Notes From A Small Island

Sunday, 18 November 2007

Do you believe in God? - I am a scientist, I don’t do religion

I came across this poem in the comments section of another blogsite
but it's so relevant that I'm plagiarising it in full:

Visit Nahida's website - If her poetry doesn't convince you, her photos certainly will.

Windows Live Spaces

-Do you believe in God?
-I am a scientist, I don’t do religion

-Do you think we are here for a purpose?
-I am a biologist, I don’t do theology

-Can you see the splendour in this equation?
-I am an artist, I don’t do mathematics

-Isn’t this garden just fascinating?
-I am an accountant, I don’t do botanic

-Do you like this poem?
-I am a chemist, I don’t do poetry

-Do you think drinking water is good for you?
-I am a physicist, I don’t do nutrition

-What do you think of the war on terror?
-I’m a priest, I don’t do politics

-Do you like this ruby-red colour in my painting?
-I am a politician, I don’t do art

-Do you think there was once a country called Palestine?
-I am an historian; I don’t do geography

-Do you think separating people with a wall mounts to apartheid?
-I am a solicitor, I don’t do international law

-Do you think people have the right to choose their faith?
-I am an atheist; I have no time for irrationality and superstition

-Do you think Muslim women should have the right to choose the way they dress?
-I am a secular free-thinker; I don’t like offensive religious symbols

-Do you think killing thousands of innocent people is a war crime?
-I am policeman; I don’t voice my opinion

-Do you agree with bombing schools and children?
-I am a teacher; I don’t take sides

-Do you agree with the right of self-defence?
-I am a Christian; I always turn the other cheek

-Do you think boycotting a tyranny could be fruitful?
-I am a shopkeeper; I get the best value for money, I don’t care where it comes from

-Do you agree with illegal settlement, and land confiscation?
-I am a journalist; I have to give an impartial view

-Do you oppose oppression and occupation?
-I am a human right advocate; I have to be neutral

-Do you feel guilty after shooting little boys for throwing stones?
- I am a soldier; I only follow orders

-Doctor… doctor… I had enough, I think I am going mad, I feel sick, can’t breath, I’m trembling, sweating, aching all over, help me…

-I am an orthopaedic; I only do bones

When you come to see a doctor, you can’t be vague; you’ve got to be precise:
Is this pain in your lower abdomen or upper thigh?
Is it at the top of your fingernail or at the bottom of your ear?
Is it in your left nostril or your right toe?
Is it above your hip or beneath your eye-brow?
I did my PHD in MCP (metacarpophalangeal joint ) known as knuckle/ finger joint; do you realize?
You need to be specific; I need to know before referring you to the relevant specialist,

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Do you believe in God? - I am a scientist, I don’t do religion

Wednesday, 14 November 2007

Rain

The rainy season has begun.

A few years ago, I claimed that Siargao was the wettest place in Asia, based on a highly unscientific experiment.

Last night we had a shower, one of many over the past few days, so, this time, I set up a rigourously-controlled scientific measuring device, at about 9:45pm.
- A bucket, placed in the middle of the lawn.

This morning, the bucket was nearly full, so I measured the depth of water in it - 25cm.

Then I did various abstruse calculations to correct for the sectional conical shape of the bucket, but the difference was minimal.

That's right; about 10 inches of rain - overnight

Added - 14/12/07 - a bit later:

1 inch rain = 6.25 inches snow

This is an average value though. Colder areas will have a lower number while warmer areas will have a higher number.
http://forum.onlineconversion.com/showthread.php?t=225

But, earlier on, in the same discussion, someone wrote that his grandfather reckoned 10 inches of snow for every inch of rain.

Either way, you will get our equivalent:-
10" * 6.25" = 5 feet 2 inches of snow
or 10" * 10" = 8.3 feet of snow

Thank God it doesn't snow here. Five feet of the damned stuff would entirely cover Shedney, my 'companion'.

------------------------------
W Somerset Maugham wrote a classical story Rain
which starts out:
"It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and...."

But even before that, Rudyard Kipling wrote: Mandalay:
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

I really don't think, now, that Kipling ever went to Mandalay, in the very middle of the country, or to the old Moulmein Pagoda, about 400 miles away. China was near, but never 'crost the Bay. It was, and still is, due north where the dawn is unlikely to come up, let alone noisily.

But the bit that really got me (although "There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees..." does ring certain sentimental bells) was:

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and --
Law! wot do they understand?

I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

And that got me into this mess, where I came to avoid the world-famous English climate .

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Iran's Nuclear Bomb - Let's Be Real

The Iranian nuclear program was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program.
Iran's current effort includes several research sites, a uranium mine, a nuclear reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include a uranium enrichment plant.
The Iranian government asserts that the program's goal is to develop nuclear power plants, and that it plans to use them to generate 6,000 MW of electricity by 2010

The U.S. and some other nations [Guess who] officials allege the program covers an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons.

As of October 2007, however, the IAEA has seen "no evidence" that this is the case.
I haven't the space to give details, but you can read an extraordinary amount of detail and commomn sense about the Iranian atomic programme here

That will be a very useful historical reference when we wake up after the nightmare and find out what Mr Brown and Mr Bush and Sarko the Sayan got us into.

But please note: The aerial photo of the Bushehr Atomic Plant above bears a remarkable resemblance to the Syrian building recently bombed by the Israelis.

Iran's Nuclear Bomb - Let's Be Real

But please note: The aerial photo of the Bushehr Atomic Plant above bears a remarkable resemblance to the Syrian building recently bombed by the Israelis.

If Anyone Had Any Sense or Education, They Might Have Read This

Xenophon's 10,000 f***d up in Iran and Turkey, so why do Mr Brown and Mr Bush and Sarko the Sayan think they will do any better?

If Anyone Had Any Sense or Education, They Might Have Read This

Xenophon's 10,000 f***d up in Iran and Turkey, so why do Mr Brown and Mr Bush and Sarko the Sayan think they will do any better?

Second-rate Scot Marches Against Persians

I really didn't believe us English had a successor to GWB's poodle until I read this:

Gordon Brown declared last night that Britain "will lead" the international campaign to stop Iran's nuclear programme, calling for new sanctions on oil and gas investments in the Islamic republic if it fails to comply with UN resolutions.

Does this really mean that our unelected British Prime Minister will send British squaddies off again to fight some damned silly war?

G*d knows we're struggling enough in the (4th, 5th?) Afghan War, and have been sent packing from Basra

Second-rate Scot Marches Against Persians

How to be a Jewish Nigger in Israel - 2 - a Couple of Traitors in the USA

I wrote a little about the Ashkenazi/Sephardi problems within the exclusive population of the Jewish State at:
How to be a Jewish Nigger in Israel - 1
but I didn't (just two weeks ago) realise what Ashkenazi paranoia can really be like:

Read this: (extracts) from:
Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question
by Meyrav Wurmser - Middle East Quarterly Spring 2005

"In July 2004, for example, a poem appeared online entitled, "I Am an Arab Refugee":

When I hear Fayruz singing,
"I shall never forget thee, Palestine,"
I swear to you with my right hand that at once I am a Palestinian.
All of a sudden I know:
I am an Arab refugee
and, if not,let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

The author is not a Palestinian refugee but rather an Israeli Jew. His name is Sami Shalom Chetrit, a Mizrahi professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who, along with Mizrahi academics like Ella Shohat, Eli Avraham, Oren Yiftachel, Yehouda Shenhav, Pnina Motzafi-Haller and others has developed a radical critique of ethnic relations in Israel. True to post-Zionism, an intellectual movement that believes that Zionism lacks moral validity, post-Zionist Mizrahi writers believe that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.

The post-Zionist Mizrahi writers continue to live their parents' insults and humiliations at the hands of the European Ashkenazi Jewish establishment that absorbed them in Israel after immigration. Discriminatory policies created a continuing social and economic gap between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim.

The radical Mizrahim who turned to post-Zionism tap into anger beyond the well-known complaints of past ill-treatment, including the maabarot, the squalid tent cities into which Mizrahim were placed upon arrival in Israel; the humiliation of Moroccan and other Mizrahi Jews when Israeli immigration authorities shaved their heads and sprayed their bodies with the pesticide DDT.
[Just as Germans did to Jews in Auschwitz ]

Read on if you really want to.

But it seems that little Meyrav, together with her husband, David, have insinuated themselves into the very heart of American politics:

Meyrav Wurmser, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the neoconservative-aligned Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, and a contributing expert at the Israel-based Ariel Center, is a longtime proponent of hardline Likud Party policies in the Middle East and, along with her husband David Wurmser (an adviser on Mideast issues to Vice President Dick Cheney), a member of an elite clique of policy wonks who helped shape ideas that seem to have heavily influenced the George W. Bush administration's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks

David Wurmser's contributions to American foreign policy have also been profound.
US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'
US hawk David Wurmser 'plotted Iran war'

He was, until he resigned, the major Mid-East advisor to the one-time Wisconsin telephone linesman who is still Vice President of the United States, despite all reasonable calls for his dismissal for incompetence and unreasonable arrogance.

In the "Good Old Days" (1953), the Rosenbergs were executed in the United States for working for a Foreign Power.

The only difference between these two sets of traitors in the USA is that the Rosenbergs worked for a supposed enemy, while the Wurmsers work for Uncle Sam's master.

I believe, as do many others, that the Rosenbergs were judicially murdered during one of America's fits of directed xenophobia.

Luckily for the Wurmsers, judicial murder of supposed spies is no longer practiced (visibly) in America.
See:
Jonathan Pollard
Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal

How to be a Jewish Nigger in Israel - 2 - a Couple of Traitors in the USA

Monday, 12 November 2007

Turkey Gobbles

I don't necessarily agree fully with what Turkey's President told Shimon Peres during the latest trip by the veteran tourist/diplomat, but it's interesting:

As reported by the Jerusalem Post:
Emphasis by me, interpolated comments by me.

Peres told Gul that Israel could not accept a nuclear Iran.
In response, Gul said that while Turkey was against the development of weapons of mass destruction, it did believe countries had the right to develop alternative sources of energy.

Peres told Gul that Israel did not accept this line of thinking and that Iran had a large amount of oil and natural gas and so did not need an alternative source of energy.
[Israel has no nuclear power, and no oil or natural gas. But it does have a large nuclear establishment at Dimona, and some 200 nukular bombs. It therefore has a divine right to chide its neighbours for even thinking about nuclear power].
Iran does not need nuclear energy," said Peres [with unimpeachable authority]
"I know the president has a different assessment, but we feel threatened."

Another sensitive issue raised in talks was the US Congress initiative to recognize the Armenian genocide. Gul told Peres that Turkey would not tolerate this issue coming up every few months.
"It is not worth ruining today's good relations over an event of the past," Gul told Peres.
[No, it certainly isn't, so perhaps we should also forget the events of the past in Eastern Europe (the Holocaust, Shoah, or whatever you want to call it, and get on with life).]

Peres said that Israel supported Turkey's initiative to set up a team of Armenian and Turkish historians to examine the events of 1915-17 and in addition, Gul thanked Peres for his efforts in working to thwart the US plan.
[What's this? A dastardly US plan to equate the genocide of ONLY 1.5 million Armenians with at least 4 times as many (6 million) Jews? ]

Peres expressed cautious optimism regarding the peace process with the Palestinians.

He said that although the two-to-four weeks remaining before Annapolis was not enough time to solve problems [after 60 years of ignoring them], "Annapolis is a station on the way to peace, and afterwards, real negotiations will begin."
[No it isn't, and they won't - see: Countdown to the offensive]

Gul said Turkey would do all it could to bring about the release of the captured IDF soldiers and said Turkey viewed the issue first and foremost as a humanitarian matter.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also arrived in Ankara to participate in a forum on Tuesday during which an announcement is expected to be made on a new industrial zone in the West Bank
I wonder whether Mahmoud Abbas will even mention the thousands of Palestinians kidnapped from their homes and held in unknown conditions, without trial, in Israeli jails and get Turkey to view the issue first and foremost as a humanitarian matter.

Peres also invited Gul to send a delegation for a project to study ways of using nanotechnology to combat terror.
[In other words, some Israeli scientist has developed micro-murderers, and wants to sell them - to whoever]

Peres also asked Gul for permission to borrow Israel-related artifacts from Turkish museums for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.
[Israelis are nothing if not extremely sentimental].