outpost near Ramallah in the West Bank. The demonstrators pelted the troops with stones, paint-filled balloons and eggs. When the settlers resisted the eviction, troops wielding sticks charged the crowds and scuffles broke out. [BBC]

Arieh Eldad of the National Union Party told Israel Radio:

They are treating people here like Arabs.

Food for Thought

Religion as a mental illness

Donna Gore (Atlanta Freethought Society member) described religion as a mental illness. She proposed that religion should be placed in a category of mental illness for the following reasons:

1. Hallucinations – the person has invisible friends who (s)he insists are real, and to whom (s)he speaks daily, even though nobody can actually see or hear these friends.
2. Delusions – the patient believes that the invisible friends have magical powers to make them rich, cure cancer, bring about world peace, etc., and will do so eventually if asked.
3. Denial/Inability to learn – though the requests for world peace remain unanswered, even after hundreds of years, the patients persist with the praying behavior, each time expecting different results.
4. Inability to distinguish fantasy from reality – the beliefs are contingent upon ancient mythology being accepted as historical fact.
5. Paranoia – the belief that anyone who does not share their supernatural concept of reality is "evil," "the devil," "an agent of Satan," etc.
6. Emotional abuse – religious concepts such as sin, hell, etc., cause feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and other types of emotional "baggage" which can scar the psyche for life.
7. Violence – many patients insist that others should share in their delusions, even to the extent of using violence.

The missionary position

“When the missionaries came, the Africans had the land and the Christians had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”

– Bishop Desmond Tutu

Death caused by crucifix

Associated Press [US]
September 22nd, 2004

ROME – A woman was killed Wednesday when a nearly 7-foot-tall metal crucifix fell on her head in a small town in southern Italy, police said.
Maddalena Camillo, 72, was walking in the main square in the village of Sant'Onofrio when the crucifix toppled from a monument being restored for a religious celebration, police said.
Sant'Onofrio is in the region of Calabria, the toe of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula, about 370 miles south of Rome.

Jesuit priest dies in chapel

Fr Claudio Rossi SJ, who served in parishes in the dioceses of Clifton and Westminster in the 1980s and '90s, has been killed died in a tragic accident near Rome.

He was visiting his mother in Palestrina on Wednesday, 31 May, as he did every week. In the property, located in a country area, there is a little chapel where Claudio used to go to say the rosary. Being the feast of the Visitation, Claudio and his mother were taking flowers to the chapel and going to say the rosary. They did not know of the existence of an old artesian well, just covered by flooring. Claudio fell in this well, about 30m deep. When they pulled him out, he was dead.

– Independent Catholic News

Sometimes They Do Ring A Bell

A. M. Clifford writes:

"We are witnessing today a most extraordinary financial phenomenon, in the form of a Stock Market which has advanced with a rapidity and to an extent unparalleled in modern financial history.

"Have basic conditions so changed that old standard of value are no longer applicable and must be either drastically revised or completely discarded? Are Economic Laws which we had come to regard as inviolable, no longer of value? Are the United States – now a wealthy capitalistic nation – entering upon an era of such industrial prosperity, that Corporate Earning Capacities will mount in the geometric progression and within a reasonable time support the present high prices for Common Stocks?

"Or are we wandering from the straight and narrow path of financial virtue, and pursuing a dangerous course, resting upon false financial doctrines, which will ultimately lead to distress and disaster? Will we look back upon the present as a time when we lost our heads and sense of financial equilibrium, and disregarded the operations of Economic Laws and what these laws taught us in the past and indulged in a wild speculative orgy which was certain, in the course of time, to bring a day of retribution?"

– from Sometimes They Do Ring A Bell by John Mauldin, 12 November 2004.

US army's solution to the 'Indian Problem'

“While public school history courses in the United States stress the horrors of the German Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and Josef Stalin's pogroms against racial minorities and political dissidents in the Soviet Union, the facts that the US Army's solution to the 'Indian Problem' was the prototype for the Nazi 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' and that the North American Indian Reservation was the model for the twentieth century gulag and concentration camp, are conveniently overlooked.”

– Jonathan Ott

History repeating itself

The celebrated Mr. Sheridan observed in a speech on the ravages in India under the government of Mr. Hastings [Warren Hastings, the first British Governor General of India]:

"Had a stranger at this time [in 1782] gone into the Kingdom of Oude [Oudh], ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowla, that man, who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had with a cultivating hand preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies, and a prolific soil – if this stranger, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval and observing the wide and general devastation and all the horrors of the scene – vegetation burnt up and extinguished; villages depopulated and in ruin; temples unroofed and perishing; reservoirs broken down and dry – he would naturally inquire:

What war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country? What civil dissensions have happened, thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed those villages? What disputed succession? What religious rage has with unholy violence demolished those temples and disturbed fervent but unobtruding piety in the exercise of its duties? What merciless enemy has thus spread the horrors of fire and sword? What severe visitation of Providence has thus dried up the fountains, and taken every vestige of green from the earth?

Or rather, what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning with pestiferous breath what the voracious appetite could not devour?

To such questions what must be the answers? No wars have ravaged these lands, and depopulated these villages; no civil discords have been felt; no disputed succession; no religious rage; no merciless enemy; no affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged for the moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation; no voracious and poisoning monsters; no – all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the English nation. They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo, these are the fruits of their alliance."

– Bartleby

Ariel Sharon

“I will tell you something: Years ago, I would watch when a group of Palestinian workers would sit down to eat in a circle and each of them would take out what he brought from home and place it in the center of the circle, and then, with restraint, one would take from here and another from there, and they all sat together. While as for our people, each of them would sit by himself and eat his food alone. When I watched the Palestinians, they made me envious. Both the culture of eating and the restraint alike. The Jews as individuals are extraordinarily talented, with a really far-reaching imagination. But as a nation I wouldn't give us a very high grade.”

– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister quoted by Ari Shavit, Sharon is Sharon is Sharon, in Ha'aretz Magazine, 4/12/01

Lyndon B Johnson

“Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences, radiating painful roots into the community and into the family and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the negro they are a constant reminder of oppression.”

– President Lyndon Johnson in a speech to Howard University in 1965.