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.