Booming Back

Something Old, Something New

2009-11-11T10:45:00.009Z

I've been reading a lot of Habermas lately, particularly his more recent commentaries on the nature of a European identity. Emerging from his long standing disagreements with Derrida in May 2003 to jointly publish a plea for a common European Foreign policy in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, continued in a series of interviews with both Derrida and Habermas on "Philosophy in a Time of Terror", and culminating last year in the publication by Habermas alone of "Europe - The Faltering Project", the concept of a shared European identity and role in opposition to and occasional collaboration with US hegemony in the 21st century is one that has been occupying most of Habermas' work in this later period of his career.

While Habermas is often accused of defining Europe solely as the "Core Europe" of Germany, France, the Benelux countries and occasionally Spain and Italy based on a shared Judeo-Christian heritage and Napoleonic law, two areas that serve as the biggest distinguisher between US and European values are common to all EU nations: the private nature of faith and the sanctity of human life. On the issue of faith in politics he writes:

"In modern Europe, the relation between church and state developed differently north and south of the Alps, west and East of the Rhine. In different European countries, the idea of the state's neutrality in relation to different world-views has assumed different legal forms. And yet within civil society, religion overall assumes a comparably un-political position. We may have cause to regret this social privatization of faith in other respects, but it has desirable consequences for our political culture. For us, a president who opens his daily business with public prayer, and associates his significant political decisions with a divine mission, is hard to imagine." - Habermas & Derrida, 'Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe', p10

Later on in the same paper he touches on the historical basis for the moral prohibitions on a State murdering it's own citizens:

"Contemporary Europe has been shaped by the experience of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and by the Holocaust - the persecution and the annihilation of European Jews in which the National Socialist regime made the societies of the conquered countries complicit as well. Self-critical controversies about this past remind us of the moral basis of politics. A heightened sensitivity to injuries to personal and bodily integrity reflects itself, among other ways, in the fact that both the Council of Europe an EU made the ban on capital punishment a condition for membership." - Habermas & Derrida, 'Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe', pp11-12

These thoughts were fresh in my mind as I read this morning of the execution last night in the US of John Allen Muhammad, who together with an underage accomplice killed 10 people in the Washington DC area with a sniper rifle from the back of a modified car over a three week period in October 2002. I remember those events quite vividly as I was living in the US at the time; much was made by the media of his name and faith and the tragedy was easily weaved into the American tapestry of Islamophobia, much as last week's incident in Ft Hood is doing now. No questions were raised about the availability of high powered sniper rifles to anyone with an ID and money.

As a theologian what often puzzles me is the disconnect between the theocratic nature of American society and its love of weapons, violence and the death penalty. For a nation where a sizable portion of its citizens believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God, it is quite jarring that those same Christians do not seem to believe in the literal words contained within the Bible. It is a nation where successive generations of preachers have sought refuge in the fire-and-brimstone of the Old Testament, and interpreted the actual teachings of Jesus such as "Love thy Enemy" as "Love them by converting them to your beliefs at gunpoint", "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" as "God wants you to make money", and above all others the central Commandment of "Thou shalt not Kill" as "Thou Shalt not Kill unless it is in the name of Jesus". The words of God have been cynically warped and mangled to suit the needs of Man.

The public influence of a conservative faith and the subsequent stigmatizing of the "other" that accompanies it has shaped almost all aspects of the US penal system, with 25% of the worlds prison population being in the US, 1 in every 9 African-American men between 20 and 34 being currently incarcerated (and 13% of all African-American men having no voting privileges as a result of previous or current convictions). The US prison population has doubled since 1990 and increased 367% since 1980 (all data from 'Mother Jones' July/Aug 2009, pp 46-54), all corresponding to the rise of conservative Christian evangelicalism in the public sphere, while in godless Netherlands a decline in criminals is currently forcing the closure of prisons or the leasing of them to neighbouring Belgium.

And then there is the death penalty, where US juries openly consult bibles before reaching a verdict. According to Amnesty International:

"the following countries carried out executions in 2008: China (at least 1,718), Iran (at least 346), Saudi Arabia (at least 102), USA (37), Pakistan (at least 36), Iraq (at least 34), Viet Nam (at least 19), Afghanistan (at least 17), North Korea (at least 15), Japan (15), Yemen (at least 13), Indonesia (10), Libya (at least 8), Bangladesh (5), Belarus (4), Egypt (at least 2), Malaysia (at least 1), Mongolia (at least 1), Sudan (at least 1), Syria (at least 1), United Arab Emirates (at least 1), Bahrain (1), Botswana (1), Singapore (at least 1) and St Kitts and Nevis (1)" - Amnesty International, 'Death Sentences and Executions in 2008', p8, pdf link.

The US occupies a unique position amongst nations with majority Christian populations in its eagerness to murder its citizens, something that puts it in good company with its atheist Communist foes or the mainly Islamic Axis of Evil. It is no understatement to say that American popular faith is almost unrecognizable as Christianity to non-US Christians,.

As a cultural, linguistic and economic satellite of the UK (itself little more than America's Airstrip One), at times Ireland can feel even further away from Europe than its isolated position as a tiny island on its westernmost fringe. However in our nation's approach to the sanctity of the life of its citizens and the anathema of State-sanctioned murder, we can firmly and proudly call ourselves European. While we still have some way to go on the full separation of Church and State as evidenced by the recent Blasphemy Bill, the fact that Biffo with all his many flaws does not begin the day with a public prayer is a sign that despite occasional evidence to the contrary Ireland is genuinely an enlightened nation.

Let's try not to forget that.

Warp20 (Unheard)

2009-11-09T19:35:00.010Z

A while back I waxed lyrical about Warp's 20th anniversary box set, and in the subsequent days I was somewhat disappointed to see that they were to release separately an additional CD of the unreleased tracks that were only available on vinyl in the box set, wondering why a digital version of those tracks weren't included in the box set in the first place.

I was thus rather delighted to find the following mail in my inbox this evening from bleep.com, Warp's online store:

"Dear Customer,

As you may have noticed we have now made the "Unheard" tracks that are on vinyl in the boxset available as downloads. As someone who purchased the boxset we felt that you should also be entitled to the digital version of these tracks. We have made these available to download from your Bleep account for free so you have both a digital and a vinyl copy for your collection.

Just log in and go to your downloads section. There you will find a new order with "Warp20 Unheard" available to download as a high quality MP3.

Kind regards,
Bleep"

This is really good customer service, and proper order too.

Just a pity that they didn't send me the mail before I ordered the CD from Amazon.

Oh well.

Where the grumpy started

2009-11-09T17:56:00.007Z

Since we're taking an enforced detour down memory lane today, here is a photo courtesy of The Very Understanding Girlfriend of Unkie Dave at Glastonbury 1998, back in the days when he was still just "Dave", having yet to earn the right to use the "Unkie" moniker of longevity.

As you can see from the photo this was just before it got really muddy. I was already down to my last remaining clean clothes but had not yet been forced to buy an emergency pair of Bolivian goat-herding trousers two sizes too small for decency from Joe Bananas due to the near disintegration of all other items of my clothing from the after effects of the toxic sludge in which we camped.

Good times, good times.

Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

2009-11-09T11:57:00.015Z

Believe it or believe it not I am not much of a drinker. In the halcyon days of my youth and/or early-to-mid twenties I might have been known to enjoy the occasional quaff but alas time and tide have been unkind to my constitution and as I can no longer, as they say, do the time, I no longer do the crime.

Long gone are the days when I could enjoy a well-earned pint after work, for now the experience is more likely to send me right to sleep within moments of the first drops hitting my blood stream. Throughout my career I have enjoyed and endured in equal measure many Company nights out, and as a responsible manager I instituted a rule upon myself, that if I was to drink with my team late into the evening I must show decisive leadership by ensuring that I was the first person into the office the next day, the message to my staff clearly being by all means eat, drink and be merry but do not let it interfere with your work the next day. This was a stupid, stupid rule, and I curse the day it ever sprung forth fully formed from my mind, for many was the morning that I sat slowly rocking back and forth in my chair at 8:15am hoping for a major catastrophe to befall the office just to ease my Dionysian pain, as over the course of the next two or three hours bounded in the rest of the department, fresh-faced and seemingly immune to the ravages of school-night folly, no doubt helped in great part by their average age being ten years my junior.

Youth, and livers, are most definitely wasted on the young.

Armed with the knowledge of my extreme light-weightedness, and coupled with the fact that as a rule* The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I do not drink at home and when I do it is normally whiskey**, it will no doubt come as something of a surprise to find that this morning I am raving about beer, or rather a specific beer, Fuller's Brewer's Reserve.

This is altogether a rather tasty ale. When I was not so much of a lightweight I was an ale drinker, and a pint of Smithwick's was a little bit of mass-produced heaven for me***. Smithwick's is the dishwater they feed Clydesdale horses to make Budweiser from their urine in comparison to this little gem. A dark, ruby ale, aged for 500 days in 30-year old single malt oak casks it is a warm and smoky beer, with a delicate hint of whisky infusing every sip. It is bottle-conditioned, meaning that fermentation continues in the bottle, allowing the beer to last a long, long time and improve with age; some can even be lain down like wine, though this is so tasty I can't see it lasting too long in my house. Bottle-conditioned beers also tend to be a bit stronger, with this one coming in at 7.7%. Simply one of the best drinks from a major brewery I have ever had, and a snip at €5.99 a bottle (roughly the same as a City-Centre pint), but unfortunately produced in very limited quantities. The off-license I bought them in only had a few bottles left and they won't be getting any more in when they're gone, and so the hunt begins.

If you do find a bottle I heartily recommend that you snap it up, but don't tell me that you have as it means one less bottle for me. Which would make me angry. And you wouldn't like me when I am angry.

Just ask anyone involved in the great Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk tragedy of 2003.

If you can find any survivors willing to talk.

* not an actual rule, more of an observation, a sad, sad observation.

** Since a fateful trip returning from Glastonbury in June 1999 on a ferry three days before duty free was abolished between the UK and Ireland where bottles of Midleton were being sold for less than half price. This also left me with unfortunately expensive tastes. We once resorted to making Irish coffees with 18-year old Glenfiddich because it was the worst whisky in the house. People cried.

*** When we moved to the US and I was unable to find Smithwick's, or its exported cousin Kilkenny, I used to wax lyrical abut it over unloved pints of local dishwater. On the eve of my 30th birthday, on our last night in Dublin before returning to the 'Have from our annual Christmas homecoming, I managed to find a single can of Smithwicks after searching through multiple Rathmines off-licenses. I carried it lovingly back to the US wrapped in layers of protective bundling and deposited it safely in my fridge to be enjoyed as a special birthday treat. On the night itself, after djing for a few hot and sweaty hours I went to retrieve it, the anticipation building to a fever point, only to find that someone at the party had opened it, decided they didn't like it after a single sip, and then turned it into an ashtray. I cried. I think this was preemptive karma for the Glenfiddich/Irish Coffee travesty. Curiously enough upon returning home and being able to avail of Smithwick's on tap at every licensed establishment it somewhat lost its gloss, for in truth it really isn't a very good beer. Manufactured scarcity made for artificially raised desire, somewhat like diamonds really.

Icke! Icke baby! (to go)

2009-11-06T13:32:00.003Z

Ah, the endless and fetid regurgitation of once-cherished childhood memories by the military-industrial-entertainment complex continues apace in a form so artificial and manufactured that it is destined to circle the great gyre of the cultural seas for all eternity drawn ever inward until it finally lies suspended in the Pacific Trash Vortex of humanity's soul (located somewhere near Hollywood).

As a hungry and inquisitive ten year-old, ever looking to the stars and wondering what more lay out there, with an imagination fertilized by stolen volumes of Heinlein, Asimov and EE 'Doc' Smith purloined from my father's bookshelves, few moments of television can compete with those two May nights in 1983 when I somehow convinced my parents to let me stay up and watch "V". It had spaceships, alien lizardmen eating hamsters, cool uniforms and lots of ominous warnings about the abuse of power and the dangers of rigidly obeying authority, all music to the ears of a hyperactive ten year-old.

Watching repeats of it twenty+ years later exposes all of its many-evident weaknesses, the acting is wooden, the writing is appalling and time has not been kind to the special effects, and don't even think of mentioning the big hair. But none of that dulls the warm and happy memories that nestle in the cockles of my heart, it remains forever frozen in amber untouched and unsullied, a perfectly preserved moment of childhood joy and wonder.

Until last night.

If the Pirate Bay has been good for anything, it has been reducing the time between the US and International screening of shows. US networks have been encouraged to allow international markets to broadcast new shows almost immediately after they air domestically, and international networks now snatch up broadcast-rights on the basis of unaired pilots for fear of loosing their audience to file-sharing. No longer is there the three-to-six month lag that made it almost impossible to watch anything without being exposed to the inevitable spoliers. Thus two nights after airing on ABC our own TV3 showed the first episode of the 'reimagined" series of "V", even before any UK network.

Whereas the old series was a dumbed-down allegory of the rise of Fascism, the new series is a dumbed-down allegory of the rise of Obamaism. But wait, says middle America, what's the difference?

A charismatic leader with a big toothy grin arrives to spread a message of hope and change, reaches out to the French and the Arabs and speaks to them in their own language (and without preconditions) with a message of universal peace, the media falls in love with them and gives them an easy ride, they use the internet to spread their message to an easily swayed and disillusioned youth, they champion technology as the cure for all society's ills, the nation's law enforcement stops worrying about the treat of terrorism now that the leader is here to save them, and finally, horror of horrors, the leader offers to save the world through the roll-out of (wait for it) Universal Health Care (dum-dum-dummmmmm!). Oh, and did I mention the leader is really a humanoid lizard intent on using their death panels to eat your children?

Yup, my cherished childhood tale has been transformed into the bastard love-child of David Icke and and Glenn Beck. Tea-parties, birthers and the evil machinations of the Duke of Edinburgh have all been poured into a giant cauldron of banality and from it a ladle of trite and hackneyed "Real America" chowder has been emptied scornfully over the wistful food of my youth.

Poo.

I seriously doubt that the writers and producers have actually conceived of this show as a Republican vehicle, but what tires me is the lazy writing "ripped from the headlines" and the pandering to an unthinking lowest-common denominator audience, who will absorb it with an anaerobic ferocity and then on numerous You-Tube threads excrete a misspelled "Make's you think, though?" comment.

In retrospect what made the original "V" so memorable was, quite simply, that I was a ten year-old, and that's why the writing, plot and acting appealed to me. Twenty-six years later and the writing, plot and acting of the remake still seem to be aimed at an audience of ten year-olds. This is what frustrates me about US mass-market television, why does everything have to be so simple that a child could understand it, is the target audience really that emotionally and intellectually stunted? Can a viewer only engage with simplistic and formulaic black and white scenarios? Is complexity taboo, reeking as it does of liberal elitism? Why must spectacle triumph over substance every time?

It probably won't stop me from watching the rest of the series though, but I will do so under protest, and with a sneer of congratulatory superiority on my face as I root for the lizard people, and all their godless Windsor-Mountbatten-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Bilderberg allies as they try to impose a one-world government and single Amero currency through swine-flu vaccinations and climate-change legislation on a tireless and redoubtable group of freedom-loving libertarian resistance fighters armed with nothing but their faith in Jesus and their Second Amendment rights.

Hoo-ra!

No one you see, is smarter than he

2009-11-03T13:36:00.013Z

There is an interesting article in today's Guardian examining the intelligence of dolphins.

It starts by recounting the behaviour of a dolphin called Kelly at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, who in response to fishy rewards from trainers for giving them litter that ends up in her pool, has learned to hide pieces of paper at the bottom of the pool, in effect banking her favours to be redeemed at a later stage. What's more she has learned how to get a return on her investment:

"Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming."

This immediately brought to mind the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Bedouin goat herds in 1946, who quickly discovered that they would make more money by ripping up intact scrolls and selling them as individual scraps of paper rather than by selling whole scrolls, as antiquities dealers foolishly paid by the item, not by the square meter. Biblical scholars kept coming back to buy more parchment scraps and the scrolls continued to be torn to shreds, and as a result are now scattered in public and private collections around the world and their subsequent translation and publication remains a source of ongoing controversy.

All this suggests that dolphins are at least as intelligent as Bedouin goat herds, and that their handlers are as trainable as Biblical Archaeologists.

In both cases the original intent of the purchasers was subverted by the sellers through the inevitable flaws of the capitalist system*. The handlers wanted a litter-free pool, but by monatizing the clean-up they in fact incentivized the production of litter by the dolphin herself. The biblical scholars wanted the scrolls, but instead their behaviour ended up destroying the very artifacts they coveted. The introduction of a monetary reward in both cases led almost immediately to the seller trying to game the system.

It was thus with a sense of crushing inevitability that I read this week of the Minister for Finance's decision to cede control of the banking and property fiasco to the private sector. After creating the state-run National Asset Management Agency to use €54 billion of public money to buy bad assets from the banks at above market rates, Brian Lenihan has now decided to create a Special Purpose Vehicle that will administer this public money and manage the toxic assets. 49% of the SPV will be owned by NAMA, and 51% by private investors. The private sector, and in all probability the same individuals who created the financial collapse, will now be handed complete control over the vehicle that will further reward their reckless behavior by cleaning up their mess at above market rates using money borrowed by the government that successive generations of tax-payers will be paying-off for many, many years.

Yesterday alone in the High Court 76 cases involving mortgage defaulters were heard, resulting in 18 repossessions. According to today's Examiner one person has been sent to jail for non-payment of debts every single day since the bank bailout began:

"The official Department of Justice figures show the problem of spiraling debt led to 306 cases of imprisonment last year and 186 cases up to June of this year – the latest date for which figures are available. This does not include the estimated 25,000 cases of homeowners in mortgage arrears."

While ordinary citizens continue to suffer Minister Lenihan further rewards the financial leaders that created this crisis and now is incentivizing their destructive behavior with public money.

Brian Lenihan has been well trained by the dolphins and goat herds of our banking classes, who continue to shred our economy into the tiniest of fragments knowing that each scrap they present will be amply rewarded.

Its not every day that I get to draw upon my experience as a Biblical Archaeologist to offer advice to a Minster of State, tune in tomorrow when I explain how stoning could be an effective deterrent against short-selling.

* hopefully you could tell where I was going with this from a mile away.

One angry man

2009-10-30T13:37:00.007Z

I've been quieter of late than I would have liked, and for once not as a result of some climate-destroying jaunt in search of evidence of the near-irreversible impact on our environment of climate-destroying jaunts. Nor have I been occupied for every waking moment with nefarious schemes of demagoguery and empire-building, either personally or as a disinterested observer. Nope, this week I have mostly been involved in that most hallowed of civic duties, jury service.

In an effort to be as impartial a juror as possible I expressly removed myself from the world of newspapers, news reports, rss feeds and the internets in general in the days leading up to and including the service itself, and after three mornings of sitting in a holding pen and waiting for my name to be pulled randomly from a hat by the most unimaginative of bingo callers I have ever seen, I finally was chosen as the last juror on the last trial of the last day of jury selection.

Poo.

Despite carefully crafting a look over the last three weeks combining the best elements of a desert-island castaway and Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman, I still somehow managed to escape rejection by either the prosecution or defence, and thus took my seat yesterday as the ominous-sounding 'Juror Number Twelve" before being dismissed for the day due to a lack of available courtroom and/or judge.

Thus one much-welcomed haircut and beard-trim later and with the fire of justice burning in my belly I returned to court this morning with my metaphorical judicial blindfold at a jaunty angle and my equally metaphorical scales held high in the air, ready to carry out my civic duty as a proud citizen of this fair land of ours.

Unfortunately over the course of the evening one of my fellow jurors had a change of heart and suddenly decided that he couldn't really do the whole "sitting in judgment" thing, resulting in the Judge being forced to excuse the whole jury and delay the trial for another few weeks. We didn't even get to pick a foreperson or decide who amongst us was going to be the angry one that just won't agree with everyone else, and keeps arguing and arguing to the point that the other eleven are themselves on the point of committing a criminal act of gross violence (though given my track record we can pretty much assume that this would have been me).

Thus I am left this afternoon feeling somewhat unfulfilled, experiencing something of a malaise as a result of this judicius interuptus, as if I have built up all this judgmental energy that now has nowhere to go. I fear for anyone who foolishly asks my opinion today, or calls on me to make a decision. Woe unto the barista who unwittingly asks me "what size cappuccino?"

"Large", I will cry, as the gallery erupts in tears and gasps and the newshounds rush to the row of phone-booths outside, and I cast my eyes to the floor as the enormity of these words weighs upon my shoulders like the burden of Atlas himself, and in the gravel-toned damn-dirty-ape frustrated voice of the immortal Heston I will bellow "and may God have mercy on its soul".

Mucilage Biopsy

2009-10-21T16:06:00.006+01:00

Before I forget, Ebauche has a rather nice 40-minute soundscape out now, Mucilage Biopsy, available for download from Alphabet Set.

Starting off with a lot of glitchy pops and clicks, it builds up into a sweeping atmospheric score that wouldn't sound out of place on an epic soundtrack (no doubt influenced by the fact that most of his recent work has in fact been commissioned pieces for actual soundtracks), before rising to a thumping beat-driven finish that echoes the unexpectedly dance-y set he played at LoveRhino's launch party back in June.

Well worth downloading, especially at the who-really-needs-the-Pirate-Bay price of free.

Direct mp3 download is available here, don't forget to right-click and save.

The Publican Party

2009-10-21T11:55:00.007+01:00

So there is much talk this morning about a credible threat to the stability of the government. Numerous back-benchers are openly talking about defying the government whip and threatening to vote against party lines, even if it triggers an election. At a meeting last night described by one TD in the Irish Independent as "on fire...the worst I have ever attended" up to 25 TDs threatened to rebel and pull the plug on the current administration.

And the cause of this widespread revolt? NAMA? Education cuts? Social Welfare and Health cuts? Scandals in TDs expenses? Standards in public office? Corporate Donations? Dail and Seanad reform? State-supported institutional abuse in clerical run schools? The Criminal Justice Bill? Civil Partnerships? The Blasphemy Bill? Lisbon II? The Budget? Pictures of Biffo in the nip on a toilet in the National Gallery?

Nope.

Drink-driving limits.

That's right, 25 TDs are threatening to bring down the government over plans by Transport Minister Noel Dempsy to reduce the permissible blood-alcohol level from 80mg to 50mg, saying that it will destroy the fabric of rural life if folks can't drive home from the pub after a few pints.

Seriously? After everything the country has been through, after everything that this Government has put the country through in the last eighteen months, this is what they choose to take a stand on? The inalienable right of every Irish man and woman to operate a moving vehicle while intoxicated?

It was obvious how big an influence the Irish Vintners Association had on Fianna Fail when the government forced off-licenses to close at 10:00pm to drive people into pubs at night and prevent folks drinking for significantly less money at home. Though the move was pitched as curbing alcoholism, it curiously didn't stop off-licenses or pubs from opening at 10:30am, so the government message here is clearly that drinking at home at 11pm is bad, but at 11am is perfectly fine?

That legislation to save lives could be the instrument of governmental collapse is farcical and shamefull. If Enda Kenny is talking about reducing the number of TDs by twenty, I can offer him a list of twenty-five to choose from right now.

Of course the real losers here would be the Green Party, who bet the whole farm a fortnight ago on getting another eighteen months to prove to the electorate that they were right to enter into Government in the first place. A drink-fueled back-bench revolt from their FF partners are the last thing they need; a snap election in the aftermath of their ringing endorsement of NAMA would (if possible) be even more catastrophic than if they had taken the high moral ground over NAMA and walked away from Government.

Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny and, to his credit, John Gormley have all been pretty vocal of late about the urgent need for electoral reform. Nonsense like this current back-bencher spat is an embarrassment to the entire nation. Reform can't happen fast enough.

Extermiknit! Extermiknit!

2009-10-20T12:14:00.008+01:00

Had a visit this morning from the amazing Ms Snag Breac, who came bearing gifts in the shape of a knitted Dalek. Yup, what you see before you is a one foot-high hand-knitted Dalek, that itself is also knitting in a nefarious plot to populate the world with plush killing machines through autonomous self-replication.

You can check out more of her amazing knitted creations, and some pretty great photography, gardening and cooking stuff over on her blog at An Snag Breac Beo.

I live in awe of my talented friends.

The Higgs boson and me

2009-10-19T12:47:00.008+01:00

There has been much talk on the internets of late of the Large Hadron Collider, and the kill-your-grandfather paradoxing effects of the Higgs boson particle the Collider is attempting to find. Stemming from a NYT article that commented on papers published by Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya, the theory goes that the elusive Higgs boson particle is "so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one". The theory accounts for the failure of previous US efforts to actually build a Superconducting Supercollider, and last year's magnet failure that caused the shutdown of the LHC.

Before you dismiss the notion it is worth pointing out that last week as the LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271 degrees C, -456 F and colder than deep space) the French police arrested a physicist working at CERN for alleged links to al-Qaida. According to the Guardian: "judicial officials (said), the man has acknowledged that he was in online contact with the group and had discussed possible terror attack plans in outline terms". CERN has to be one of the most secure research facilities in the world, with extensive background checks. Though poor rapping skills do not appear to be an impediment to employment one imagines links to fundamentalist terror groups would be. The odds of an employee with alleged links to terror groups evading all screenings and finally being discovered mere weeks before the LHC is fired up again must be almost as small as those of finding the Higgs boson itself.

I mused on this cosmic conundrum as I spoke with my mother this morning, who yet again canceled a planned meeting between my family and that of the Very Understanding Girlfriend. We have been together for thirteen years, and although they live in the same city our families have never met. Never. While supposedly our two mothers encountered each other for milliseconds as mine dropped a package off at her's when the latter was about to visit us in the US, no actual recording or measurements of the alleged incident exist. Without scientific proof, I remain a skeptic.

Thirteen years, and no meeting. What are the odds?

This latest hurdle concerns a ramp that is being built at my grandparents' house to allow them better access to the front door. The house is on a hill with a steep meandering path that leads up to it and many, many steps. While the ramp is being built the steps and path have been dug up, meaning that my grandparents will be housebound until the ramp is finished. Work started today and continues until Friday, but this Wednesday was the only day that the stars were sufficiently aligned to allow three generations of the Very Understanding Girlfriend's family and mine to congregate in the same place at the same time.

Since this get-together has been on the calendar for over two weeks there is no possible reason on earth why the week-long work on the ramp had to start today, unless the meeting of our two families will be an event of such cosmic significance that the Higgs boson will be generated in the process, sending ripples backwards in space and time to prevent any such familial encounter from occurring in the first place.

I tried to explain this theory to the Very Understanding Girlfriend as she phoned her mother to cancel yet again, but she didn't seem too impressed with the maths, nor my use of Summer Glau and Michael J Fox as the x and y axes in the probability graph I used for illustrative purposes.

"Its not me", I argued, "Creation itself is conspiring against us"

Thus far, she remains unconvinced.

With a Well-Tempered Clavier

2009-10-15T15:06:00.008+01:00

On another musical note The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I had two friends over for dinner last night, and in addition to a rather tasty Rioja we were presented with an outstanding vinyl copy of 'Switched-On Bach' a 1968 album of Bach standards performed on a Moog by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, who went on to score the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange and Tron.

When released Bob Moog called it "the most stunning breakthrough in electronic music to date", and thirty years later it still sounds amazing.

I think this will be a new rule in our house, all guests must bring music (nice wine remains optional). Mr. G set the bar pretty high last night though, and his vinyl donation is very much appreciated!

We Are Reasonable People

2009-10-15T13:46:00.005+01:00

Just back from a walk to James Street Parcel office to pick up the Warp20 Box Set, and damn but if it isn't one of the most beautiful collections of music I have laid my grubby little paws on.

Celebrating twenty years of the Warp label the boxed set contains 3 x 10" vinyl of unreleased material, 2 x 10" vinyl of locked-groove classic tracks, 2 x cds of classic tracks, 2 x cds of covers of Warp tracks by Warp artists, 1 x cd of an hour long Warp mix and a gorgeous 192-page booklet visually displaying the full Warp catalogue through to August 2009.

Warp is something of a personal music obsession of mine since some kind soul first played Autechre's 'Incunabula' for me back in 1997 (yes, I was somewhat late to the party by then, but I think I've more than made up for it in the subsequent years). Autechre, Plaid, B12 and Boards of Canada definitely reshaped my concept of music, how it was created, what it attempted to say, what effect it had on your brain. It encouraged me to go beyond listening and start creating, first with ACID and Fruity Loops on a PC, then on to hardware with a dusty and worn Roland MC-505 and a Korg Electribe EA-1 (again, and somewhat unfortunately for my bank balance and storage space, I have improved on that slightly in later years). Not always the easiest music to listen to, and at times stretching the concept of 'music' to the point of wondering if your cd and/or speakers are in some way damaged, as a label and concept it remains the benchmark against which I judge most other electronica.

While the Warp20 boxed set sold out before it ever shipped, two of the cd collections are available separately. 'Chosen' is a perfect introduction to Warp with classic tracks from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Plaid, Boards of Canada and newer acts like Grizzly Bear and Battles. 'Recreated' is a covers album that should bring a smile to anyone with passing familiarity with the label, and worth buying just for Born Ruffians cover of Aphex Twin's 'Milkman'. Both are double albums.

More info on Warp20 can be found on Warp's mini-site here.

When do we want it? In due course!

2009-10-13T12:59:00.008+01:00

Enough time has passed now since the events of Saturday that I feel I can take a moment to write down a few thoughts and observations on the Green Party, and the significance of the Special Convention on the Program For Government and the National Asset Management Agency; I tweeted fairly extensively from the Conference so I don't feel the need to summarise the day's events beyond saying I came, I saw, I lost. If you want some good analysis of the Program For Government check out Irish Election and Irish Left Review, for instant comment and reaction look back over #pfg on twitter.

The Green Party is not a left-wing party
While it is socially progressive it is also a strong believer in market forces with government oversight in key environmental areas, but does not support major redistribution of wealth. It is predominantly a party of the middle class, and as such it fits comfortably into the British Liberal tradition.

While the PFG proposes abolishing the upper limit on PRSI, the introduction of water charges and an elimination of the current system of tax loopholes, there is no attempt to increase the current rate of Corporate Tax, and NAMA was supported by 68% of the members. The notion of privatization of banks was widely ridiculed with the prevalent belief of those members who spoke being that the public sector was too inefficient and/or corrupt to manage these institutions effectively.

Much fear was evident on the prospect of a Fine Gael/Labour coalition without Green participation, with one speaker suggesting that "If you trust Fine Gael and Labour then you are at the wrong party conference" to tumultuous applause. I cannot see major differences between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael policies, for me the only thing that distinguishes them on paper is the level of corporate donations that Fianna Fail has accepted from the construction and financial industries. Historically more corruption scandals have plagued Fianna Fail, but no doubt that is simply because they have been in power more often and for longer.

Why the Green membership should be so anti-Fine Gael confuses me, and their outright rejection of Labour baffles me completely. They may reject their labeling as the environmental wing of Fianna Fail, but after this weekend's conference those rejections ring very hollow indeed.

The Green Party is not a radical party, it is a pragmatic party
There is nothing dramatic or radical in the PfG, the specifics are fairly tame and the more courageous items are all conditional and aspirational, with the establishment of non-binding commissions to report back on the feasibility of change, rather than any actual change itself.

While few who spoke, including the Parliamentary Party, considered NAMA to be the best deal for the country, or Fianna Fail the ideal partners, they overwhelmingly followed the line of "the best we could get" for both. The fear of being out of government outweighed any fears of the effects of continuing to be in government on either public opinion of the party, or on its own moral compass.

While there was mention by Dan Boyle and John Gormley of rendition flights and the Corrib pipeline, it was of increased inspection and oversight, not of opposition. The membership of the party has no interest in controversial campaigns, that element left with Patricia McKenna and the other high profile resignations. In return these local grassroots campaigns have no interest in the Green Party, and that showed in the catastrophic results in the local elections.

The party prefers to be in power and score minor victories, than be out of power and score none. There was little mood for discussion on the cost to the soul of the party for those small victories.

Eamon Ryan is the future of the Green Party
John Gormley has lost the public trust. Trevor Sargent threw it all away. Dan Boyle shows signs of a bad temper and a short fuse. Paul Gogharty is seen as too unpredictable. Ciaran Cuffe, despite being an avid tweeter, doesn't have a high enough profile. Mary White is just too nice.

Ryan, however, is a great speaker and looks good in a suit. He is knowledgeable and well read, an early adopter of new technologies and most importantly for the future of the Party he is pro-business and a key proponent of the Green Economy. The business community does not fear him.

The new generation of Young Greens are not sandal-wearing dope-smoking anti-capitalists working on an organic farm, they are urban suit-wearing future green-collar dot-commers, the very embodiment of Celtic tiger cubs. Traditional left/right debate is irrelevant to them, their Greens represent a high-tech future with a morality and theory of social justice based on environmental rather than economic concerns.

While Ryan himself may not survive the next election, it is clear that he is the role model for this new generation of Greens.

I am in the wrong Party
This is the logical outcome of the first three observations, and will be rectified shortly.

It has been suggested that Labour or the Socialist Party would be a better home, but for the time being I think I have had enough of party politics. I have learned some interesting things by being closely involved with the political system, enough to know that major reform is needed, but also that that reform cannot come from within.

Turkeys, as they say, do not vote for Christmas.

How could something so wrong be so right?

2009-10-08T16:45:00.010+01:00

I am in love. What you are seeing in the video above is an Eigenharp, revealed this week from Eigenlabs and the product of eight years of development. A mixture of midi controller, wind, string, percussion and loop player it is also just about the most beautiful thing I have seen (keep in kind I am the proud owner of an Omnichord). There's a pretty good overview of how it works and what exactly it is capable of on video here, and at the bbc here, and all I can say is wow.

The problem I have always felt about electronic music is how boring it is to watch. With the exception of Love Rhino, who plays a guitar as part of his set, almost all of my musician friends hide behind a laptop and leave the audience wondering whether they are just hitting play on winamp, or if anything actually 'live' is going on. This agoraphobia was taken to extreme at an Aphex Twin gig I was at where Mr James actually spent the whole gig sitting on the floor behind the table the decks were on with only his arm visible as it reached up over his head to put records on the platters.

For triggering loops I'm partial to a few Audio Cubes, and my weakness for a Tenori-on is well known, but the ability to move away from a laptop and take front and centre on a stage while avoiding the humiliation of a keytar, is something that makes the Eigenharp an object of pure desire.

They only thing that stops me from doing my usual impulse purchase here is the price tag, starting at £3,950.

Ouch.

That and the fact that the only folks who'll buy one probably play in the Creature Cantina.

Greens and NAMA, part II

2009-10-07T16:23:00.006+01:00

According to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize wining economist* and author of 'Globalization and its Discontents' (amongst other things):

The "principle of overpaying banks for loans is criminal", "The Irish Government is squandering large amounts of money to bail out banks" and NAMA is "a massive transfer of money from the public to bankers" - Irish Times, Irish Examiner

Stiglitz was speaking on RTE's Primetime last night and advocated allowing the banks to collapse, that those who lived by the sword of Capitalism should be prepared to die by the sword of Capitalism:

"Which means when you can’t pay your debts, the share holders lose everything, the bond holders become the new shareholders and if that does not fill in the hole in the losses of the banks, then because the Government is going to provide deposit insurance, it becomes the owner. Then it [the Government] quickly sells it, or as quickly as it can, because when you have trauma like this you may not be able to do it quickly, but the joke is we call that ‘pre-privatisation’" - Irish Examiner

Stiglitz has been a vocal critic of Obama's plan to bail out the US Financial sector, so it comes as no surprise that he has serious misgivings about NAMA, but when a Nobel Economist accuses the government's behaviour of being 'criminal' you would hope the folks in Leinster House would sit up and take notice.

I watched Monday night's Frontline with some interest because of its coverage of the ongoing renegotiations of the Program for Government (on the substance of which I am not commenting). I was heartened to see the strength of the anti-NAMA sentiment expressed by some of the party members in the audience, prompting one group to go as far as suggesting that if voting against the Program for Government was the only way to prevent NAMA from happening, they would do so in spite of whatever concessions the Green negotiators were able to wrest from Fianna Fail.

Two votes are scheduled for Saturday's Special Convention, the first on accepting the new Program for Government needs to be passed by 2/3 of the members present. The second on rejecting NAMA also needs to be passed by 2/3 of those present. While there is a significant group with anti-NAMA sentiments within the Party I would have doubted that it would amass the 66% of votes needed to mandate a rejection; however it is much easier to get the 33% + 1 vote necessary to reject the Program for Government, especially given that the motion for Green support for Lisbon II only received exactly 66% of the votes during the July Special Conference. If the Program is rejected, the Greens pull out of Government, an election is called which presumably will be won by a Fine Gael/Labour coalition, both of whom are fervently opposed to NAMA, though they differ over what the alternative should be.

I've already written on my belief that were an election to be held in the next twelve months the Greens would cease to be a significant parliamentary party for at least the next ten years. Opinions differ in the mainstream press on who would be the sole TD to survive a snap election, most suggesting Trevor Sargent though I noted last night that Vincent Browne believes Eamon Ryan would emerge relatively unscathed. Either way the party would take a decade to recover by which time there may not be a role for a dedicated environmental party, given the mainstreaming of Green issues and their adoption by other parties.

For Party members to risk the destruction of the Party itself over the issue of NAMA shows just how passionate its opponents are, and with just cause. I fervently believe that NAMA is one of the most criminal pieces of self-serving legislation to be foisted upon an unwilling public, rewarding Fianna Fail's financial backers in the construction and banking sectors for destroying our economy. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize to see that.

The McCarthy/An Bord Snip report proposed cuts in public expenditure of up to €5.3 billion; NAMA proposes to buy loans on properties with a current market value of €47 billion for around €54 billion, the difference between the two figures being more than the total savings to the Exchequer proposed by the An Bord Snip cuts. While eliminating NAMA would not have the effect of preventing the proposed cuts to Education, Heath and Welfare, it is indicative of the burden that this and future generations of citizens will have to accept should NAMA be enacted. There is no justifiable reason to pay above market rates for toxic assets when using public money to do so.

My intention on Saturday had been to weigh up the revised Program for Government on its merits, despite my strong opposition to any continued coalition with Fianna Fail, and vote purely on the proposal as presented. Given the scale of the disaster this nation faces should NAMA become reality I feel I must now also consider this as part of my vote.

Pat Fitzpatrick, leader of the grassroots group "Greens Against NAMA" will be on Vincent Browne tonight at 11:05 on TV3, and I will be watching with great interest.

* as mentioned before on this blog, I am well aware that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize for Economics, but common parlance refers to it as such so I have chosen to do likewise.

Quite A-Moo-sing

2009-10-06T14:42:00.003+01:00

Now that is how you organise a farmers' protest.

From coverage of protests in Brussels in yesterday's NY Times, thanks to Alan for the link.

Plus sa change, plus c'est la meme chose

2009-10-06T12:40:00.009+01:00

A couple of news reports have caught my eye in the last few days, I had originally thought to write a post on some of them individually but am feeling lazy so I'll just lump them all together here.

Reading is UnAmerican

During the recent G20 protests in Pittsburgh the tubes were alight with videos of everything from camo-wearing police abducting protesters to police staging team photos with captured protesters forced into humiliating trophy poses, but the thing that worried me the most was the arrest of an organisers who used twitter and other online services to direct groups of protesters away from marauding police. Elliott Madison had his home in New York raided by the FBI after his arrest in Pittsburgh, and amongst the evidence presented by the FBI when announcing the raid were gasmasks and goggles (pretty standard issue for anyone expecting to be teargassed by overzealous police), pictures of Marx and Lenin, and anarchist books. That's right, the FBI used his choice of reading material to partly justify his arrest.

In the past I have gone through phases of worrying about how much information I reveal about myself online. When revelations about Facebook's ties to the CIA and their data sharing agreement with the US government broke I tried to unsubscribe, not that I have anything particular to hide, it just wasn't something that I particularly wanted to support. I eventually learned to stop worrying and love the 'Book, and opted back in to keep in touch with friends in the US and elsewhere. At the same time I happily put my entire book collection up on LibraryThing for all the world to see, and a quick perusal will find many, many left-wing, Socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, Situationist, Surrealist, Anti-Capitalist and other books of all political stripes and colours. You will even find books by Thomas Friedman. Worse, you'll find books by Rahm Emmanuel. This does not mean that I am a Socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, Situationist, Surrealist, Anti-Capitalist, Neo-Conservative or worse, a Democrat, it just means that I have an inquisitive mind, a passion for political theory and a general love of reading.

Apparently that is now an arrestable offence in America.

Judging by the high levels of illiteracy shown at recent right-wing rallies across Middle America, perhaps the authorities should reconsider that policy (thanks to 8den for the image link).

But they eat Whales!

The UN Development Program released its latest development index yesterday. According to Mahbub ul Haq, the founder of the Human Development Report:

"The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people's choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time. People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation in community activities. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives."

Although the report is entitled the 2009 Human Development Report, it in fact collates data from 2007. After dropping a place last year Norway emerges on top once again as the most developed country in the world, with Australia second, Iceland third, Canada fourth and Ireland remains in fifth, well ahead of Japan in 10th, the US in 13th and the UK down in 21st place.

There's an interesting factsheet on Ireland, which puts us in 22nd place for Gender Empowerment and 29th place for percentage of population comprised by immigrants (a healthy 14.8%). All of this is a great snapshot of how good we used to be, we'll have to wait until 2011 to see just how much the recession, proposed government cuts to health and education, and the return of the many thousands of migrant works back to their home countries have damaged our global development standings.

Operation Economic Freedom

It was with some interest that I read this morning's report that China, Russia and a group of middle eastern nations are planning to abandon the dollar as the currency of international oil trade, in favour of a basket of currencies including the Euro, Yen, Yaun and a new, as of yet unnamed, single currency for the Gulf Co-operation Council nations, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

You may remember that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein abandoned the dollar as the currency for all Iraqi oil trades in favour of the Euro, a move that other nations looked likely to follow. This sent shockwaves through Washington, as the only way the US manages to stay economically afloat with such a massive amount of international debt is the fact that in order to buy and sell oil every other nation has to maintain a large dollar reserve. If any nation, say China, were to attempt to collect on their US debt the US economy would collapse, destroying the value of the dollar, and thus wiping out the enormous dollar reserves that nation (and every other) has, also bankrupting them. The US feared that a move to the Euro for oil trading would remove this bulwark and allow other nations to come knocking on their door looking for their money back, with interest, and so a swift invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam put a stop to any such move to the Euro.

This is why today's report is so important (if accurate), as with the backing of China and Japan, as well as America's erstwhile allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, as opposed to a unilateral action by a single nation, there appears to be little the US can do to prevent such a move. For the rest of the world, a move to a global trade based upon a combined basket of currencies and gold rather than a reliance on a single currency affected by domestic economic issues can only be a good thing. For the US it is potentially catastrophic.

Iraq was an easy target for the neocons and when Iran also mooted a move to the Euro and the establishment of a local Middle-Eastern oil trading market talk of invasion also ratcheted up behind a smokescreen of preventing nuclear non-proliferation. Under an Obama administration such hawkish bluster is more difficult, especially when the countries proposing such a move are your allies.

See, plenty of things to talk about this morning without having to comment on last night's Frontline.

ordo ab chao

2009-10-05T14:24:00.009+01:00

To avoid the depressing coverage of Lisbon, and to keep to my strict vow not to comment on the ongoing renegotiation of the Program for Government I have been keeping myself quite occupied for the last few days.

Friday saw a mad dash to Heuston Station from our local polling booth to catch a 6pm train to Galway for a friend's house warming. Never has democracy been exercised in such a slap-dash last minute fashion; despite an excellent series of articles in the current issue of Village Magazine read in the week leading up to the Referendum that almost caused me to vote Yes, I finally went with my conscience and voted No, though only deciding that about an hour before I marked the box with my X. You can now add me to Michael O'Leary's list of losers, but at least I can sleep at night knowing I haven't betrayed my core beliefs.

The house warming was great, catching up with friends that I haven't seen in far too many months, though an unfortunate incident with an extractor fan hood and my skull left me feeling a bit woozy for a sizable portion of the evening (seriously, why do they put them at head height, it just doesn't make sense?). After a rather good group brunch in Ard Bia the next day, the Very Understanding Girlfriend and I returned home to continue working on the great project that has occupied both of us for the majority of our week, the overhaul of our shared office.

We moved in to our apartment three years ago, and unbelievably there are still a few boxes from that move left packed and unloved under tables and on top of bookcases. City center living has its advantages, but storage space is not one of them. Coupled with the glacial speed of our decision making, a process that can only be measured in geological time, the effects on our shared office can only be described as 'cluttering', in the same way World War II is referred to as 'The Emergency', twenty-plus years of Civil War in the North are called 'The Troubles', and the abomination of a season between winters that we have endured since time immemorial is humorously called 'Summer'.

Thus at the instigation of The Very Understanding Girlfriend we finally broke down last week and decided to do something about the Himalayan piles of books and miscellaneous stuff that threatened to rain down literary destruction upon us at any moment, and try and put some order onto our office. One trip to a magical Swedish furniture shop and about three days of hammering, screwing, bracketing and coughing up lungfulls of particle board and plaster and our office is starting to look a little less like it was made by FEMA.

Surprisingly now that the contents of our life are no longer strewn around the floor, we seem to have less storage space than before. Somehow the random piles of accumulata had organised themselves into a perfect Weaire-Phelan structure, allowing seemingly Tardis-like storage to occur. This perfect tension has now been broken and we are left with an impeccable office but an unnavigable hallway.

Life, you see, is all about enforced compromises. Getting one part of it totally sorted necessitates taking a hit in another.

Just like Lisbon really.

Vote No to Suchard!

2009-09-29T11:19:00.012+01:00

Quote of the morning from the Very Understanding Girlfriend on the above video: "As entertaining as that piece was I'm not sure if we should vote purely on the basis of political satire".

With less than four days to go till I march down to the polling station it's still all to play for with my vote. I'm leaning towards sticking with my principles and voting No on the basis that my primary reasons for voting No last time (that the Lisbon Reform Treaty is too pro-business and does not protect the worker enough, and that the Treaty is essentially the same document as the EU Constitution already rejected by the majority of French and Dutch voters and thus it is undemocratic to try and impose it on the citizenry of Europe against their will) are still valid regardless of the unfortunate economic circumstances we currently find ourselves in.

However I find myself in even more uncomfortable company this time round. Despite the occasional presence of Patrica McKenna (including a great debate with Senator Deirdre de Burca on City Channel, which I'm sure nobody actually saw) and Joe Higgins MEP, all the media focus is on fringe groups like Libertas and Cóir.

Libertas are scary because they think Lisbon is too socialist and that it doesn't do enough for big business. With money coming from UK Hedge fund managers that stand to gain if the Irish banking system collapses (as they did when Anglo Irish bank was nationalized), with initial seed money coming supposedly from party leader Declan Ganley's own company that is heavily invested in the US defense industry, the allegations that it is a CIA front have been around since they first emerged on the scene and haven't gone away. Either way Libertas are acting for secretive backers that stand to personally gain from further economic and political chaos in Europe.

Cóir are even scarier. They are to right wing uber-Catholic pro-life group Youth Defence what the People Before Profit Alliance is to the Socialist Workers Party, a handy front organisation designed to fool people who would never think of supporting them into voting for them. Operating out of Youth Defence's Capel Street office, and led by folks with ties to German fascist groups , Cóir have recently introduced the Sarah Palin Death Camps argument into the debate, targeting voters with physical disabilities and telling them that after Lisbon II they would be "put down like a dog". While this may have been just the tactics used by a single canvasser, the group as a whole has adopted a line that Lisbon II will force the introduction of abortion into Ireland, and that this will also lead to the state-mandated termination of fetuses exhibiting signs of physical or mental disabilities. Not that you'd ever guess this from their poster campaigns with fluffy pictures of giraffes and false allegations about EU mandated reductions to the minimum wage. In fact, they seem to be campaigning on every issue except the only one that actually matters to them, abortion.

And then there are the Shinners.

With bed-fellows like this who will claim victory in the event of a No vote, it is extremely difficult to hold one's head up proudly in public and proclaim "I am voting No", but that shouldn't stop me from doing so.

For the record:

1) I am pro Europe, and pro-European Union. The EU have been responsible for many aspects of Ireland's transformation from a backwater nation on the verge of being classified as a third-world country in the 1980's to being the 5th most developed nation in the world, according to the 2008 UNDP index. In many instances EU legislation has been more socially progressive than that proposed by our national government, and most of the Green legislation of recent years has emanated from the EU rather than born of the Dail. While the EU can be accused of being unwieldy and bureaucratic, to my mind it cannot be accused of being as endemically corrupt as successive iterations of Fianna Fail governments, in fact it is arguable that the EU has reined in some of the worst excesses of our own governments who would naturally be inclined to legislate purely in favour of their own pockets and those of their backers in the property, construction and banking sectors.

2) I am pro-immigration. I believe that Ireland, even in its current economic depression, has more than enough resources and opportunities to share, and our culture and society is greatly enhanced by an influx of new traditions and ideas. It has been argued that increased immigration will lead to further exploitation of the workforce as migrants will accept lower wages, thus driving down wages for all workers in a given sector. This view shifts blame for depressed wages away from the exploitative employers who offer such wages and on to the migrants for accepting such wages. The way to combat this is to legislate a high minimum wage for all workers and enforce it, creating a employees' market where skills are at a premium and employers compete for workers, rather than an employers' market where workers fight each other in a race-to-the-bottom over wages.

3) I am pro-choice. In the 1990's I was part of a case that went to both the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice, arguing for the right to disseminate information in Ireland on pregnancy options that were legally available in other EU countries. Facing jail and prohibitive legal fees I fought for an individual's right to choose, and the days spent in the Supreme Court awaiting my fate were some of the proudest of my life.

4) I believe in intervention in international situations in limited circumstances. An EU intervention in Rwanda, Congo or Darfur in the face of internal genocide would, in my mind, have been justified. US and NATO Action in Kosovo and Iraq was not. The EU is not NATO and the presence of a substantial number of neutral or left-leaning nations in the EU should ensure that any action taken by an EU peacekeeping group is on humanitarian and non-imperialist grounds. In fact the existence of such a group would provide an alternative to calling on NATO in situations where their presence will only exacerbate the situation. Ireland has a long and proud tradition of supporting UN peacekeeping missions and I do not have a problem with our participation in similar humanitarian or peacekeeping missions under an EU mandate.

So why then am I still thinking of voting No? I fundamentally believe that the Lisbon Reform Treaty does not go far enough to support the citizens of Europe. It protects the rights of big business, and does not focus on the individual. If the Lisbon Reform Treaty was genuinely in the interests of the citizens of Europe, why do their representative governments not let them vote on it? Why has every nation that has approved it done so via an act of parliament, and not by referendum? When every nation that has given its citizenry the chance to vote on the EU Constitution or the Lisbon Reform Treaty has rejected those treaties, why has the EU not listened to its own citizens and come back with a new document that genuinely reflects the will, the hopes and the aspirations of the people?

A constitution for Europe should be by the people, for the people and of the people; Lisbon is none of these, and that is why I have and will vote No.

Probably.

A last word on the Greens and Government (for now)

2009-09-26T10:15:00.012+01:00

Yesterday I, like every other Green Party member, received an email from party leader John Gormley updating us all on the Special Party Convention to be held on October 10th to vote on the Party's position on NAMA and a new Program for Government, the agreement with Fianna Fail that outlines the terms of the coalition currently being renegotiated in the wake of the recent local and European elections.

Minister Gormley explicitly stated in this email that if a 2/3 majority of the Party members present at this convention do not vote to accept the revised program for Government, then the Greens will leave Government. Similarly, if a motion to reject NAMA is proposed and then passed by a 2/3 majority, the Greens will also leave Government. With the exception of the original convention that propelled the party into coalition government no meeting in its history has been as important, and the consequences for the nation are even higher than on that June day.

My own feelings on both NAMA and the continued presence of the Green Party in government are well known. I strongly disagree with the proposed structure of NAMA, specifically the paying of above current market rates on toxic assets in the erroneous hope that property values will rise to near bubble levels in the foreseeable future and the taxpayer will get a return on the government's investment. This angers me for two main reasons, firstly it further rewards the property and banking industries for creating this economic meltdown. The scale of donations cataloged recently on thestory.ie clearly show why Fianna Fail is so eager to protect its financial backers in the construction industry, and it sickens me that our money is being used so blatantly to do so. Secondly while the government has no problem in rescuing the perpetrators of this meltdown, there is no sign of any relief for the true victims of the crisis, the thousands of ordinary citizens now left with properties worth 50-60% of their original purchase price, who rather than receiving aid from the government are now faced with the prospect of a Property Tax to add insult to injury. These concerns are supported by leading economists and ordinary citizens alike.

Although I have no truck with the Shinners, their call in the NAMA Dail debate for a Referendum on the subject has merit given the scale of the public investment proposed, and I am proud that the democratic nature of the Green Party allows me a genuine say in the matter, unlike the other 99.99% of the country's population. My own preference would be for full nationalization of any financial institution that accepts a government bail out, that is the only way to ensure proper oversight of how our money is being spent, to ensure proper corporate governance, and to prevent those that got us into this mess from being further rewarded financially for it.

My feelings on the continued presence of the Green Party in Government are even more obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with this blog, and do not need to be reiterated here.

While the process of renegotiating the Program for Government is entering its final stages Minister Gormley has asked party members to refrain from public comment or speculation on the specifics of that negotiation, and I am going to heed that call. It is highly unlikely that anything will result from these negotiations that will change my views, or alter my vote on October 10th, but I will attempt to keep both an open mind and a closed mouth between now and then.

Quite a challenge.

As with the recent Convention on the Lisbon Treaty I will be taking extensive notes during the October party meeting, and will publish a post after the results of the voting have been announced, but until then do not take my silence on the issues as disinterest, rather as a last vain hope in the mechanisms of a party that I once strongly believed in.

Besides, there's still Lisbon II to rant about.

To Marketing!

2009-09-25T12:58:00.013+01:00

Ah, Arthur's Day. The greatest national holiday that never was.

Earlier in the week the Very Understanding Girlfriend surprised me by expressing interest in participating in the celebrations of the (erroneous) 250th anniversary of the birth of Ireland's favourite pint of plain. Throughout the city ticketed events were being held in numerous music venues with a rake of international and local musicians scheduled to perform, but the highlight of the day was to occur at 17:59 with the mass toast in pubs the length and breath of Ireland (not to mention New York, Lagos and Kuala Lumpur) "To Arthur", the founder of the brewery that bears his name.

This desire of hers to participate was surprising because a) neither of us are big drinkers, b) even when we do drink it is never, ever a pint of stout, and c) she is the most virulent anti-corporate person I know (and I know an awful lot of anti-capitalists). Thus shortly after 5pm we set off into town to Kehoe's on South Anne Street, along with around four to five hundred other folks who had the same idea. The pub was jammed, more crowded than I have ever seen it even on a night like New Year's Eve, and this was 5pm on a school night.

It took me 35 minutes to get served, with my pints arriving less than two minutes before the moment itself, the tv counted down and then 17:59 arrived and the pub actually went wild with the whole establishment standing on chairs and tables crying out in one voice, "To Arthur!", and that was nothing compared to the bellow that surged forth from the street below, where literally hundreds of people spilled out of the pub and on to the two adjoining streets.

The moment passed, but the night was just getting started.

We left Kehoe's as the cries of "To Arthur!" were rising up again, mingling with the shouts from Bruxelles and beyond, where similar sized groups of revelers had congregated, and we traveled across to Grogan's, where if anything the crowds were larger, merging with the inebriated patrons of Spy Bar and Dakota and occupying the crossroads of South William Street, Castle Market and Coppinger Row in one unending horde to the point that it was impossible to tell where one bar's drinkers ended and the next began.

And the night went on and the queue at the bar seemed never less than three deep, and the frazzled barstaff grew weak in the elbows pulling pint after endless pint of the black stuff with plaintive, desperate cries of "is anyone not looking for stout?" but stout was all that filled the glasses of the congregation, and the toasts never abated though descended into a cacophony of "To Martha!", "To Sparta!", "To Garda!" whenever a roof-mounted camera crew went by on the giant white lorries with electrified sides emblazoned with even more of the omnipresent advertisements reminding us of what exactly we were all celebrating.

And the night went on.

Aside from one uncomfortable instant where an old soak made a drunken lurch at The Very Understanding Girlfriend, and then took a swing at me with a shout of "It's Arthur's birthday, I don't care what happens to me, there are no consequences" (or mumbles to that effect), the night was amazingly good humoured. Despite the thousands of people on the streets openly defying the 'no public drinking' laws the garda presence was minimal to non-existent. As a friend commented, its the closest thing to Mardi Gras Dublin has ever experienced.

And of course at the heart of it all was an entirely manufactured event foisted on the good people of Ireland by a cynical multinational drinks company exploiting our national heritage and taking all subsequent profits overseas. Everybody knew this, and nobody cared. Even the folks drinking cans from the off-license were drinking Arthur's drink; everyone had bought into it, everyone knew they were being used, but nobody cared. There was no talk of the Recession, no talk of NAMA, no talk of Lisbon, no talk of doom and gloom at all. There was just drunken chat, and laughs, and cheers and toasts and lots and lots of pints.

Somewhere in the hollow moral vacuum of a chrome and leather filled room an ad exec is rubbing their blood-stained hands together in glee at the prospect of the bonus they are going to earn for thinking up this campaign, possibly the most successful in their agency's history. But surprisingly, for bringing the people of this city together in pure and unadulterated bacchanalian festivity for one single night in defiance of the darkness all around us, I do not begrudge them this unholy delight, as I join with thousands of my fellow mindless automatons and raise my pint glass high in the air and join in the atonal chanting of the masses:

"To Arthur!"

Choose Lisbon (or else!)

2009-09-22T17:42:00.002+01:00

I haven't been writing about Lisbon II that much because I must admit to being somewhat conflicted by it. With ten days to go until polling I am the closest thing to undecided that I have ever been in any election or Referendum.

For me Lisbon I was pretty clear cut, it was a constitution for Europe run by and for big business with no protection for the individual worker. While the Charter of Fundamental Rights does set out important tenets that will become enshrined in law, many of the references to workers' rights were and are essentially window dressing, non-binding and non-enforceable on any member state. This has remained unchanged in Lisbon II, all though the European Council declared in the aftermath of the last vote that it attaches a high importance to "Social progress and the protection of workers' rights", even the impartial guide to the vote produced by the Referendum Commission from which this statement is taken admits that "This European Council deceleration on workers' rights is a political statement. It is not legally binding" (downloadable from here, though it was also distributed by post to every household in the State).

So if the fundamental reason why I voted No the first time round remains unchanged in Lisbon II, why am I conflicted over voting No a second time?

Six months ago there was a joke doing the rounds about what was the difference between Iceland and Ireland (A: One letter and about three months). Six months on we're not doing a whole load of laughing and if anything are in a worse situation than our Nordic neighbours. The only thing that has saved our country from complete and utter collapse is the fact that our economy is not solely ours to ruin, without the Euro and the weight of the EU behind us the IMF would have been called in and we would be forced to sell off what little state services we have left at knock-down prices to the same oligarchs that drove us into this crises.

The fact is that thanks to criminal mismanagement of our nations resources by successive Fianna Fail governments and their funders in the construction and banking industries our country is no longer able to survive as an independent State. Within weeks of their collapse Iceland quickly abandoned their decades long antipathy towards EU membership and came knocking on the Brussels door with application papers firmly in hand. We would be insane to do anything right now that would jeopardise our own place within Europe.

When the citizens of France and the Netherlands rejected the EU Constitution, the document was shelved, life went on and the EU did not collapse. When the citizens of Ireland rejected the Lisbon Reform Treaty, we were told by both our own government and the EU to keep trying until we gave the right answer. If citizens of any other EU member state had been given the opportunity to vote on the Lisbon Treaty, odds are they too would have rejected it, this is why the governments of every other member state refused to allow a Referendum on the Treaty, and pushed it through by act of parliament. It was too important to their business interests to allow for its rejection. At the heart of this treaty is the most undemocratic act that has ever been perpetrated on the citizens of Europe in modern history, the governments of each state know that it is not the will of the people in its current form, and they have conspired to ensure its adoption and imposition.

And this is the sad conundrum for me. The Treaty itself and the way the will of the Irish people has been ignored sicken me to my very core, but the prospect of a two-stream EU with punitive measures conducted against us for stepping out of line terrifies me, and this is exactly what Berlusconi threatened yesterday. We are being bullied by the rest of Europe, but we might have no choice but to sit back and take it.

For me the Lisbon Treaty was never about wether we want to be in the EU or not, it was about the way in which we wanted the EU to work. A 'No' vote was not about rejecting Europe, it was a call for a better Europe, one with its citizens and not business at its heart. The EU has been responsible for an amazing amount of positive change in Ireland, and I firmly believed that it could be responsible for even more, if social justice was enshrined at its very core through a pro-people constitution.

This was the message we sent to Brussels, but somehow that got sidetracked by selfish squabbles over our influence and the numbers of Commissioners, and by embarrassments like Libertas and Coir who punched far above their weight with the media ignoring the work of Joe Higgins and Patricia McKenna to focus on the more sensationalist headlines, and now the chance to go back and draft a document of social justice for all European citizens has been lost. We have been told in no uncertain terms that this is it, take it or leave it, in or out. And we can't afford to be out.

An EU that bullies dissenting members is not an EU that I want to be a part of.

But we can't afford to be out.

I have never been more conflicted about a vote in my life.

You are now entering The Twilight Zone

2009-09-21T12:27:00.017+01:00

Norway is an odd place. It is like an alternate reality spookily similar to our own, but with one major difference that only gets revealed to our heroes twenty minutes into the show, with disastrously jarring consequences.

Norway has the second highest GDP in the world, and according to the 2008 UNDP Human Development Index is the second most developed country in the world (after Iceland, so expect some changes there in the 2009 report)*, and the second best place to live if you are a woman, after Sweden. From 2001 to 2006 it ranked number 1 in both these categories, and given the strength of its economy should return to top position when the 2009 report is issued in October. The 2009 Global Peace Index ranks it as the 2nd most peaceful country in the world, after New Zealand. It has one of the world's largest oil and gas reserves, but rather than using the revenue generated from these to reduce tax levels it instead invests the money for future generations in what is called the Government Pension Fund. Last Monday a national election was held and the incumbent left-wing Red Green coalition government was reelected, the first time a government was reelected in Norway in 16 years, despite strong opposition from conservatives campaigning on an anti-immigration platform and a pledge to use money from the pension fund to reduce tax levels immediately. Voters rejected both the racist overtones of the opposition's campaign, and the short-sighted nature of their neoliberal economic plan.

So far Norway is sounding pretty much like paradise, and our adventuring heroes have been lulled into a false sense of security, having struck up valuable friendships with the locals in a short period of time, just strong enough to cause a sense of genuine anguish when the glaring difference between this world and ours is shockingly revealed:

(deep breath) They eat whales! (dun-dun-duuuuuuuun!!!)

Norwegians love whale meat. And Seal. And Reindeer. And just about anything else that has enough good sense to try and get away from them. On a trip around Svalbard by boat the lunch we were served was grilled whale meat**, and people were fighting each other for seconds. The supermarkets are stocked to the gills with it, though it is considered a treat rather than an everyday food. At the Tromso Polarium, a museum/aquarium attached to the Polar Institute, there are a series of educational exhibits showcasing efforts to conserve whales and other endangered species, so that future generations can enjoy them... as food.

And its not just whale, the Polarium has three captive bearded seals and as we arrived they were being trained to retrieve thrown objects. These seals are the mascots of the Polarium, and in its gift shop you can buy small cuddly plush seals for your kids, made with real seal fur. All that's missing is a cuddly plush club to go with it. And this was just in the Polarium, we didn't make it to the Museum of Hunting and Trapping down the road.

Longyearbyen on Spitzbergen was Norway to the Nth degree, still supporting as it does a small community of scattered hunters and trappers. A stuffed Polar Bear greats you on the baggage carousel in the arrivals hall of the small airport, a larger one stands over the doorway of the co-op supermarket, a slightly shabbier one stands in the lobby of the Radisson hotel. The wall of our breakfast room in our lodge had a fine specimen in rug form adorning it, and while the archipelago itself has more bears than people, I'm thinking the population of stuffed bears also gives the locals a run for their money.

The economy of the island, and indeed the country as a whole, was initially built on 19th century whaling, and unlike the maritime economies of the US and the UK there is no attempt to recognise the immoral nature of this foundation in its modern history. Norway's present is an unbroken continuation of its past, there is no shame over whaling, and when questioned it provokes a sense of genuine puzzlement, "Do Irish people feel shame over cows and pigs? Then why should we feel shame over whales and seals? Why are one group of animals acceptable to eat and not others?"

The more regular readers amongst you will know that I am a vegetarian, something even the slightly astute occasional reader will also have guessed by now, but I am not an evangelist. Vegetarianism is a personal choice for me, and I don't seek to impose it on anyone else. While those around me were munching down on their whale (for the record, it apparently tastes like gamey fish) I was asked why I was vegi. This question arises frequently, and oddly enough most people ask is it for religious reasons, as if doing it for God or gods is acceptable, but choosing not to eat meat on the basis of a purely rational decision is just bonkers.

I could have answered that I am vegetarian on the basis of a belief that all life is sacred and nothing should have to suffer so that I can live. I could have answered that it is unsustainable to eat meat at the levels of current western consumption, given the amount of land and water required to farm cattle, in addition to the climate damaging effects of gaseous emissions from domesticated ruminating animals. I could have argued that, as anyone who has read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" knows, the health practices associated with the meat industry are horrendous and the quality of the meat you ingest is suspect at best.

All these external reasons are valid, but none are the reason why I continue to reject meat. I am vegetarian to escape my programming.

I am the product of over 3.5 Billion years of evolution. My species emerged onto this world between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago figured out that by farming they could ensure a consistent supply of food, allowing civilisation to bloom and humanity, as we know it today, to arise. Our current western industrialised society has evolved to a point where one is not forced by environment to subsist on a specific diet, never before in the history of our species have so many options been available for nutrition. The privilege of the position I find myself in as a member of this species and society at this specific point in time cannot be overstated.

I am not Usain Bolt, I am not Stephen Hawking, but I am still the pinnacle of all of life's processes that have led to this one point in time where I, as a living being, have a choice about how I live, how I power myself on a daily basis, and what I do with that life. Although I can eat meat, by choosing not to I am celebrating this process of evolution and the privileged position that I find myself in. My physical programming still cries out for an omnivorous diet, the smell of rashers frying in a pan still sets my taste buds on fire, but the power of my mind is enough to overcome this desire. By not eating meat I prove that I am a creature of thought and will, and my mind is stronger than my baser instincts.

That is the triumph of evolution, and that is why I am a vegetarian, because I can be, because I can choose to be.

This was not the answer my whale-eating compatriots were expecting, and they shuffled off somewhat nervously as they mentally raised me from 'Elevated' to 'High' on their Crazy Scale.

Regardless of my Darwinian foibles, I reckon most folks outside of Norway and Japan would still do a doubletake at the sight of someone chomping down on a Minke burger, and that is the conundrum of Norway; that arguably the most evolved country in the world happily snacks on something also fairly evolved.

And that has left me somewhat disturbed by the whole trip.

For a counter argument on the whole meat-eating thing, check out posts from Tadhg and Tim. They both raise valid points, but aren't nearly strong enough to make me change my mind.

* Interestingly Ireland ranks 5th, ahead of the US in 15th and the UK in 21st place. I would also expect some changes there in the 2009 update.

** When we said we were vegetarian we were offered salmon. We finally managed to explain that fish was not a vegetable, and then they cooked us up a nice rice dish.

And a star to sail her by

2009-09-20T12:40:00.008+01:00

Still on the subject of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we went out to a few events at the Fringe Festival last night and on the way home I took this photo of the Jeanie Johnston, the replica 19th century sailing ship built nearly ten years ago to commemorate the famine voyages. I think there are plans to turn her into a floating museum, but with funding scarce in our post-Tiger economy who knows what will happen.