The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Israel has shut down as 400,000 public sector and transport workers go on strike over non-payment of wages to local authority workers. (I know, you thought for a second it was over the Apartheid Wall.)

The bit that amuses me however, is that airport workers have been given permission by the unions to break the strike for the flight into Israel of the English soccer team to play Israel in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. They will, however, still refuse to service planeloads of English soccer fans.

David Clark, Robin Cooks special advisor from 1997 to 2001 at the Foreign Office writes an excellent piece in this month’s Prospect. He is writing about Nick Cohen and ‘What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way’ which has already been dealt with here by smiffy.

As he notes:

The conclusions Cohen arrives at are unsparingly critical and deeply pessimistic. Robbed of its historic purpose by the defeats of the 1980s, much of the “liberal-left” (Cohen’s cover-all term for every shade of left opinion) has experienced a “dark liberation” from responsible politics and opted for a self-indulgent oppositionism which at best betrays its most noble aspirations and at worst has turned it into an active accomplice of the authoritarian right, both secular and clerical. In short, the liberal-left is morally and politically bankrupt.

Cohen is right that the doctrine that my enemy’s enemy is my friend has led sections of the left to some truly grotesque conclusions. One was that the great crime committed in the Balkans in the 1990s was not the ethnic slaughter inflicted by Serb paramilitaries but the efforts of western governments to stop it. Another was the transformation of Saddam Hussein from a blood-soaked tyrant into a noble victim of American…

But Clark has a much more nuanced critique of Cohen. He agrees with Cohen that ‘certain leftists are prepared to tolerate or even support totalitarian movements and ideas in the service of anti-imperialism’, but he argues ‘it is his assertion that this is symptomatic of a new and deep rooted malaise on the liberal-left that is wrong’.

He notes that the left embraces a broad spectrum of beliefs (indeed I find Cohen’s use of the word Liberals in the title of his book somewhat puzzling and wonder is that a pitch for US sales). But he clearly indicates that although ‘beyond the utlra-leftists who openly despise liberal democracy, there has always been a fringe of fellow travellers willing to provide soft support…Cohen deplores the failure of protestors on the March 2003 anti-war march to change anti-Saddam slogans, but at least none of them were chanting for him’. And that is different. Clark who belongs on the traditional left of the British Labour party indicates the difference between 2003 and 1968 when the marchers were chanting the praises of Ho Chi Minh and Castro and Ché, but the point is well made. Bar a tiny tiny group there was no visceral support for Saddam either explicitly or implicitly.

Sure, the rhetoric of some on the anti-war side does appear to short-circuit thinking. The continual elision of many different arguments in a sort of boilerplate ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ answer to any issue pertaining to the war is tiresome as ten minutes on the Guardian’s Comment is Free will demonstrate. Blair and Bush war criminals? Well, could well be, but probably not in this world - or if they are we’re going to have to hold an awful lot of others to such a high standard. War for oil? Maybe, who knows. People should make their own history? I entirely agree, but again in a world where everyone is willing to supply arms it’s hard to see how that’s entirely feasible And so on… But that’s to miss the point that even if the given reasons for opposing the war can appear reductionist that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a certain power to them when taken collectively.

And yes, there was a massive contradiction in one respect in so far as had the protests been successful they would have led to the continuation of Saddams reign, and that is no small thing and something progressives should consider long and hard particularly how the left can give more than genuflectory and rhetorical support to societies that are suffering under appalling oppression. But, the dangers - the very real dangers of US intervention - with the unknowable potential for grim ramifications was a genuine and appropriate reason for calling a halt to the process as structured by London and Washington and were intuitively recognised by those who Cohen would be profoundly critical of. I made the wrong call at that time. Given the same, or similar, set of circumstances I wouldn’t although I’m not antagonistic to limited interventions per se.

One might also argue that there were many intermediate positions well short of armed conflict which the US and the UK could have adopted that would have been both more activist and more appropriate than invasion - yet they chose not to do so. Even were one to accept entirely their bona fides on the war (something I do not) the issue as to why these interim measures were not taken speaks for a moral culpability and irresponsibility on their part even before the invasion started.

However Clark has further points to make:

There is something additionally peculiar about the focus of Cohen’s argument. Although the totalitarian left has always been with us, it is probably less significant today as a political force than at any time in the past 100 years. Leninist and Stalinist groups that used to attract tens of thousands of supporters, infiltrating the Labour party…are today a borken force. The largest of them the SWP is a mere 3,000 strong and the Communist Party of Britain has only around 900 members. They do not merit the attention lavished on them by Cohen and others on the pro-war left.

This is crucial. I spend some time entertaining and to some degree educating, myself by following the travails of the further left in the UK and here. But these are tiny formations of often articulate and eloquent people who are very marginalised both from the rest of the left and the society within which they live.

Sure, they achieved a certain prominence during 2003. But can anyone really believe that Respect are the coming thing in the UK, or that Richard Boyd-Barrett is on the brink of achieving state power in the upcoming General Election?

The further left is small (obviously) because it lacks mass support. Inside our bourgeois democracies, however flawed, it is unlikely that they will ever gain mass support, and the democracies by dint of being bourgeois retain sufficient legitimacy to satisfy the broad mass of their populations as evidenced by either passive or active support at elections. We can huff, we can puff, but we aren’t going to blow that particular house down by full frontal assaults or covert chicanery. And as an example of this it’s worth looking at the Workers’ Party (originally Official Sinn Féin, later Sinn Féin - The Workers’ Party) record, surely the closest this country and arguably the UK (seeing as it - ahem - organised in the six counties) ever came to an organisation with both a coherent political ideology and - ahem (cubed) - other muscle capable of at least partially impinging on the state (Obviously another offshoot of Sinn Féin presented a threat to the state, but of a different sort). That failed ignominiously, in part because even at the height of the 1980s and the most severe economic crisis this state ever experienced there was no traction for such an approach. The WP had at it’s height at most 3000 members across the island (although having been a member during that period I’d wonder about the accuracy of that figure) in a society of 2.5 million plus in the South, a vastly more favourable ratio than say the SWP or similar groups in relation to the population of the UK. It had experience in terms of it’s antecedents in covert organisation and such like. And yet it was unable to deliver a truly revolutionary programme. Odd one thinks, if only because it saw itself as a direct heir to the sort of ‘vanguardist’ programmes that actually worked in Russia and elsewhere.

Yet however disciplined the WP it’s doubtful that had it come to the crunch more than a minority within it would have gladly signed up to a coup against the Irish state as constituted at that point in time. Now argument will rage as to the nature of the WP and it’s capacity for bringing about change, but few will disagree that in terms of seriousness and potential capability it’s project was vastly more so than say the SWP.

Now if I know this, and I’m no genius, it’s fairly certain both the longer term members of the SWP, SP and whoever know this (which tells us much about the comforts of struggle for pretty much it’s own sake) and so does Nick Cohen.

So what’s it all about then? Clark suggests that it is in some sense an inability to conceive of Islamists and Islamism as ‘political phenomena rather than as simple manifestations of evil’. Clark considers that ‘this difference is crucial…if terrorists…are influenced by politics, then it is possible to deal with them by a process of engagement- if not with the terrorists and extremists themselves, then certainly by those who might be susceptible to their propaganda… [but if not] then any attempt to accord them a rational explanation is akin to appeasement’.

But he eventually pins the tail on the donkey and sees this as a shift of Cohen and others away from the left entirely. Cohen is according to Clark apparently now unconvinced about comprehensive education and exercised by welfare dependency. If accurate this is terrible news since Cohen has been one of the most significant and persuasive voices on the left for a considerable length of time.

So there is another lesson to learn. And that’s this. That sometimes the Left, or some aspects of it, are on one issue or another going to be wrong from the individual point of view. Appallingly, obviously or just plain stupidly wrong. Just as those on the right accept - because the right is a broad church too - that some aspects of it are less agreeable than others they naturally don’t run to the hills at the first, or even the fifteenth, sign of trouble. They stay and they fight their corner. They argue, the discuss and sometimes, if they’re lucky they may well win their ground. The great betrayal is not as Cohen and others would have it that the left has lost it’s bearings.

Instead, to my mind it is that Cohen and others have themselves become intoxicated by events that when put in perspective appear much less earth shaking than at first sight. The Iraq war was not the defining moral and political event of our time. The Iraq war protests were not the harbinger of the SWP and all it’s works. The internet isn’t representative of all shades of left, even if they happen to be there. The war itself was whatever the intentions of some of those who initiated it a squalid affair which left no ones reputation entirely intact but reflects perhaps worst upon those who refuse to recognise objective reality.

And if that betrayal is to be compounded by a further betrayal, a sort of Flight of the Earls of Intellect from the left because they find it easier to continue to justify the unjustifiable, or in a curious mirror image of the further left and it’s dubious theoretical use of the concept of ‘imperialism’ to continue to play with their own theoretical castles in the sky that evade the central truth that the US could not be an honest broker in this dispute of all, then that too is a tragedy of sorts.

But that also means that the opposite is often true. Take Cohen as an example. His books, and in particular “Pretty Straight Guys”, are an excoriating analysis of New Labour from a perspective not a million miles away from political positions here. That he got it wrong on the Iraq war - a single issue - should no more mean that he is somehow placed beyond the pale (whatever the way in which segments of the self-defined ‘decent’ left have attempted to do that themselves) for socialists and progressives.

There’s a balance to be struck and people should be careful not to depart or be pushed out the wrong door.

Leaving the thin pickings in the Guardian in their final installment about the apparently soon to be completed peace process which can best be summed up by the phrase “Thank God we’re out of there”, let’s consider the bould Green Party whose spokesman on Health John Gormley has who has against all expectation raised his head above the parapet upon that great issue facing the Irish nation.

Is it climate change? Is it the GPs excellent proposal on banning experimentation on primates? Is it the current state of the health service?

Er…no, it’s none of the above. Instead its…fluoridation. The Green Party has given a solemn undertaking to end fluoridation of public water supplies in the event it enters government.

So, what’s this then? According to the GP in an article in the Irish Times from Wednesday.

Mr Gormley said the latest advice from the American Dental Association told parents to avoid using fluoridated water when bottle-feeding babies because of the dangers of fluorosis - the staining and pitting of teeth which can result from overexposure to fluoride.

“This advice should be heeded,” Mr Gormley said. “The balance of international evidence proves that water fluoridation should be stopped immediately.”

Mr Gormley said there had been a huge increase in fluorosis in Ireland in the last decade.

He said that 98 per cent of countries in Europe did not add fluoride to their tap water.

“Even up North it is not done. One thing Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley could agree on was that they don’t want fluoridation.”

Mr Gormley also raised concerns about the link between excess fluoride and bone cancer in boys, saying that one study showed boys who lived in areas with fluoridated water had a five times greater risk of contracting the disease.

“Fluoride is a toxic substance, we shouldn’t be taking it into our bodies,” he said.

The curious thing is that if one reads the ADA website one discovers that it actually and I quote:

ADA Positions & Statements

American Dental Association Supports Fluoridation

The American Dental Association unreservedly endorses the fluoridation of community water supplies as safe, effective and necessary in preventing tooth decay. This support has been the Association’s position since policy was first adopted in 1950.

and that

Infants, Fluoride and Bottled Water

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it will allow bottlers to claim that fluoridated water may reduce the risk of tooth decay. “Whether you drink fluoridated water from the tap or buy it in a bottle, you’re doing the right thing for your oral health,” says ADA executive director James B. Bramson, D.D.S. “Thanks to the FDA’s decision, bottlers can now claim what dentists have long known—that optimally fluoridated water helps prevent tooth decay.”

The ADA agrees with the FDA that this health claim is not intended for use on bottled water marketed to infants for whom lesser amounts of fluoride are appropriate. The appropriate amount of fluoride is essential to help prevent tooth decay. But fluoride intake above optimal amounts creates a risk for enamel (dental) fluorosis in teeth during their development before they erupt through the gums. Read more about how children can get the optimal amount of fluoride to protect their teeth.

Odd.

Yesterday Dick Ahlstrom the Science Editor of the IT brought together a mass of testimonials from health and scientific authorities that the opposite was the case.

“Removing fluoride is not a risk-free option,” said the Health Service Executive’s principal dental surgeon in the west, Sligo-based Dr Joe Mullen. “You certainly will see a rise in dental decay bringing increased pain, increased suffering, lost days at work and other problems,” Dr Mullen said.

The people who would suffer most were the poor.

“The clearest [ risk factor] with dental caries is poverty, which is true for so many other health issues,” he said. It is more difficult for less well-off sectors of society to afford toothbrushes, toothpaste and to gain access to dental services.

“The great thing about water fluoridation is it gets to everybody, rich or poor,” Dr Mullen said. “People on lower incomes benefit proportionately more than people on higher incomes.”

Fluoridation was brought in to counteract bad dental hygiene and its introduction has had a significant impact. The best countries to study for comparative purposes are Northern Ireland and Scotland where water is not fluoridated, but where the general population has similarly bad eating habits when it comes to snack eating and sugary drinks, Dr Mullen said.

“We know from dozens of studies here and studies with Northern Ireland which show a 50 per cent difference in dental caries rates,” he said.

Figures provided by the expert body show that in the 1960s the average rate of decayed, missing or filled teeth in five-year-olds here was 5.6 and 4.8 in Northern Ireland.

It is now 1.8 here compared to 4.5 in the North, where there is no fluoridation.

Stopping fluoridation would reverse this and increase dental problems here, Dr Mullen said. “We would expect to see our decay level equate to the North. I would expect to see an increase of 50 per cent.”

Now, again, perhaps it’s just me, but watching Dr. Strangelove many years ago I was very taken by the US commander Jack D. Ripper of the air base from which the unfortunate B-52 bombers were dispatched who was a sort of walking compendium of the fears of the anti-Communist right… high on his list was “what he believes is a Communist conspiracy which threatens to “sap and impurify” the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people with fluoridated water” (quote from wiki).

And ever since I’ve never been able to take it terribly seriously as an issue. Some months ago I was presented with a pile of Government reports and took the opportunity to read through them. Weirdly one of the most interesting was the Fluoridation Forum (available http://www.fluoridationforum.ie/)report which detailed in exhaustive detail medical findings from around the world.

Their conclusions? That the levels of fluoridation in Irish water supplies presented no threat, and indeed quite the opposite, it was of considerable benefit to public health.

There is an extremely large epidemiological database on human response to a low intake of
fluoride from tap water. It has been accepted by many expert groups at an international
level which have reviewed these data that there is no substantive evidence that fluoride
intakes in the range predicted for young infants by the exposure modelling in this risk
assessment are associated with adverse health effects other than enamel fluorosis (e.g.
Thiessen, 1988, CEPA, 1993, Janssen and Knaap, 1994, California EPA, 1997, US Institute of
Medicine, 1999, McDonagh et al., 2000,). The adverse effects observed in animal studies,
as summarised in the hazard characterisation section of the risk assessment and described
in more detail in Appendix 1, are not considered relevant for the purposes of the risk
assessment, since extensive epidemiological studies have not produced evidence that the
findings in animals can be extrapolated to human populations drinking fluoridated water
over many years (e.g. California EPA, 1997, US Institute of Medicine, 1999, McDonagh et
al., 2000,). It is therefore considered more appropriate to base the risk characterisation on
the available human data, rather than the animal data.

Some findings were made that were acted upon, as noted in a good editorial in the Irish Times today (words you don’t read here often) that:

Some changes were proposed. The level of fluoridation in tap water was reduced. And the Department of Health was urged to conduct public information programmes to minimise an excessive uptake of the mineral by small children through bottle-feeding or the use of fluoridated toothpaste. Fluorosis, involving the discoloration of teeth, was found to be the main disadvantage.

according to Dick Ahlstrom

Mr Gormley also raised fears about using fluoridated tap water to mix formula for bottle-fed babies because of the dangers of fluorosis. Fluorosis is not a health risk and fluorosis is less of a risk where the fluoride in water is kept at proper levels.

The IT editorial also notes that

Anyone growing up in Ireland of the 1960s will remember just how bad people’s teeth were. General poverty and inadequate oral hygiene meant few people retained a full set of teeth into middle age. Living with dentures and toothache was part of growing old. Then tap water was fluoridated. Since then, the situation has improved dramatically. The rate of tooth decay among five-year-olds has dropped from being 10 per cent higher than in Northern Ireland to less than half of the North’s figure today. Tap water in the North is not fluoridated.

and

At a time when the Irish Dental Association is balloting its members on whether to withdraw from a free dental scheme for medical cardholders, the fluoridation issue is an unhelpful distraction. Treatment for medical cardholders is so poor that they can wait for months to have a denture fitted. And orthodontic care for children can take years. As in the health services generally, those who can pay for dental treatment receive priority treatment.

Wiki has some interesting further information, for instance bottled water manufacturers are now contemplating adding fluoride to their products due to the shift in consumption patterns.

Look, I’m not averse to the argument that mass involuntary medication isn’t an unalloyed good. It offends my libertarian instincts considerably. But I can’t in all honestly see this as some sort of wedge issue that heralds worse in the future. Some proponents of fluoridation argue that it is similar to fortifying milk with vitamins, and that seems to me to be reasonable. And really, in a society where we prohibit smoking in pubs, but don’t ban it altogether, despite and because of the adverse affects that it has it seems almost perverse to raise this as an issue of any great import.

And I’m wondering too whether this is in some respects an attempt by the Green Party to burnish it’s individualist credentials and perhaps put a little truly clear blue water between it and the collectivist left.

Problem is, that politically at least, this is a non-issue which has already been thrashed out in considerable detail by the state, various stakeholders and concerned citizens (consider the list of those who made submissions to the Forum). And that General Jack D. Ripper tinge of sheer oddness is nothing the Green Party should seek to associate itself with.

Or as the IT concludes, perhaps with an implicit sideswipe at the GP (which I wish the GP hadn’t given them the opportunity to make) which indicates the lack of traction this issue may have more broadly:

Individuals who worry about excessive fluoridation can take steps to minimise their intake of the mineral, without denying its benefits to the most vulnerable sections of society. At this stage, political parties should concentrate on improving access to good quality dental and medical care rather than be diverted by this loony issue.

PS after writing this I noticed that Simon had also done a piece on it at the Dossing Times, which covers some of the same as the above…although my interest in this is not so much the issue itself interesting as it is as the way it plays with a broader public…

Yesterday’s Guardian brought us installment number two of the Guardian’s entirely premature (in my mind) three-part series about the conclusion to conflict in the North. So what did we learn? Well here’s an easy to read and quick to print out comparison of some of the key points (and is it just me or is the Guardian’s current page layout very tricky to read to say nothing of the curious omission of their TV review in the murky edition that is distributed in the RoI?).

Notable is the way in which the interview with Seamus Mallon is restricted to their website rather than published in the RoI distributed edition. Perhaps it’s down to the testy nature of his responses and a wish to spare our blushes. Probably not though.

Religion is something of a theme according to the Guardian in the dealings between Blair and Paisley (the Guardian - richly channelling the 17th century - actually uses the phrase “A fierce Protestant” in describing him):

Tony Blair has forged a special bond with the Rev Ian Paisley, the DUP leader who holds the future of the Northern Ireland peace process in his hands, by discussing their common interest in and commitment to Christianity.

And this is supported - in a fine example of one of those times when one wonders has the world actually gone mad - by no less an authority that Lord (once just plain old Paul when he wrote Marxist analyses of the situation in the North and also something of a Workers’ Party line on such things - or developed than line, it’s difficult to tell really) Bew in a truly gushing tribute.

“Blair is brilliant at seducing Paisley,” Lord Bew said. “This is the most amazing love affair, the last great Blairite romance.They are even exchanging books on religion. It is fantastic stuff. It is religious; it is romantic. It is brilliant. You have to hand it to him. Once again, when we thought the old maestro was fading, his capacity to seduce, politically speaking, is phenomenal.”

Tony Blair has forged a special bond with the Rev Ian Paisley, the DUP leader who holds the future of the Northern Ireland peace process in his hands, by discussing their common interest in and commitment to Christianity.

So let’s compare and contrast some of the ideas that come up.

Here are some of the participants response to introductory gambits by Blair:

Trimble

Q: What were your first impressions of Tony Blair?

A: He revealed to me [in 1993] that when he was growing up family summer holidays were spent going to Donegal, to spend one week at a hotel in Donegal and then the other week touring round family members in the north of Ireland. That showed that he had an interest and a personal interest. That was significant.

McGuinness

Q:He didn’t mention his Co Donegal roots?

A: He never mentioned it once.

Here by contrast is an assessment of Blair’s character. Spot who it is who ticks the most, median and least satisfied boxes.

McGuinness:

We had to think on the gallop and make our own assessments and judgments based on how we found him. It was clear to us that he was showing very clear signs and indications that he was up to do the business as well.

I wasn’t able to make an assessment of where Blair got [his commitment] from. Where did his intellectual and emotional engagement in the process come from?…It probably came from knowing and understanding that this was a conflict that had gone on for, at that stage, over 25 years. What powered him in all of this? Was it a desire to be the first British prime minister in history to make an important contribution? It didn’t really matter. What mattered was whether or not we were dealing with someone who made an impression on us. Somebody who…was challenging the Thatcher mentality that the enemy was the republicans, the enemy was the IRA, that they had to be defeated at all costs. I think it was his willingness to do that that made an impression on us.

Mallon:

Q: Did you feel Tony Blair was being an honest broker?

Mallon: “Here was a guy with a moral dimension to everything. And I’m not sure at what point I began to realise that in his political dealings he was amoral and didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘honesty’.

“I don’t know whether that came all in one go, how quickly it came. At a point I came more and more to the view that this man’s word was worth nothing. I still don’t think it’s worth anything, by the way.

“That’s one of the most remarkable things about him. This man with a moral dimension to everything, who applied morality to nothing. I got increasingly to the point where I wouldn’t have taken his word for anything. And that was as a result of the dealings that I had with him.”

Paisley:

“We shared books that I thought would be good for him to read and I’m sure he read them. He always takes books away with him.”

And sure why not? Makes one wonder whether George W. Bush and the curiously close ‘relationship’ was something of an understudy for the big one…

In any case a remarkable insight into the chameleon like persona of one T. Blair. Not quite all things to all men, but close. Progressive to SF. Deeply religious to Paisley, and downright amoral to Mallon. I guess people take away what they want to from meeting him.

Anyhow, onwards.

The outcome of the Process itself:

Trimble

My criticism comes from 2001-02 where he increasingly got the focus wrong. I remember we said to him many times that his focus was always seen to be on republican difficulties and doing things to help them. Whereas we pointed out that, ‘Look the real problem threatening the agreement is the fact that unionist support has slipped and has continuing to slip because of what they see as a continuing flow of concessions to republicans and you have got to address that’. And they didn’t and they were blase about it.

There seemed to be a sort of notion that no matter how bad things were, I would always be able somehow to pull the rabbit out of the hat. I do remember once one meeting in Downing Street saying to Blair that the way these things are going that I am in danger of losing my parliamentary seat. A senior aide who was with him laughed and said no that wouldn’t happen. But there we are.

McGuinness:

The issue of arms was obviously a highly vexed issue…It had to be dealt with sensibly from a republican point of view. It had to be dealt with in the type of time frame that was laid down by ourselves. But the issue of arms was dealt with to the satisfaction of De Chastelain, the taoiseach and the British prime minister. And of course prior to that, in 2005, the IRA did make the just as symbolically, maybe even more, important statement that the war was over. So the combination of the war being over, the combination of dealing with the issue of arms obviously could only have happened within the time frame that was dictated by the republican negotiators. To deal with it in the time frame of others was to run the risk of totally destroying the entire process and we were not prepared to do that.

Mallon:

“Yes. There was a fundamental misjudgment … Anyone who knows the north of Ireland would not have contemplated actions which sold middle unionism to Paisley, just as the same way in which our party [the SDLP] was treated.

“Especially with the exclusion of Mark [Durkan] from the [later stages of] talks at Downing Street. Even the US delegate was there. It just wasn’t clumsy… It was a deliberate decision by the two sovereign governments.

“It wasn’t clumsiness. It wasn’t judgments that went wrong. It was strategy. You had [Jonathan] Powell and others in Dublin who had decided that to make this work you had to dispense with middle unionism and middle nationalism. I think it was as calculated as that.

“[But] middle unionism won’t go with Paisley and middle nationalism won’t go with the Shinners [Sinn Féin]. There’s your instability.”

By the by I find this middle nationalism/unionism argument enormously puzzling. For thirty years there was no real meeting of minds between the two. In part that was for the obvious reason that both parts of the ‘middle’ had to look over their shoulders at more recalcitrant parties. But it was also, I suspect, that there was no great pressure for them to do a deal. For Seamus Mallon (famously he of the ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’) to retreat to this sort of analysis demonstrates…well something similar to what Splintered Sunrise has noted in his excellent critique of the recent Assembly Elections (not that I agree with the critique in it’s entirety but it’s all food for thought). The middle ground (and middle class) appears to have held onto a sense of political entitlement. That’s great, but in a society like the one we see in Northern Ireland such an entitlement vanishes like the morning mist. Middle unionism has certainly shifted some way towards Paisley (or more accurately the DUP). The parts of it uncomfortable with that project, and the UUP has shifted towards Alliance. Middle nationalism has shifted more than some way towards SF.

And it reminds me of a conference I was at in Dublin back early in 2003 where I was talking to an intelligent thoughtful Unionist political scientist. He was telling me that he could see the centre ground shifting in Unionism towards the DUP, but that that dynamic of itself would ultimately tame and moderate that party. I remember being entirely unconvinced, even surprised by his equanimity at this prospect. But his argument was that the GFA could be implemented much more effectively in this sort of a context.

Perhaps he’ll be proved right.

I know mandatory sentencing for criminal offences doesn’t work. I’ve seen the reports and read the analysis helpfully given to me by friends over the years trying to encourage me away from my position of strongly supporting mandatory sentences for drug offences.

And then a judge gives a rapist a three month suspended sentence. Wednesday has more information, but Twenty Major gets across my sense of disgust with characteristic bluntness.

As a friend of mine, currently a trainee Barrister in Dublin, confessed to me, it’s not that Judges don’t live on this planet, they’re not even aware that it exists.

Reading the Guardian today we are presented with a new three part series about the Peace Process. For some curious reason there is an unseemly haste about the enterprise that reminds of successive histories of the Palestinian Israeli peace process which were rushed out after each ‘great moment’ only to be superseded by the next… and with a couple of weeks to go until we find out about whether power sharing is a runner I’m reminded about the old “It’s too soon to tell” riposte by Chou en Lai on being asked about the effect of the French Revolution. Surely they could wait until Ian and Martin are safely esconced within Stormont. Or perhaps not. Why spoil the general air of optimism?

Most entertaining was Peter Mandelson’s curiously mealy mouthed and egocentric views on the Peace Process I couldn’t help but be struck by the thought that his words might be deliberate despite his later retraction on Radio 4 (later still undermined by the Guardian releasing the tape - and what a sign that is that he is out of favour, or is it?).

So what did he say that was so awful? Well this for example:

“In order to keep the process in motion [Tony] would be sort of dangling carrots and possibilities in front of the republicans which I thought could never be delivered, that it was unreasonable and irresponsible to intimate that you could when you knew that you couldn’t.”

I’m getting the distinct impression Peter wasn’t too fond of Republicans. Not that that is necessarily a problem. But at this remove, why the sourness?

And this too from 1999 when he was asked to write a ’secret’ letter (and does that have any meaning in this day and age) to the IRA about the ‘on-the-runs’…

“I was at a performance of the Royal Ballet visiting Belfast and I was taken out three times during the performance to talk to No 10 about this,” Mr Mandelson said. “I said … I am not prepared to do it because I have my own standing to think of and a secret side letter is not how I want to do business. They came back and said that the prime minister takes a different view, that you do need to make these offers to the republicans and he wants you to write this letter. I said if the prime minister wants to make these offers I am afraid he will have to write his own letter.”

More curious again is his odd phrasing about meetings with Sinn Féin leaders.

“When Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness entered the room you were expected to stand up. They were senior military, they were top brass. Apart from being leaders of Sinn Féin they were leaders of the military council. And they knew it and they knew you knew it. They were lordly, this pair. They were always operating psychological games on me, always. They are bloody hard people. There was very, very tough psychological game-playing, a lot of unspoken intimidation and I played it back not by intimidating them but by not being fazed by it. I did not address them as if they were leaders of the military council, so that fiction was maintained … But I had a way of letting them know that I knew what was going on … It was as if you were talking to some recalcitrant member of the lobby staff of the Wolverhampton Gazette is the way I handled it: firmly.”

Have to be honest. I find it inconceivable that people were expected to stand up when Adams et al entered a room because of some sort of link to PIRA.  And one of the reputedly sharpest minds in British politics is unable to remember that it’s called the ‘Army’ council? If he’s getting it wrong on this superficial level just what level of analysis can we hope for on other more fundamental issues? Then there’s the fact that he comes across as seriously intimidated by the pair despite the overly emphatic denials. And note that cod-parochial references to his local newspaper do not a statesman make.

However: firmly.

Still, is it me an my cynicism that sees other hands at work here? No harm at this point for the idea that SF have done even better than already thought to filter out, particularly in the wake of last weeks results.

And no harm either to talk it up, even if only to point out to the DUP that if they’re not in government soon who knows what may be next down the line if Plan B (something close to joint authority by Dublin and London or let’s be realistic, London and Dublin) goes into effect? After all, those British Prime Ministers are clearly so malleable if one believes Mandelson, there’s no knowing what sort of magic Ahern, Adams and McGuinness may work on Brown, or Cameron for that matter.

For curiosity’s sake, took a quick look at some of the transfers for Independent Republican candidates in the Assembly. Unsurprisingly, there was a clear, though not consistent, bias towards transferring to Sinn Féin candidates. It should be clear that this is on a very small sample. Not all 18 constituencies had Independent Republicans, and in a number of places like West Tyrone and Mid-Ulster, Sinn Féin candidates were elected before the Independents were eliminated.

Starting with the largest vote, Davy Hyland’s 2,268 transferred at just over 35% to Sinn Féin’s Mickey Brady. The SDLP picked up 701 votes, 279 for Sharon Haughey and 422 for Dominic Bradley. The high vote for the latter related no doubt to him being a Newry based candidate, like Hyland. About a third of Hyland’s votes were non-transferable.

In Foyle, Peggy O’Hara’s vote was interesting as it was the second worst Independent Republican vote for transferring to Sinn Féin. Eamon McCann of the SWP picked up 588, SDLP candidates picked up 471 and Sinn Féin got 440, just under a quarter. Somewhat similarly, Geraldine Taylor’s RSF vote in West Belfast of 437, went best to Seán Mitchell of the SWP who picked up 139 votes, with the SDLP collecting 85 and Sinn Féin 88, just over 20%. The antagonism between RSF and Sinn Féin on the ground in West Belfast might have it’s part to play here.

In South Down, former Sinn Féin councillor Martin Cunningham saw his vote continue to decline and he picked up 448 votes. When he was eliminated, it was at the same time as 755 Alliance votes, but they would be more likely to transfer to SDLP, Green and UUP than to Sinn Féin or the DUP. On that count, Sinn Féin picked up 220 votes, the SDLP 190 and the Greens 323. It’s difficult to see much of Sinn Féin’s vote coming from Alliance and some of the SDLP vote must have. Certainly, it’s a transfer rate within the republican bloc of around 40%.

A similar picture can be seen in Fermanagh/South Tyrone where Gerry McGeough (827) and McManus of RSF (432) got eliminated along with 536 Alliance votes. The Sinn Féin candidates picked up 633, the SDLP picked up 495. Again, this suggests a substantial inter-republican transfer of possibly as high as 50%, but more likely in the 40s.

The last two constituencies were smaller. Barry Toman of RSF polled 419 votes and was eliminated with a couple of hardline independent unionists. We can assume therefore that the 139 (33%) votes Sinn Féin got, and the 84 (20%) the SDLP picked up, were from him. In East Derry, the RSF’s McGonigle was eliminated with 395 votes alongside an Independent Unionist. Thus, again, we can assume the bulk of the 231 (58%) received by Sinn Féin, and the 43 (11%) received by the SDLP, were from him. Interestingly, of the Sinn Féin vote, only 16 were transferred to former RUC officer Billy Leonard.

Are there trends here? Well on such a small sample, this needs to be taken with no shortage of salt but it seems there is a little bit of an urban/rural divide. In West Belfast and Foyle, Sinn Féin and the SDLP got about the same from Independent Republicans, but the SWP got more than either. In rural areas though, the Sinn Féin vote was much higher, recording transfer rates in the 40s and even 50s.

We’re talking about small figures here, but if there are Independent Republicans running in the Super Council elections, small handfuls of transfers could make a difference. It’s also interesting to wonder how many of these voters were new voters who had abstained in the past but once drawn to the polling booth, decided to transfer. In theory, as well as winning over former Sinn Féin voters, Independents could have brought out an alienated republican vote that then transferred to Sinn Féin, though it is more likely that in rural constituencies these were Sinn Féin voters sending a protest signal.

Not sure if anyone caught this in the Guardian on Wednesday. With the day that was in it it seemed possible to briefly raise our eyes from the electoral gutter to the clean fresh sky above us and beyond that space itself.

Er…no, actually best not. Let’s go back to the Assembly Election, because I read one of the most disturbing reports in a newspaper I’ve ever seen.

The Planetary Defence Conference is taking place soon with the aim of establishing ways to deal with asteroids that threaten to impact with the Earth. Near-Earth Objects ranging from grains of dust to moving mountains kilometers in size are fairly certain to have caused up to extinction level events in the past.

Various techniques have been suggested for dealing with them and the Conference will consider them in some detail. These range from attaching propulsion systems to them in order to deflect them to attempting to destroy them with nuclear weapons and such ideas are well known from films such as Deep Impact and Armageddon. Still, interesting and all as that is what really my eye was the information contained further down the story. When discussing one possible threat to the planet it noted:

    All eyes for the moment are on Apophis, a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered in 2004, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036. If it struck, Apophis would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole planet would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. There could be dark skies for a year or more and crops worldwide would be destroyed.

But it could actually be worse.

    Many smaller objects around the Earth’s orbit break up when they reach the atmosphere, with no impact beyond a short fireworks display. An NEO wider than 1km, however, collides with Earth every few hundred thousand years and an NEO larger than 6km, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every 100m years. Experts agree that we are overdue for a big one.

This potential threat has led the Conference to consider the following…

    The critical question psychologists will address is whether details of an impending impact should be kept secret, to avoid widespread panic. In December 2004, for example, scientists calculated that if Apophis were to hit it would land somewhere along a line that crossed central Europe, parts of the Middle East, the most populated district on Earth (the Ganges River valley), and on out across the Philippines. At the time, the information was kept secret and many NEO scientists agreed it was the right thing to do.

Wait a second. The threat assessment was of such significance (i.e. it was thought that the chances it could actually happen were sufficiently high) that it was felt better in the interests of public order to keep a lid on the information? Isn’t that sort of remarkable and how come we’ve heard so little about it up until now? Granted the threat passed. We’re still, mostly, here. But even so…

    But Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says secrecy goes against the advice of many experts in risk management. “There are myths about the downsides of putting all information out, used as rationalisations by astronomers and space agency officials for withholding information, but which are counter to the policies of expert social scientists.”

    He says the perception that members of the public would immediately panic about an impending impact has no support from studies of social psychology. “If risk communication is done poorly, people may become unduly alarmed, they may lose faith in the veracity of official statements, they may misunderstand what’s being communicated, they may ignore important warnings.”

To be honest it’s not so much the threat of panic that worries me, but the threat of a giant rock hitting the planet.

And, to my mind, it indicates how parochial much of our thinking is. We’ve been discussing climate change here over the week, and it’s always struck me that whether caused by anthropogenic sources or otherwise there is an imperative to act, if only because it forces us to think smarter about our technologies, our utilisation of resources and our place on the planet…

There is of course an appeal, and it’s understandable, for a simpler way of life, but I think that’s a serious error, indeed it’s hard to see how that can be achieved with a planetary population in the billions short of some very unpleasant measures.

This as a great opportunity to shift ourselves forward into using much more clever technologies in transport, energy and conservation. If we are dependent upon land transport or slower air transport then it makes sense to use the most advanced technologies available and make them more efficient.

And, like it or not, to sustain our planetary environment we must, of necessity, have a presence in space both to monitor the biosphere and to warn of and guard against incoming problems, must, of necessity have a high technology civilisation. Not for puerile issues of national or international pride or because technological progress is an end in itself (although arguably it can be when developed appropriately) but as a matter of survival and since it’s the smart thing to do. And also because, to be honest, this universe we find ourselves in is implacably hostile in it’s simple indifference not merely to human life but to the biosphere in general. The current efforts to establish a means of dealing with climate change are enormously important, but climate change isn’t the only threat we as a species or the planet faces, yet, ironically we are, as ever, the only species on the planet in a position to do something about it.

I bought today’s Irish Times, specifically to get a breakdown of the Assembly results in the North, and found myself reading shallow, inaccurate and clearly biased election analysis. It could only be the work of Noel Whelan. (Sub required)

The article is an analysis of Sinn Féin and while making very valid cricitisms of Gerry Adams’ recent abysmal performance on Week in Politics, contains the usual Whelan sloppiness.  Commenting on the Sinn Féin posters around the city advertising their election rally on Friday night (Standing room only I heard) he makes the curious claim that they’re illegal, ignoring the fact that there were posters for the SWP Marxism event (As much sitting room as one could desire by all accounts) throughout Dublin as well. “…political posters, like any posters, are illegal. “

In reality, it used to be entirely legal to put whatever you wanted up on the lamposts, free speech and all, but the Council has been trying to ban them for some time. At present, postering is allowed but I think you have to inform the Council you’re putting up the posters first, and certain streets are ‘poster-free’. It’s an interesting issue actually and one I might return to at some stage. Whelan, btw, is a barrister.

Next up: “Sinn Féin surged in the Republic in 2002 and 2003…”

2003? What happened in 2003 Noel? There was an Assembly election, and Sinn Féin did surge in it, but that’s not in the Republic.

But his best gaffe is right at the end when he says that the Greens and Sinn Féin are competing for the same vote. Sinn Féin’s support is basically working class, male and young. Green support is basically middle class and more female than male. Look at the constituencies they compete in. Greens strong in Dublin South East, Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire. Sinn Féin strong in places like Dublin North West, Dublin South West and so on, large, sprawling working class estates and disadvantaged areas. Whatever competition there is for an ‘anti-establishment’ vote is marginal.

Noel is no stranger to mistakes. As the Sunday Independent pointed out, his 2002 Tallyman’s Guide was notoriously gaffe-prone and strewn with errors of fact and analysis. I didn’t read it, but I do own a copy of his Tallyman’s Guide to the Assembly Elections in 2003, similarly laden with factual inaccuracies and no political analysis worthy of the name, simply candidate profiles cut and pasted. He actually co-wrote the book with Nicholas Whyte, whose site on Northern elections is outstanding stuff and he no doubt contributed most of the facts and figures, making one wonder what Noel did to earn his by-line. 

His own forays into electoralism have not gone well. He failed to get elected as a Fianna Fáil candidate in 1997 in Dublin South East, failed to get elected to the Seanad that same year, achieveing a derisory 20 votes, and failed to get a nomination for 2002. This does not however, prevent him from using his position as a columnist for the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner, to attack the enemies of Fianna Fáil and the PDs, for whom his wife worked in the past. I think Phoenix was pointing this out in greater detail in a recent issue.

The mystery of Noel Whelan is why, and how, he managed to carve out a reputation for political analysis. He has no qualifications in it. He is a failed candidate, and only ran the once if you don’t count the Seanad. His books are laughable and his bias eye-wateringly evident. Yet he is a regular panellist and writes two weekly columns for national newspapers and has another book just out ahead of the next election.

Anyone who has an answer to this can drop a note to Frank Little at the usual place.

Just a brief post to capture a couple of thoughts. I was able to follow the Assembly Election results throughout the day and a number of scenes impressed themselves upon me.
Firstly the remarkably disciplined Sinn Féin electoral machine. Remember guys, that’s not all it’s about.

Secondly the apparent evaporation, at this point at least, of the anti-GFA Republican vote. I’m sort of surprised, but then again, with two Ard Fheiseanna safely behind SF perhaps I shouldn’t be.

Thirdly the reversion of Dr. Paisley to type in interviews today.  And yet some of the noises coming out of the DUP camp were much more measured.

Fourthly the fact the Greens have put up a good showing.

Finally the sense that however else it goes this is likely to be worth at least a percentage point or two on the SF poll ratings in the South.