the greatness of president bush

1. In the first nine months after the year 2000 election, during which Al Gore attempted to steal the American Presidency through the courts, George Bush conducted himself with responsibility and restraint.

2. When the crew of an American plane were held hostage by the Chinese government, President Bush resolved the crisis peacefully and effectively.

3. He led us through Nine Eleven.

4. He did not allow Al Qaeda and its allies the sort of soft landing get out of jail free card President Clinton had given them. The writer Mark Steyn has cited President Bush as having dismissed Clinton's policy on Islamic terror with the following remark: "He shoots a two million dollar missile into a ten dollar tent and hits a camel in the butt."

5. President Bush gave the Taliban and Al Qaeda the war they still can't quite believe. The American army, along with the Brits, the Australians, and a few others, swept into Afghanistan prompting Osama Bin Laden's now famous order of heroic Islamic defiance: "Run away."

6. President Bush was responsible for liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein's family murderocracy.

7. When CNN, Time Magazine, the Washington Compost, The New York Times, NBC, CBS and ABC through their quisling defeatism and short term politically motivated opportunism, had turned many Americans against the Iraq war, President Bush stood firm. After years of relying on soft soap Clinton era Generals, he finally found a military genius called Petraeus, who once more set about giving the Jihadis a war they still can't quite believe. When CNN and its cohort of media appeasers, wanted to surrender Iraq to Al Qaeda and Iran, President Bush defied them. He didn't assign Petraeus to the job. He turned him loose. Petraeus was a general who didn't believe in allowing Muslim terrorists to murder American troops and then retreat into Syria or Pakistan for rest and relaxation. Soon Jihadi safe houses were going boom. Petraeus was the nearest thing we've seen to a latter day Patton. A real warrior. But he would have been nothing without President Bush, the latter day Churchill.

8. When North Korea revealed that it had reneged on a no nukes deal negotiated with President Jimmy Carter during the Clinton Administration, President Bush did not engage in mutual recriminations with the ex Presidents. Carter had been acting as an envoy for President Clinton when the Accord with North Korea was signed. Like everything else produced by Carter, the agreement with North Korea proved worthless. Carter's clownish incompetence had allowed the North Koreans to receive American aid while the North Koreans simply went ahead and developed the bomb anyway. President Bush now insisted that other countries in the region had an equal interest in preventing North Korea from developing and using nuclear weapons. He insisted on six nation talks instead of just a one on one deal negotiated between the USA and North Korea. While the anti American media like to crow that America wants to force its imperial ambitions on the world, President Bush quietly maintained his insistence that Japan, Russia, China, and South Korea should also be involved in any negotiations with North Korea. This strategy prevented regional powers from turning the North Korean situation into an America versus the rest gambit. It meant the other countries were left twisting America's arm to help them secure North Korean nuclear disarmament. It was an honorable, courageous and ingenious policy.

9. President Bush resisted attempts by elements within the biotechnology industry to begin harvesting stem cells from aborted babies for scientific experiments. The pressures on President Bush were immense. The biotechnology companies used their media contacts to propagandise the general public with grandiose claims about how these stem cells might offer cures for Alzheimers, cancer, and everything else besides. President Bush stood strong against them. Shortly afterwards the scientific community revealed that it could fulfill its experimental stem cell requirements using cells harvested from adult human beings. There was no need to kill anyone or abort any human being. The atheistic media who had portrayed President Bush as an inhuman monster for daring to oppose the agenda of biotechnology companies, never deigned to apologise.

10. His foreign policy successes were many. After President Bush liberated Iraq from the Saddam Hussein family murderocracy, the President of Libya Colonel Gadaffy (known to his friends as the Mad Dog of the Middle East) suddenly decided to go public about his own country's nuclear weapon's programme and ended it. Gadaffy fessed up. It is unlikely that the Mad Dog of the Middle East would ever have admitted to his attempts to develop nuclear weapons if President Bush had not intervened in Iraq. It's unlikely that if Gadaffy got nuclear weapons, he would have restrained himself from using them. In Columbia, thanks to the support of President Bush and America, the democratic government of President Uribe finally got the upper hand on the drug dealing terrorists of the Farc revolutionary movement. President Bush's support for Columbia, eventually led directly to the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages after years in Farc captivity. In the Philippines, President Bush helped the government keep its own Al Qaeda terrorists on the back foot.

day among days

It is my birthday.
Collect ten bucks from every visitor to The Heelers Diaries.
Ah, if only life were like this.
I woke this morning to a phone call from the Spanish Professor.
"What age are you?" quoth she.
"I'm 43," I said without hesitation.
There came an effusion of Hispanic enthusiasm.
"Wow. You never told me before. Why wouldn't you tell me? Why are you telling me now?" quoth she.
"I've grown," sez me.
When she rang off I lay in the bed listening to the sounds of life flowing through the old Chateau.
In the hall Doctor Barn was having a mild disagreement with his son Ryan aged four.
I heard Ryan in high dudgeon saying: "Right then. I'm going back to bed. And I'm not getting up until I'm ten."
This was a most cheering beginning to my day.
In the afternoon I met up with my sister Yogic Marie and sister in law Executive Jackie for coffees at the Newbridge Silverware cafe.
It is a good cafe.
It has Russian waitresses.
Ah, they'd invade you soon as look at you.
The conversation was light.
Jackie told me she knew the sister of the lad who fired me from the Leinster Leader.
"She was a right bitch too," said Jackie. "I gave up playing basketball because of her."
Yes truly, life is local, as they say in the Johnston Press.
Later this evening the family gathered for a formal ceremony to wish me a happy birthday.
Formal ceremony?
A chinese take away actually.
But heartfelt for all of that.
One snatch of conversation I want to share with you gentle readers.
"James and I were discussing that Hallelujah song that's in the charts at the moment," said the Mammy. "You know the one. Everyone's recording it."
"It's a lovely song," put in Businessman Tom. "It's like a prayer."
The Mammy nodded.
"I told James it was a prayer," she said. "He thinks it's about sex. But I heard a priest on the radio today from Glenstall Abbey and he was explaining all the Biblical references in it. So really I think it is a prayer."
Businessman Tom was broadly supportive of this view.
"Of course it's a prayer," he snorted. "I've had lots of sex and nothing ever happened that had anything to do with that song."
My sister Marie's husband Farmer Edward leaned forward.
"Yes," sez Edward, "but when you'd be doing it, would you not sometimes shout Hallelujah."
The noble Heelers thought Edward's remark was worth the price of admission.
"Well," sez I, "that one was worth waiting 43 years for."
Doctor Barn had been attending the debate with sober mien.
Now he spoke.
"It's a Leonard Cohen song," sez he. "Leonard Cohen often has Biblical references in his songs. But I don't think you could call them prayers."
The voice of reason.
We'll leave it at that my warm hearted confreres of the internet.
I'm 43.
It's a great age.
Great in the sense of wondrous.
The new 21 really.

Whatever age we are is the best age to be.

See y'all again soon.

ginging the cat

Greatest Obscenities of the War in Gaza.

1. The United Nations Relief Works Agency under its Viceroy John Ging has been propping up the rulership of Hamas, the Iranian proxy terror army in the Gaza Strip, for many years.

2. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have giving free food to Hamas terrorists and their families throughout that time. Also free electricity, free clothing, free petrol, free water, and free schools. Most materials distributed by the UN fall into Hamas hands. Hamas uses these materials to legitimise its rule in Gaza. Remember. Nothing moves in the Gaza Strip without Hamas permission. The UN has single handedly ensured the survival of the Hamas terrorist army.

3. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have not made any attempt to secure the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shallit, who was kidnapped by Hamas in a cross border raid from Gaza into Israel in 2006. The UN has continued to feed the men who kidnapped Gilad Shallit. The provision of food to terrorists has not been made contingent upon those terrorists desisting from their terrorist acts. The Hamas terrorists who kidnapped Gilad Shallit also murdered several Israeli soldiers during their raid from Gaza into Israel. Again this did not affect the willingness of the UN to unconditionally feed the Hamas terror army.

4. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have built schools all over Gaza and have handed those schools to Hamas and its supporters to run. In these fine UN schools, infant Palestinans are taught that the Israelis murdered Mickey Mouse, and that Mickey Mouse's cousin a Palestinian cartoon character called Nahoul the Bee, wants the children to wipe out the State of Israel.

5. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have failed to indict Hamas for war crimes even when members of Hamas were infiltrating Israel from Gaza and then blowing themselves up in Israeli cafes.

6. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have presided over a situation where Hamas members are appointed as drivers of UN vehicles. The allegation of choice is that these vehicles have been used to transport missiles and launchers and Jihadis around the battlefield.

7. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging failed to take any action when Hamas introduced a brutal new Islamist penal code into Gaza last year. Among other enlightened measures, the penal code included crucifixion as a punishment for certain crimes. It made no difference to Ging. He still made sure that those lovable Hamas goons could get their hands on plenty of egg mayonnaise sandwiches. The unconditional disbursement of UN food aid to Hamas, Iran's proxy terror army in Gaza, means that Gaza now has the fattest deprived people on the planet.

8. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have failed to ensure even a modicum of law and order, human rights, or basic decency, in the Gaza Strip, in spite of the billions of pounds they have spent propping up the Hamas terror army.

9. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging have failed to do anything about Iran's complicity in positioning Hamas in Gaza to strike across Israel's border as a proxy terror army. The UN has failed to condemn the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal who still insists Gaza will fight to the last drop of blood. Not his blood though. The UN has failed to point out that Khaled Mashaal makes his bellicose threats from the safety of a luxury bunker in far away Damacsus the capital of Syria. The UN has failed to prevent six thousand missiles being launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. The UN has failed to take responsibility for its own incompetence in Gaza and has at the same time allowed its arrogantly groovy self righteous hippy trippy international coterie of staff members and aid groups, a menagerie best titled Viceroy Ging's Lonely Hearts Club Band, to attempt to criminalise the Israelis.

10. The UN and its Viceroy John Ging never criticise Hamas. They know that to do so will mean certain death for them. "Human rights violations? Not our business. Have another egg mayonnaise sandwich. And here's a cup of water. Plus some new shoes. And while we're at it a new school with a brand new curriculum based on the works of Nahoul the Bee." This is false humanitarianism. UN dependency culture is leaving Palestinians mired in a self indulgent self perpetuating victimhood which leads only to terrorism, desolation and depravity. The children of Palestine, thanks to the UN, will grow up perpetually under the sway of a proxy terror army imported from Iran. This UN fostered reality is in fact crueller to the people of Palestine than anything the Israelis have ever done.

when the iron bird fell from the sky

An American Airways plane crash landed on the Hudson river in New York on Thursday.
No one was killed.
All 155 passengers and crew are safe.
Praise God for this.
The investigating authorities in New York have announced that as of yet they have not been able to recover the black box flight data and voice recorders from the plane.
The authorities also say that the plane's engines have become detached from the wings and have not been recovered.
I am concerned that an effort may be underway to conceal the true cause of the crash.
There was a very early rush to explain the sudden catastrophic failure of the plane's two engines as being the result of an impact with a flock of geese.
I am reminded of a syndrome Mark Steyn has referred to among certain American investigating authorities.
To wit: "No Islamic terrorism here folks. Move along now."
Black box flight recorders also went missing during the unexplained downing of a Qantas jet in the Philippines last year.
It is interesting to note that at least six Qantas jets were forced to make emergency landings last year.
Qantas admitted to grounding other of its aeroplanes due to what it called "maintenance issues."
Another Qantas jet suffered an extraordinary collision while being towed on the ground when maintenance crew either inadvertently or deliberately damaged the aircraft.
My questions.
Are Muslim terrorists sabotaging aeroplanes?
Have Muslim terrorists infiltrated aircraft maintenance facilities?
Do airlines take adequate precautions to ensure neither Muslim terrorists nor their friends can work in aircraft maintenance facilities?

an open letter to john fry the incoming chief executive of the johnston press

I've allowed you a quiet first week in your new job to settle in.
A week should be enough.
Now it's time for you to send your underlings to fetch the Heelers file.
Make sure they bring you everything.
All of it.
You're not going to want any surprises when you're dealing with me.
You're going to read up on your history.
Then you're going to make a career decision.
It's sometimes difficult for people with ten million quid in the bank and with hundreds of thousands of quid a year coming in by way of pension entitlements, free shares, and salary plus bonuses, it's sometimes difficult I say, for people like you, to appreciate the situation of people like me, on twenty grand a year plus nothing who get fired when we're forty by some faceless scruff hireling of a British company that we never agreed to work for in the first place.
I'm going to teach you what people like me have to deal with Fry.
Pay close attention.
Congratulations on your appointment as Whatever It Is at the Johnston Press.
Now you start to work for a living.
James Healy
PS: Your legal advisers at Hyman Roberts of Glasgow have been sniffing around my website. You're going to have to look for new legal advisers Fry. That name is verging on the obscene. Don't you know it's a very private part of the female anatomy? Why, it's practically the last taboo. Roberts indeed. Would you really let someone called Roberts represent you? You know women sometimes take profound offence at the merest mention of that name in mixed company. And there are deeper social issues Fry. In some Muslim countries, young girls are forced to have their Robertses sewn up to preserve the illusion of virginity. It's a most inappapropriate name for any company associated with you. Can you imagine your Mr Roberts addressing the court? There'll be pandemonium. Shades of Snipcock And Tweed, eh Fry?
PPS: As far as I'm concerned your all a bunch of Robertses.

a little light relief

Evening at the Chateau De Healy.
James is flumped on the couch in the front room.
Paddy Pup is lolling nearby.
MC Hamster is doing her phantom of the opera routine from the confines of her cage.
The Mammy is ensconced in an armchair.
All is at peace.
The phone rings.
It is my brother.
The tough one.
Businessman Tom.
He is laughing.
He doesn't laugh much.
My curiosity is aroused.
"What's up?" sez I.
"Switch on RTE," sez he.
"Why?" sez I.
"Just do it," sez he.
I flick the channels on the Sexevision to RTE.
There is a documentary underway about unemployment in Ireland.
I watch.
The RTE cameras are following someone called John Whelan into an unemployment office to film him signing on.
My jaw drops.
The RTE commentator tells us: "John Whelan was formerly editor of the Leinster And Offaly Express, and afterwards editor at Voice Newspapers. But last July he lost his job."
During this most compassionate eulogy, the RTE commentator neglects to mention that in between being editor of the Leinster And Offaly Express, and being editor at Voice Newspapers, John Whelan was also for a few short weeks editor of the Leinster Leader, during which time he fired me from the job I'd held for ten years.
And now John Whelan is signing on for unemployment assistance on national television.
The irony is screaming.
I have never spoken to John Whelan.
I have never seen John Whelan until this moment gentle readers.
Our scant interactions at the Leinster Leader took place by email and letter post.
Now I behold him on national television.
He is, in the best sense of an old fashioned phrase, a baldy little bollix.
"It's a strange feeling signing on," John Whelan tells the nation. "You have the feeling people are looking at you. You don't get far on a hundred and ninety seven Euro a week."
My contemplation of this heartrending evocation of human suffering is broken by the Mammy.
"Earlier today you were saying about how you wondered did God want you to forgive and forget," she points out pleasantly. "It's a funny coincidence isn't it? You know. You talking about forgiveness this morning. And then the lad who fired you appearing on the television tonight. Almost as if you were meant to know. The circle is complete. Does it mean it's over? Is it the end?"
A far awake look filled my piercing blue eyes.
I considered.
In my mind's eye I viewed the displacement of the forces of my enemies.
My sources at the Leinster Leader have told me two senior management figures who had spent years trying to run me out of the building, are on their death beds. The Chief Executive of the Johnston Press who was in charge during my firing has within a year of that decision, shuffled off into retirement. The share price of the Johnston Press within a year of the decision to fire me, has dropped to almost nothing. The editor who fired me is unemployed, and from what I've just seen on RTE, he's well nigh unemployable.
I drew a deep breath.
Beside me the ghost of Winston Churchill appeared.
"Winston," sez I, "tell the Mammy how it is."
Winston grinned.
"This is not the end," he boomed. "It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning."

january in the garden

It is morning.
Robin is following me and Paddy Pup around the garden.
He flutters from tree to tree.
Occasionally he comes down from the banches and alights on the ground beside me.
He keeps a wary eye on Paddington.
In my heart of hearts I don't think Paddy would chomp a robin.
Although you never know with that dog.
In any case Robin is disinclined to risk it.
He's been following us carefully for ten minutes.
"Okay," I tell him. "I'll get you some madeira cake."
I go back into the house, purloin a few slices of the Dad's cake from the kitchen, and return to the garden.
There is a veritable Noah's ark of the bird kingdom waiting for me when I get back outside.
It's as though Robin has told them good things are coming.
The starlings are grouped on the apple tree, giving the occasional cheeky chappy whistles.
The blackbirds have come sprinting from the hedge and are watching me now from among the rose bushes.
Alone among the birds, the blackbirds are graceful runners.
They fly good too.
Willie Wagtail is in situ on the clothes line, bobbing about like a drunken sailor on a drunken sea.
The crowkins are posited further back on the glasshouse roof.
The crows will scare off the other birds if I turn my back.
I scatter some madeira.
From nowhere a group of tits emerge to dive on it.
They don't wait for me to scatter a second handfull.
They don't ask permission from anyone.
They know their entitled.
Because they're Great Tits.
Arf, arf.
Oh that one will never get old.
Robin meanwhile is busy arguing with a second robin who wants to move in on the action.
"There's enough for everyone Robin," I tell him.
He turns and grabs a piece of madeira the size of his head.
The second robin gets a bit too.
There is a general clamour of wingbeats and twittering.
(And twits. - Paddy Pup note.)
Oh great open aired theatre of life.
You know it's true.
There are consolations in the creation gentle readers.
The birds have their madeira cake.
I have the birds.
All of us have each other.

the village on the edge of forever

Northern Italy photographed by Luigi Avaro.

to the overthrow

the worm things from the soft earth
in the rainfall night crawl forth
onto pavement doorstep or road
into the concrete certainty of death

they do not think but they know
that in a darkness yet to fall
there will be an overthrow
and those who rule will crawl

and those who crawl will rule

though tonight in their impossible thousands they die
crushed under wheel trampled under foot
conquered by a nation
that knows them not

harry hotspur

Prince Harry, a member of the British royal family, is getting some negative publicity this week.
The publicity stems from an attempt by the Rupert Murdoch owned anodyne insincere left wing broadcaster Sky News to promote the circulation of a Rupert Murdoch owned anodyne insincere pornographic no wing newspaper The News Of The World.
The News Of The World has through a spying operation on Prince Harry obtained some video footage of the Prince using barrack room language about a fellow soldier.
The fellow soldier is of Pakistani orgin.
In a piece of informal banter Harry is said to have referred to him as a Paki and a towel head.
I would hazard that the broadcasting of this spy tape is not the huge ratings winner Sky News thinks it will be.
The News Of The World implies that its spying operation amounted merely to accepting the video from a third party.
I doubt this is the extent of The News Of The World's spying operation on Prince Harry or on other members of the royal family.
It is highly likely that The News Of The World sought out soldiers who had served with Prince Harry and offered them financial inducements for footage of the Prince.
Nonetheless.
Prince Harry fought for his country in Afghanistan.
The decision to withdraw him from Afghanistan was taken over his head by civil servant types.
He has not been found wanting.
Moreover.
There is a more profound issue at stake.
I believe The News Of The World along with the tabloid media played a significant role in the death of Prince Harry's mother The Princess of Wales.
You will remember she was hounded to death beneath a bridge in Paris by paparazzi photographers who pursued her car through the streets until it crashed.
You will remember the paparazzi photographers at the scene took pictures of the Princess of Wales as she lay dying in the wreckage.
You will remember the paparazzi photographers did not try to help the Princess of Wales or her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, or the two bodyguards who were also trapped in the wreckage.
Paparazzi photographers exist because newspapers like The News Of The World will pay paparazzi photographers money for hounding celebrities in the search for paparazzi photographs.
Death may result but that is be considered incidental.
The hounding is where the money lies.
My personal assessment has always been that the newspapers who promote paparazzi culture were responsible for the death of the Princess of Wales, and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul.
I consider those deaths to have been murder.
I have not bought a tabloid newspaper since.
I include The News Of The World in my assessment.
I would add that I remain dissatisfied with the conclusions and conduct of various enquiries and investigations into Princess Diana's death.
I mention this only because it is intolerable to me that the same newspapers would now start hounding her son.
Sky News will not profit from its present promotional activity with The News Of The World.
It is a pact with the devil.
The declining circulation of The News Of The World will not be rescued by what is really just another low rent attempt to betray Great Britain.
The only ones to benefit in fact, will be the Jihadis and Muslim fundamentalists in our midst who may indeed derive some modest pleasure from the short term opportunism of Sky News and The News Of The World.
Muslim terrorists know full well how divided we are against each other.
They're gambling on our media groups to make decisive action against Islamic terror impossible.
It is a divide and conquer strategy.
But ah.
That's another story.

what really matters