Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week March 20, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.12 comments
A bumper week, with many deserving candidates missing out (like Eamonn Delaney who the abolition of tuition fees, and Marc Coleman, who thinks banking standards are now being set too high).
Is it just me, or has Daniel McConnell has discovered a new branch of mathematics; one where incrememental increases make up for all the cuts and tax rises public sector workers have been hit by?
The perception of a pay freeze and the pension levy hitting public sector workers stands in stark contrast to the reality of State employees in permanent, pensionable jobs. They are still seeing their gross salaries increase because the Government is allowing them to receive increased pay purely on the basis of time served.
Could it be that the word “gross” reflects the reality of the reporting better than the amount of pay actually going into people’s pockets?
Good to see that that massive election victory has not dimmed the quality of contribution we can expect from Shane Ross. In an article that should have been a companion piece to last week’s winner, he tells us the real soloution to our problems. Is it using some of the massive power of the state to create jobs? Don’t be silly. Is it using the publicly-owned companies to generate jobs, wealth and income from trade? Of course not. Is it taxing the wealth created and moved through this country properly? (Indignant splutter). It’s bankruptcy (fair enough on defaulting on the debts of the banking class and property speculators) allied to swapping our masters from Merkel and Sarko to our true friends, O’Bama (copyright Spintered Sunrise) and Elizabeth II, who we can even grovel to on the cheap when they come to visit.
The US and Britain remain our largest trading partners. The month of May will see a visit to Ireland from the heads of state of both nations. We should not yet ask them to bring the royal cheque book or the presidential seal — but we should remind our European partners that if they drive us to bankruptcy, we have older friends elsewhere.
And speaking of last week’s Stupid Statement of the Week, Brendan O’Connor got a mention for arguing that the Celtic Tiger had made Irish people leave their homes and be sociable. This week, proving that even he probably doesn’t worry about consistency in what he writes from one week to the next we get this.
But there is a huge argument to be made that now is a time to look out again to our neighbours and our communities. Maybe it’s time to accept that we might have overdone individualism in this country for the last 10 years, to the point where lots of people of a certain economic status became almost narcissistic. And maybe it’s time for us to start reaching out to each other again, time to rebuild the collective.
Not so much a stupid statement in itself, but some might take it as a demonstration perhaps of how stupid the Sindo columnists think their audience is.
Eamonn Keane has a superb entry this week. What will happen if those nasty Germans, forgetting how the Versailles treaty reparations hurt them, insist, like Shylock, on their pound of flesh in the form of the Republic’s coporation tax? Why the country will turn into Weimar Germany of course.
The consequences of wringing this corporate tax pound of flesh from us are very serious.
Politically, if Enda Kenny surrenders on this he is finished. Secondly, there will be the danger of a rise in extremism. Go back to post- war Germany and see what the punitive Treaty of Versailles created. It will be easy fodder for both far left and right wing elements.
Is it just me, or might there be something deeply distasteful in taking the stereotypical evil, money-grubbing Jew that is Shylock, and using a comparison to him to suggest an Irish Nazism might result? Maybe we can ask Michael McDowell, who talks about the corporation tax argument with the French and Germans in terms of appeasement.
Despite all the Nazi nonsense, this week’s undoubted winner, and also winner of the lack of self-awareness award, is Aengus Fanning.
Now our people are being crucified on the altar of German monetarist dogma which, it seems, we daren’t challenge.
German monetarist dogma caused this mess? Really Aengus?
Dessie Ellis interview… March 20, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, The Left.14 comments
…a bit late on this one which appeared in yesterday’s Mail, conducted by Jason O’Toole. But absent the scarifying headline ‘Is blood on your hands Deputy?’, a tribute to the sub editors, this is quite interesting.
First up this Dessie Ellis is yet another TD who can be seen as tracing a lineage back to the Official IRA [or in some of the personalities, the WP] in this Dáil, in his case directly.
As a teenager, Dessie was first ‘associated with’ the Official IRA before going on to join the Provisional IRA. He explains: ‘We have a long history of Republicans in our family — my two grandfathers fought in 1916. I’ve been involved in politics from about 17 — street protests. At a very young age, I was very politicised and I was on lot of marches up North and in Dublin.’ Did he light a match that day when the British Embassy was burnt down by protesters angry over Bloody Sunday? ‘I won’t comment on what I done or what I didn’t do! I was there in that and it was a strange time.’
He makes a fair point…indeed a very intriguing one.
Dessie insists that there are prominent members of Labour today — politicians who had previously been members of Democratic Left, the Workers’ Party and Official Sinn Féin before joining Labour — who were also members of the IRA. ‘There are quite a few hypocrites there. I’m well aware of that. I know some of them from my past. So, I know the positions that they held. Some of them are still there. Nobody gets scrutinised as much as us [Sinn Féin].’
Nor is he coy about his own history:
Dessie grew up in Finglas West and was childhood friends with IRA leader John Noonan, who is now persona non grata within Sinn Féin after being allegedly linked with criminality. He is being investigated by the Criminal Assets Bureau. Ellis doesn’t directly comment on the allegations facing the man he ‘grew up together’ with. Yet, he adds: ‘I have absolutely no time for any criminality or people lining their own pocket or using the name of the Republican movement in any way. They’ve let themselves down and their families down and the country down. I made sure that it didn’t happen, to the best of my ability, in my area. That’s not to say it didn’t happen.’ While Noonan went on to become the adjutant officer of the Dublin Brigade, Dessie explains that he ‘was not really active’ as an IRA member in the 26 counties. ‘It would have been a bit different for me, I was more closely associated with Northern Command.’ What position did he hold? ‘I wouldn’t want to be saying too much. Let’s just say I worked with Northern Command and I held a senior position for many years. I was an active volunteer in the struggle.’
And:
Was he ever on the Army Council? ‘I won’t answer that,’ he quickly replies. Does he have blood on his hands? ‘I don’t feel I have blood on my hands; I think that’s the wrong way to describe things. I believe things happened that shouldn’t have happened. I don’t think anybody in the Republican movement was happy with certain things that happened. We were in a very vicious situation for a long, long time and there’s a lot of people, if it comes to, have to answer over what happened.’ Would he accept that some of his actions caused deaths? ‘Well, I’m not going to respond to that. But I’m accepting that as a Republican, that things happened that shouldn’t have happened. And there is a certain responsibility when that happens.
He was on hunger strike for 37 or so days, during his extradition to the UK from the Curragh Camp where he was serving an 8 year sentence.
He became so weak that at one stage, he had to be brought in a wheelchair into court for a hearing in Britain. ‘They extradited me during the hunger strike. It would have been 30-something days. I had been brought into the court in England in a wheelchair, which was weird.’ Was he really prepared to die? ‘From day one, I had that pencilled in my mind. And, as things got closer, that was the way I was thinking. I certainly was [prepared to die] up until a point then when I was given a briefing from the solicitors who were quite adamant that they felt we had a case and that we would win it. ‘It was quite clear that part of their conspiracy charge was that I knowingly knew that items were to be used in the UK, right? ‘Number one — the jury didn’t buy that and understandably because there was no evidence whatsoever that I was ever in the UK. On top of that, there was a case of double jeopardy. So, on that basis, I took a decision to discontinue with the hunger strike. It was quite a hard decision, amazingly. We won the case. ‘The solicitor was dead correct on what we would win it on. I was relieved anyway.
But he has a sense of failure over not going through with it.
Dessie admits that he feels guilty about deciding to give up his hunger strike and face the charges. ‘The psychological effects of not following through were with me. And I don’t think people understand, failure is not something I contemplate in my life. And I always felt that I had failed in that, you know? ‘And it still rankles with me that there was a certain failure. A failure to follow through with what I intended to do.’ But you wouldn’t be alive? ‘Well, that’s another thing. ‘Whatever, it’s still with me even to this day.
He also notes:
After winning his case, Dessie confesses that he returned to Ireland and continued being an active IRA member ‘until the Good Friday Agreement’. He also admits that he was ‘probably’ lucky never to be re-arrested during this time-frame. Apart from hunger strike, did he ever come close to dying? ‘I have in the past, yes.’ How close? ‘Close enough.’ Was he shot at? ‘Yes. I won’t go into it, though.’ So, does he consider himself lucky to be alive today? ‘I would say that’s a fair assessment.’ After his father’s death in 1996, Dessie decided to give up his lucrative TV shop business to focus on constituency work as a Sinn Féin councillor. ‘I redone the business and I set it up at the side of my mother’s house and we had it going very well. And then when my father died, really my heart wasn’t there. ‘I gave up my business. I was making a lot of money, but it wasn’t about money. So, I’ve lived on air for years. I’ve been a full-time councillor for ten years. To me, it’s more than just about being a TD — it’s a life.’
This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Harald Grosskopf, Synthesist March 19, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....2 comments
Yes, yes I will.
Over the last few weeks, bar the piece from Yourcousin, you’ll have seen music from the early 1980s in this slot. And why stop now when we’re on a roll?
So, for your pleasure, here’s Harald Grosskopf, or Großkopf. 1970s. Berlin School, played with Ash Ra Tempel. Drummer and keyboard player and is an integral though somewhat unsung part of the kosmische scene. Unsurprisingly given that connection he also worked with Klaus Schulze on the latters excellent Moondawn, which was given it’s own ‘This Weekend…’ some while back (and is credited with ‘electronics’).
I wasn’t aware of the Schulze connection when I first heard this solo album from Grosskopf, entitled Synthesist, from 1980 but it makes perfect sense. There’s the same undertow to the music, something that while perfectly of its time somehow has weathered the years vastly better than one might have any reason to expect.
But it’s also fair to say that unlike some [most] electronic tinged music from that period it has a certain sophistication which sets it apart. And whereas Schulze is slower and more considered Grosskopf’s work is speedier, perhaps a function of his being a drummer. And the bass is further down in the mix than might be expected while the sequencers and minimoog propel the material along.
Ignore, if you can, the cover, which is… ahem…of its time, right down to the clunky yellow and orange ‘neon’ inspired type and the photograph of Grosskopf covered in what appears to be silver paint.
Listen instead to the music. The faux guitar lines on “Emphasis” show its roots, so to speak (and are not a little Hawkwind like too), check out though the first track “So Weit, So Gut”, which has a surprisingly contemporary sound to it. Or the title track which has been remixed by the interesting Blondes outfit. Then there’s “Transcendental Overdrive” which is a bit more 70s, and no less interesting. As is “1847 – Earth”. Tai Ki, unfortunately not available on YouTube sounds for its first minute and a half like something New Order would have been working on a few years later. Trauma is more ambient with hollow bell like sounds in the background while B. Aldrian swells and surges across its five minutes only to fade out in arpeggiated notes.
For some this may in parts be a bit saccharine, but those sequencers and beats are frequently insistent, close to Krautrock, even if striking off for pastures new -no surprise there, and the melodic lines are just fine.
Grosskopf is still working away and the album was rereleased last month, with a strikingly less – er – striking cover – along with a bonus disc of remixes by a range of contemporary groups including Blondes and others.
Enjoy.
So Weit, So Gut
Synthesist
Transcendental Overdrive
1847 – Earth
Emphasis
B. Aldrian
If it’s the hippies and the liberals fault…. why, it must be John Waters on Gadafy. March 18, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.27 comments
Astounding is the only word for Waters latest contribution.. I’d sort of managed to ignore until now his piece from the previous which appeared to suggest that any of us on the left are simply middle class hypocrites. Or somesuch.
But that pales in comparison to…
…the ‘liberal’ baiting.
IT IS strange to read, in the liberal newspapers, articles and editorials demanding that the international community “do something” about Libya. Strange because it is impossible to forget that these same newspapers led the charge against George W Bush and Tony Blair when they “did something” about Iraq.
The truth is that the international community is immobilised not by military issues concerning intervention in Libya, or by any argument concerning the justness of such an initiative, but by a cultural paralysis that has rendered the western “powers” powerless in the face of tyranny and evil. The ideology promulgated by liberal western media is the most significant cause of this paralysis.
The Daily Mail style language…
It has been fascinating to observe the demeanour of Muammar Gadafy since the outset of this present episode. At first, three weeks ago, he seemed confused and besieged, a tyrant who appeared to be losing his twisted grip on his people. But, after this initial period of hesitation, he has become a new man. It is as if he has assessed the mood of the world and realised that the West is all hat and no bottle, that nobody is going to take him on.
The inapposite efforts to make us all responsible, and note again how leftists are hypocritical.
He kills his own people in air-attacks and strikes back at rebel insurgents with force and confidence, promising an “amnesty” to those who leave down their weapons and abandon their burst for freedom. Their surrenders – in effect their suicides – ought to shame the West, its leaders and peoples, except that, due to the influence of its dominant generation of leftist agitators and opinion formers, our cultures are too choked by hypocrisy to any longer have any shame about these matters.
And it’s not at all about Gadafy, not really, nope, it really is about us. Well, you and me, not JW. Obviously.
Gadafy affects to blame al-Qaeda for the uprising in Libya, knowing such claims to be nonsense. But he has understood something al-Qaeda intuited years ago: that the West was too weakened by complacency and populism for its leaders to offer it any real resistance.
Then we trip merrily to the bathetic.
Al-Qaeda was briefly proved wrong, back in 2003, when Bush and Blair embarked on a mission to reassert the right of the West to police the world according to its own much-vaunted principles: freedom, democracy, justice and truth.
The invasion of Iraq was only in part about taking out the tyrant Saddam; it was also about sending a signal to the world that the West was awake and watching.
And this fascinating assertion…
We know what happened. Both leaders were pursued by the elites of their societies, led by mischievous and cynical media forces, and eventually subjected to cultural impeachment and banished in disgrace. So far, there have been five major British-government investigations into Blair’s decision as prime minister to support the US-led invasion of Iraq; thus far, four of these have found that he acted legally and in good faith.
And it’s still about us…
But still, he is compared to murderous tyrants like Radovan Karadzic and Saddam Hussein by people who have never been called upon to stand up for a principle in the whole of their lives.
And the hippies. Though, and who the hell am I to talk, in this regard he might perhaps think about a hair cut.
Employing a spurious calculus of carnage that factored out the million Iraqis killed by Saddam, the ageing counterculturalists of the West have conducted an eight-year trial of the only western leaders who have been prepared to face down tyrants on the basis of moral principle and human empathy.
The unmentioned legacy of all this is a cultural paralysis that promises any tyrant anywhere a free rein to torture and obliterate his own people.
Then there’s an oblique dig at…well, read it and make up your own mind.
Compared with Saddam, Gadafy is a sitting duck, hated by his people far more than he is feared by them, and elaborately surrounded by female bodyguards as though further to taunt the West with its own spinelessness and self-imposed impotence.
And this is pretty offensive too…
Barack Obama is the embodiment of this culture of hypocrisy and childishness: a black president who is president because he is black, a walking advertisement for left-liberal vanity, a man who can match, word for word, the verbal flatulence of an era characterised by delusion, cowardice and empty talk. A fortnight ago, when Gadafy was still vulnerable, Obama loudly declared that the Libyan leaders “must go”, but since then he has done precisely nothing to enable such an outcome.
And it’s still about us, mutters the sage who…er… by the way, has never had to make an actual political choice any greater than you or me (or actually less, given that most of us are pretty activist) over his life…
Obama is the elected representation of the postwar generations who never understood that politics is about choosing the lesser of evils. Even had he the personal courage and determination to act against Gadafy, Obama could not do so, because the commitment to do nothing in such situations is central to the unwritten contract he has made with those who delivered him to what was once the most powerful political position in the world.
And here’s more stuff about the hippies…
Gadafy knew exactly what he was doing when he warned the West that an intervention could cause “another Vietnam”. This phrase is the hypnotist’s code word, calculated to invoke the trance of a generation of opinion formers who remain in a repetitive loop of retro-sentiment defined by the counter-cultural mantras of youths lived out in a completely different world.
A different world you say? Pointless no fly zone – eh? A world where the centre right is in power across Europe?
One can argue the no fly zone either way, though I’m not agin.
But as if to put Waters piece to the torch almost as soon as the ink is dry, near enough immediately it was called, with – er – US support, Gadafy’s government calls a ceasefire.
This Week at The Irish Election Literature Blog March 18, 2011
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Irish Election Literature Blog.Tags: Irish Politics
16 comments
A quiet week leftwise …..
A Flyer from The Workers Partys Michael White running in the 1983 Dublin Central by-election
From 1997 Fiachra O Céilleachair of the Democratic Left is “A New Voice for Ring”
On then to some from the forthcoming Seanad Elections…
“Pictures are illustrative and do not signify endorsement of him by those depicted” says Marc Coleman
Then Leaflets from Rónán Mullen and Fiona O’Malley
A Poster for former Sinn Fein councillor Donal O’Cofaigh running for the Socialist party in Enniskillen in the forthcoming Local Elections
And finally, from the vaults, a Joan Collins leaflet from the 2004 Local Elections
It’s never a bad news day in the Irish Times Property supplement… March 18, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.3 comments
Even if the headline on the print edition of the newspaper proper is that ‘House prices could fall 13.4% this year in bank test scenario’, and even better for those in that situation the text continues ‘and 14.4 per cent next year before recovering in 2013′, and in an amended heading on the website this morphs into ‘Banks are stress tested for 60% fall in house prices’…
Meanwhile the headline in the Property Supplement states:
Ireland for sale – and expats are beginning to buy
Woohoo!
And…
With prices still falling, Ireland is starting to look like good value – at least to expats trawling our property websites from a distance
But… check out some of the language used…
Dublin estate agent Owen Reilly, who specialises in selling apartments, says that interest in his properties is now split about 50:50 between Irish and overseas buyers.
And while…
At Knight Frank, 56 per cent of its properties last year were bought by people getting funding from abroad, about 30 per cent of whom were from the UK market or were Irish expats. This year, Grant expects the UK/Irish expat proportion to be as high as 40-50 per cent – its last two sale agreeds went to UK buyers for example.
Er… that’s it as regards hard figures that demonstrate this expat interest converted into cold hard cash.
But not all of the overseas interest – be it from foreigners or Irish ex-pats – is translating into sales. O’Hagan notes that much of the overseas interest his firm is seeing is still at the inquiry stage, while Reilly adds that although investors are coming from the UK to check out what’s available, they are not yet ready to purchase.
And…
There is a similar hesitancy on the part of some Irish living abroad. Reilly regularly gets emails from Irish professionals working for firms such as Goldman Sachs or Intel in the US or the UK inquiring about the state of the market and looking for a top scale apartment in a location like Ballsbridge for €300,000 – and are shocked when they can’t find one. “They’re frustrated by the lack of properties for sale and are surprised by how high prices still are,” he says.
And…
US investors are also largely sitting on the sidelines. Perhaps influenced by reports of Ireland’s troubles in the US media such as Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair opus, US buyers tend to have unrealistic expectations of what’s available.
And…
“We’ve yet to see someone actually make a purchase. They’re looking for bargains,” agrees Grant, while O’Hagan concurs, “they talk about it more than doing it”.
Right so.
For the day that’s in it… March 17, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
…this might be of interest, from Magnum’s photographic archives, images of Dublin.
Communist Party of Egypt Resumes Public Existence March 17, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Communism, Middle East.7 comments
I came across this article by the Egyptian Marxist economist Samir Amin the other day, in which he suggests that Egyptian communists – or the radical left from the communist tradition as he puts it – have played an important role in the revolution there. And then the following press release from the CP of Egypt popped into my inbox just now. A welcome sign of how the agitations and revolutions for democracy in the Arab world offer renewed hope for the growth of progressive politics.
The Egyptian Communist Party held a comprehensive meeting that included all its different entities and subcategories. The meeting resulted in a unanimous decision to officially announce the party’s existence and activities, considering the new and healthy political and social environment that has resulted from the January 25 revolution, and after years of being forced to work in utter secrecy and under much repression.
The party has agreed to continue the communist journey that began in the 1920s, despite the fact that the communist concept has been reproached and widely misused by corrupt anti-proletariat regimes over the past decades.
The Egyptian Communist Party was re-inaugurated in 1975 and is legitimated by the masses – and this is authentic legitimacy. This goes back to its long struggle and strong connection with the working class in Egypt, as well as the social and political aspirations of hardworking Egyptians. It is these same people who – today – aspire for a society built on freedom, justice and honor, alongside freedom from dependency, tyranny and oppression.
Even though the Egyptian Communist Party was forced to work in complete secrecy for many years, its partaking in democratic and frontal achievements since 1975 are simply undeniable. Members and calibers of the party come from all walks of life and have made positive and powerful contributions to the events of our revolution. For more than 9 decades, Egyptian communists have made unprecedented and strong contributions in many fields of culture and community, including literature, politics and unionism. The communist ideology has survived campaign after campaign of aggression by regimes backed up by right-wing extremists across the Arab world supported by imperialist forces, only by working in utter secrecy, with much persistence and through the ample support of the masses.
The Egyptian Communist Party confirmed that it will be holding its 4th genral conference in the near future to determine the ideal plan of action and organizational chart that will guarantee the demands and aims of our revolution during the coming period.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh… March 17, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.15 comments
I’d had this idea of riffing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities in relation to St. Patrick’s Day. But as I thought about it the more it struck me as a pretty condescending take on it – by me, not by Anderson whose concept I think has a lot of validity to it.
And even if, and I may have mentioned this before, how I’ve never quite found out what St. Patrick’s Day is for, and yes, it has a national component – in some fashion, in my more jaundiced moments I’ve often felt that it seems to be more owned by others than us.
Speaking of which I was in O’Neill’s the night before last and the place was heaving with US and UK tourists. Over for the Patrick’s week celebrations? Most likely. They didn’t seem to be heading along to Boyzone (whose ‘concert’ had snarled up traffic in the city centre through and after rush hour).
But that said, there is something about the reports on the news the evening of St. Patrick’s Day which does bring the concept of community into sharper focus.
Perhaps it’s just the sense, and reality, of community and collective effort, the fact it happens nationwide. All those parades, bands, floats, all directed towards one broad goal. All those people dressed up as St. Patrick’s, and parade marshals, minor celebs and sometimes major ones, sitting in cars, or walking or whatever.
There’s nothing imagined about those communities. That’s people working together over weeks and months to produce something that, albeit ephemeral, has some meaning. Sure, it’s difficult to parse out exactly what the meaning is, but…
And in that I think there is something impressive about the day. A public celebration, of sorts, that happens almost everywhere more or less at the same time in many places on the island.
Anyone who has seen the photographs and footage of the Catholic events that took place across the 20th century will know that that joint activity has largely been dissipated.
That sort of manifestation in the public space has now long gone.
Maybe the weird hybrid of national celebration, religious festival (though that’s now but an echo of its original intent) commercial promotional activity, day off that is St. Patrick’s Day is a successor of sorts.
I’ll be watching this vicariously today. And good luck to those of you who brave the elements in to wherever you choose to see a parade or event.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Irish Right’s Economic Policy March 17, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Uncategorized.add a comment
Just saw this cartoon (originally here ) via a comment at Madam Miaow’s evisceration of Niall Ferguson’s latest ode to imperialism.
