Interesting News Snippets

Re 151

I have a friend who was a native resident of Mosul. Born and brought up there, as a Christian Iraqi citizen. He left, many years ago, citing even then, religeous persecution.

The events now taking place in the largely Christian North of Iraq have all the appearance of the opening shots in the current advancement of militant Islam. Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Heaven forbid that revolution should spread North to the 80 million Moslems in Turkey.

Christians have been ethnically cleansed from Mosul by Isis, and they’ve burned down an 1800 year old church. 🙁

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/last-few-iraqi-christians-flee-violence-and-threats-in-mosul-as-isis-continues-its-takeover-9622541.html

This must be in the realm of fiction.

The D. Tel. (report, 23rd July ) relates the heart warming story of a doctor who after sexually assaulting at least three women in the course of his work, has been cleared by an enquiry and allowed to continue practicing unsupervised !

This creature works at a private hospital – the name of which was not published.

I am not skilled in these matters but, I would have thought that, as a matter of commonsense, the welfare and safety of the public should have been uppermost in whatever passes for the minds of the tribunal.

Yes, but the way things are progressing, they, the Chinese will finish up very rich and successful in a totalitarian state and able to well pay their way and we will possibly be very poor, living in a make believe democracy under the beneficial order of Herr Juncker and the equally totalitarian EU.

Who would you regard as a potential winner ?

The answers to your last three questions are probably none, none and none. Nothing untoward in a totalitarian state.

I doubt many of us here would swap the frustrations of British procrastination for the Chinese model. But I could be wrong.

For the last 25 years we’ve been dithering and debating the location for a new London airport. A press report, (Sun. 12th July) tells us that the Chinese in preparing for a new airport were somewhat restricted by the topography.

So they have demolished by explosives the tops of 65, yes, 65 mountains and then filled the valleys with the spoil to create a new regional airfield at about two to three thousand feet elevation. Heaven forbid that we take such action, what would all the Oddie’s and Attenborough’s of this world have to say about that. In any event we don’t have any mountains, at least proper ones.

Judged even by British standards of procrastination, twenty five years is a long long time to be talking about siting a new airfield.

I wonder how many risk assessments were prepared by the Chinese ? How many impact assessments on the wild life ? How many committees were convened to discuss the social and environmental impact ?

One would have thought simply transmitting on all frequencies used near any targets would disrupt their flight. Trouble is by having to jump through all these loops they have already won.

You will never win playing the nice guy, you need to use the tactics they use to defeat them.

The following was discussed on these forums some considerable while ago:

To-day’s Mail carried the story that British security and anti terrorist units have been in discussions with the governing body of British aero modellers regarding the threat posed by explosive carrying, radio controlled, model aircraft or drones.

There is evidence that terrorist groups in the Near and Middle East have already experimented. One wonders what exactly would be an effective form of defence ?

Irrespective of any allegations of negligence – which remain to be proved. Irrespective of whether the bear was aggressive, highly excited or out for an evening stroll, the point of my comment was that the piece in the Socialist Worker (there’s an oxymoron for you) was an entirely un-necessary jibe that was inconsiderate and distressful especially to the family of this unfortunate youngster.

How does ‘privilege’ creep into this ? Because young Horatio went to Eton, is his life worth less than someone at a comprehensive?

There is nothing quite like a good tablespoonful of moral comparison to justify a muddled opinion.

Well it could have been the other nest of the over privileged then it would have been a Harrowing experience! Aggressive Polar Bear? It was only doing what bears do,look for food why shoot it when it was leaving. From what I understand it was a trip doomed to failure. Rifle failed to fire twice, petty unlikely unless the guy was peeing himself or it was badly maintained lie the trip wires. As to the boy I feel the same amount of regret at his death as those who are killed on an almost daily basis by stupid motorists or murdered.

Doncha jus’ love ’em ? That pillar of social justice and probity known as The Socialist Worker, the saliva speckled mouthpiece for the Socialist Workers Party has entered the lists with a spiteful piece on the story of the schoolboy attacked and killed by a polar bear on Svalbard Island.

“Eton by polar bear”, was their headline. Hilarious ! Horatio Chapple was a pupil at Eton. With others, he was on an Arctic expedition when the group were attacked at night by an aggressive polar bear. The bear killed the youngster and then attacked, severely injuring others.

All rather strange with, one would have thought, little capital to be made from this story however, it seems that according to the Daily Telegraph wherein this story was reported, Charles Kimber who purports to be the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, is an Old Etonian !

Much outrage has been expressed against this variety of gutter commenting – I won’t refer to it as journalism.

Horatio Chapple RIP.

Today’s news reports that if you try to board your flight with an uncharged cell phone you’ll be redirected to rhe bus or railway station instead. This is the latest anti terrorist, flight safety precaution emanating from America.

Is taking a flight these days worth all the accumulatedl safety hassle ? I think I’ll stay at home and save some money. Now, if ‘they’ adopted some ethnic profiling, that would begin to make sense. Most of us would be a bit more tolerant to the idea of standing in a mile long queue for what seems like eternity.

News from America. The D. Tel. &th July, reports that the state of Georgia has announced a new weapons law called bizarrely; the ‘Safe Carry Protection Act’ !

This law allows weapons to be carried openly almost everywhere: Churches, airports, bars and the classroom. It strengthens the rights of gun owners and prevents the Police from making random ‘stops’ to check for valid permits.

You can imagine that this Act has raised a bit of a storm.

Exactly right. The French know how to deal with problems involving immigrants who do not confirm. The UK has lessons to learn!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT48H6fVKX0

Re 137

FGM is one of the entirely predictable outcomes resulting from the constant promotion of multiculturalism. When other ethnic identities are encouraged to maintain their way of life this, then, is what happens.

As you correctly identify, it is the politicians who caused the problems in the first place who are now so reluctant to take action.

But, strangely enough, not French politicians.

FGM Failure a national scandal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28127678

It seems to me that we’re not going to get a grip on this issue until our politicians have the balls (no pun intended) to actually say which group in our society this practice is accepted in. Sadly, as with other issues such as ritual slaughter and certain facial garments, the politicians are too afraid of speaking up.

It has long seemed to me that the Left – that includes the BBC, is largely humourless, especially when it comes to political humour.

It is that lack of earthy humour that is really one of the most intimidating features of left wing socialist philosophy.

Hitler Youth tweet Labour candidate resigns

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28106688

A Labour parliamentary candidate has resigned after tweeting an image of the Hitler Youth in relation to a protest outside BBC Scotland’s HQ.

Now, to start with it seems odd that a Labour Candidate of all people should be so concerned. I guess it highlights the unholy alliance that is the Labour party and the BBC.

Ms Wiles has apologised and resigned as a candidate for the seat of Angus.
The Labour Party said it would swiftly get a replacement.

Ironic that the above quote sounds exactly like something the Nazi party would have done. 😀 I’m sure an apology for inappropriate humor would have sufficed.

It sounds a huge amount but against the total mass of the oceans of 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons it is a miniscule percentage. I believe that these small particles of polymerised material are unlikely to be poisonous in themselves. If you accidentally swallow a small piece of milk bottle or plastic pot it will pass through you and come out the other end.

So I don’t think it is correct to say the oceans are poisoned, but I if we have any polymer scientists in our midst they can perhaps corroborate or dispute my contention.

A Press report to-day commented that there was an estimated 40,000 tons of plastic floating in the world’s oceans, primarily in the Pacific. What makes this statistic so terrifying, is that most of it has been broken down to a size of particle that makes it easily available as an accidental food source for fish.

Pathological analysis of fish taken in various areas of ocean are believed to show that these tiny particles of plastic are readily mixed with a major food source; plankton.

Have we so poisoned the oceans that we really should not be eating anything that comes from it ?