today they said

President Barack Obama: "This was not personal. This was about civilian control of the military."

James Healy: "The firing of Stanley McChrystal was about as personal as you can get. It was about Barack Obama's fear of the American military. It was about Barack Obama's inferiority complex. It was about Barack Obama's innate inability to lead. So McChrystal is gone and every Jihadi on earth is celebrating. Meanwhile the rules of engagement that have been imposed on our troops in Afghanistan are getting them killed and maimed daily, and handing the initiative to Al Qaeda. General McChrystal bears some of the responsibility for accepting such rules of engagement from the Obama Administration in the first place. But McChrystal finally got tired of seeing Americans die because of Barack Obama's faux humanitarianism. Yeah. Barack Obama wants to cut and run from the War On Terror. That's a different priority from actually winning, you understand. McChrystal understands. Finally. Barack Obama's priority is to criminalise the previous Administration of President George Bush and then hope Al Qaeda will go away. I am giving Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt in postulating that Barack Obama doesn't actually want Al Qaeda to win. His delusion is that the terrorists will go away if Obama betrays America sufficiently to appease them. But I may be wrong on this. He may actually want them to win. Obama's policies of releasing Al Qaeda members from Guantanamo Bay, of bringing down troop strength in Iraq, of announcing withdrawal dates from Afghanistan, have all combined to revitalise the Jihadi's. In addition the reduction of active combat units in Iraq has allowed Iran and Syria to continue destabilising Iraq at their leisure while refocussing the Jihad effort in Afghanistan. But it is Obama's insistence on suicidally restrictive rules of engagment for American troops in Afghanistan itself that has given Al Qaeda a capacity to function on the battlefield which it never had before. American troops are not permitted to fire on Al Qaeda members who aren't clearly showing weapons. Even at the height of a battle if an Al Qaeda terrorist walks into view and shoulders a shovel, the Americans are forbidden to fire on him in case he's a farmer. The Americans are also precluded from firing on buildings without official permission from Afghan authorities. If the Americans want to search a building they are required to give seven days notice to the residents. This Obama style dilettante warfare is getting our soldiers slaughtered before our eyes by an enemy that couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag unless we let them. Our soldiers were worth more than this. Our soldiers. Because if the Americans don't defeat Al Qaeda all our countries are going down."

let's hear it for the god

Ah thank you God for the sweet caress of morning on the fields, the river, the mountains and the sky.
Thank you God for the raucous hymnals of praise from the starlings in the cherry tree.
Thank you God for the jackdaws looking in at me through my window at 7am and cawing for madeira cake.
Thank you God for the unsayable glories of created things.
Thank you God for the sanctity of life.
Thank you God for my 1998 Nissan Almeira, still going after all these years.
Thank you God for Paddy Pup's gaping maw champing on a biscuit.
Thank you God for the peckers, aka the wing nuts, aka the feather dusters, aka the budgies.
Thank you God for the Welsh Rare Bit, the Black Panter, the Perfect Fit, the Spanish Onion, the Three Amigas, the Brezzer, the Contessa, and Lord I've got to stop giving people nicknames.
Thank you God for the film Bananas particularly the bit where one of the members of a military junta snarls viciously about Woody Allen: "I could kill him with my bare hands. He brings cake to a dinner party? He doesn't even bring an assortment."
Thank you God for the John Carpenter film Dark Star particularly the bit where the guy is trapped in a lift shaft and the lift keeps going up and down with him hanging from the bottom of it while the music of Figaro plays in the background.
Thank you God for the adoration chapel.
Thank you God for the sun in his zenith and the countryside breathing forth in pure rejoice.
Thank you God for Hammy Hamster, and Lord I never realised you could put such grace in a little creature, silly of me I know, but your creation never ceases to surprise me.
Thank you God for Beauraing.
Thank you God for Pontmain.
Thank you God for Rome.
Thank you God for giving no authority to anything that oppresses us.
Thank you God for the victories.
Thank you God for tea and apple crumble at the Cafe Des Beaux Parvenus in Newbridge Silverware.
Thank you God for the Dad and his grandiose plans to catalogue his chaotically scattered stamp collection, and Lord we'd have a better chance of cataloguing the contents of the national museum, it would be an easier job anyway.
Thank you God for the Mammy asking me to bring out the bin and then pronouncing sagely: "After all it's your bin too."
Thank you God for the pool of gold on the horizon as the sun goes down.Thank you God for the conquest of fear.
Thank you God for nephews.
Thank you God for children climbing trees in the garden.
Thank you God for the neighbour's kids demanding a game of Snakes And Ladders.
Thank you God for the guy in England ringing me to say that the doctors had told him his kidneys had inexplicably regained function.
Thank you God for Anissa wearing a short dress around her house to scandalise her Muslim Dad and his Arab friends, or to intrigue me, and Lord there is hope for the world.
Thank you God for every miracle, every grace, every touch from you.
Thank you God for the mystic sussurations of memory whispering in the twilight.
Thank you God for America and Great Britain.
Thank you God for Sister Gemma, Sister Lelia and all the hero nuns from the planet Zorg.
Thank you God for every hero.
Thank you God for the light of morn, the light of noon, the light of e'en, and the light of souls.
Thank you God for the light of grace.
Thank you God for the Pope.
Thank you God for you.

the jurisprudence of desmond zaidan

Desmond Zaidan is a Lebanese national who has been appointed Judge within the Irish courts service.
His appointment has taken place without public consultation.
Several media outlets have been used by the courts service to propagandise in favour of his appointment.
Among the outlets used to propagandise in favour of Judge Desmond Zaidan's appointment is the Leinster Leader, a newspaper from which I was fired in 2007 for the crime of being on the payroll ten years.
The Leinster Leader in an article trumpeting Judge Desmond Zaidan's arrival in the Naas district court, described Judge Desmond Zaidan as "popular" and suggested that his admirers had established a Facebook internet website to celebrate his down to earth rulings and no nonsense style.
The Leinster Leader endeavoured to convey the utterly false notion that the website had been established by members of the public.
The Leinster Leader also falsely claimed that this connoted broad public approval of Judge Desmond Zaidan.
The Leinster Leader further falsely claimed that Judge Desmond Zaidan was a Judge Judy figure reminiscent of a tough but fair television Judge from America called Judy Sheindlin.
I maintain that the Leinster Leader reports of Judge Desmond Zaidan's appointment were discreditable and unprofessional propaganda, published at the behest of the courts service to head off public concerns about a surreptitious appointment which was already raising disquiet in many quarters.
I have asserted that the Facebook website page dedicated to Judge Desmond Zaidan was created by those responsible for his appointment as a Judge and is yet another crude propaganda attempt to manipulate public opinion.
Judge Desmond Zaidan has admitted he is "aware" of the website.
I would postulate that Judge Desmond Zaidan is aware of the website because he was a party to its creation.
The Leinster Leader attempted to back up its nonsensical claims that Judge Desmond Zaidan was popular by quoting two senior police officers from the North West of Ireland.
Even in the most rose tinted of media delusions, popularity with police officers is hardly the same thing as popularity with the general public.
I would advise the failing Leinster Leader that it won't stay in business by catering to the needs of Ireland's individually and institutionally corrupt police officers or indeed by catering to the needs of low rent Lebanese Judges.
There are a lot of corrupt cops in Ireland.
But there's just not ever going to be enough corrupt cops or incompetent Judges to generate profits for the fart filled Leinster Leader.

I mean I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns.
Personally, I have been aware of Judge Desmond Zaidan since a corrupt police officer styling himself Sergeant James D O'Meara summonsed me to court last November for the crime of allowing my car light to fuse in a downpour.
O'Meara, an odious out of control thug in uniform, had attempted to put me in fear at the side of the road, flinging a photograph on the ground from my wallet, accusing me of stealing my own car after he had seen my documents and knew this could not be the case, compelling me to stand in the rain in a tee shirt while he shouted in my face "You should know that light is gone," and stomping away from me with a snarl of "I'm finished with you," when I attempted to question him further on the manner in which he was behaving.
O'Meara said one other interesting thing while I endeavoured to discover what the hell he was playing at.
As he was ranting at me in the rain, I managed to ask him quietly could I go to jail over this incident.
O'Meara answered with a smirk: "That depends on what attitude the Judge takes."
Obviously he was already acquainted with the court room style of Judge Desmond Zaidan and had no concerns that my rights might be upheld in that particular court room before that particular Judge.
Since then I've kept a weather eye on Judge Desmond Zaidan.
I was interested to see would any of his much vaunted Judge Judy common sense decency come to the fore.
What I found was an invidious, dishonourable, and dangerously incompetent Lebanese national posing as an Irish Judge.
I give you three examples.

1) A man was brought to court after a police officer stopped his car in Naas. The man had conducted himself respectfully towards the police officer. But at some point the situation deteriorated. The man was compelled to leave his vehicle. A struggle with the police officer ensued. After the struggle the man was hospitalised. The man stated in Judge Zaidan's court that the police officer had struck him on the back of the head with his truncheon while he lay on the ground. Judge Zaidan said to the man that he did not believe a police officer would assault him when there might be Closed Circuit Television cameras in the area. I am suggesting here that Judge Zaidan's reference to CCTV cameras was injudicious, illegal and wrong, unless Judge Zaidan actually had access to footage from such cameras. I am suggesting here that Judge Zaidan's claim that police officers won't commit assault in areas where there may be CCTV camera is also injudicious, illegal and wrong. And not a little bit delusional. But there was worse to come. Judge Zaidan remanded the man in custody to await a report on his injuries from the hospital. This meant that a man who may have just been hospitalised by a corrupt thug cop was going to sit in jail while the extent of his injuries at the hands of that corrupt cop were investigated. The man became incensed in the court room. As he was being led away, he shouted at Judge Desmond Zaidan: "Go home you foreign c-cks-ck-r. Judge Desmond Zaidan sentenced him to an extra period of detention for his outburst. Now here's the thing. I've watched Irish Judges in action for two decades. I've seen every sort of provocation towards the Judge imaginable. I've seen a defendant shout at Judge Mary Martin: "Ha, ha, you ould c---. Your father hung himself from a tree in the back garden. Ha, ha." And Judge Martin didn't turn a hair. Stared him down. And the guy apologised in nothing flat. Desmond Zaidan due to his own personal limitations is apparently incapable of exercising control in his courtroom without throwing people in jail for fripperies. I am suggesting that Judge Desmond Zaidan is bringing the uncivilised pseudo macho mores of a debilitated nay barbaric Lebanese culture to the Republic of Ireland.

2. Another recent case in a courtroom presided over by Judge Desmond Zaidan featured a man who'd been brought to court by Gardai (Irish police) for the crime of running away when a police officer called out to him in the street. This has never in a hundred years of the Irish Republic been a jailable offence. Zaidan sentenced the man to two months in detention.

3. Last week Judge Desmond Zaidan ordered the arrest of a man who kissed his girlfriend at the rear of his courtroom. The man was held in custody until the afternoon of the same day when he apologised to Judge Desmond Zaidan in open court. Judge Desmond Zaidan's behaviour in this case is uncomfortably reminiscent of the sexually immature behaviour of Judges in countries like Dubai, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan et al, (particuarly al, I hate him) where kissing in public can be deemed a criminal offence in accordance with the psychotisised repressions cusomary in Arab Islamic culture. The case says a lot more about Judge Desmond Zaidan's sexuality than it does about the probity of the man who commited the purely notional crime of kissing his girlfriend in court. The arrest of a man for such a crime has never been recorded in Ireland before. People have kissed in Ireland for thousands of years. Some of them may have even kissed in courtrooms. Even under the dark days of the penal laws, no one was ever jailed for the crime of kissing. Desmond Zaidan is single handedly bringing the law and the courts into disrepute. There was more to come. Judge Desmond Zaidan ordered the release of the man whom he had just had arrested for the crime of kissing his girlfriend. As he was led from the courtroom, another man clapped his hands. Judge Desmond Zaidan then ordered the arrest of the man who had clapped his hands. Judge Desmond Zaidan remanded the man who clapped his hands in custody for seven days. This also is believed to be the first time anyone has ever been jailed in the Republic of Ireland for the crime of clapping their hands.

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

I am suggesting that Judge Desmond Zaidan is not fit to be a Judge. His jailing of a man pending a medical report on injuries the man sustained at the hands of a police officer was indeed in the best sense of an old fashioned phrase, injudicious, illegal and wrong. His jailing of a man because a Garda claimed the man ran away from him in the street was even more dubious. His ordering the arrest of a man for kissing in court was novel but perhaps the Judge is not a romantic. His jailing of another man for clapping his hands in court is quaint but let's let that one go.

how green was my budgie

Evening at the chateau.

I am ensconced in front of the television rooting for General McChrystle.

Greeny Budgie is sitting happily on the crook of my elbow emitting the occasional conversational chirrup.

Presently I notice a meditative look settling on the budgie's feathery features.

This can mean one thing.

"Ma," I hiss to my aged parent who occupies the adjoining armchair. "Quick. Watch this."

The Mammy turns.

The budgie, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, emits a little pooh pellet onto my elbow.

Then, with great deliberateness, she moves a few steps to one side, reaches down with her beak, and tosses the pooh from off my elbow onto the carpet.

"Have you ever seen the like of that?" I challenge the Mammy. "Would you ever have guessed that a little bird could show such courtesy and refinement? Imagine the way her mind is working. She doesn't want to leave a pooh on my arm because she knows I don't like them there. Isn't there a remarkable dignity crafted into creatures?"

The Mammy does not deign to reply.

why did general petraeus faint at a congressional hearing

This one was quite surrealistic.

General Petraeus is the only leader the Jihadi's actually fear.

He is the hero who gives them the war they still can't quite believe.

But his capacity to bring the fight to the Mussies has been seriously undermined by President Bush's departure from the White House and the accession to power of the hippy lawyer Barack Obama.

Bear in mind it took President Bush seven years wading through Clinton era appointee generals who were cool about their sexualities but didn't know how to fight a war, before he found a general who actually knew how to spill some blood and guts and scare Al Qaeda and the Iranians out of their tiny cotton picking Muslim minds.

As a matter of policy, Barack Obama has been seeking to undo the victories of the Bush Administration.

For the past two years, General Petraeus has seen his freedom of action seriously curtailed simply because Barack Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The victories in Iraq have been diminished by Barack Obama's attempts to repudiate the American army's liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's murderocracy and thereby criminalise President Bush.

General Petraeus' capacity for action in Afghanistan has been similarly limited by Barack Obama's shameful footdragging in the allocation of new troops and the cretinous early annoucement of withdrawal timetables.

Way to give the Jihadi's something to fight for Barack.

Seriously though, he's doing a brilliant job.

Last week Senator John McCain was questioning General Petraeus about the state of play in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Senator McCain had just asked did General Petraeus approve of President Barack Obama's stated intention to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan in 2011.

General Petraeus had given what he thought was a non committal answer, hedging about his reluctance to set specific dates.

Senator John McCain sat bolt upright.

His question had related to the fact that President Obama has just announced a specific date for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He sensed a possible divergence between President Obama and his senior battlefield commander.

Senator McCain respectfully repeated the question.

And General Petraeus keeled over in a dead faint.

Here is the news.

General Petraeus was not dehydrated.

General Petraeus was not struck by a sudden heart attack, arrhythmia or shortness of breath.

General Petraeus' collapse had nothing to do with his health.

There was nothing wrong with General Petraeus whatsoever.

When Senator McCain repeated his question about President Obama's troop withdrawal policies, General Petraeus realised he had to answer either with the truth that President Obama's strategy was destroying the American war effort, or falsely that he thought President Obama's strategy was a good one.

General Petraeus could either speak the truth that he knows full well, namely that Barack's drawdown of troops in Iraq has already all but snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and that his announcement of a similar timetable for a drawdown in Afghanistan is the single most vitalising factor at present for Al Qaeda's jihadi's and their sponsors Iran and Syria.

Or General Petraeus could procrastinate, dissimulate, lie, and pretend that the President's policies had his full support.

Senator McCain's restatement of the question suddenly made procrastination and dissimulation untenable.

And General Petraeus has never been much inclined towards lying anyway.

You can understand his dilemma.

General Petraeus was understandably reluctant to betray American soldiers who are dying precisely because Barack Obama's timetables for withdrawal have reinvigorated the Jihadi's.

But General Petraeus was also reluctant to lose a job he'd spent a lifetime working towards.

General Petraeus realised quite suddenly that if he answered truthfully he would no longer be able to retain his historic position as Centcom commander overseeing the Afghan and Iraqi theatres.

Generals who publicly disagree with their Presidents do not lead armies in America.

In his heart of hearts General Petraeus decided that he didn't want to lose that job.

General Petraeus pretended to faint to avoid answering Senator McCain's question.

That is all.

my favourite photo of all time

The king and queen of Sweden are sitting either side of their daughter and their daughter's new husband.
The queen is smiling gamely.
The daughter looks exceedingly happy.
The new husband looks like a guy who's just graduated from personal fitness trainer to crown prince of Sweden.
The king's face is a study.
The king's face, in the best sense of an old fashioned phrase, looks like a boiled shite.

bleak heart

a boy stands in a field above the town

he does not know what the years will bring

dark night touches him and the rain

his spirit leaps in his imagining

 

a man writes at table in the dark

he wonders of all things what we are

spirits creatures matter worse

pitched forth comets about a dyng star

 

tell me if all time is one time

and what is was and will be

was the boy already corrupt as he looked upon the town

am i already dead as i write

more of the night THEY came home

The anniversary fast approaches of the largest ever UFO sighting in Irish history, now known as The Kilcullen Incident. The incident took place four years ago this weekend. A few hours after midnight, police began receiving reports of a formation of lights in the sky above the Wicklow mountains. The lights appeared, then disappeared. They were motionless in the sky. Witnesses over a fifty mile stretch of countryside from Naas, Athy and Carlow reported seeing them. The formations were filmed from Kilcullen by my father Tom Healy. This footage lent its name to the incident. Army sources have indicated to me that the UFO's were in fact army parachute flares being used during army night manoeuvres in the Glen Of Imaal. I believe this explanation accounts for the lights with a certainty above 90 percent. I would have said the explanation was 100 percent certain, except for the fact that my army sources themselves refused to state the probabilities so categorically. One said: "I am certain these are army parachute flares. But I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it." My assessment is that if he was absolutely certain, he would bet his mortgage on it. Neither army officer was able to account for the lights being motionless in the sky. Army parachute flares are designed to sink slowly towards the ground, extinguishing just as they reach earth. The officers' explanation was that these lights were being seen from so far away that they only appeared motionless. One conspiracy theory around the lights has persisted in spite of the parachute flares explanation. Within days of The Kilcullen Incident, a book on UFO's was published in Ireland. Could the authors of the book have colluded with friends in the army to stage the sightings? The army has been using the Glen Of Imaal for more than half a century. Night manouvres have never previously resulted in a widespread regional UFO sighting. Perhaps the flares were fired higher than normal in order to create the required illusion... One other factor of note might be considered in assessing the sighting. When I was showing film footage of the lights to Giovanna Rampazzo and Mareen Von Liebnitz at their apartment in Dublin, a shelf partially detached from their kitchen wall, spilling items onto the floor. For a moment we were all quite dumbfounded. Then our instinctive capacity for denial, kicked in. "Well that just goes to show," said Giovanna as we stared at the debris, "that girls don't know how to put up shelves." The falling shelf showed nothing of the sort. She knew it and so did I. But if anything mysterious was involved it is more likely to have been the actions of our over stimulated imaginations inducing telekinetic pressure on the shelf, than anything directly to do with the UFO's reaching out to cause such an effect from the video. So it was either telekinesis or else the girls were witches and through playing with the occult had allowed some sort of an evil spirit into their apartment. To be clear, I'm saying the falling shelf was caused by telekinesis or a disembodied spirit. I'm 90 percent certain of that one too.