One angry man

I've been quieter of late than I would have liked, and for once not as a result of some climate-destroying jaunt in search of evidence of the near-irreversible impact on our environment of climate-destroying jaunts. Nor have I been occupied for every waking moment with nefarious schemes of demagoguery and empire-building, either personally or as a disinterested observer. Nope, this week I have mostly been involved in that most hallowed of civic duties, jury service.

In an effort to be as impartial a juror as possible I expressly removed myself from the world of newspapers, news reports, rss feeds and the internets in general in the days leading up to and including the service itself, and after three mornings of sitting in a holding pen and waiting for my name to be pulled randomly from a hat by the most unimaginative of bingo callers I have ever seen, I finally was chosen as the last juror on the last trial of the last day of jury selection.

Poo.

Despite carefully crafting a look over the last three weeks combining the best elements of a desert-island castaway and Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman, I still somehow managed to escape rejection by either the prosecution or defence, and thus took my seat yesterday as the ominous-sounding 'Juror Number Twelve" before being dismissed for the day due to a lack of available courtroom and/or judge.

Thus one much-welcomed haircut and beard-trim later and with the fire of justice burning in my belly I returned to court this morning with my metaphorical judicial blindfold at a jaunty angle and my equally metaphorical scales held high in the air, ready to carry out my civic duty as a proud citizen of this fair land of ours.

Unfortunately over the course of the evening one of my fellow jurors had a change of heart and suddenly decided that he couldn't really do the whole "sitting in judgment" thing, resulting in the Judge being forced to excuse the whole jury and delay the trial for another few weeks. We didn't even get to pick a foreperson or decide who amongst us was going to be the angry one that just won't agree with everyone else, and keeps arguing and arguing to the point that the other eleven are themselves on the point of committing a criminal act of gross violence (though given my track record we can pretty much assume that this would have been me).

Thus I am left this afternoon feeling somewhat unfulfilled, experiencing something of a malaise as a result of this judicius interuptus, as if I have built up all this judgmental energy that now has nowhere to go. I fear for anyone who foolishly asks my opinion today, or calls on me to make a decision. Woe unto the barista who unwittingly asks me "what size cappuccino?"

"Large", I will cry, as the gallery erupts in tears and gasps and the newshounds rush to the row of phone-booths outside, and I cast my eyes to the floor as the enormity of these words weighs upon my shoulders like the burden of Atlas himself, and in the gravel-toned damn-dirty-ape frustrated voice of the immortal Heston I will bellow "and may God have mercy on its soul".

Mucilage Biopsy

Before I forget, Ebauche has a rather nice 40-minute soundscape out now, Mucilage Biopsy, available for download from Alphabet Set.

Starting off with a lot of glitchy pops and clicks, it builds up into a sweeping atmospheric score that wouldn't sound out of place on an epic soundtrack (no doubt influenced by the fact that most of his recent work has in fact been commissioned pieces for actual soundtracks), before rising to a thumping beat-driven finish that echoes the unexpectedly dance-y set he played at LoveRhino's launch party back in June.

Well worth downloading, especially at the who-really-needs-the-Pirate-Bay price of free.

Direct mp3 download is available here, don't forget to right-click and save.

The Publican Party

So there is much talk this morning about a credible threat to the stability of the government. Numerous back-benchers are openly talking about defying the government whip and threatening to vote against party lines, even if it triggers an election. At a meeting last night described by one TD in the Irish Independent as "on fire...the worst I have ever attended" up to 25 TDs threatened to rebel and pull the plug on the current administration.

And the cause of this widespread revolt? NAMA? Education cuts? Social Welfare and Health cuts? Scandals in TDs expenses? Standards in public office? Corporate Donations? Dail and Seanad reform? State-supported institutional abuse in clerical run schools? The Criminal Justice Bill? Civil Partnerships? The Blasphemy Bill? Lisbon II? The Budget? Pictures of Biffo in the nip on a toilet in the National Gallery?

Nope.

Drink-driving limits.

That's right, 25 TDs are threatening to bring down the government over plans by Transport Minister Noel Dempsy to reduce the permissible blood-alcohol level from 80mg to 50mg, saying that it will destroy the fabric of rural life if folks can't drive home from the pub after a few pints.

Seriously? After everything the country has been through, after everything that this Government has put the country through in the last eighteen months, this is what they choose to take a stand on? The inalienable right of every Irish man and woman to operate a moving vehicle while intoxicated?

It was obvious how big an influence the Irish Vintners Association had on Fianna Fail when the government forced off-licenses to close at 10:00pm to drive people into pubs at night and prevent folks drinking for significantly less money at home. Though the move was pitched as curbing alcoholism, it curiously didn't stop off-licenses or pubs from opening at 10:30am, so the government message here is clearly that drinking at home at 11pm is bad, but at 11am is perfectly fine?

That legislation to save lives could be the instrument of governmental collapse is farcical and shamefull. If Enda Kenny is talking about reducing the number of TDs by twenty, I can offer him a list of twenty-five to choose from right now.

Of course the real losers here would be the Green Party, who bet the whole farm a fortnight ago on getting another eighteen months to prove to the electorate that they were right to enter into Government in the first place. A drink-fueled back-bench revolt from their FF partners are the last thing they need; a snap election in the aftermath of their ringing endorsement of NAMA would (if possible) be even more catastrophic than if they had taken the high moral ground over NAMA and walked away from Government.

Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny and, to his credit, John Gormley have all been pretty vocal of late about the urgent need for electoral reform. Nonsense like this current back-bencher spat is an embarrassment to the entire nation. Reform can't happen fast enough.

Extermiknit! Extermiknit!

Had a visit this morning from the amazing Ms Snag Breac, who came bearing gifts in the shape of a knitted Dalek. Yup, what you see before you is a one foot-high hand-knitted Dalek, that itself is also knitting in a nefarious plot to populate the world with plush killing machines through autonomous self-replication.

You can check out more of her amazing knitted creations, and some pretty great photography, gardening and cooking stuff over on her blog at An Snag Breac Beo.

I live in awe of my talented friends.

The Higgs boson and me

There has been much talk on the internets of late of the Large Hadron Collider, and the kill-your-grandfather paradoxing effects of the Higgs boson particle the Collider is attempting to find. Stemming from a NYT article that commented on papers published by Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya, the theory goes that the elusive Higgs boson particle is "so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one". The theory accounts for the failure of previous US efforts to actually build a Superconducting Supercollider, and last year's magnet failure that caused the shutdown of the LHC.

Before you dismiss the notion it is worth pointing out that last week as the LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271 degrees C, -456 F and colder than deep space) the French police arrested a physicist working at CERN for alleged links to al-Qaida. According to the Guardian: "judicial officials (said), the man has acknowledged that he was in online contact with the group and had discussed possible terror attack plans in outline terms". CERN has to be one of the most secure research facilities in the world, with extensive background checks. Though poor rapping skills do not appear to be an impediment to employment one imagines links to fundamentalist terror groups would be. The odds of an employee with alleged links to terror groups evading all screenings and finally being discovered mere weeks before the LHC is fired up again must be almost as small as those of finding the Higgs boson itself.

I mused on this cosmic conundrum as I spoke with my mother this morning, who yet again canceled a planned meeting between my family and that of the Very Understanding Girlfriend. We have been together for thirteen years, and although they live in the same city our families have never met. Never. While supposedly our two mothers encountered each other for milliseconds as mine dropped a package off at her's when the latter was about to visit us in the US, no actual recording or measurements of the alleged incident exist. Without scientific proof, I remain a skeptic.

Thirteen years, and no meeting. What are the odds?

This latest hurdle concerns a ramp that is being built at my grandparents' house to allow them better access to the front door. The house is on a hill with a steep meandering path that leads up to it and many, many steps. While the ramp is being built the steps and path have been dug up, meaning that my grandparents will be housebound until the ramp is finished. Work started today and continues until Friday, but this Wednesday was the only day that the stars were sufficiently aligned to allow three generations of the Very Understanding Girlfriend's family and mine to congregate in the same place at the same time.

Since this get-together has been on the calendar for over two weeks there is no possible reason on earth why the week-long work on the ramp had to start today, unless the meeting of our two families will be an event of such cosmic significance that the Higgs boson will be generated in the process, sending ripples backwards in space and time to prevent any such familial encounter from occurring in the first place.

I tried to explain this theory to the Very Understanding Girlfriend as she phoned her mother to cancel yet again, but she didn't seem too impressed with the maths, nor my use of Summer Glau and Michael J Fox as the x and y axes in the probability graph I used for illustrative purposes.

"Its not me", I argued, "Creation itself is conspiring against us"

Thus far, she remains unconvinced.

With a Well-Tempered Clavier

On another musical note The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I had two friends over for dinner last night, and in addition to a rather tasty Rioja we were presented with an outstanding vinyl copy of 'Switched-On Bach' a 1968 album of Bach standards performed on a Moog by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, who went on to score the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange and Tron.

When released Bob Moog called it "the most stunning breakthrough in electronic music to date", and thirty years later it still sounds amazing.

I think this will be a new rule in our house, all guests must bring music (nice wine remains optional). Mr. G set the bar pretty high last night though, and his vinyl donation is very much appreciated!

We Are Reasonable People

Just back from a walk to James Street Parcel office to pick up the Warp20 Box Set, and damn but if it isn't one of the most beautiful collections of music I have laid my grubby little paws on.

Celebrating twenty years of the Warp label the boxed set contains 3 x 10" vinyl of unreleased material, 2 x 10" vinyl of locked-groove classic tracks, 2 x cds of classic tracks, 2 x cds of covers of Warp tracks by Warp artists, 1 x cd of an hour long Warp mix and a gorgeous 192-page booklet visually displaying the full Warp catalogue through to August 2009.

Warp is something of a personal music obsession of mine since some kind soul first played Autechre's 'Incunabula' for me back in 1997 (yes, I was somewhat late to the party by then, but I think I've more than made up for it in the subsequent years). Autechre, Plaid, B12 and Boards of Canada definitely reshaped my concept of music, how it was created, what it attempted to say, what effect it had on your brain. It encouraged me to go beyond listening and start creating, first with ACID and Fruity Loops on a PC, then on to hardware with a dusty and worn Roland MC-505 and a Korg Electribe EA-1 (again, and somewhat unfortunately for my bank balance and storage space, I have improved on that slightly in later years). Not always the easiest music to listen to, and at times stretching the concept of 'music' to the point of wondering if your cd and/or speakers are in some way damaged, as a label and concept it remains the benchmark against which I judge most other electronica.

While the Warp20 boxed set sold out before it ever shipped, two of the cd collections are available separately. 'Chosen' is a perfect introduction to Warp with classic tracks from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Plaid, Boards of Canada and newer acts like Grizzly Bear and Battles. 'Recreated' is a covers album that should bring a smile to anyone with passing familiarity with the label, and worth buying just for Born Ruffians cover of Aphex Twin's 'Milkman'. Both are double albums.

More info on Warp20 can be found on Warp's mini-site here.

When do we want it? In due course!

Enough time has passed now since the events of Saturday that I feel I can take a moment to write down a few thoughts and observations on the Green Party, and the significance of the Special Convention on the Program For Government and the National Asset Management Agency; I tweeted fairly extensively from the Conference so I don't feel the need to summarise the day's events beyond saying I came, I saw, I lost. If you want some good analysis of the Program For Government check out Irish Election and Irish Left Review, for instant comment and reaction look back over #pfg on twitter.

The Green Party is not a left-wing party
While it is socially progressive it is also a strong believer in market forces with government oversight in key environmental areas, but does not support major redistribution of wealth. It is predominantly a party of the middle class, and as such it fits comfortably into the British Liberal tradition.

While the PFG proposes abolishing the upper limit on PRSI, the introduction of water charges and an elimination of the current system of tax loopholes, there is no attempt to increase the current rate of Corporate Tax, and NAMA was supported by 68% of the members. The notion of privatization of banks was widely ridiculed with the prevalent belief of those members who spoke being that the public sector was too inefficient and/or corrupt to manage these institutions effectively.

Much fear was evident on the prospect of a Fine Gael/Labour coalition without Green participation, with one speaker suggesting that "If you trust Fine Gael and Labour then you are at the wrong party conference" to tumultuous applause. I cannot see major differences between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael policies, for me the only thing that distinguishes them on paper is the level of corporate donations that Fianna Fail has accepted from the construction and financial industries. Historically more corruption scandals have plagued Fianna Fail, but no doubt that is simply because they have been in power more often and for longer.

Why the Green membership should be so anti-Fine Gael confuses me, and their outright rejection of Labour baffles me completely. They may reject their labeling as the environmental wing of Fianna Fail, but after this weekend's conference those rejections ring very hollow indeed.

The Green Party is not a radical party, it is a pragmatic party
There is nothing dramatic or radical in the PfG, the specifics are fairly tame and the more courageous items are all conditional and aspirational, with the establishment of non-binding commissions to report back on the feasibility of change, rather than any actual change itself.

While few who spoke, including the Parliamentary Party, considered NAMA to be the best deal for the country, or Fianna Fail the ideal partners, they overwhelmingly followed the line of "the best we could get" for both. The fear of being out of government outweighed any fears of the effects of continuing to be in government on either public opinion of the party, or on its own moral compass.

While there was mention by Dan Boyle and John Gormley of rendition flights and the Corrib pipeline, it was of increased inspection and oversight, not of opposition. The membership of the party has no interest in controversial campaigns, that element left with Patricia McKenna and the other high profile resignations. In return these local grassroots campaigns have no interest in the Green Party, and that showed in the catastrophic results in the local elections.

The party prefers to be in power and score minor victories, than be out of power and score none. There was little mood for discussion on the cost to the soul of the party for those small victories.

Eamon Ryan is the future of the Green Party
John Gormley has lost the public trust. Trevor Sargent threw it all away. Dan Boyle shows signs of a bad temper and a short fuse. Paul Gogharty is seen as too unpredictable. Ciaran Cuffe, despite being an avid tweeter, doesn't have a high enough profile. Mary White is just too nice.

Ryan, however, is a great speaker and looks good in a suit. He is knowledgeable and well read, an early adopter of new technologies and most importantly for the future of the Party he is pro-business and a key proponent of the Green Economy. The business community does not fear him.

The new generation of Young Greens are not sandal-wearing dope-smoking anti-capitalists working on an organic farm, they are urban suit-wearing future green-collar dot-commers, the very embodiment of Celtic tiger cubs. Traditional left/right debate is irrelevant to them, their Greens represent a high-tech future with a morality and theory of social justice based on environmental rather than economic concerns.

While Ryan himself may not survive the next election, it is clear that he is the role model for this new generation of Greens.

I am in the wrong Party
This is the logical outcome of the first three observations, and will be rectified shortly.

It has been suggested that Labour or the Socialist Party would be a better home, but for the time being I think I have had enough of party politics. I have learned some interesting things by being closely involved with the political system, enough to know that major reform is needed, but also that that reform cannot come from within.

Turkeys, as they say, do not vote for Christmas.

How could something so wrong be so right?

I am in love. What you are seeing in the video above is an Eigenharp, revealed this week from Eigenlabs and the product of eight years of development. A mixture of midi controller, wind, string, percussion and loop player it is also just about the most beautiful thing I have seen (keep in kind I am the proud owner of an Omnichord). There's a pretty good overview of how it works and what exactly it is capable of on video here, and at the bbc here, and all I can say is wow.

The problem I have always felt about electronic music is how boring it is to watch. With the exception of Love Rhino, who plays a guitar as part of his set, almost all of my musician friends hide behind a laptop and leave the audience wondering whether they are just hitting play on winamp, or if anything actually 'live' is going on. This agoraphobia was taken to extreme at an Aphex Twin gig I was at where Mr James actually spent the whole gig sitting on the floor behind the table the decks were on with only his arm visible as it reached up over his head to put records on the platters.

For triggering loops I'm partial to a few Audio Cubes, and my weakness for a Tenori-on is well known, but the ability to move away from a laptop and take front and centre on a stage while avoiding the humiliation of a keytar, is something that makes the Eigenharp an object of pure desire.

They only thing that stops me from doing my usual impulse purchase here is the price tag, starting at £3,950.

Ouch.

That and the fact that the only folks who'll buy one probably play in the Creature Cantina.

Greens and NAMA, part II

According to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize wining economist* and author of 'Globalization and its Discontents' (amongst other things):

The "principle of overpaying banks for loans is criminal", "The Irish Government is squandering large amounts of money to bail out banks" and NAMA is "a massive transfer of money from the public to bankers" - Irish Times, Irish Examiner

Stiglitz was speaking on RTE's Primetime last night and advocated allowing the banks to collapse, that those who lived by the sword of Capitalism should be prepared to die by the sword of Capitalism:

"Which means when you can’t pay your debts, the share holders lose everything, the bond holders become the new shareholders and if that does not fill in the hole in the losses of the banks, then because the Government is going to provide deposit insurance, it becomes the owner. Then it [the Government] quickly sells it, or as quickly as it can, because when you have trauma like this you may not be able to do it quickly, but the joke is we call that ‘pre-privatisation’" - Irish Examiner

Stiglitz has been a vocal critic of Obama's plan to bail out the US Financial sector, so it comes as no surprise that he has serious misgivings about NAMA, but when a Nobel Economist accuses the government's behaviour of being 'criminal' you would hope the folks in Leinster House would sit up and take notice.

I watched Monday night's Frontline with some interest because of its coverage of the ongoing renegotiations of the Program for Government (on the substance of which I am not commenting). I was heartened to see the strength of the anti-NAMA sentiment expressed by some of the party members in the audience, prompting one group to go as far as suggesting that if voting against the Program for Government was the only way to prevent NAMA from happening, they would do so in spite of whatever concessions the Green negotiators were able to wrest from Fianna Fail.

Two votes are scheduled for Saturday's Special Convention, the first on accepting the new Program for Government needs to be passed by 2/3 of the members present. The second on rejecting NAMA also needs to be passed by 2/3 of those present. While there is a significant group with anti-NAMA sentiments within the Party I would have doubted that it would amass the 66% of votes needed to mandate a rejection; however it is much easier to get the 33% + 1 vote necessary to reject the Program for Government, especially given that the motion for Green support for Lisbon II only received exactly 66% of the votes during the July Special Conference. If the Program is rejected, the Greens pull out of Government, an election is called which presumably will be won by a Fine Gael/Labour coalition, both of whom are fervently opposed to NAMA, though they differ over what the alternative should be.

I've already written on my belief that were an election to be held in the next twelve months the Greens would cease to be a significant parliamentary party for at least the next ten years. Opinions differ in the mainstream press on who would be the sole TD to survive a snap election, most suggesting Trevor Sargent though I noted last night that Vincent Browne believes Eamon Ryan would emerge relatively unscathed. Either way the party would take a decade to recover by which time there may not be a role for a dedicated environmental party, given the mainstreaming of Green issues and their adoption by other parties.

For Party members to risk the destruction of the Party itself over the issue of NAMA shows just how passionate its opponents are, and with just cause. I fervently believe that NAMA is one of the most criminal pieces of self-serving legislation to be foisted upon an unwilling public, rewarding Fianna Fail's financial backers in the construction and banking sectors for destroying our economy. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize to see that.

The McCarthy/An Bord Snip report proposed cuts in public expenditure of up to €5.3 billion; NAMA proposes to buy loans on properties with a current market value of €47 billion for around €54 billion, the difference between the two figures being more than the total savings to the Exchequer proposed by the An Bord Snip cuts. While eliminating NAMA would not have the effect of preventing the proposed cuts to Education, Heath and Welfare, it is indicative of the burden that this and future generations of citizens will have to accept should NAMA be enacted. There is no justifiable reason to pay above market rates for toxic assets when using public money to do so.

My intention on Saturday had been to weigh up the revised Program for Government on its merits, despite my strong opposition to any continued coalition with Fianna Fail, and vote purely on the proposal as presented. Given the scale of the disaster this nation faces should NAMA become reality I feel I must now also consider this as part of my vote.

Pat Fitzpatrick, leader of the grassroots group "Greens Against NAMA" will be on Vincent Browne tonight at 11:05 on TV3, and I will be watching with great interest.

* as mentioned before on this blog, I am well aware that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize for Economics, but common parlance refers to it as such so I have chosen to do likewise.

Quite A-Moo-sing

Now that is how you organise a farmers' protest.

From coverage of protests in Brussels in yesterday's NY Times, thanks to Alan for the link.

Plus sa change, plus c'est la meme chose

A couple of news reports have caught my eye in the last few days, I had originally thought to write a post on some of them individually but am feeling lazy so I'll just lump them all together here.

Reading is UnAmerican

During the recent G20 protests in Pittsburgh the tubes were alight with videos of everything from camo-wearing police abducting protesters to police staging team photos with captured protesters forced into humiliating trophy poses, but the thing that worried me the most was the arrest of an organisers who used twitter and other online services to direct groups of protesters away from marauding police. Elliott Madison had his home in New York raided by the FBI after his arrest in Pittsburgh, and amongst the evidence presented by the FBI when announcing the raid were gasmasks and goggles (pretty standard issue for anyone expecting to be teargassed by overzealous police), pictures of Marx and Lenin, and anarchist books. That's right, the FBI used his choice of reading material to partly justify his arrest.

In the past I have gone through phases of worrying about how much information I reveal about myself online. When revelations about Facebook's ties to the CIA and their data sharing agreement with the US government broke I tried to unsubscribe, not that I have anything particular to hide, it just wasn't something that I particularly wanted to support. I eventually learned to stop worrying and love the 'Book, and opted back in to keep in touch with friends in the US and elsewhere. At the same time I happily put my entire book collection up on LibraryThing for all the world to see, and a quick perusal will find many, many left-wing, Socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, Situationist, Surrealist, Anti-Capitalist and other books of all political stripes and colours. You will even find books by Thomas Friedman. Worse, you'll find books by Rahm Emmanuel. This does not mean that I am a Socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, Situationist, Surrealist, Anti-Capitalist, Neo-Conservative or worse, a Democrat, it just means that I have an inquisitive mind, a passion for political theory and a general love of reading.

Apparently that is now an arrestable offence in America.

Judging by the high levels of illiteracy shown at recent right-wing rallies across Middle America, perhaps the authorities should reconsider that policy (thanks to 8den for the image link).

But they eat Whales!

The UN Development Program released its latest development index yesterday. According to Mahbub ul Haq, the founder of the Human Development Report:

"The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people's choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time. People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation in community activities. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives."

Although the report is entitled the 2009 Human Development Report, it in fact collates data from 2007. After dropping a place last year Norway emerges on top once again as the most developed country in the world, with Australia second, Iceland third, Canada fourth and Ireland remains in fifth, well ahead of Japan in 10th, the US in 13th and the UK down in 21st place.

There's an interesting factsheet on Ireland, which puts us in 22nd place for Gender Empowerment and 29th place for percentage of population comprised by immigrants (a healthy 14.8%). All of this is a great snapshot of how good we used to be, we'll have to wait until 2011 to see just how much the recession, proposed government cuts to health and education, and the return of the many thousands of migrant works back to their home countries have damaged our global development standings.

Operation Economic Freedom

It was with some interest that I read this morning's report that China, Russia and a group of middle eastern nations are planning to abandon the dollar as the currency of international oil trade, in favour of a basket of currencies including the Euro, Yen, Yaun and a new, as of yet unnamed, single currency for the Gulf Co-operation Council nations, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

You may remember that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein abandoned the dollar as the currency for all Iraqi oil trades in favour of the Euro, a move that other nations looked likely to follow. This sent shockwaves through Washington, as the only way the US manages to stay economically afloat with such a massive amount of international debt is the fact that in order to buy and sell oil every other nation has to maintain a large dollar reserve. If any nation, say China, were to attempt to collect on their US debt the US economy would collapse, destroying the value of the dollar, and thus wiping out the enormous dollar reserves that nation (and every other) has, also bankrupting them. The US feared that a move to the Euro for oil trading would remove this bulwark and allow other nations to come knocking on their door looking for their money back, with interest, and so a swift invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam put a stop to any such move to the Euro.

This is why today's report is so important (if accurate), as with the backing of China and Japan, as well as America's erstwhile allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, as opposed to a unilateral action by a single nation, there appears to be little the US can do to prevent such a move. For the rest of the world, a move to a global trade based upon a combined basket of currencies and gold rather than a reliance on a single currency affected by domestic economic issues can only be a good thing. For the US it is potentially catastrophic.

Iraq was an easy target for the neocons and when Iran also mooted a move to the Euro and the establishment of a local Middle-Eastern oil trading market talk of invasion also ratcheted up behind a smokescreen of preventing nuclear non-proliferation. Under an Obama administration such hawkish bluster is more difficult, especially when the countries proposing such a move are your allies.

See, plenty of things to talk about this morning without having to comment on last night's Frontline.

ordo ab chao

To avoid the depressing coverage of Lisbon, and to keep to my strict vow not to comment on the ongoing renegotiation of the Program for Government I have been keeping myself quite occupied for the last few days.

Friday saw a mad dash to Heuston Station from our local polling booth to catch a 6pm train to Galway for a friend's house warming. Never has democracy been exercised in such a slap-dash last minute fashion; despite an excellent series of articles in the current issue of Village Magazine read in the week leading up to the Referendum that almost caused me to vote Yes, I finally went with my conscience and voted No, though only deciding that about an hour before I marked the box with my X. You can now add me to Michael O'Leary's list of losers, but at least I can sleep at night knowing I haven't betrayed my core beliefs.

The house warming was great, catching up with friends that I haven't seen in far too many months, though an unfortunate incident with an extractor fan hood and my skull left me feeling a bit woozy for a sizable portion of the evening (seriously, why do they put them at head height, it just doesn't make sense?). After a rather good group brunch in Ard Bia the next day, the Very Understanding Girlfriend and I returned home to continue working on the great project that has occupied both of us for the majority of our week, the overhaul of our shared office.

We moved in to our apartment three years ago, and unbelievably there are still a few boxes from that move left packed and unloved under tables and on top of bookcases. City center living has its advantages, but storage space is not one of them. Coupled with the glacial speed of our decision making, a process that can only be measured in geological time, the effects on our shared office can only be described as 'cluttering', in the same way World War II is referred to as 'The Emergency', twenty-plus years of Civil War in the North are called 'The Troubles', and the abomination of a season between winters that we have endured since time immemorial is humorously called 'Summer'.

Thus at the instigation of The Very Understanding Girlfriend we finally broke down last week and decided to do something about the Himalayan piles of books and miscellaneous stuff that threatened to rain down literary destruction upon us at any moment, and try and put some order onto our office. One trip to a magical Swedish furniture shop and about three days of hammering, screwing, bracketing and coughing up lungfulls of particle board and plaster and our office is starting to look a little less like it was made by FEMA.

Surprisingly now that the contents of our life are no longer strewn around the floor, we seem to have less storage space than before. Somehow the random piles of accumulata had organised themselves into a perfect Weaire-Phelan structure, allowing seemingly Tardis-like storage to occur. This perfect tension has now been broken and we are left with an impeccable office but an unnavigable hallway.

Life, you see, is all about enforced compromises. Getting one part of it totally sorted necessitates taking a hit in another.

Just like Lisbon really.