RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/04/08/venezuelas-navy-battles-a-cruise-ship-and-loses

The sailors had guns, but the unarmed pleasure boat had a thick hull

IT WAS, ON the face of it, a mismatched contest. The ANBV Naiguatá, a Venezuelan patrol vessel, was armed with a 76mm naval gun, a German-built anti-aircraft system that sprays a cloud of tungsten bullets and a pair of deck-mounted machine guns, among other weaponry. The RCGS Resolute, a Portuguese-flagged cruise ship with an 80-seat theatre, had the top speed of an oil tanker. But in the early hours of March 30th it was Venezuela’s Bolivarian navy whose ship ended up on the seabed—in the first decisive naval skirmish in the Caribbean for 75 years.

The Resolute, en route to Curaçao, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, had been drifting for a day in international waters near La Tortuga, a Venezuelan island, as it tinkered with its starboard engine. At midnight it was approached by the Naiguatá and ordered to come into port. As the Resolute contacted its head office for instructions, the Naiguatá opened fire—a video released by the Venezuelan navy shows a sailor firing an AK-47 in the howling wind and darkness with Rambo-like enthusiasm—and rammed the cruise ship, according to its parent company.

Unfortunately for the Naiguatá, the Resolute’s placid appearance belies the fact that its strengthened hull, built for polar cruising, can smash through metre-thick ice—and, it turns out, puny patrol boats. The Resolute brushed off the collision with “minor damages”, whereas the Naiguatá rapidly took on water and sank, leaving 44 sheepish sailors to be rescued.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/11/boris-johnsons-illness-has-darkened-britains-mood

BORIS JOHNSON has always believed that history was not made just by vast impersonal forces but by great men and women who change its course through their sheer talent and willpower. His admiration for Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher springs from this worldview; so did his decision to reject the belief widespread in the establishment that Britain’s destiny lay in the European Union and to lead the country out of it.

Just as Mr Johnson was fulfilling his ambition, with a recently acquired 87-seat majority in Parliament and grand plans to build a new one-nation Conservatism that might yet win him membership of the great-men club, the vast impersonal forces hit back. On March 27th Mr Johnson revealed that he had covid-19. On April 6th he went into intensive care. The government is in the hands of his cabinet and the first secretary of state, Dominic Raab. Mr Johnson’s Brexit plans have been sidelined in order to fight a rearguard action against a disease that is locking down the country and tanking the economy. The prime minister who wanted to be defined by Brexit will be defined by covid-19.

Mr Johnson’s condition is all the more shocking because he is normally such a force of nature. He has been blessed (or cursed) with Falstaffian appetites: witness his two marriages and a third in the offing; his five acknowledged children and another on the way; his string of mistresses; his enthusiasm for food, wine and, of course, cake; the mound of books and articles that he has produced while also pursuing his political career; and his extraordinary ability to light up a room. He has also been an omnipresent figure in British public life for several decades: editor of the Spectator, star columnist on the Daily Telegraph, mayor of London, principal Brexiteer, foreign secretary and tormentor-in-chief of his predecessor, Theresa May, until he finally got the job he always wanted.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/robbed-of-reputation-and-achievement/

The classic definition of a libel is the consigning of an individual to ridicule and disrepute. Cardinal George Pell endured that in spades and for years before the grotesque exercise in character assassination culminated in 405 days behind bars. Someone, many if there is any justice, has to pay.

Much has been, and will be, written about the Pell case, most of it by commentators much more qualified than I, but indulge me to offer, humbly, a few thoughts. If we go back to basics, we can ask ourselves the simple question, how probable is it that a middle-aged man, clever and ambitious enough to rise to the very top ranks of his profession, would risk everything by molesting two boys in circumstances where he could be discovered at any minute? Most people would say ‘not impossible but very improbable’, I would venture to guess.

That premise would, or should, inform a healthy scepticism from the get-go on the part of any competent and disinterested investigator.  It should demand that evidence against the subject be compelling.  That ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’ should be as apparent to the prosecution team as it would be to the jury.

Except, it seems, if the subject were Cardinal George Pell.

Another aspect the astute investigator might consider is if this alleged perpetrator, this highly intelligent achiever, is also something of a risk-taker?  As far as I am aware, most paedophiles, at least those within the clergy, are not opportunistic predators.  They carefully groom their victims over time.  The investigator might ask himself, how probable is it that the past life of this self-indulgent middle-aged risk-taker with so little self-control as to take this immense risk for just a moment’s fleeting pleasure would not be littered with similar instances?