Messages

Whiskeysteve has given his reasoned and reasonable position, but I'm still not sure if he believes the Hamas targeting of innocent civilians is justified or not. Nobody else, that I can remember has taken the offered opportunity to condemn the killing by Hamas of Israeli civilians.

Possibly your memory is slipping, Hardy, but, as I recall  most credible posters here appear to regard murder as morally wrong, no matter where it comes from.
I have no problem at all in going about 90% of the way with you; I do have reservations about letting your antipathy towards Robert Fisk get in the way of objective evaluation of what he had to say.
For all I know, he may be more obnoxious than Kevin Myers is to me; I could add in John Waters too and still the balance could tilt in Fisk's direction but my opinion of what he had to offer would still  be as objective as possible.
From what I have seen, read and heard from a wide range of sources I can find nothing factually inaccurate in what Fisk penned in this instance. Thad's all I can say and it would be pretentious of me to claim I am an expert on such matters. ASAIK, while he may have subjectively marshalled his facts together, to me, they still remain facts.
It does strike me how (relatively) lucky we all are to be able to sit back and trade words, while in real life it is literally a matter of life or death for so many innocent people involved.
Subjunctive clause or semicolons won't blow a family to smithereens.
I also feel it is unnecessary to proclaim my abhorrence of Hamas actions every time I complain about the excesses of Zionism.  I think some things can surely be taken for granted and that murder is wrong no matter what the reason is or who commits it. I do not feel it
I think the hoors of Hamas who fire those rockets knew full well that they would provoke a disproportionate reaction from the equally obnoxious hoors on the other side. Obviously, they have their own reasons for provoking a conflict with infinitely more powerful and equally fanatical neighbours.
But without exonerating Hamas in any way, I just can't get inside the minds of those who will line an array of tanks up and aim their guns at a defenceless refugee camp. It was the same f**kers who stood aside and allowed Christian militia to get at similar camps in southern Lebanon some years ago. Here, the inhabitants the inhabitants were massacred without mercy or exception.
Has the lessons of the Holocaust been lost on all Zionists?

Firefox will automatically backup your bookmarks from time to time.
I assume you want to manually save them....
Open the Bookmarks tab and select Organize Bookmarks.
Now, look at the Import and Backup tab.
Select Backup. You will be prompted for a place to save the backup and the present date will be chosen by default.
[I don't know where Firefox saves the automatic backups - probably in its temp folder in program files..]
Save it where you will be able to retrieve it later. Its suffix will be .json- no need to worry about that.
When you want to restore it, go back to Bookmarks >> Organize Bookmarks >> Import and Backup again and select Restore.
Be careful here....
You will get a list of dates- all are automatic saves. Go for Choose File instead.
Browse to where you saved your manual backup and select it.
Firefox will alert you that you will lose all recent changes if you go ahead and restore it.
If that's what you want, go ahead.
HTH

Jesus Christ! Next you'll be telling me people swim to keep themselves dry or that bleeding is an incidental side-effect of shooting someone in the head - it was never intended to draw blood.

Simple question - why are they firing rockets at people?

Simple answer, Hardy, is to try and kill as many of them as possible!
I have no doubt whatsoever that Hamas will do their utmost to destroy the state of Israel and kill each and every one of their oppressors.
The Israelis on the other hand, quite correctly, see Hamas as their deadly enemies and will stop at nothing to nullify their threat.  The problem is that "nothing" seems to be interpreted literally by the said Israelis.
Given their monopoly of airpower and their huge superiority where other forms of weaponry are concerned they can afford to strike at will, wherever and whenever they choose.
Hamas are hopelessly outgunned and out numbered in every conceivable way, not that that gives them any moral licence to kill their intended targets. But I think it is irksome to have to stop every couple of sentences to apportion blame equally. I most certainly have reservations of every possible sort about the Arab fundamentalists who control every facet of life in their own communities.
I don't for one moment think Fisk is unbiased in his reporting. Why should he be?
If he is or has been on the ground there and reports what he has seen and heard at first hand, why the onus should be on him to condemn both sets of antagonists equally- if he finds this not to be the case.
After all, he puts his thoughts and views into the public domain when he publishes them and it is up to each and every one of us to accept or reject his findings. We are blessed in our own society that we enjoy an unfettered press and also have access to a wide range of TV and radio stations that between them will give us a fairly comprehensive assessment of the Middle East situation.
Therefore, I don't depend on Fisk alone to influence my thinking. But based on what I have read and seen from a variety of sources, I tend to agree with most of what he writes.
The article we are referring to did not trivialise the deaths of innocent Israelis; at least I can find no evidence that it did. As he says, it's an endless circle of violence with each side reacting to the latest depredations of the other.
Fisk's rant was directed at the hypocrisy of western powers who call for "restraint" on both sides as if they were equal combatants in the conflict. And at the hopelessness of finding a settlement as long as this deception continues.
I was in the US for a period at the time of the last Israeli attack on Gaza. I was absolutely appalled at the bias of all the main TV channels in their reportage of the invasion. It was self-imposed censorship, pure and simple- not a single report in my time there showed any sense of balance or concern for the Palestinian cause.
I think Fisk and others of the same outlook do us all a general service in presenting us with a counterbalance to the majority viewpoint.
And make no mistake about that last point. On the international scene, where it counts most, the Palestinian viewpoint is ignored. Even here, we get a widespread point of view that, somehow the Israeli attacks on hospitals and schools in Gaza are justified because Hamas uses them for cover by setting up their bases in or near such buildings. A phone conservation with my American nephew confirmed for me this morning that this is certainly the general feeling over there.
Yet, either here or there, it seems odd that few consider the fact that Hamas are not welcomed by the community at large and are certainly not invited to locate their bases where they do.
All in all, I think dissident voices, like that of Robert Fisk, do help maintain a sense of balance in the whole sorry affair.

Great result for Connacht, but not great news for Ulster, given that we have to finish above them to qualify for next year's Heineken Cup.

Myles,
Ulster are going through a very iffy period now and have been off the pace for a long time. Any ideas as to why they are underperforming for so long?

Hardy, I feel it's a pity that you did not emphasise the sentence that offends you in its entirety; doing so might show u Fisk's reasoning in a different light.

Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.

Now; I do not see any insinuation therein to suggest that killing innocent Israelis is not wrong.

For me at any rate, the paragraph following the sentence you draw attention to delivers the substance of Fisk's article:
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.

What I take from Fisk's article is what I have accepted to be the case ever since the conflict began or at least since I first became aware of it. I certainly don't imply any support for the goals of Hamas when I say that the crimes of the Israelis stink to high heaven.
Fisk may be a one trick pony in that he adopts a consistently anti-West line but
I see nothing in what he has written here to make me change my overview of the situation; money talks and the biggest players on the international money markets are Jews. As long as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Solomons and the likes are dominant figures, America and its allies will back the Israeli cause and to hell with any talk of justice or fair play for the Palestinians or any one else involved.

Donnycarney, the unposh end of Dublin 5.

I have nothing good to say about this cnut so I wont go on a rant except for one item ---
in 1973 he was appointed Minister of Posts and Telegraphs at a time when the Irish telephone system was about 10 years behind the rest of the world.
In 1977 when he got his just reward the phones were 20 years behind the rest of the world.

The Cruiser was minister for Posts and Telegraphs and Labour spokesman for Norn Iron at the same time. He spent his entire time mouthing about the IRA and nationalist activists generally and devoted little or no time to his ministerial brief. Rossfan is right; he left the telephone service twice as bad as it was when he took up the job.
I remember a Fianna Fail spokesman (Brian Lenihan snr?) snapping at him one night on TV that if he had to use a public telephone box to phone in his comments we'd hear a lot less of his views on Northern Ireland.
About 18 months ago, I found myself sharing an ICU in Beaumont with him. I felt sorry for the old devil; if ever there was a dead man walking, it was him. He wasn't actually walking, if you follow me. It was plain to see that his walking days were well and truly over.
I'm more than surprised that he lasted so long.
Throughout his political career, he was fiercely hostile towards Charlie Haughey. Some political commentators have been reporting that it was a positive side to his character and that he deserved credit for tackling Haughey over, let us say, his unorthodox way of funding his lifestyle.
Maybe his reasons for hating Haughey weren't as altruistic as those commentators think.
The night before the '73 election I found myself having a quiet drink with the bould Charlie. It was an unplanned meeting and it as CJ was buying, Lar was prepared to pretend to be polite and listen. Haughey made some extremely accurate forecasts at that meeting.
Fianna Fail were going to lose the election the next day. That one was fair enough, although the pundits were predicting a close win for Jack Lynch. Haughey would top the poll in his constituency, thereby relegating the Cruiser to second place. (They obviously stood in the same constituency.)
Conor, sez CJ, was a complete egotist and would resent Haughey outpolling him for as long as he lived. Haughey went on to say the Cruiser would stop at nothing to do him down, as he put it.
He then went on to say that when he assumed leadership of Fianna Fail, he would have to contend with O'Brien's enmity ever step of the way. In his own words, he wouldn't give a f**k for the to**er but he would snap at his heels all along the way.

One final prediction: Haughey reckoned there would be a major war in the Middle East over oil resources before 1990 arrived. He was to be out by just 15 days.

Reillers, Stevetharlear,
Thanks to both of you lads for taking the time to fill me in.
It's an incredible story and if it wasn't being played out in public view right here and now, I doubt if any sane person would take it for real.
Frank Murphy and the county board have a lot of explaining to do but it is hard to see to whom they are accountable—at least that is what stands out first and foremost to me.
This row has been rumbling on for the best part of a decade; both senior panels have been involved with a remarkable degree of unanimity across both hurling and football panels. I can't honestly recall a single intercounty player breaking ranks when his particular panel was engaged in a standoff.
Down the years both panels have undergone quite a few changes in personnel and yet the degree of solidarity is unprecedented.
By any stretch of the imagination, the players must have substantial reservations about Frank Murphy and so many players over such a long period of time with players joining and leaving each panel on an ongoing basis can't all be wrong.
Frank Murphy has been the only constant all along; I'm sure the county board setup must have undergone changes since the beginning of this decade. Frankie must have a huge degree of control over the board.
The big mystery to me is the fact that all the clubs of the players involved, both hurling and football, haven't seen fit to intervene.
I'm told Cork has the greatest number of registered GAA clubs in county and yet the silence from them all is deafening. Frank Murphy must be one hell of a unique individual to keep them all under control!
I'm sure you will understand how an outsider like me can feel confused by it all.

Well, lads, it looks like the 100 page mark will be reached in no time at all but even if the craic goes on for a good while yet, I don't see any consensus emerging—if I may use a buzz term.
Unfortunately, you will probably have reached the 200 mark and more before any sort of deal will be arrived at in this situation. All sides seem to have dug in and compromise seems to be a dirty word.
I honestly don't know what is going on and I suppose very few outsiders would claim to make sense of it either.
In previous altercations between intercounty players and the county board it was fairly easy to have a good degree of sympathy with the players, hurlers and footballers alike. Their grievances seemed substantial.
Pardon me if I am missing something here, but I thought after the last spat that an agreement was entered into by all sides concerned that players' representatives would have an input into the selection of future managers. In return, all players agreed not to go on strike again. 
To a gobhawk like myself, that seemed clear enough; the players, hurlers and footballers, seemed to have got a substantial portion of what they had been looking for and life by the Lee could return to normal.
Yet, within a year the hurlers were up in arms again, claiming bloody blue murder and pointing the collective finger at Frank Murphy; Frank it seems arranged matters so his choice of hurling manager was appointed without reference to the wishes of the current hurling panel.
Am I right so far? That, in brief, is what I have gleaned from what I have seen and heard since the present standoff began.
Several things strike me: Why didn't the hurlers object the very second Gerald Mac was appointed? I'm quite sure the hurlers' reps were aware of the tactics that Frank & co. were likely to adopt and should have not allowed the appointment to proceed once they realised that the spirit of the recent agreement was being breached.
Again, I may be incorrect in my recollections but I think Gerald's appointment had been announced before the players indicated their dissatisfaction. I certainly recall reading that the players had a meeting with the new man and Sean Og telling him, more or less, that he wasn't wanted.
Tactically, the players mucked up here. If they were unhappy, they should never have attended any such meeting; either the appointment was in order or it was a transgression of the terms of the agreement facilitated by Kieran Mulvey. Meeting with the man was giving tacit acceptance to his appointment. They followed ill-thought out advice on that one.
I like Cork hurling and Cork hurlers in general and I accept that the players must have serious and heartfelt grievances to follow the course they are pursuing but I honestly can't see them winning this one. For one thing, the footballers are staying very silent; no fraternal bonds here. Didn't the hurlers come to their aid in the not so distant past?
Furthermore, none of the clubs appear to have backed the cause of the striking players. Does their silence speak volumes?
Last time the goings on in Cork hit the headlines, it was noticeable that high profile managers like Brian Cody and Richie Bennis publicly backed the hurlers' cause. So did a number of prominent players from other counties. There seems to be no support from those quarters now.
The odds would appear to indicate that Gerald will hold on and in doing so the power of Frank and his buddies on the county board will be increased. Maybe my assessment is a bit simplistic, but that's my take on proceedings as an objective outsider. 

www.godaddy.com is the cheapest I have found.  At £6.71 / year for .com, if anyone knows any cheaper, please let me know.

I haven't come across any cheaper but I certainly have come across better.
I tried them once and left after a year. The name registration wasn't the problem but their webhosting package was dire.
There is an English company, web-mania.co.uk, that I have used and I have found it to be good value fore the money.
I'm not a web expert or anything approaching one, but I have knocked together a few fairly uncomplicated sites for myself and for a few friends and web-mania have been fairly satisfactory - both with Domain Name registration and with the cost of hosting sites.
£7.95 annually for a .com suffix is cheaper than most others offer. Some of the less popular options are somewhat less. I think the going rate for a hosting package is £24.99 annually, so the total cost works out at around €40 for a year.
I've never had reason to try out all the features but apart from the email service being a bit slow at times, I've nothing really to complain about.
From my own experience and from what others tell me, I'd give American budget companies a miss; they tend to be short on manners and technical backup services.

Good post, Abbeysider; I certainly don't disagree with anything you have stated; any difference between us seems to be a matter of perspective rather than of substance.
One place where we both sing from the hymn sheet is here:

Do any of us have a clear idea of a starting 15? I dont

I suggest John O'Mahony doesn't either.
After he took over the reins, Mayo made it through to the league final. They lost that game but weren't disgraced by an in-form Donegal side. Donegal, if any of you care to remember, were getting rave reviews at the time; they were being widely tipped as a good bet for September. Injury problems left O'Mahony short of his preferred first fifteen but the side acquitted itself well. No sign of battle trauma or lack of appetite for the game were evident.
Our first game, against Galway in Salthill, loomed up ahead.  Optimism was high; Mayo were strongly tipped; nobody, but nobody mentioned any sign of mental tiredness amongst the older players.
When the game began, Peter Ford moved his wing forwards up into the corners and the Mayo half backs got in their own way. The Mayo defensive formation crumbled – there is no other way to describe it. By the time O'Mahony reacted, the game was out of sight.
In the second half, the Mayo veterans tore into the opposition but were unable to overcome the scores Galway racked up in the flying start they enjoyed. Can any Mayo fan who reads this, tell me of one "vet" who showed the white feather as they sought to overcome the deficit?
I contend that the excuse that the players hadn't the bottle to compete doesn't measure up to the facts. Maybe the General Election looming up might have taken O'Mahony's eye off the ball but the players gave their best – pity the same can't be side about the tulips on the sideline.
The Galway game this season followed the same broad pattern, in my humble opinion. Galway got off to a flying start and thereafter Mayo had to struggle uphill all the way. To O'Mahony's credit, he did organise the defense more efficiently this time around but the forwards were crap; devoid of a plan A never mind a plan B.
Okay; the result was closer than it was in Salthill but Mayo were playing catch up all the way and Liam Sammon proved the master when it came to tactics on the sideline.
Mickey Harte also proved instrumental in Tyrone's victory in a desperately poor game when he proved far sharper in reacting to events on the field.
BTW; if anyone cares to look back at the side that took the field in Castlebar this year, it might be surprising to see how many of the older players lined out. This was not a case of giving youth a fling, IMO. Rightly or wrongly, O'Mahony stuck with the vets of former years.
My abiding memory of the game against Tyrone is the sight of Conor Mortimer being left isolated throughout the entire game with Mayo's only game plan to hoof high balls in on top of him. Asking him to compete against a taller, heavier player with an incompetent referee was asking for trouble. 
Did O'Mahony take any action to counter this in any way from start to finish?
Really, there were many other cases where I thought the manager could have reacted more decisively when matters were going against us but leaving Mortimer isolated and unprotected from start to finish sums up our championship campaigns over the last two years.
We were like sheep in a heap with the shepherd at the bottom of the pile.

[The stable animals]

The stable animals
Pig.........evil genius

A pig. In a stable. In Bethlehem. 

Why, that's about as likely as a Prod. In a GAA team. In Fermanagh. 

Still, I'll take the part, since the Pig is a noble creature.

And besides, it's the only living creature in the whole stable that won't get eaten or ridden...

I wouldn't be altogether confident about backing the family silver on that assumption, if I were you.   
I'd have serious reservations about the proclivities of someof those who may disagree with you on occasion.
You'd be short odds-on to suffer either or both fates if you should get into a stable with some of those you find around here. D

The White House on the old Dublin- Ashbourne Road is my favourite grub shop without exception. The steaks there are top class and the same can be said for any sort of beef dish.
Mind you; the good folks there need to be on their toes because there are two other fine places along the same stretch of road.
The Brock Inn, 500 yards down from the White House on the Dublin side and the Coolquay Lodge, which is about a mile further along the road towards Ashbourne, are both very well-known and both deserve their reputations.

Can I ask another question so, if most lads admit there isn't a full back, an outstanding, proven centre back and only 2 scoring forwards (neither of which are great as scoring forwards IMO) then why are so many of you highly critical of JOM? You talk of a lack of progression but how can you progress if you don't have the players?

The problem is that Johnno appears to have lost the deftness of touch that he once had. Since taking over, he has continually chopped and changed his team about without giving anyone a chance to settle down and develop some degree of understanding with others around him.
The game against Galway in Salthill last year was a case in point: not a single line of the team had played as a unit before this game. It certainly showed on the day as Galway left us at sixes and sevens from the throw-in. Peter Ford, the Galway manager, outmanoeuvred O'Mahony without bother and the changes needed, that were obvious to all, bar O'Mahony, only took place when the cause was lost.
This year has been as bad as the previous one where the need to make decisive sideline changes is concerned.  The game against Galway followed the same pattern more or less, as the previous one and the herrin' chokers won another game by default. Our championship record over the last two years has seen us beat Cavan and Sligo and after that you would be struggling to find positives.
Maybe we lack a natural full back or a centre half, but we won't get either unless it comes about by pure chance. The business of fiddling with players' positions goes on steadily and with no obvious sign of success. Billy Joe, Jimmy Kilcullen and Vincent Conroy have all been given extended runs at full back and none of them proved to be a success. Others have been tried there also. 
Now; to my simple way of thinking, it would be far better to settle on an individual and make a full back out of him rather than fluting about hoping for divine inspiration. Every time you make a change at full back or any other crucial position, you have to consider the knock on effect on others around it.
As I write this, our beloved manager seems to have no clearer idea as to what his preferred started fifteen would be if he could field it. And that's after two years of team building and development. I accept that he lacks natural candidates for a number of positions but what is he going to do about this?
Wouldn't he be far better off if he were to take his closest prospect and shoe him into a given position, say, fullback and keep him there until someone better comes along? At least that would allow him to gain a clearer understanding of who would be needed in the corners to make a cohesive unit. Same goes for every central position right down the field.
At this stage, Billy Joe must have been tried in every position bar goal and still can't nail a permanent position down. Andy Moran and Trevor Mortimer are others who could lose their amateur status as Travellers if he keeps shifting them about. For me, it's not O'Mahony's fault that he doesn't have readymade solutions to the positional problems we know of; it's the way he has gone about minimising the shortcomings that concerns me.
I mean, is there a single manager in the land who honestly feels he has each position filled with natural players of the highest quality. Where most others seem to accept their shortcomings and try to work things out to best effect, Johnno keeps juggling his team, hoping things will eventually gel together.
I'd feel that after two years, he is no nearer getting his preferred set up than when he started out.
All of this is bad enough without mentioning the McDonald episode. While I fully accept his right as manager to pick whoever he chooses, the manner in which he handled matters here left a lot to be desired. He left himself open to ongoing hassle and controversy that a wiser man would have foreseen and avoided.
All in all, I don't see matters improving dramatically this year either. I sincerely hope for the best but am expecting a good deal less than that.

http://www.parliament.uk/directories/house_of_lords_information_office/alphabetical_list_of_members.cfm

There's a right few Bishops in the House of Lords. Are they all Church of England?

Yes, there are 26 seats in the Lords for Archbishops of the C of E because it remains the established church; unlike the Church of Ireland (Protestant/Anglican) and the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).

Because of the evolutionary nature of the British political system over the last c.300 years, this is being looked at in order to reform the system and separate church and state.

Still not done, but I think it's only a matter of time I think.

Tonto, I’m lost here; maybe you could enlighten me?
I thought all the Churches (England, Ireland, and Scotland etc.) were Anglicans; part of the Anglican Communion (or something like that.)

I’ve always assumed this to be so but never felt the need to actually go and checkit out before now.