I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel

Its absolutely insane.

A guerrilla artist sneaks two caricature paintings of An Taoiseach Brian Cowen into two Dublin galleries and the government goes crazy. First came RTE's all-out craven apology to the Taoiseach on last night's news for even reporting that it happened in the first place, and now this morning comes the raid by Gardai on the offices of Today FM over a report that Ray Darcy's show knew the identity of the artist.

Given the state of the country at the moment, an economic crises caused largely by the shortsighted actions of Brian Cowan both as Taoiseach and previously as Minister for Finance, exacerbated by the criminal activities of a large number of CEOs and other executives in the financial sector, are there not better things that the Gardai could be doing than running around trying to find the person that removed An Taoiseach's fig-leaf?

That the weight of the government and police have been brought down on two national broadcasters over even reporting what is essentially a lighthearted prank that not even the galleries in question are taking seriously speaks volumes about the character of our political leaders and the reason why we are all in the mess we are in. In what other western democracy would a television station have to apologies for hurting the Prime Minister's feelings by merely reporting on an incident - this wasn't a talk-show host's banter or the views of a controversial panelist, this was an item on the news widely reported across the UK and elsewhere (as shown by the picture above from the Times).

I've just finished reading "Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies, a pretty damning expose of lazy journalism, cozy cartels, self-censorship and journalists that are altogether too close to politicians and their PR agencies, and seeing RTE cave in so rapidly and unequivocally highlights the fact that the lack of a free press is by no means unique to the UK and US.

Seriously, this is a pretty sad day for journalism in this country.

On the other hand, it is an absolutely red-letter day for Irish bloggers, who finally have something they can collectively seethe about, and show exactly why they are better than traditional print or broadcast media, unbeholden as they are to either politicians or their corporate fat cat supporters, hurrah! There is even a Twitter thread (#picturegate) where like minded tweeters can express their collective outrage, um, collectively, which for the wonderful world of lazy journalists in old media will no doubt prove to be an even bigger story than the Government's clampdown on free speech itself (oh look, the blogosphEir is angry, the TwittEirati awaken, etc, etc).

The only objection that I have to the TwittEirati is their choice on nomenclature for this candle, "picturegate" is too easy, surely "Cowengate" has infantile enough connotations.

It happened on the Late Late Show

There occurred last night a most unusual and singular event; in these troubling economic times my pursuit of value for money has extended all the way through to my televisual habits, and after parting with 160 of my hard earned euros to purchase yet another year's television and radio license I felt compelled to try and get even a fraction of my money's worth through the viewing of either RTE One or Two. This was not as easy as you might suspect, for although The Very Understanding Girlfriend might watch the occasional episode of ER (pronounced, for the benefit of our American friends, like Winnie The Poo's donkey friend), this in and of itself is not enough to justify the full extent of the license fee given that a DVD box set of any given series costs less that €15 on Amazon. Thus it was with some surprise that I found myself tuning into Pat Kenny last night to try and watch a bit of his expose of the appendix-like organ of the Oireachtas that is the Seanad.

With a panel that consisted of Fianna Fáil’s Donie Cassidy, Labour's Alex White and Trinity Independent David Norris, and numerous senators in the audience (though none from Fine Gael, who pulled their participation in a spat with RTE), the heated conversation attempted to explain the function of the Seanad and examine the question of reform.

It was painful viewing indeed.

The Seanad exists as either a springboard for potential TDs, a retirement home for old TDs, or a safety net for TDs that lost their seat but hope to get it back in the next election. This was obvious from the make up of the panel, with Alex White (Labour's candidate for the late Tony Gregory's Dail seat) and the absent Fine Gael members (RTE's choice of Fidelma Healy-Eames, failed Dail candidate for Galway or party choice Paschal Donohoe, Dail candidate in the Dublin central byelection) and the audience contained many more Dail hopefuls, and at least one European Parliament hopeful, Green MEP candidate Deirdre de Burca. The Seanad is a little more than a tax-payer funded waiting room, holding politicians on their way to somewhere else, or for the more sports-minded amongst you, the Seanad is the substitute bench of the Oireachtas, a way of keeping party hopefuls warm until the day comes that they are called onto the field of dreams that is the Dail.

When challenged to justify the existence of the Seanad, none of the sitting senators could. They almost invariably, with the noticeable exception of Alex White, could only speak in terms of what they personally had done for their imaginary constituents, using the airtime as stump speech for any future election they might be standing in. There was no attempt at consensus on its collective value, only a justification of the presence of any given individual in it by that individual. It was a shameful display of 'me fein' politics at its worse, and was perhaps the single biggest display of the urgent need for reform since the debacle in December when the government parties lost a vote because their Senators couldn't be bothered to turn up and do the one thing they are actually paid to do.

The point was made that for a country with a population the size of Manchester we are vastly overrepresented in our parliament. The Oireachtas consists of 166 elected TDs representing a population of just over four million (4,239,848 in the 2006 census), which equates to 1 TD for every 25.5K citizens, and 60 Senators in the Seanad, eleven of whom are directly selected by the Taoiseach, 43 by panels supposedly representing different sectors of Irish industry, agriculture and commerce, but effectively allocated along party lines in proportion to the composition of the Dail, and six elected by the good and honest graduates of TCD and the NUI.

The UK in comparison has a population of around 60 million and 646 MPs, a ratio of 1 MP for every 91,000 citizens. The US has a population of around 300 million and 535 Congressmen (plus 5 non-voting delegates) and 100 senators, for a total ratio of 443,000 citizens per elected national representative. I've put together a table below with this and data from France and Germany:


A TD's salary starts at €95,363, with most averaging €122,000. An Irish Senator's basic salary starts at €70,134. The current base pay for a UK MP is £63,291, just over €67,500, or 70% of what an Irish TD gets. A US Senator or member of Congress gets paid $174,000, or around €128,000, which is on par with the average TD's salary, but each represents 17 times more constituents than their Irish counterpart.

The simple fact is that we are overrepresented in this country, and our representatives are overpaid for the work they are doing. Fine Gael have proposed reform in the Oireachtas, but do not go far enough. While the small ratio of citizens to TDs should create a more participatory democracy where representatives are more approachable and citizens feel closer to them, the dynastic nature of Irish politics means that many TDs invariable only represent the business interests of their own extended family and its supporters. The unelected nature of all but six members of the Seanad and the manner in which seats are distributed in proportion to the composition of parties in the Dail means that as an effective upper house of parliament the Seanad is moot, a talking shop that exists only to rubber stamp legislation with almost no actual power, albeit one that costs the taxpayer each year over €4 million in basic salaries alone.

While it could be argued that the composition of the Seanad is effectively a method of introducing Party-list proportional representation, akin to systems of France, Spain and other European countries, the fact that the majority of Senators are in reality not accountable to any constituency other than their party (despite protestations by individual Senators on last night's Late Late show to the contrary), means that it remains an unrepresentative quango of the highest order. Direct election by the citizenry is the only adequate form of reform for the Seanad save outright abolition.

While last night's embarrassing performance by the members of the Seanad may not have justified their own existence, it almost justified my license fee. That and "ER" and "Lost"* on Sundays.

* yes, I know "Lost" is on at the same time on Sky 1, but I don't think I can stand to see the sight of Iggy Pop's scrawny drug-addled and plasticated body pimping car insurance before and after each and every ad break. Even fast-forwarding through a recorded version makes me feel queasy.

The chair recognises the delegate from Caprica

Well, managed to totally ignore St Patrick's Day for yet another year, but somehow in my rush to avoid any media portrayals of the stereotypical drunken Oirish buffoon I managed to completely miss an event of global historical significance for a full 24 hours, until alerted yesterday morning to it by my eagle-eyed sister.

On March 17th, The UN hosted a special event entitled "If Adama and the Cylons can live in peace, why the frack can't we?"*. From the UN's website:

UN Public Information Department, Sci Fi Channel to co-host a panel with Battlestar Galactica creators to raise profile of humanitarian concern. The discussion will explore some of the themes that are of importance to both the United Nations and the critically acclaimed television show: human rights; terrorism; children and armed conflict; and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faiths. The panel will be moderated by Academy Award-winning actress and producer Whoopi Goldberg. Oscar-nominated actress Mary McDonnell, Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Edward James Olmos, and Battlestar Galactica creators and executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick will participate in the panel.

I immediately contacted Ms K, our friend in the UN, in search of pictures, and she sent me a link to this (.rm file), which is a recording of the 2 hour session.

Some people say that in light of the global apathy shown by world leaders to the atrocities in Darfur and Gaza, and the inability of the global community to speak out against the drumbeats of war in the leadup to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, that the UN has lost its voice and potentially its relevancy.

For years I have disagreed with this argument, and now I have proof.

* no, that's not really the title.

Nothing but a heartache

Went up to Belfast this week to see a few friends, one over from the UK to run an international workshop drawing lessons from Ulster on conflict resolution, peace and reconciliation (great timing), and the other from Dublin who has been living in the North for a while now working on his PhD. It was good to see them both, the only downside being that we didn't spend nearly enough time with either.

On the train up there I got a call from my Doctor with some follow up results from a few blood tests I had. I woke up three weeks ago and thought to myself, "now that you are in your mid thirties, maybe you should start getting regular checkups", and so that very day I did. Everything came back normal, except that is for my cholesterol.

This was a surprise.

I went out yesterday and picked up "Controlling Cholesterol for Dummies", surprised that the largest bookshop in Dublin had scores of books on diabetes, but of the three they had on cholesterol the Dummies book was actually the best. Unfortunately the book really isn't going to help me, containing as it does many useful tips including cutting down on fatty meats and full-fat dairy products, stopping smoking and reducing your alcohol intake. Great general advice but unfortunately I am a) a vegetarian and have been for eight years, b) lactose-intolerant, c) have never smoked and d) would average less than three units of alcohol in any given two week period.

The book recommends eating lots of vegetables, raw, steamed or boiled, or if fried then in a rapeseed or safflower oil, again, this is pretty much my day-to-day diet. It advises that "continually drinking five cups of press-brewed coffee or 15 espressos a day may raise your cholesterol", but unfortunately I have one cappuccino in the morning with soy-milk and if I drank 15 espressos every day high cholesterol would be the least of my problems. My Body Mass Index is fine (admittedly at the upper limit of fine) and my blood pressure today was 120/82.

All of this and yet my total cholesterol is still 6.9, my HDL is 1.3 and my LDL is astonishingly 4.69. These are levels normally found only in chain smoking obese alcoholic pensioners*.

I went to the internet to find out about what vegetarians can do to lower their cholesterol, and all that came back was a number of unanswered questions posted to forums and Answers sites along the lines of, "hey, I just got back from the doctor and found out I have high cholesterol, but I'm a vegetarian - what can I do about that?".

great.

The problem is that only 20% of cholesterol comes from your food, and 80% is produced by the liver. You can substantially effect the cholesterol intake from your food, but there is not much outside of medication that you can do to reduce what your liver produces. If, like me, you already live a low-cholesterol lifestyle, then basically the problem is all the fault of your parents and their crappy genes.

While a worse diet would certainly speed me towards the pearly gates, there is little more that I could do by changing my current behavior. I have almost nothing left to give up. I can try and reduce my cholesterol intake through taking stanols that soak up the cholesterol in your intestine before it gets absorbed by the body (the stuff in Benecol), or through taking oils high in Omega 3,6 and 9 that break down deposited saturated fat. But aside from getting more exercise, and unless I'm willing to start taking Lipitor for the rest of my life, apparently there's really nothing more that can be done.

Which is poo.

While on the scale of genuine problems that my friends have faced in recent years, this is really quiet minor, it still is freaking me out a bit.**

* okay, not quite, but they are dangerously high and indicate a 2% chance of a heart attack within the next ten years, which is not nice.

** especially that 2% thing.

No Cigarettes or alcohol!

Went in to see Watchmen last night and it was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Once I got over the wooden acting (resulting from choosing actors on the basis of their physical resemblance to two dimensional comic book illustrations) I actually managed to enjoy it*.

I'm not going to waste any time tearing apart all the things that are different to the book (my attitude being that the film is a separate animal to the book, even a three hour film would never be able to convey the subtleties and complexities of the book so why bother being disappointed when it doesn't really try?), but one thing that did strike me was the almost complete absence of one of the most iconic images in the book, that of cigarette smoking, especially the stylized cigarette holders.

In the film there is arguably more graphic violence than in the book, there is certainly a lot of sex and nudity (both female and blue supermale), but only The Comedian is seen smoking a cigar, which is acceptable because he could never be accused of being a positive role model. One scene in particular where this is most obvious occurs with Laurie looking for a cigarette lighter and setting off a flame thrower; the scene makes it to the film but sans cigarette, she just decides to start pressing random buttons for no apparent reason.

It says something about American society that in an "R" rated film the only taboo seems to be the portrayal of smoking in anything other than a negative light.

*except for the music. Seriously, seriously painful to sit through gratuitous uses of "Hallelulja", "First we take Manhattan" and especially "99 Red Balloons". Boo.

Where I am not today

Couldn't make it down to Wexford for the Green Party Convention this weekend as I have, rather unusually, family obligations. While I won't have the pleasure of attending the workshops or arguing against the merits of a green based economy in the absence of a platform for social justice over a pint or two of non-organic beer, I do not feel that I will be left out of the event altogether. In the wake of Obama's internet-fueled victory political groups all across the world have suddenly discovered the web, and the Green Party is certainly trying to be at the front of that, despite its limited resources.

The event is being livestreamed on mogulus, which has the added fun of inappropriately targeted ads scrolling across the screen (ads for moving to the Ukraine appeared while speakers were discussing the collapse of the Irish property market), and a good few folks are twittering from the convention floor. There is a good online conversation going on, though nothing too controversial, much like the convention itself. All the speakers are on their best behavior, and there hasn't been any real drama so far.

While the first motion I was looking out for, that on forming a government of national unity, failed to get the 2/3rds majority it needed to get to pass, it still was supported by 55% of delegates, showing that the majority of members are unhappy with the performance of the current government, or its ability to get us out of the current economic crises. It will be interesting to see how the later motion on a special conference next year to pull out of government fares, I suspect it too will be supported by the majority, but not by the 66% it needs to pass.

Check out the twitter stream here and the livestream here, and slower updates are on the party web site here.

No justice, No peace

Last week I went to my first Millennium Development Goals Lecture in Trinity of the new year. I've been attending the MDG series on and off for the last two years and have seen some pretty interesting speakers, Cynthia Enloe and Susan George being two that stood out; lectures are free and normally attract an interesting cross-section of academics, professionals and the underemployed with too much time on their hands and a penchant for rambling self-serving questions.

Last week's lecture was given by Phakiso Mochochoko, a lawyer form Lesotho and a Senior Legal Advisor at the International Criminal Court, and was a general analysis of the role the MDGs play in advancing Human Rights. Although none address Human Rights specifically, he argued that the two topics are inadvisable, and touched on a few specific areas of interest. While the talk itself was good, it was the following Q&A session that will stick in everyone's mind, possibly the most animated and almost hostile session I have seen in the MDG series.

Although Mr Mochochoko didn't spend too much time on specific cases taken by the ICC itself, the Q&A session was dominated by questions highlighting the perceived failures of the Court. It kicked off with a worker from Troicaire highlighting the situation in Sudan, where the case being brought against President Omar al-Bashir had resulted in a government crackdown on external aid agencies working in the region. While Mr Mochochoko wouldn't accept that the work of the ICC was directly to blame for this crackdown, arguing that there were many contributory factors behind the scenes, he did accept that President Bashir had used the ICC case as a convenient excuse to act against external agencies that were witness to his actions against the people of Darfur.

He faced further criticisms from an Algerian in the audience who took the ICC to task for not acting against criminal behavior by Western leaders, or regimes supported by the West. He specifically raised the brutality of the Algerian government, as well as the recent actions of the Israelis in Gaza, and also the US invasion of Iraq. Mr Mochochoko pointed out that all three countries highlighted had signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but had not ratified it, meaning the ICC has no jurisdiction over those countries. The actions to date taken by the ICC in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan, have all occurred in nations that have ratified the Rome Statute. It is powerless to act outside of its jurisdiction.

In fact while both Israel and the US had signed the Statute in 1998 one of the first acts of the Bush administration in the post 9/11 world was to announce its withdrawal from the statute in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, clearly indicating it was concerned over the legality of the war and the prospect of future war crimes cases being brought against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. This fear of international censure was not unique to Bush, for although he originally signed the Statute as President, Clinton never pushed for ratification of the act by Congress, and to date Obama has shown no signs of bringing the US back to the table. Thus the prospect of America ever being held accountable by the International community for its actions are very, very slim.

While Mr Mochochoko acquitted himself well during the Q&A, it is interesting to note that the first response of President Bashir to the arrest warrant issued yesterday by the ICC was to completely expel a large number of aid agencies from Darfur, including Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontieres, exactly as predicted by the audience member from Trocaire.

The conflict between the pursuit of justice vs the pursuit of peace has been highlighted in the extreme here, the ethical dilemma of the cost of bringing perpetrators of genocide to justice in the absence of a mechanism to prevent further resulting atrocities being inflicted upon the victim population goes unanswered by an international community unwilling to create such a mechanism. Although the African Union has placed peacekeepers in the region they have been largely ineffectual, and as long as the west declines to put pressure on China, Sudan's biggest trading partner and only political ally, to effect change in the region the ability of the ICC to act effectively is hamstrung by the collateral damage its actions inflict.

The ICC is stuck in a Catch-22 situation created by the inaction of the West; calls for it to scale back its pursuit of justice for fear of reprisals are misdirected and provide an opportune smokescreen behind which our complacent governments can wring their hands and absolve each other of the guilt their continued inertia generates.

Links
This year's MDG series in TCD
ICC arrest warrant
Expulsion of Aid Agencies
NY Times last year on the dilemma of Justice vs Peace in Darfur

many people nowadays like marmalade instead

I just made scones.

That may not seem like much compared to what some people do, but the idea just makes me happy. There was something very visceral about the kneading of the dough, a pleasant way to pass part of the afternoon.

I don't think this counts as my creative act for the month, maybe if I painted them...

Appetite for Distraction

Continuing with our theme of fun recession-busting antics that you can do at home and don't cost that much money, I have torn myself away from the brace of scones baking away happily in the oven to write about the other thing occupying my time lately (apart from fretting over the imminent collapse of civilization as we know it), namely reading.

Now to be fair reading has occupied a good deal of my underemployment, it was one of the main pursuits I hoped to enjoy upon leaving work, however this year I have made a conscious effort to move away from the blood-pressure raising, fits of beserker rage-inducing tracts that were the hallmark of 2008. With new Hope, comes a more relaxed and carefree reading list, bolstered by the seemingly endless supply of cheap second-hand genre novels populating the shelves of Chapters on Parnell Street.

To date while I have started at least twenty books I have managed to finish only eight, averaging but one per week. Of these 'The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Invention of Air" were solidly in the non-fiction, might just recommend to a friend (especially "Omnivore's") camp, 4 were embarrassing genre stuff that I read just because Tadhg couldn't finish even one in the series (he knows which one, I don't feel compelled to elaborate any further), and two more are worth mentioning for very different reasons.

The first was "Swiftly" by Adam Roberts, a not-quite-Steampunk take on Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and Voltaire's "Micromegas" that progressed nicely up to a point with some interesting ideas (Clockwork difference engines made possible by enslaved Lilliputians trapped inside working the mechanisms) before abruptly turning down a dark alleyway of unpleasantness more suitable for the back pages of Craigslist than in an invocation of an eighteenth century work of political allegory. Though he attempts to portray an apocalypse of biological warfare, Roberts was more interested in the scatological than the eschatological, channeling less from Swift's "Gulliver" and more from "The Lady's Dressing Room" and his other similar poems. While Swift's scatological poems still have the power to shock, I found Roberts' homage to be purely vulgar, and an unwelcome intrusion into the storyline.

I did not like this book, not one little bit, and mention it here only as a warning to any who might pick it up and say, 'oh, that sounds like an interesting idea, maybe I will just ignore the alarm bells that are going off in my head at the fact that there seem to be three second-hand copies of this on the shelf, all priced at less than five euro".

One a much lighter note then was a psychological tale of sociopaths and their victims trapped in a powder-keg of tension at the bottom of the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the Pacific Northwest Coast of the US in Peter Watts' "Starfish". I had read Watts' "Blindsight", and am a regular reader of his blog, but didn't get around to reading this book that originally made his name. While most definitely a hard scifi novel, what separates this and "Blindsight" from most genre work is Watts' focus on the psychological interaction between his characters, most of whom stem from developmental archetypes extrapolated out to an almost unrecognizable degree based on his projections of the interactions between future technology and biological modifications. Think Gibson channeling Jung.

This I am much happier to recommend, and have paid it the ultimate literary honour that I can bestow upon a work of genre fiction, I have added it to my LibraryThing, and proudly show it off to all and sundry, rather than hiding it down the back of the couch of shame, never to be seen by occasional visitors in either the real world or the online, like I do with my (far too many) Charlie Stross.

Most of this genre work I have started and finished in a singe day, light reads that aren't that taxing. They are the treat you can eat between meals, without ruining your appetite. Unfortunately as with most advertising, such claims are but a tissue of lies, as since I started reading genre stuff again, the pile of half-read non-fiction continues to build up on my bedside table, unloved and unfinished; Levitin's "Your Brain on Music", Erlich & Erlich's "The Dominant Animal", Vandana Shiva's new book "Soil not Oil", all in various degrees of completion, all discarded (temporarily) in favour of lighter, less challenging fare.

As the recession deepens, I appear to have turned to comfort reading to ease the pain. My brain is filling up on the empty calories and sugar rushes of literary junk food, and it tastes good.

Let us hope that we see some light at the end of the economic tunnel soon, or else I might just wake up one morning and find myself reading Dan Brown.

And nobody wants to see that happen.

Links
'Swiftly' - Adam Roberts
'Starfish' by Peter Watts
Peter Watts' blog

Worst silver lining ever.

Been a quiet few days in terms of online activity, as I have been more sociable than usual in the really real world, with drinks and/or food with friends every day for the last week. I have thus been too tired and/or fed to blog about anything of worth.

You might think that this was one last bacchanalian hurrah in defiance of our impending societal and economic collapse. And you would be right. The list of friends who have suddenly found themselves unemployed continues to grow, and the realities of the recession are hitting home hard and fast now. I met a friend this morning who had been thinking of selling up everything here and moving abroad; three years ago he bought a three bedroom semi-d in a new(ish) estate in North County Dublin for €650,000. He had the house valued today by an estate agent, and was shocked to find it now worth €450,000. Negativity equity has most definitely arrived.

I found myself very depressed earlier in the week over reports that the Government were examining the reintroduction of Property Tax, with talk of an annual 1% tax on the value of a home. With no taxable income at the moment, I haven't been too concerned with reports of income tax increases, and as I have carefully planned out a monthly budget for the next year or so my plan to ride out the recession bunkered down in my almost-self-sustainable apartment looked fool-proof. With my mortgage switching over to a Tracker this month, I actually saved €250 this month alone, everything was indeed coming up Milhouse. However the sudden introduction of a 1% property tax would throw that plan into considerable disarray.

Thus it was with no small amount of irony that I actually took some strength from my friend's story of the rapid and near-catastrophic collapse in the value of his house; If I had my apartment revalued in the event of the introduction of an annual property tax, then perhaps I would end up paying less tax and could stretch my budget further.

That is how messed up our economy is, I am now looking at negative equity as a positive development.