the eternal question

Is the cleaning lady a tea leaf?

treesomes

Jim Hawkins approached in mellow mood
with cries of "Hey" and "Whassup dude"

He bid me sit and listen hence
to his latest gems of intelligence

"We're genes and chemistry that is all,

Richard Dawkins is on the ball

He's pulled the plug, he's called God's bluff

We're not spirits, we are stuff

And that is why we're also free

to indulge in ceaseless pagan orgies."

He continued a while in manner crude

before bidding me a merry: "See ya dude."

And I was left to contemplate

The wilful hopelessness of the atheistic state

Our minds enslaved, our bodies pseudo free

Oh orgies were made by fools like me

And I'd have added if he'd waited to the bold Jim Hawkins

Only God can make a Richard Dawkins

the criminal classes

Bank Of Ireland chief executive Richard Boucher paid himself six hundred and ninety thousand Euros last year. This is the money we know about. The real figure will be higher. At least three other executives at the same bank got similar pay rates. All this at a bank which lost more than a thousand million dollars last year. Those are Bank Of Ireland's official losses by the way. The real losses will be higher.

how corrupt is the irish police force

April sun on the city of Dublin.
Me sitting in the new Costa cafe on Dawson Street.
There are no Arab Muslim waiters on the staff so customers are not yet being racially profiled.
It's a relaxing place to be.
I revel in the cacaphonies.
Abruptly my peace is shattered.
Cousin Bill arrives and thrusts a newspaper article in front of me.
"Read that," he exclaims. "You're always giving out about the Guards."
Bill's comment relates to my much vaunted analysis of the recurrently thuggish behaviour of members of the Irish police force. Irish cops style themselves An Garda Siochana, and are often referred to colloquially by Irish citizens as "the Guards," "the Garda," or "those corrupt b--------s."
In my considered opinion the Irish police force is indeed individually and institutionally corrupt.
Not just institutionally corrupt you understand.
Individually corrupt also.
Because I hold ever individual Guard responsible for every individual rape, violation, assault and death in custody (Garda euphemism for murders committed by Guards) that he or she commits or covers up or turns a blind eye to.
They're all guilty.
But I digress.
Let us return to our sheep as the Russians say. (The French say it too. - Francois Sarkozy note.)
Bill watches as I read the Daily Mail arteekle.
It is headlined "Hero Cop."
Aren't they all?
I read fascinatedly of a Garda Seargent who has just been awarded a hundred thousand dollar payout for getting stabbed while on duty.
Presumably the Irish government will borrow that money to pay him from an idiot bank because no one else in the country has a bean.
I read the arteekle again to see if I have correctly understood.
Yes.
The gist of it is that Garda Hardman is being paid an extra hundred grand for doing the job he is already excessively remunerated to do.
That should bring his annual earnings for this year to something over a quarter of a million bucks.
The arteekle doesn't mention that particular fact of course.
Bloody hell.
Cousin Bill watches my face.
"There," he said. "That's why they're so well paid. And they're not all corrupt."
I fold the newspaper with what grace I can, and hand it back to him.
"The guy who's supposed to have stabbed him is dead," I said slowly.
"Serve him right,." said Cousin Bill.
"The Guards claim the guy stabbbed Sergeant Hardman and then pressed himself against two of his own knives. The Guards claim that he was somehow holding the knives to press against his own chest outwards from a wall. The Guards claim he managed to stab himself twice through the chest using this most unlikely method," I murmured.
"He must have been a right nut case," put in Bill affably.
"Some psychologists think it's almost impossible to stab yourself," I said softly. "The self preservation instinct kicks in. The mind tends to refuse to go through with it. I sure hope there were other witnesses to Sergeant Hardman being stabbed and to his supposed assailant stabbing himself to death. I mean I sure hope there were other witnesses who weren't Guards."

intimation of things unknown

When God made swans he was just showing off...

questions arising re irish times journalist accused of child cause

Will the Irish Times itself be held responsible for its employees actions and compelled to pay massive damages to any and all victims sexually abused by Irish Times staffers? Will the Irish Times be subject to a Judicial Enquiry to establish how many of its employees are guilty of child abuse activities at present and in the past? Will management at the Irish Times be subject to a Judicial Enquiry to establish how much they knew about their journalists engaging in child abuse activities and when they knew it and what if anything they did about it? Will any members of Irish Times management be forced to resign over their failure to detect their employees predilections for sex with children? Will the Irish Times be compelled to display notices in the foyer of its buildings detailing the measures it takes to protect children from sexual abuse by its own staff? Will Irish Times journalists be publicly compelled to leave the door open when receiving children in their offices? Will the Irish Times be issuing public apologies for the sexual abuse of minors carried out by its journalists? Will the Irish Times be apologising for its concealment and under reporting of child sex abuse crimes committed by its own and other media group journalists, editors, and television producers for the past fifty years?

fun with banky and francois

Let us speak of the Ivory Coast...
***

1. An election in Cote D'Ivoire took place some months ago. The Christian President Laurent Gbagbo accused his rival the Muslim leader Allisane Outtara of rigging the results.

2. The election results as recognised by United Nations observers based in Cote D'Ivoire deemed the Muslim leader Mr Ouattara the winner.

3. Mr Gbagbo and his supporters claimed the vote had been rigged.

4. The United Nations admitted some inconsistencies in the vote but insisted the result must stand.

5. United Nations staffers in the past have had a certain weakness for certifying dubious election results. The most salient and indeed grievous example of this up to now was when Angola's Marxian civil war leader Jose Eduardo Dos Santos held onto power after the United Nations certified his rigged election victory in 1992 and turned a blind eye as he once more turned the army loose on his rivals. Similar events occurred in rigged elections in Uganda, also certified by United Nations observers.

6. The implication is that United Nations staffers on the ground consider it a success to certify an election and a failure if they have to overturn one. We must also speculate that in some cases many of these same United Nations staffers may be more culpably involved in actual election rigging, for example in elections where there is a Muslim candidate and the United Nations observers are either Muslim or leftist, which in fact all of them are.

7. In Cote D'Ivoire Mr Gbagbo said he would accept an internationally supervised investigation of the election.

8. His rival the northern based Muslim Mr Ouattara, who has virtually no support outside of the northern region, said he would tolerate no investigation or recount.

9. The United Nations observers in Cote D'Ivoire at the behest of the French and unnamed Muslim nations also refused to sanction any investigation or recount of the rigged election results.

10 The United Nations backed the regional Muslim leader Mr Ouattara and endorsed him as the new President of Cote D'Ivoire.

11. The Supreme Court of Cote D'Ivoire supported the claim of Mr Gbagbo and appointed him President in a formal swearing in ceremony.

12. The army of Cote D'Ivoire formally endorsed and recognised Mr Gbagbo as President.

13. The Sky News description of Muslim leader Mr Outtara's supporters as "Forces loyal to President Ouattara," incorrectly implied that Mr Ouattara had the army on his side. His armed supporters are preponderantly composed of Islamist militias drawn from the northern tribes of his own region.

14. The Muslim leader Mr Ouattara's Islamist militias could not have conquered the south of the country without the provision of heavy weapons. These weapons came from the Islamic Republic of Iran which has been shipping high value military hardware to West Africa for several years with a view to facilitating a Muslim takeover in both Nigeria and Cote D'Ivoire.

15. The Muslim leader Mr Ouattara would still have been unable to conquer the southern part of Cote D'Ivoire, as he has no support outside his northern base, without additional heavy weapons and air support from the United Nations forces and French army units.

16. Both the United Nations and the French have committed ground forces to installing a Muslim President in Cote D'Ivoire while explicity failing at precisely the same time to allow any ground force action in aid of the perfectly justified rebellion by Muslims in Libya against the genuine mass murdering world threatening terrorist dictatorship run by Muammur Gadaffy and his family. The irony is screaming. As are the rebels in Libya. Gadaffi's army is progressively attriting them to nothing before our eyes.

17. The United Nations moved to take action against President Gbagbo and his supporters surreptitiously without any public or Security Council debate on the matter. This action was taken under the direct instructions of the same low level United Nations staffers in Cote D'Ivoire who wished to see the flawed election which they had supervised upheld. It was taken as I've stated using forces already in place in Cote D'Ivoire in the supposed role of neutral peace keepers. The legal justification for the action, if such there is, has been construed from old United Nations Security Council resolutions.

18. The advance of Muslim leader Mr Ouattara's Islamist militias from the north of Cote D'Ivoire into the south took place to the backdrop of massacres by those same militias in Christian villages through which they passed.

19. The United Nations and the French turned a blind eye to massacres by Muslim leader Mr Ouattara, with the usual low level staffers claiming to Sky News: "There have been massacres on both sides."

20. Yesterday French special forces commandos deposed President Gbagbo and installed Muslim leader Alisane Ouattara as President of Cote D'Ivoire.

21. Now that's what I call tragedy.