Happy Christmas!

A Happy and joyful Christmas to anyone who happens upon this blog tomorrow! I shall not be writing for a couple of days, but my very best wishes to all! Take care and be good to one another! This is the fantastic card that my classmate Wesley gave to me, from the Palestinian Solidarity campaign here in Ireland, and it shows the three kings having a little trouble getting past the wall to visit Bethlehem. Bye for now, JOhn

Out of holes in the ground

Some white supremacist guy just crawled out of his hole in the ground and left a slime trail all over one of my blog entries. The links he left lead to his white power site, where him and other white power morons get together and make up stories that most self-respecting people apart from loony facists wouldn't be interested in reading. But hey, maybe you'd like to read them out of sheer curiosity. (why is it that we find ugliness so fascinating?)
Anyhow, in the interest of free speech I shall not delete his post, but I am going to have to reconsider allowing anonymous comments, which really annoys me. What is wrong with these people?

Land of the Free

Talk about freedom!

Check out this story in the American newspaper the Standard Times,
about who may come knocking on your door if you've read the wrong book at the University of Massachusetts.
Oops! Turns out the student around whom this story is based may have concocted the whole thing. You live and learn I suppose! Anyhow, have a look at the comments for more on that (and thank you to anonymous for letting me know).

Late Night Poetry

I'm back home in Galway for Christmas, so I met up with some of my friends for a little game of football yesterday evening.
It has been so long since I touched a ball or did any other type of exercise that I finished the game absolutely exhausted (I'm sure there will be plenty of new resolutions after Christmas).

My chest was pretty bad before I played the game. Last night in bed, it felt like there was an elephant sitting on it. Though physically drained, I still couldn't sleep, and I flicked through a couple of different books to try and fill my head with something else besides the ticking of the clock.

After failing to really get into the first book that I had managed to reach without leaving the blankets or disturbing the elephant, I looked around for something else to read and spied the little white spine of a book winking out at me from under a pile of papers on the sink beside my bed.

It read "I am the Darker brother", and after I had freed it from the papers, spilling a glass of water on the ground and knocking over my alarm clock in the process, I opened it up. It turned out to be an anthology of poems by Black American writers. Who knows how it had ended up there. Most of the poems had been written around the mid 20th century. There was some really good stuff in it too, not that I'm normally a big reader of poetry, and it helped pass a couple of sleepless hours until eventually my mind lost the will to fight my body anymore and let me drop off to slumber land. Anyhow, here's a couple I liked (amongst several):

Hokku: In the Falling Snow

In the falling snow
A laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white

Richard Wright (pictured above)

The Whipping

The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighbourhood
her goodness and his wrongs

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged-
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.

Robert Hayden

Winter Solstice

Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat.
So fat that their bones are brittle,
their little legs can't support their huge bodies
and their feet become deformed.
Actually the gruesome programme I saw was about the mass production of that other Christmas bird, the turkey, but I don't know any rhymes about the fattening of turkeys. Many turkeys are reared in a state of almost total darkness, and packed dangerously close together.
Turkeys are woodland birds, who are happiest when feeding under the shade of trees, in which they can sleep at night. There are a lot of turkeys needed for the Christmas market, but it would be nice to think that the bird you're going to eat has had a less than miserable life before ending up on your plate.
I love eating them though. Christmas dinner is without doubt my favourite meal of the year, by a long way.
I like Christmas in general, though I can't seem to muster as much enthusiasm this time as I have other years. I'm suffering a little from those damn Winter blues.

Still, now that the shortest day of the year has come and gone, from here on out things can only improve. Ever since I've been a child I've always wanted to visit Newgrange on the Winter solstice, and watch the light flood down through the tomb. I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to see it in person, but it must be pretty spectacular. It shows just how important this day must have been for our ancestors, and I think it's a pity that it seems to pass us by these days without any one really noticing.
After all, it is the very heart of Winter.
From now on, the long dark nights will begin to recede and the days will lengthen.
Yesterday marked the return of the sun.

Standing on their own two Feet

A political tide is sweeping across Latin America.

With the election of Evo Morales, the indigenous leader of the Movement to Socialism party, Bolivia has become the latest country in the region to elect a left-wing government.

In Chile, the socialist Michelle Bachalet looks set to become the first female President in the country's elections on January the 15th.

And earlier this week, in a bold popular move, Argentinian President Nestor Kirchner announced the decision to pay off the remaining debt owed to the IMF before the year is out. The prescribed economic policies of the IMF have proven disastrous for Argentina and everywhere else they have been implemented in Latin America.

"In reaction to more than a decade of free-market reforms that failed spectacularly to end poverty but exacerbated extraordinary levels of inequality, left-leaning governments have been elected in one country after another."

North American influence in the region has been greatly weakened in recent years, with more and more countries opting to take their own economic decisions, form their own alliances on their own terms and take control of their own natural resources. Kirchner and Brazilian leader Lula Da Silva teamed up at last November's Summit of the Americas to attack the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

In an interview in El Pais today, Evo Morales talked about Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader who has proven to be such a thorn in the side for Washington and, with the country currently flush from oil revenues, an alternative source of financial asisstance for countries wanting to liberate themselves from America's influence. (He offered Kirchner two Billion dollars to help pay off the Argentinian debt). Asked if he trusted Chavez, Morales replied that he had great respect and admiration for him.

"He fought alongside his people for their dignity, their sovergnity, their natural resources. When a leader defends his people, my experience is that his people will defend him. This is the case with Chavez. Imagine, having to suffer so many blows: one from the military, one economic, one from the media, and one democratic, including the referendum to revoke his position, which he turned into a referendum of confirmation. And he continues standing, stronger than ever."

Some countries in the Latin American region could prove to be models for other devoloping nations if their radical approaches to tackling poverty and inequality are successful, and if they are allowed time to flourish without interference. Time will tell.

Best Christmas Present!

On the corner beside Trinity there's a stall selling hand-knitted Peruvian finger puppets, and they're only two euros each! They're really cool, but with my class-mates having all ran off after our recent escape from the college I have no access to a camera to show them to you. Have a look next time you pass by and I bet you'll like them. They look very like these guys. They've got any animal you like, so if you're feeling strapped of cash, go get'em. I got a llama, a giraffe, a tiger, a hippo and a sad looking panda.

Panda's Problem

Panda climbed the little wooden steps leading up to the stage, placed his notes on the podium and taking his glasses out of his pocket, looked out upon the audience.
It was clear that the crowd were delighted to have the opportunity to hear one of China's most esteemed scholars in person, a bear generally aknowledged to be the world's foremost authority on bamboo. Public speaking still made him very nervous and he could feel the sweat gathering in the fur of his paws. This was the third and final talk in a series of lectures entitled "Bamboo: Where do we go from here?", and as far as he was concerned it was his best.

He cleared his throat with a little growl and launched himself into his speech. It went pretty well too, with his little puns and witty asides getting plenty of laughter and applause, while his theories on bamboo poetry were met with profound expressions and noddding brows. And it would have been plain sailing all the way to the end, if he hadn't been distracted by something in the audience. It began about two thirds of the way through, and he was soon finding it hard to concentrate on what he was doing.

About two rows from the back, a couple of girafffes were locked in a passionate embrace. They weren't paying the slightest bit of attention to him or his talk. Giraffes can be inappropriate at the best of times, but it struck a nerve. Of course he managed to get through it, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation at the end, but as he plodded along the corridor of the university that night, chewing slowly on a strip of bamboo, all he could think about was those two long-necked lovers who had all but ignored him.

What a lonely thing it is to be a panda he thought. He hadn't even seen a female Panda for over a year, and he had been doing his best to forget that embarrassing encounter ever since. Feeling in need of a bit of cheering up, he decided to pay a visit to his friend and took the lift down to the Marine Psychology department to find Dolphin.

Harold Pinter's Speech

If you haven't read it yet, then please click HERE.

It will be well worth your while.

Short Hand S.O.S

I'm back in the class after sitting

my shorthand exam.

Which I rammed.

I'm switching to

morse code.

To hell with squiggly lines.

I'm a dots and dashes man now.

Patience

A seagull just landed on the windowsill.

He's staring at me quite intensely.

And there's a greedy little glint in his eye.

Damn it.

I think he's reading my signals.

They must pick it up off the sailors.

All that time spent following trawlers.

Waiting.

dit-dit-dit-dah-dah-dah-dit-dit-dit

Australian Race Riots

Cronulla beach, south of Sydney, was the scene of riots yesterday, as large groups of white Australians clashed with police and attacked people of Middle-Eastern origin.

The riots took place when around 5000 people gathered for a rally held after an alleged attack on two lifeguards by a couple of Lebaneese men. Police have said the attack did not appear to be racially motivated.

According to the papers, police believe that white supremacists may have used the incident to stoke up tension in an area which is often frequented by youths of middle-eastern origin from working class nieghbourhoods of Sydney.

"There appears to be an element of white supremacists and they really have no place in mainstream Australian society. Those sort of characters are best placed in Berlin 1930s, not in Cronulla 2005," said New South Wales police minister, Carl Scully.

Retaliation attacks against white Australians have taken place in other areas.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared that "attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of their own background and their politics. I'm not going to put a general tag of racism on the Australian community."

Yet Howard is well aware that there have always been undercurrents of racism in Australian society, and Howard's critics have accused him of capitalising on nationalism and prejudice for his own political ends, particularly in the run up to elections. It seems there has been increased tension between the Muslim and white Australian communities since the attacks of September 11th 2001 and the Bali bombings.

This is to say nothing of the systematic discrimination against Aborigines and the human rights abuses carried out against them which stretches back from the foundation of the British colony right up to the present day. Howard has stated publicly on a number of occasions that present day Australians should not have to feel guilty about the genocide of the indigenous aboriginal population and has tried to play down the racist aspect of his nation's history. Yet this is not an issue confined to the past, as evidenced by the incidents over the last couple of days.

As late as March of this year a UN body, the CERD (comittee for the elimination of all racial discrimination) found the Australian government guilty of discrimination against the indigenous population on a number of counts.

"In particular, the Committee expressed concern about the abolishment of ATSIC; the practical barriers Indigenous peoples face in succeeding in claims for native title; the continuing over-representation of Indigenous peoples in prisons; and the extreme inequities between Indigenous peoples and others in the areas of employment, housing, health education and income. The UN Committee called on the Australian Government to work towards a meaningful reconciliation and to properly address the issues of the Stolen Generation."

Howard also used the issue of the boat people and Asian immigrants to garner votes in the campaign for the 2001 election, persuading voters that he was the man to keep refugees out of the country, and pandering to widespread hysteria about 'floods' of immigrants pouring into the country. This helped to deflect attention away from the real issues affecting the many white Australians in poor communities with high unemployment, who were led to believe that it was immigration that was behind their own marginalised circumstances.

"The government has deliberately targetted its anti-refugee xenophobia at those social layers, particularly in rural and regional areas, that have been uprooted and left vulnerable by the processes of economic restructuring. Adopting the program of the extreme rightwing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, both Liberal and Labor cynically prey on fears and insecurities, which their own policies have been responsible for creating, to blame immigrants for the lack of jobs and services."

Last year there were prolonged clashes over a weekend between Aboriginal youths and police in the Redferns area of Sydney after an aboriginal boy was impaled on a fence during a police chase. It is not difficult to see similarities between this and the trigger which caused the rioting of another marginalised community in France quite recently.

There remains a huge over-representation of Aboriginies in Australian prisons and their life expectancy and literacy levels are way below other sections of Australian society. Check out the statistics in this interesting article from the time of the Redferns riots.

Howard, along with some other Australian politicians, and the Australian media, led by Rupert Murdoch, have certainly had a role to play in generating the kind of racial tensions and anti-immigration hysteria which have led to these latest riots.

A simple "we are not racist" statement sounds pretty hollow when it comes from a man who has built a political career on pandering to prejudice.

The Lion, the Penguin and the Passion

I remember reading the chronicles of Narnia as a child and really enjoying them.
Thankfully, the Christian sub-text went well over my head, as I'm sure it did for most young readers.

Children are clearly capable of understanding concepts like honour, injustice, Good and Evil and so on, but religious metaphors can be a little trickier to grasp, especially if Lions and Witches are involved.

C.S. Lewis wrote the books to "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life". Polly Toynbee has written an interesting article in the Guardian on Lewis' epiphany-by-stealth approach.

With the film about to hit Irish cinema screens, it definately won't have the same kind of religious hype surrounding it as it has had over in the States and I can't really imagine any little halos sprouting up overnight around the country. Children like good stories with lots of magic and excitement and there's plenty of that in the Narnia stories.

Still, the propogation of religious ideas through the medium of cinema is an interesting issue. This week saw Californian Republicans losing their patience with Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar. There is a campaign up and running to try and persuade Mel Gibson to run for office on the Republican ticket. The well-known actor has impeccable conservative credentials. The Passion of Christ was a huge success in America and churches organized block bookings of cinemas to send their congregations to see it.

As Ms. Toynbee points out when talking about the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the basis for both films is a muscular and bullying kind of Christianity, and it's all about power, suffering and guilt. The positive messages of Christ are left out of the Passion, and instead what is focused on is agony and torment. Physical pain is glorified and the whole spectacle is designed to produce only one kind of emotional response: Guilt. Here is a section from her article where she describes Aslan the Lion's death (don't worry, he gets resurrected later on), all because of the little boy Edmund's greed (may he burn in the fires of Hell!).

"The devil, in the shape of the witch, tempts him: for the price of several chunks of turkish delight, rather than 30 pieces of silver, Edmund betrays his siblings and their Narnian friends.

The sins of this "son of Adam" can only be redeemed by the supreme sacrifice of Aslan. This Christ-lion willingly lays down his life, submitting himself to be bound, thrashed and humiliated by the white witch, allowing his golden mane to be cut and himself to be slaughtered on the sacrificial stone table: it cracks in sympathetic agony and his body goes missing."

Religious groups are promoting the film feverishly, looking at it as a way to attract young people into the church. They also fell over themselves to transform the documentary March of the Penguins into something it clearly wasn't. According to them the penguins were monogomous (they change partner every year) upholders of traditional family values(they're birds) and the living proof of intelligent design (the pseudo-scientific theory which people-who-can't-believe-they're-not-special use to attack evolution).

Devout Christians believe in something which cannot be proven. I am fine with that. So why is is that they have to constantly clutch for these little straws. Whatever happened to faith? Why try and engage in scientific debate if at the end of the day you're going to ignore what almost all of the scientists tell you? I think most ten year olds would be able to see that a multitude of penguins on the march has absolutely no religious signifigance whatsover for humanity.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as irrational nuts, but there are many of them and they are quite political. Think of Pat Robertson calling for the assasination of Hugo Chavez. As far as I am concerned it is a good thing for society when the Church and the State maintain a respectful distance. Unfortuantely that is not the way things are happening in many parts of the world, with invariably negative results for free speech and political freedom.

One of the sickest and most distressing manifestations of religious interference is the encouragement of abstinence as a way of combating AIDs in Africa. It doesn't work. It ignores hard material facts. It ignores reality. What is clearly needed is family planning and access to condoms and other forms of protection. It wouldn't hurt to allow them to make their own medicines either, and not be dependent on large multi-nationals. But, no, what matters most is that people thousands of miles away can get to sleep at night, knowing that, ineffective as their solution is, they haven't compromised their Christian values. Much of the funding which is given by the US is dependent upon recipient countries promoting abstinence instead of promoting safe sex.

It reminds me of something I remember reading in the fantastic book (read it please, it's great!) King Leopold's Ghost, which tells the story of Belgium's only colony, the Belgian Congo. Missionaries would travel into the jungle to small villages and take the children away from the heathens, so they could be baptised, often marching them for several days back to their outposts. Many of them would die en route, but as one of the nuns wrote in a letter home, they were lucky enough to have been baptised first.

A sign I picked up after the protest this afternoon

First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew

Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Trade Unionist

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me

Pastor Niemoeller (Victim of the Nazis)

Coercion

One of the key documents used by the Bush administration to link Iraq and Al-Qaeada was based on the false statements of a prisoner in Egyptian custody.

The New York Times reports that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was afraid of recieving harsh treatment and was coerced into making the statements. Al-Libi was a member of Al-Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan. He was one of several prisoners moved around to America's allies as part of the 'rendition' process.

Bush, Cheney, Powell and other officials in the Bush administration repeatedly cited the information provided by Al-Libi as evidence that Iraq was training Al-Qaeda members.

Undervalued Journalists

My future as a journalist is looking darker with every passing day. Look what these poor fellas have been reduced to. Bid for the award-winning Western Daily Press staff here.

Up Close

There was a great programme on BBC 1 last night about American artist Chuck Close. His BIG protraits are amazing. His mosaic pieces are inconcievably complex and beautiful. And they're all done on enormous canvasses. His painstaking style means he only produces around 3 pictures a year and some have taken him more than a year to complete. Check him out if you can. I was blown away.

On reading what somebody said about Best's death

Funerals and the way people are talked about immediately after their death have a huge influence on how they are remembered.

I think there are several people whose work has not recieved fair analysis because of the media nostalgia which surrounds their deaths. If we are to talk incessently about someone's life after they pass away, surely it can't all be beatification. A couple of examples spring to mind.

Ronald Reagan got a nice whitewash upon his death. Forget about Star Wars and anti-communist paranoia, he was 'the gipper', 'the great communicator' and there was a whole lot of talk about jellybeans.

No one could speak badly of John Paul II's policies, despite the fact that he back-tracked on many of the positive Vatican II reforms and alienated forward thinking theologians. There was little debate about what direction the church should take after his death. It was said to be out of respect, but it was quite useful for some of the interested parties (Ratzinger).

Tonight Margaret Thatcher is in hospital and Sky News are already cranking up the whole nostalgia machine again. Within the last half hour I have heard about her warm heart, that she was a feminist etc.

In the case of George Best, there was something of a media circus as well, but for every mention of his footballing, there was a collective sigh about his drinking. Everybody felt they had the right to pontificate.

Anyone who loves football knows Best was a great footballer. He was also a human being who was flawed just like the rest of us.

So what gives us the right to be so judgemental? The decisions he made about how he was going to live his life were personal ones, and unlike the decisions made by John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, they didn't affect the shape of the world. I couldn't care less about the personal lives of public figures.

Surely what counts is how they do their job.

And what Best did in public on the football field, he did brilliantly.

The Frightened Ostrich Approach to Torture

"Amnesty International has revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland."

It is abundantly clear that a full and transparent government investigation into the use of Shannon by CIA planes is needed. Amnesty International has rejected the claim by Condaleesa Rice that 'rendition' is permissable under international law'. So far the American secretary of state has only denied that prisoners were being transported so as to be tortured, not that 'rendition', the transfering of prisoners without legal process, was taking place. Rice has argued that rendition is a necessary tool in the War on Terror.

"The argument makes no sense unless there is an assumption that the purpose of rendition is to send people to a place where things could be done to them that could not be done in the United States," said David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University

"Ireland has not, and will not, facilitate the torture of prisoners by any state, and any use of torture, wherever occurring, would be wrong and deeply reprehensible," said the Taoiseach.

Yet despite the Taoiseach's comments, the government is effectively sticking its head in the sand by accepting American assurances at face value. Even if the planes are only using shannon for refuelling purposes and have no prisoners on board, if those planes go on to perform rendition activities in other countries we have to accept some degree of culpability for letting them pass through unchecked.

The American definition of torture has been steadily narrowing to allow more and more of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, including waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and so on. Alberto Gonzales' leaked Justice Department memo from 2002 defines it like so:

"torture is only torture when it involves physical pain equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death".

US ambassador to Ireland John Kenny has been invited to appear before an Oireachtas commitee and discuss the alleged transportation of prisoners. Commenting on the allegations, Professor William Schabas of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUIG said in the Irish Times today that the Irish government had a duty to guarantee that people are not transported through Shannon for torture elsewhere, or else "it has a duty to tell the Americans that they cannot land, and that they should go somewhere else."

End Freedom!

I was looking for some kind of image to go with the story below and I didn't find anything appropriate, but I did find this American military patch. It depicts a tough looking eagle sitting on a stool. The military have a habit of shortening things and I've heard that that particular quest was known as operation end-freedom for short, which I thought kind of funny. (Yes, it's been a slow day)

More Unjustifiable Deporation

"Victims of the Taliban"

"Don't send us back to a War Zone!"

"If we go back, we will die"

These were just some of the slogans printed on the white signs being held aloft by a large group of Afghan men who gathered early yesterday afternoon outside the Dail. They were there to protest against their deportation back to Afghanistan, where many of them can quite reasonably fear persecution or death.

Some have been here for up to three years. Most of them have already had their appeals turned down.

It was freezing cold on Kildare st. One of the Residents against Racism members held a small amplifier up so that we could hear what the speakers were saying above the noise of the traffic. Residents against Racism helped organize the protest and their representative called for the responsiblity for granting asylum to be transfered from the Department of Justice to the Human Right's commission. Other supporters were also present and spoke, among them a small group of TDs, including Joe Higgins (socialist), Ciaran Cuffe (greens), Joe Costelloe(labour) and Finian McGrath (representing some of the independents).

Sultan Kabirchakari, wearing dark glasses, spoke to us with the aid of a translator. He was blinded in an assasination attempt on him in Afghanistan.

He described how the men being deported had fled Afghanistan to escape persecution from the Taliban and only asked to be allowed to stay here in Ireland and work.

He thanked the Irish people for their hospitality and told of how they wanted to integrate and contribute to the country.

Like the other speakers before him, he said that Afghanistan is a country controlled by warlords and it is not a safe or democratic place to return to.

After the protest they marched to the Department of Justice to hand in a letter asking for their cases to be re-examined.

No. 1000

This is the face of the 1000th human being to be executed in the US since 1976.

Remember it next time you hear the Bush administration use the word civilized.

Kenneth Lee Boyd was pronounced dead at 2.15 AM.

Bush had 152 people put to death during his 6 years as governor of Texas.

That's about 1 death warrant signed every fortnight.

"I take every death penalty case seriously", said Bush.

Reassuring. Yet he often only had the confidentail death penalty memos
shown to him on the very day of the execution.

So I wonder how mundane the whole thing must have become after a while.

"Hey Alberto, whacha got for me today?"

"oh, just another one of these forms to sign."

"Is it Friday already? What did the guy do anyhow?"

"Oh, some really bad stuff sir."

"Well I suppose we gotta do what we gotta do .... there we go (signing form). Now. How the kids getting along?"

Kevin and I (and an uninvited guest)

When I started thi...

Hello! Mind if I join you?

For God's sake, what is it you want now? Look, I'm busy writing a blog. So shoo off.

Is it about Kevin Myers?

Well, yes, it is actually, but that's none of your business. Now go on, make yourself scarce.


Now where was I? Ah yes. (clears throat) When I started this blog, I decided that it would be best to leave Kevin Myers out of it.

I would just stay here on the high moral ground and refrain from lowering myself to his level. But, try as I might, I can't ignore him. If he were a stripey yellow insect he would be the wasp rather than the bee. The wasp has no respect for the long-established and mutually beneficial 'I'll ignore you, if ignore me' deal that we have with the bees. As much as I'd like to imagine he'd just go away if I petended he wasn't there, the man seriously bothers me.

Ah, you see, you're talking about him though! That's the mark of a good journalist. And he has such a way with words....you're just jealous!

I am not! Who invited you into this blog anyhow?

If Myers isn't making heroes out of O Duffy's blue-shirts and attacking veterans of the International Brigade for defending the Spanish republic against the fascists, he's waxing lyrical over the creation of the PDs and describing Haughey as the most capable and dynamic figure ever to grace Irish politics. And we need not mention the whole SOBs thing.

It's not fair of you to bring that up! It was so unlike Kevin. I think he may have spent a little too much time in the sun, or perhaps someone had slipped something into his wine, or....

Have you quite finished? Good. Now stop interrupting.

Today, he turned his venemous pen on the unions, more or less repeating the mantra of Delaney and the other free-marketeers (scroll down a couple of entries for more on that). He compares the trade unions to the coelacanth, an ancient type of fish rediscovered after it was long thought to be extinct.

Oh, what a delightfuly clever fellow! He reminds me of some kind of distinguished Victorian gentleman. So frightfuly witty. And so well-rounded in his knowledge. I imagine he has many fascinating interests! Arcaheology, botany, marine biology....

I'm sure he does. Please stop trying to engage me in conversation. If you feel like talking, go bother someone else's blog.

Now, if you can keep quiet for a moment I'll continue. The reason Myers believes that the trade union movement is comparable to an extinct fish is because as far as he is concerned class no longer exists. Now we are all in this together.

Hurrah for team Ireland!

He writes that, "the one lesson we have learned in the past 15 years of unbroken growth is that labour is a commodity that is totally subject to market forces. Only in the protected world of the state sector, where siptucanths still rule, is it possible to pretend that labour is immune to market forces. For the rest of us, market forces really do decide what we do and how much we earn for doing it."

Well, we do have to change with the times you know. Get with the programme!

"We". "Us". How convenient to lump himself in along with everyone else and pretend that he is in just as much danger of getting a pay cut or losing his job as an Irish Ferries' worker, or any other minimum wage employee in Ireland. Myers knows that his tired old opinion columns with their stable formula of bigotry/historical revisionism/slander will keep him well paid and comfortable till the day he retires. It is a far cry from the lack of job security and poor work conditions he and the rest of the crawthumpers would have most of the country toil under.

You cad! Where would this country be without Kevin? Who would we turn to for moral sustenance? He will never retire till his work is done! Never I tell you!

Well he won't as long as eejits like me keep talking about him, that's for sure.

Now either be off with you or fetch me my pipe.

High priests of Mammon

Questions and Answers has been quite interesting lately.

Fine Gael's leap onto the band wagon of anti-traveller prejudice was discussed a week or two ago and Jim Higgins managed to represent his party well, even getting in the old "sure aren't they all driving 4x4's" horseshite.

Last Monday the Irish Ferries dispute was discussed, amongst other issues. It was really quite amazing to hear the manner in which Eamon Delaney, deputy editor of Magil magazine, and Dr. Dan McLaughlin, chief economist with the Bank of Ireland talked about Irish workers. Sadly, their realtionship with humanity is indeed very distant. Delaney's arrogant Thatcherite assertions went so far as to imply that trade unions were no longer needed in modern Ireland, and indeed have been obsolete for decades. Patricia Casey, regional secretary of SIPTU, defended the trade union movement well, and spun Delaney's own argument back on him, arguing that it was he that was "peddling retro", and that the Irish Trade union movement was in fact more vibrant than ever.

All over the world workers are persecuted for trying to organize themselves and form unions. Globalized trade has made the right to organize more and more vital all the time and trade unions are one of the institutions of a democratic nation that we should be most proud of. One only has to look at the Irish Ferries dispute and the bold moves taken by Irish Ferries staff over the last week to see that workers should and must organize to protect their livlihoods.

Delaney's comments on George Best were equally repulsive. When asked what kind of monument should be erected to the legendary football player he said none, and that he should be remebered only as a wife-abusing alcaholic.

It was nice to see that I was not the only one who dispproved of these pontificating high priests of Mammon. A listener rang in to ask how much does the president of Bank of Ireland earn, while expecting us to work for nothing, and, towards the end of the show, a well-spoken elderly gentleman sitting at the back of the audience said that he was absolutely shocked at the lack of humanity in the lanuguage used by both McLaughlin and Delaney. "All I hear is Economy, economy, economy!", he said. " For God's sake, we live in a nation!"

Hear hear

What the hell

Some of you are probably wondering what the hell the post below was on about. Well, lets just say that it's related to our class, so feel free to skip over it and don't be getting yerselves all muddled and confused.

Ablogalypse Now!

Giant heads carved of obsidian appear upon the pebble beaches. Sounds like the beating of giant brass gongs reverberate in thundering booms across the land. Farmers recoil in terror as cattle give birth to ungodly two-headed off-spring. Old men, with ragged grey beards and mad glaring eyes, appear at street corners wearing sandwich boards, and with their long and crooked fingers they warn of impending doom. The wise stargazing sages of the countryside scan the dark heavens for eclipses and celestial signs. Fervent piety sweeps the land as the people of Ireland prepare themselves for the coming of the long promised apocalypse. On the island’s rocky western coast, fishermen report sightings of dark ominous shapes upon the horizon. With the land gripped by fear, the wagons begin to cross the Shannon and flee eastward. For something is afoot…..

Yet not all of the nation’s people cower in terror, and a small band of journalism students boldly turn against the human tide and make their way to the cliff-tops. With quivering hearts, they face out across the sea and await the arrival of fate.

The time that grown-ups fear to talk of has arrived. The rumour that haunts the frightened whispers of children has come to pass. Breathe deeply, and let your eyes linger for the last time upon the world as you know it, for all is about to change.

Here come the BLOGs

The Empire Strikes Back!

Yesterday's edition of the Guardian online had an interesting blog about the all new Henry Jackson Society.

The society has been set up as a "forum" (read neo-conservative think tank) to discuss Britain's role in this new terror-stricken world of ours. The introduction to the society on their web-site runs as follows:

"The Henry Jackson Society is a non-profit organisation that seeks to promote the following principles: that liberal democracy should be spread across the world; that as the world’s most powerful democracies, the United States and the European Union – under British leadership – must shape the world more actively by intervention and example; that such leadership requires political will, a commitment to universal human rights and the maintenance of a strong military with global expeditionary reach; and that too few of our leaders in Britain and the rest of Europe today are ready to play a role in the world that matches our strength and responsibilities."

One of their statement of principles states that the society "supports a 'forward strategy' to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so. This would involve the full spectrum of our 'carrot' capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those 'sticks' of the military domain."

The sheer arrogance of the language used would be laughable were there not so many "distinguished" names signed up to the statement of principles. The image of the rest of the world as a dumb beast to be cajoled and coerced into submission to an American and British world view smacks of the kind of imperialist language used by the
Project for a New American Century.

A quick glance at the New American Century's statement of principles, written in 1997, and you can see how closely related they are to the principles of the Henry Jackson Society, if not more worrying because of the political clout wielded by the american signatories. All the usual suspects are there, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, the "end of history" man Francis Fukuyama, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Even Dan Quayle got in on the action. You can get the gist of what they have to say in the following line taken from their statement of principles: "We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership".

As mentioned in the Guardian blog, one of the Henry Jackson Society's patrons is Whitehouse advisor Richard Perle, another leading light in neo-conservative circles and instrumental in persuading Bush to go to war.

Amongst those joining him in the British boys club are politicians such as Michael Ancram the shadow secretary of defence, David Willets, shadow secretary of state for trade and industry and even Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble.

The Times is well represented with assistant editor Gerard Baker and columnists Oliver Kamm and Stephen Pollard all signing up. Oliver has published articles such as the delightfuly titled "It's No Time to Ban the Bomb: Britain Needs Nuclear Weapons" and "Help, I'm a Pro-War leftie" on the site.

A couple of members of the Defence Manufacturers Association are on the list, including the always eager (to cash in on misery) Beaver ltd. (Their chirpy web-site offers "High Quality, up-to-date government and market intelligence for the defence, aerospace and homeland security industries." )There are also a couple of British military commanders amongst the others.

And what would any list of Neo-Conservatives be without the addition of a revisionist historian to give a weighty nostalgia to the whole affair. Step forward Andrew Roberts. He's one of the new breed of less-dusty looking televsion historians that pop up on Channel 4 and BBC these days.

It actually surprises me that Niall Ferguson's name isn't there. I'm sure some of you remember the popular British documentary series "Empire", with its rose-tinted re-imagining of the British Empire's historical legacy. His book "Collossus" apparently argues that America should take the lessons of Victorian Britain on board and accept its destiny.
Publisher's weekly described the book in this way. "Criticism of the U.S. government's imperialist tendencies has become nearly ubiquitous since the invasion of Iraq began nearly a year ago, but Ferguson would like America to embrace its imperial character."

Would he now. What really needs to be made is a different set of documentaries altogether, about the real historical impact of colonialism upon the world (a look at what was under the boot). Somehow I can't see Channel4 or the BBC making one though. Much safer to blow bubbles. More on that prick later.

What lies beneath

My bedroom has a good view of the street below. Bad management of my personal finances has left me without the necessary cash to buy any curtains until next month, so until December rolls around, I sit at my desk every evening stark naked, aware that I can be seen by all my neighbours across the street. Only joking. The lack of curtains bit is true though, and sometimes it's easy to get distracted by what is happening down there on the street. A few nights ago, I sat in front of the window for quite a while, spaced out and glassy eyed, with the dreaded book of shorthand lying open and ignored on the desk in front of me.

All of a sudden, a loud crashing noise snapped me out of my squiggle and dot induced stupor. I couldn't see what had caused the sound. In front of the 24 hour shop across the street, a group of about 5 or 6 young fellas wearing hoodies were shouting at someone further up the street. I couldn't see anyone at first, but eventually 3 men in their mid-twenties came into view, sauntering up as far as the group of youngsters, a confident bravado in the way they swung their shoulders and stuck their chests out. They didn't look Irish, though I could be mistaken. They had quite tanned skin and two of them had long hair. Only the loudest exclamations were audible, and it was hard to make out exactly what the confrontation was about, though from the hand gesturing and body language it was clear that the young lads had done something to annoy the three men, who looked like they had no intention of backing off from their much younger adverseries.

A teenage girl stood ouside the chinese takeaway on the corner, only a few metres away, and shouted something at the two groups. I heard someone telling her to fuck off. The stand off continued, the two groups staring each other down and after about a minute of verbal exchange, confronted by these older and stronger men, the teenagers seemed to back off a little. It seemed that all the posturing and threats would not lead to actual violence after all.

Suddenly, another group of young fellas came tearing around the corner. There were at least as many in this new group as there were involved in the stand off. With the fresh reinforcements, they now outnumbered the other group by at least three to one. The first to arrive hurled a glass bottle as hard as he could at the men. It struck one of them and smashed against the wall, scattering glass everywhere. The man who had been struck bent down to cover his face as he was hit, while his two friends ran back along the street. With only one vulnerable figure before them, the youngsters suddenly found courage, the kind that comes from being part of a mob, and began to rain punches and kicks down upon the man. He broke away from them and ran down the street. After a moments hesitation the youths pursued him, bottles flying through the air, and the sound of exploding glass ricocheted around the street. It was hard to tell if any of them had hit their target.

By now, a small group of curious passerbys had gathered around the girl, who was still screaming at them to stop. The three men had fled into what was presumably their apartment, because at this stage the young fellas turned their attention to a balcony a few floors up, just beyond my field of vision. Bottles, cans, peices of wood, anything that came to hand, was flung upwards. I could hear the sound of the projectiles smashing against the walls and windows and see how caught up in the excitement of the moment the boys were.

They heard the sirens of the gardai even before I did, and in the space of a couple of seconds had all vanished around the corner of the 24 hour shop again. Two gardai walked up and down the street outside for a minute or two, and had a quick peek down the dark and poorly lit road where the assailants had made their escape, but it was clear that they were just going through the motions.

Meanwhile, the girl called up to the three men to come down from their flat. I could hear her shouting "They've gone!". An ambulance arrived and reluctantly the man who had been struck by the bottle was persuaded to go with them. The other onlookers gradually drifted away after the ambulance had gone. The girl went back into the chinese takeaway, and the gardai sat back into their squad car and pulled away. The street was empty again and curiously peaceful. About 10 minutes afterwards, the guy who had thrown the first bottle was back again, his hood up, leaning against the wall at the corner of the 24 hour shop. Across the street, safe up in my room, I looked down at him and wondered what was running through his head after having done what he did. His head flicked up and his gaze hung in the general direction of my window for a prolonged moment. I don't know if he was looking at me, but my eyes shot down as fast as they could to Mr. Pitman's little book.

It seems silly now, but my first instinct had been to hide the fact that I had watched enthralled as these ugly and violent events unfolded beneath my window. I pretended to read so that I wouldn't make eye contact with this little thug, not out of fear of him, but because for some reason I felt a little embarrassed, like a voyeur caught in the act. Tis a strange dark world we live in.

The First Narrative Arts Club

Last night I attended the grand opening of the Narrative Arts Club in the Central hotel here in Dublin. The founder of the club, a somewhat nervous northern doctor, took on the role of MC for the night. With great gusto he informed us that this was indeed the first club of its kind in the whole world. We dropped our jaws at this earth-shaking revelation and tried to look suitably impressed. Alas, attendence was poor, and I think there were only about 7 of us there, not including the performers. My sister, her boyfreind and I made up almost half of the audience, so we endevoured to do twice the work of normal spectators, and notched up the volume of our laughter and applause accordingly. Not that any over-the-top thigh slapping was neccessary, with all of the participants performing admirably on the night.

While other storytelling clubs such as the Yarnspinners focus mainly on a more traditional Irish style of storytelling, the intention of the narrative arts club is to introduce a slightly more modern feel to the whole thing. There were four acts on the night, and two of them were performing for the first time. The MC did a couple of his own storys, followed by a short bearded guy who told us an at first believable but increasingly absurd tale of growing up on his father's tour bus. This was followed by an hilarious Jewish woman from London and then a great long improvisation on the theme of Irishness and the grand art of bullshitting from a Dublin man. it was made clear that anybody who felt the urge could come up and tell a story (none of the seven of us put our hands up), and surely if they manage to get a few more people to come along next time it'll be a great opportunity for any would be tall tale tellers to perform in front of an intimate but enthusiastic audience. A date has not been set for the next gathering, but I have been told it will be in December. Keep your eyes peeled.

Hieronymus Blog

Don’t ask me why, but I feel like boring you first of all with a few little musings of mine.

When moving into a new place, it’s always good to establish some little routines. Finding a café or bar nearby where the staff are usually friendly, a bakery that sells nice bread, getting to recognize faces that you see seem to see very other day on the street. These are all little pleasures that make a new place familiar and somewhere that you are least a little more comfortable in living. When I moved up to Dublin at first, it took me a while to get used to the place, and to be completely honest, I don’t know if I could ever see myself living here permanently. I have very itchy feet. Still, wherever the wind takes me over the next few years, it could and probably will set me back down again here in Dublin. So I may as well get used to it.

After an extended and confusing period of readjustment over the Summer months, I faltered initially when it came to adapting to Dublin and the whole student life thing again. I had an interesting month or so, wallowing in loneliness and self-pity at times, developing a tolerant co-existence with my flatmate and endeavouring to make my new bedroom seem like somewhere where I wouldn’t mind having to spend a good deal of the immediate future. In the meantime, I noticed certain things about where I live.

Wherever you happen to call your home, walking along a street in the morning is completely different from passing along the same street in the evening. There is a different feel to the place. Now that the evenings are darker, I usually set out for home in varying degrees of twilight, and sometimes under the yellow light of the street lamps. In the morning, its bright and frosty, with huddles of suited workers scurrying along to work. By evening, there are shadows everywhere and everything has a rougher, more exciting edge. When it is grey and overcast, the entire street lowers its head in gloom and manages to look like its suffering from some world-crushing hangover. The whole character of the street changes during the day and even the people begging seem to move on, only to be replaced by others.

It sickens me to see so many homeless and poverty stricken people on the streets of Dublin. So much affluence and wealth in the country, and nothing to spare for the unfortunate. There is this guy who sits everyday on the steps of Avalon house, with his head bowed down over his knees. He has his hand out, holding some kind of paper cup. He has whitish blonde hair and the palest of faces. Sometimes when his head is raised, I think he has Japanese features, but I could be wrong. Wherever he’s from, something awful must have happened to have brought him there, to where he now sits everyday, his head bent, all alone. It’s tragic.


I joined Laser video club a couple of weeks ago and boy am I having a ball, all by my little old self, watching good movies. How many years did I waste in Galway pacing up and down on the faded blue carpet of x-travision, scrutinising the rows of shite for the occasional worthwhile movie, or a comedy that didn’t have a pair of tits on the cover (okay, so i've exaggerated a little)? As I’m sure ye are fully aware, Laser is great.

I don’t mean to be a heaper of gloom, but unfortunately this blog entry could not come to an end without some reference to what happened across the road from the DIT yesterday evening. The laundry just down the road caught on fire and much of it burned down. I tend to carry a list of things I have to do (which only ever grows bigger) with me, and one of the things marked down for yesterday was to leave clothes into the laundry to be washed. Of course in a selfish way I’m glad I didn’t get round to it now, but I feel so sorry for the guys who run the place. I drop my stuff off there all the time, and it’s the fastest and cheapest laundry I’ve seen up here. The two guys who work there always smile when they’re talking to me and in a friendly way exchange the few words it takes to do our business. We’ve probably never had a proper conversation, but I like them.

Sometimes when I went in there, after giving them the ticket and asking for my bag, I would look at a stone tablet they had cellotaped to the side of the counter.
The writing looked Arabic, with beautiful characters that made swirling curves in the stone. One day, I asked the guy what it meant and he told me, “this is the name of God” and smiled at me. I am not religious and I don’t believe in any God, but I liked the way he said it and kind of admired the way he was so clear in his belief. For some reason I really enjoyed the short exchange, and left the place feeling reassured. It was a nice human connection. Which brings me back to all the talk of routines. Once a little connection is made with a place, it becomes part of your daily life, and whenever I passed the laundry, I had a pleasant association with the place.


I’m a damn rambler I tell ye, so ye’ll have to forgive me! Recently I heard or read something, somewhere, along the lines of,
“ask, and be embarrassed for a moment, don’t ask, and be embarrassed for the rest of your life.”
I know I probably have it arse-ways but I like that saying, or quote, or whatever the hell it is. The worst thing in the world is being too afraid to say you don’t know something and ask about it.


Another day I went in to drop off some laundry and the other guy, who always has a slightly more serious expression, was down towards the back of the laundry. He was dancing around, swinging his hips in a very feminine manner, with a short white apron held up to his waist. I could hear bursts of men’s laughter coming from back there. A long rack of plastic sheathed garments hid the laughers from my view. With a huge grin on his face, he whipped away the apron when he saw me at the counter, and ran up to take my bag off me.

I don’t know if these guys owned the place or were just running it, but it saddens me to think that they may have lost their jobs or even their business in the fire. Hopefully they have insurance and they’ll be back on their feet soon. As for all that clothing lost to the cruel flames, the customers are in for one hell of a shock in the morning.

The Blog of War

Foriegn correspondents of the future beware!
A brief glance at the reporters without borders web-site will give you a good indication of how little freedom of expression is valued in many of the world's countries.

The website runs a tally of how many journalists and media assistants have been killed since the start of fighting in Iraq in March 2003. An alarming 74 dead so far, and two still missing.

Little wonder then that the Guardian announced today that it will no longer maintain a fulltime correspondent in Baghdad. After the abduction of Rory Carroll last month, the paper held an internal review and decided it would be less risky for the journalists involved if they took turns out there.

"From the beginning of next year we will have a rota system. We will be there most of the time but we will have four or five people for four- or five-week stints"

An understandable position, but a little saddening. Even before the switch to part-time correspondents, it seems foreign journalists in Iraq rarely moved far beyond the walls of their compounds.

I made my way out to the Stilorgan hotel last month to attend a talk given by Robert Fisk. He touched on a huge range of issues, including the abduction of Rory Carroll and the dangers of reporting from Iraq. He described how foreign journalists rarely if ever ventured beyond the walls of their guarded compounds, instead forced into sub-contracting the risk out to local journalists.

A wee aside: Apparently the hired men standing guard on the towers of the New York Time's compound wear New York times t-shirts over their bullet proof vests, which I thought quite amusing, if its true (is it some sort of marketing thing, or just the crappiest of uniforms?).

Anyhow, I'm rambling on so I'll get back to the point.Fisk, a man of tremendous courage, said that while he may go back for one last visit, it was just too dangerous for him to think about working out there again. Once again, completely understandable, particularly coming from a man who has put his life on the line many times over during the course of his career.

But it does raise a question. If its too dangerous for the hardiest of professional journalists like Fisk and Carroll, where oh where will the news from Iraq be coming from?

And should the western media have kept so damn quiet when Al-Jazeera were getting turfed out of the country?

What do you reckon?

Don't make me use my mind-reading device 'cos if I do, it ain't gonna be pretty!