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What you want to say – 30th December 2015 December 30, 2015

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Tawdy - December 30, 2015

May the year 2016 live up to whatever expectations you all may have.

And may all those who need it be dumped by a vengeful electorate.

Happy New Year to us all.

VENCERAMOUS

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2. makedoanmend - December 30, 2015

sans comment

Fukushima article with loads of pictures by someone called A. Podniesinski taken in 2015. Fairly long article with photos, and with link to the photographer’s site with loads more photos of Fukushima and Chernobyl.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_72562.shtml

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3. CL - December 30, 2015

“Trump has little chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination…

this is an election rife with understandable but misplaced outrage over the American quality of life, and Donald Trump is happy to mine that….

Trump has shifted the entire conversation…

the lasting Trump effect on this race is that the really, really, really conservative guys (or what would have been considered such 10-15 years ago) now look pretty down the GOP middle…

He’s still setting the ideological pace.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-meaning-of-donald-trump/

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CL - December 31, 2015

“shortly after Trump jumped into the race, he stumbled onto a secret: whenever he blurted out forbidden thoughts about race, ethnicity or gender, he was showered with the attention he always craved….
This goofball billionaire mirror-gazer has unleashed a half-century of crackpot grievances about the post-civil rights cultural landscape that a plurality of seething white people felt they never had permission to air, until he came along…
Trump is basically a cretinous dinosaur who doesn’t understand why slurs about periods or the disabled or “the blacks” were ever made taboo in the first place…
The Silent Majority has been waiting 50 years for a prophet, but this year it settled for a billionaire loudmouth with a comb-over and a personality disorder…
What we won’t know until 2016 is whether this joke will end up being on all of us — or just those of us who waited too long to take Trump’s accidental war seriously.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-year-the-trump-laughter-died-20151229?page=4

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4. roddy - December 30, 2015

pparently Red C polls are not all that they seem.Some are being commissioned by “outside bodies” and contain leading “pro government ” questions such as “now that the economy is improving significantly” ,do you think x,y or z?

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5. EWI - December 30, 2015

I hear that Liam Clarke has died. Whatever I may personally think of the effect of his political activism (dressed up as journalism, like so many), the Cedarites might like to mark his death.

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Joe - December 30, 2015

A good man gone. Rest in peace.

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gendjinn - December 30, 2015

I know he had significant concerns that British spooks were out to get him around the time his book on McGuinness was published. His house had been broken into and he took some actions that you’d only do if you really feared for the safety of yourself and family.

Sorry to see him gone so young, and he kept publishing right up to the end. While I didn’t agree with his analysis on the north I did find him to be of integrity and found his writings to be an honest account from his perspective. Which is as good as it can get with journalists TBH.

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CL - December 30, 2015

“He remained a man of the broad, sensible left and a trade unionist to the end. Our union, the National Union of Journalists, summed up his career in a brief but highly apposite statement about his death on Sunday.

Irish NUJ secretary Seamus Dooley put it thus: “On behalf of the NUJ, I would like to extend sympathy to the family, colleagues and friends of Liam Clarke, political editor of The Belfast Telegraph and a former officer of Belfast and District branch of the NUJ, who has died.”
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/liam-clarke-a-fearless-and-formidable-journalist-who-always-kept-ahead-of-the-pack-34316929.html

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EWI - December 30, 2015

Beware the ‘sensible left’. I hear their chief spokesman is one P. Rabbitte.

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6. roddy - December 30, 2015

Liam Clarke is dead and his family are grieving.However to claim he “feared “British spooks is horseshit.He regurgitated RUC/ MI5 propoganda for decades.

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EWI - December 30, 2015

+1 If they were ‘out to get him’ it was because their priorities had now changed.

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gendjinn - December 30, 2015

You’ll forgive me for falling into the trap of trusting my own lying ears over your complete ignorance of the conversation.

Not to mention there is a gulf between wrong and malicious.

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7. roddy - December 30, 2015

???????!

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8. Tomboktu - December 31, 2015

Worth a read:

‘Parking the Big Money’
Cass Sunstein’s review in the New York Review of Books of
The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens and The Price We Pay a film directed by Harold Crooks, inspired by Brigitte Alepin’s 2010 book La Crise fiscale qui vient (The Coming Fiscal Crisis)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/01/14/parking-the-big-money/

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9. sonofstan - December 31, 2015

Not for a moment making light of what people are going through in Enniscorthy, Mallow and Graig, but I suspect some in the govt parties must be regretting not getting the election over with in November.

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Joe - December 31, 2015

Yep. Folklore in FG is that they lost an election in the nineties by going a few months too soon. Please God, future folklore will be that they lost this one because of the floods.

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WorldbyStorm - December 31, 2015

I think that is true SoS. Bound to have an effect.

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Tawdy - December 31, 2015

Said as much to Mrs Tawdy when they didn’t go in November.

Hopefully they get washed away ( FG/Lab) and take the other shyteholes in FF with them!

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10. Paddy Healy - December 31, 2015

MARXIST ECONOMIST Michael Robert’s Summary of 2015 on His Blog
New Capitalist Crisis Developing

New World Economic Crash On The Way!

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11. roddy - December 31, 2015

Joan Burton has been shipwrecked in Kilkenny today.Indo says Kathleen Funcheon was seen acting suspiciously in the area a short time beforehand!

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Eamonncork - December 31, 2015

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Liberius - January 1, 2016

It probably says a good bit about Burton that she was in a canoe in knee-deep water.

As a side note, these floods surely have to give those in Clontarf pause for thought in their quest to preserve their splendid views.

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12. Tomboktu - December 31, 2015

AP McCoy is accepting a knighthood. Ho hum.

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13. roddy - December 31, 2015

SDLP man Pat McCarthy got an MBE .He was interned in 71 as a member of the political grouping that I am forbidden to mention and remained a member of said grouping until well into the 90’s.Years ago he would have told them to STICK their MBE!

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WorldbyStorm - January 1, 2016

I cannot speak for the sticks but I suspect they would feel as you do. I know I do.

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JM - January 1, 2016

But seriously , what about Rhiannon Giddens ? She was incredible . My loss that I never heard of her until last night . Must correct that gap in my musical life !

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botheredbarney - January 1, 2016

Her deep voice and southern accent are something. I also liked the backing of the double bass and cello.

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14. Eamonncork - December 31, 2015

Happy New Year folks. Thanks for the good company in 2015 and hope everyone is keeping their heads above water.

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WorldbyStorm - January 1, 2016

And to you! Watching Jools H. and thinking… hmmm… better selection next year please God.

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Alibaba - January 1, 2016

Agreed. But, hey, I enjoyed it anyway.

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15. Starkadder - December 31, 2015
16. Tomboktu - December 31, 2015

A podcast of Francis Spufford, in which he talks about — among other things — writing Red Plenty: http://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/wa_episode17/

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17. botheredbarney - January 1, 2016

Bonne année agus Athbhliain faoi shéan is faoi mhaise d’ar leitheoiri uile.

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WorldbyStorm - January 1, 2016

Agus tú féin a chara.

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18. Michael Carley - January 1, 2016

Happy New Year to one and all. This year, full automated luxury communism.

Reasonably good Guardian article about Frongoch,

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/27/welsh-village-frongoch-summons-ghosts-irelands-revolutionary-past

but oh the comments.

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19. roddy - January 1, 2016

Going back to Joan’s naval activities,the “Irish Star” front page leads with the headline : “Joan Rivers”.The ever quick Danny Morrison responds on twitter with : “hate the paper but you gotta hand it to the SUB”! (cryptic reference to John Holland who invented the submarine ,calling it the “Fenian ram” or what?!)

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20. JM - January 1, 2016

“Young Cassidy” – the 1965 Sean O’Casey biography movie is getting a rare broadcast today on TG4 at 1pm. And who wouldn’t have cast Rod Taylor in the lead role ?

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EWI - January 1, 2016

Will certainly watch it. Intrigued to see how (if) it deals with his I.R.B. and I.C.A. memberships, and his feuds with those who went on to be involved in the Easter Rising.

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sonofstan - January 1, 2016

Thanks for the heads up – I’ve been intrigued by its existence for years but have never seen it until this afternoon. For a director of Ford’s calibre, it’s comically bad though….. as to EWI’s questions, I think the answer is ‘not well’. The whole movie passes, from c1913-1924(?) without a mention of the Great war. Knowing at least a bit about the history of the time, I was bit baffled – can’t imagine how a non-Irish audience would take it.

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EWI - January 1, 2016

Saw it too – no mention of his I.R.B. activities, his falling out with the I.C.A., no Connolly, Larkin or Markievicz anywhere.

No mention either that he was CoI, not Catholic as implied, and despite the direct inference in the movie O’Casey did NOT participate in the Easter Rising.

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JM - January 3, 2016

John Ford didn’t actually direct it . Apparently he only managed two scenes before his health failed. His much earlier ‘Plough and the stars’ was pretty poor , as was Hitchcocks ‘Juno and the paycock’ . I have to admit liking “Young Cassidy” despite it’s obvious flaws . The 1913 riot scene is good and the Abbey scene too .

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21. Starkadder - January 1, 2016

SInce we’re interested in science fiction film ,I though this piece on
a lost Nicolas Roeg sci-fi film might be of interest:


By October 1977 Roeg was sequestered in the Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood with long-time collaborator Allin, but the Flash Gordon movie they conceived would be very different one to the film that was finally released.

“We worked for days, talking ourselves into this crazy-ass project,” recalls Allin. “Nic loved the idea that the bubbles were for the kids but the images were just so stark raving erotic. Nic’s version was going to be a comic-book story but for adults. Ming was a god. Flash and Dale were Adam and Eve, and Ming was an evil deity chasing them across the universe. Our Ming’s ambition was to conquer the universe by destroying populated worlds, leaving no survivors except chosen females with whom he would populate their world in his image. Flash/Adam’s task was, in Dino’s words, to save-a-da-world!”

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/gordon-alive-untold-story-flash-gordon/

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22. roddy - January 2, 2016

For anyone on the Irish left who is still ambivalent about the possibility of a “left wing unionism” ,let them read today’s “Guardian” interview with Kate Hoey.In it she supports the monarchy,fox hunting,UKIP,border controls and describes Thatcher as “sweet”.There’s much more but I could’nt be bothered repeating it!

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Michael Carley - January 2, 2016

What has Hoey to do with the left?

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Michael Carley - January 2, 2016
EWI - January 2, 2016

“A farmer’s daughter and PE teacher before she became a Labour MP, Kate Hoey has stuck by causes including foxhunting. Now she finds herself aligned with the Tory and Ukip right against the EU – but says she will be making a ‘strong leftwing case for leaving’”

As soon as she finds it, of course.I note that during the railways anecdote, she doesn’t say that SHE wants to re-nationalise them.

How much of this is influenced by the thought of ‘Wee Ulster’ getting out of the GFA and such by way of Britain exiting the EU?

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oconnorlysaght - January 3, 2016

To my knowledge Kate H. left the IMG for essentially personal reasons (they weren’t as nice as she thought they’d be) around 1972.For a while she hung around with the SWP before descending into the Two-nationist sewer. I don’t know how long she was with SWP, but I remember Eamon McCann welcoming her appointment as Sports Minister enthusiastically in the Sunday tribune, so I suppose she made an impact. On the other hand, this may just have been support for a fellow Ultonian.

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Paddy Healy - January 3, 2016

Great to Har from you Rayner!
You never lost it!!

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23. sonofstan - January 2, 2016

First cuckoo?
Annette Mooney and Kieran Allen leafleting for PbPA outside the Swan centre in Rathmines this afternoon. No mention of their partner alliance on the literature btw.

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dublinstreams - January 2, 2016

AAA doesn’t have their own candidate there afaik

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24. roddy - January 2, 2016

Michael,when I first heard of Hoey in the 80’s she was described as “left wing” by the two nations bulshitters (many of whom now deny they were two nationists) She was a member of the international Marxist group until 85 and was used as a counter to the genuine pro Irish Republican left in the British labour party.My point is that onetime “leftists” who take a unionist line on Ireland inevitably end up taking a reactionary line on almost everything else.

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Michael Carley - January 2, 2016

Onetime leftists take a reactionary line on most things: if they didn’t, they’d still be leftists.

As for the trajectory from the IMG to reaction, that’s hardly new. See Nick Cohen, Frank Furedi, etc.

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ejh - January 4, 2016

Cohen was in the IMG? You sure about that?

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Michael Carley - January 5, 2016

I don’t think he was, anymore than Furedi was, but the trajectory is the same.

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Paddy Healy - January 2, 2016

Effectively the Socialist Party Position is “two Nationsist”
They have dropped the “United” from Socialist United Ireland now using Socialist ireland
Despite the genuiness of many in the organisation, this position will lead to disaster unless it is changed! Gerry Adams is dancing in the streets!!!

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sonofstan - January 2, 2016

Gerry Adams is dancing in the streets!!!

Something like this I hope…..white boots and all

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Jolly Red Giant - January 4, 2016

Oh holy bejaysus Paddy – get a life if all you can do is spout cr*p like that.

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25. torheit - January 2, 2016

Varoufakis and others are launching DIEM 25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) on the 9th of this month.

His assertion that Europe’s democratic deficits need a pan-European movement rather than fragile and temporary alliances of national movements.

… what matters above anything else is that our movement will invert the current sequence. Currently, parties begin at the level of the nation-state and then try to forge (flimsy and ineffective) alliances at the European level. Our movement will begin everywhere in Europe first, will be based on radical internationalism, will target the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU and in each of its national jurisdictions, and only then ‘descend’ into the mechanics of national, regional and local electoral processes.

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CL - January 2, 2016

Has he got it ackbasswards?

Remember Tip O’Neill,… and Declan Ganley.

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torheit - January 2, 2016

That remains to be seen – it’s a long shot, certainly – it’ll be interesting to see if there is ‘progressive’ European demos that could be mobilised.

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dublinstreams - January 3, 2016

I have to say we need a more European focus, the last European elections really had no debate about European wide issues, embarrasingly so.

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Joe - January 4, 2016

“Our movement will begin everywhere in Europe first…”

Anyone know where, how or by or with whom it might be beginning in Ireland?

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26. dublinstreams - January 2, 2016

Former Minister of education thinks only way to get equality in schools is to get a rich person to fund a campaign The newly started @equateireland is being funded by foundation that closed down 2 years ago? http://www.onefoundation.ie/index.php/about-one/

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27. Michael Carley - January 3, 2016

Robert McLiam Wilson, writing about CHarlie Hebdo and Paris, has this to say about Northern Ireland:

Because our new reality is the startling power of the micro-minority. There is one portion of the UK population who know this already. The Northern Irish portion. They spent three decades as part of a peaceful, democratic majority entirely dominated by the fissile futility of a few hundred people’s atavism and arrogance. They know that a handful of pitiless citizens can bring a country to a near standstill. They grew up knowing that, they drank it in with their mother’s milk. It’s uncomfortable knowledge and it can make us quite uncomfortable people to be around. You’re not going to get a whole lot of sunny political optimism from that bunch. The nicest of us just don’t tell the truth about it when we’re asked. I know I don’t.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/03/charlie-hebdo-scurrilous-reports-by-non-french-speakers

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sonofstan - January 3, 2016

What’s the line about forgetting nothing and learning nothing?

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fergal - January 3, 2016

Almost a year since that attack- what sticks in my mind is Sky tv showing repeated images of the police officer about to be shot dead- a French Muslim- but going ‘ape’ when a French journalist attempted to show the front page of Charlie Hebdo live on tv it summed up the whole affair for me….

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28. roddy - January 3, 2016

Och,sure was’nt “Ulster” a great wee place altogether until a handful of rascals went mad!

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sonofstan - January 3, 2016

Just like black folk were all happy and cared for down south until a handful of commie agitators came down from the north with notions about civil rights and such.

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WorldbyStorm - January 3, 2016

It’s a shockingly ill informed and partial reading by RMW – but it is one that has a currency amongst some and not just in the UK. Which is problematic. The events of the 1960s (and before) didn’t emerge from nowhere, and the manner in which NI was left very deliberately to run itself in the way it did wth no oversight from London (let alone God forbid Dublin) was absolutely instrumental to what happened later. TBH even his use of the words democratic majority sticks in my craw. it was the facade of democracy and the reality of anything but.

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sonofstan - January 3, 2016

It’s like people in the southern states of the US telling you the civil war wasn’t about slavery at all….

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WorldbyStorm - January 3, 2016

Indeed, and it’s not even the MOPE stuff, indeed one doesn’t need to be a republican to see that there were massive injustices imposed across decades from the establishment of NI in areas of housing provision, franchise, policing, etc. Indeed it’s striking to me that the first real political push came from within the North to enlarge civil rights within a UK context.

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29. Starkadder - January 3, 2016

Anyone seen this? An extreme right-wing milita group has taken over
a wildlife refuge in Oregon and are threatening a clash with the
authorities. The group seems to be lead by Ammon Bundy, son
of the infamous Cliven Bundy.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/03/oregon-militia-threatens-showdown-with-us-agents-at-wildlife-refuge

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Tomboktu - January 3, 2016

Well, they’re white & not Muslim, so it’s not terrorism, obviously.

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30. sonofstan - January 4, 2016

Renua want to ‘abolish the Leaving Cert and replace it with courses designed for industry’
Discuss.

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botheredbarney - January 4, 2016

Interesting point. The vocational schools set up in the 1930s were intended to prepare boys (mainly) for industry. The middle classes generally ignored them, preferring the feepaying secondary schools run by religious orders. So sonofstan is right to seek clarification on Renua’s questioning of the Leaving Cert and the current curricula and syllabi of the secondary schools.

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oconnorlysaght - January 4, 2016

The Rebooties’ education scheme is imply a logical extension of what has been the policy of most Irish universities. It fits in, also with that one-time aspirant socialist, Ruairi Quinn’s urge that the teaching of history be curtailed. Gradgrind is alive and well and active in Irish academia and politics.

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sonofstan - January 4, 2016

‘Rebooties’ 🙂

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EWI - January 5, 2016

Renua want to ‘abolish the Leaving Cert and replace it with courses designed for industry’

Of course they do. For State-funded institutions. You can be sure that there’ll be a get-out clause for the little darlings in fee-paying Clongowes to continue learning ancient greek and latin.

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Michael Carley - January 5, 2016

May I refer you to my rant on the class element of humanities education in the current issue of Look Left.

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31. EWI - January 5, 2016
32. Paddy Healy - January 5, 2016

Jan 5 Irish Times :Over €700m wiped off Irish exchange equities and Euro Stoxx 600 has worst start ever

Financial Times: China Stocks Fall Further: http://wp.me/pKzXa-ua

Jan 4: CHINA STOCK MARKETS CLOSED AS SHARES Fall 7.6%

Global Stock Markets Affected
German Stocks Fall 4.5% 04/01/2016

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33. CL - January 5, 2016

“Most of Saudi Arabia’s 10.3m barrels a day (b/d) of output passes through the Shia heartland, now seething with fury. While global crude stocks are at record levels, there is no spare capacity outside Saudi Arabia. A disruption lasting more than a few days could cause oil prices to spike violently – possibly to $200 or more – triggering a worldwide economic crisis.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/12081550/Saudi-showdown-with-Iran-nears-danger-point-for-world-oil-markets.html

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ejh - January 5, 2016

That may be so, but Ambrose Evans-Pritchard does have a tendency to predict apocalypse on a far too regular basis.

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