I don't believe it

There is nothing so discombobulating as a disturbed morning routine.

Six days a week I awaken, rise, ablute, encaffine and write, normally in something approximating that exact order, giving myself a reasonable approximation of a lie-in on a Sunday due to both the absence of delivery-trucks in the adjoining lane-way that usually serve as my morning alarm sometime between 5 and 7am (depending on the day), and also as a result of the equally-adjoining provider of caffeine keeping holy the Sabbath and remaining firmly shut, forcing me to go further afield for my morning necessity and thus requiring slightly more effort being made in my choice of sartorial elegance (While the rest of the city might be comfortable walking around the streets in their pyjamas I, alas, am not. Perhaps it is a generational thing, perhaps it is the picture of Dr Zoidberg without his shell that now sits uncomfortable atop my own mental self-image thanks to a recent conversation with a friend, its just not something that the good citizenry of Dublin will ever be subjected to).

No matter, the point of this meandering is to firm in your mind the notion that I am something of a creature of habit, at least as far as my awakenings are concerned. I try and structure my work day so that no meetings occur before 11am, giving me plenty of time to arise, dust the cobwebs from my brain and deal with the twin withdrawals of caffeine and words, intaking one and expelling the other, repetitious actions mirrored across time and space by countless generations of unwitting hosts whose sole purpose is to facilitate the reproduction and transmission of that most insidious and parasitical liver-fluke of the mind, the meme.

Much like the fungus that steers a hapless zombie ant, information does indeed want to be free and will use whatever tool is at hand to disseminate itself across as wide a net as possible, poking and prodding the ganglia of a captive human transport only dimly aware of their role in the propagation of these insidious brain-worms. Thus I know not what compels me to write each morning, only that I feel strangely on edge with a fiery itch in my cerebellum that distracts me from all other activities should I fail to complete my morning ritual.

Alas living in an urban environment the harsh reality is that those self-same city streets that provide such wonders of 24-hour convenience, entertainment and sustenance are not always the most conducive to activities of mental reflection. While I have grown to accept to the apparent lure of the aforementioned adjoining lane-way as a public urinal, its quiet yet reassuringly well-lit environs a seeming siren-call to inebriated revelers both male and female the length and breadth of this fair city, nothing could have prepared me for the discordant cacophony that is the English Language School at rest.

It is no doubt a blessing in these turbulent economic times that large groups of teenage students from sunnier climes still see fit to travel here each and every summer as their parents did before them, and their parents' parents, all in the fervent desire to achieve a level of mastery in the English language that can only be described as "bleedin' ra-pid". It is unfortunately something less of a blessing that an academy for such eduction exists less than four doors down from me, and climate change has conspired with geography to provide both an incentive to take long and boisterous breaks outside and an ideal lane-way in which to lounge and relax, assuming you can ignore the pungent aroma of the previous evening's human contributions.

Which evidently the international youth of today are well able to do.

While the triple-glazing on my windows is strong enough to block wi-max signals, alas it is no defence against the mass chatter of excited teens. While my natural inclination is to lean out the window, shake my fist in an exaggerated and exasperated manner, and yell incoherently but menacingly, such actions would sadly reinforce the already pervasive impression that some of my friends have of me as something of a grumpy old curmudgeon.

As nothing could be further from the truth I instead took the enlightened decision this morning to shrug off such inconveniences and take my caffeine away with me the short distance to my studio, to relax and luxuriate in its inspirational surrounds and commit pen to paper, bit to bite (or whatever the digital equivalent may be), feeding the inner demon that commands me to write.

Only to discover that a horde of workmen had descended upon the building in which my studio resides to completely refurbish the common areas, offices, toilets and almost every part of the building that is not actually my studio, necessitating the near-complete demolition of almsot every space 20 meters away from my writing desk in at least three dimensions over the course of the next four weeks (so technically the destruction will occur in at least four dimensions). My studio will now remain an ocean of squalor in a sea of gentrified commerce, providing an ongoing musty odour that no doubt will be the source of many a water-cooler conversation in the offices above and imparting me with a hint of Bohemia as I pass by future occupants of the building's soon-to-be more salubrious areas.

Between now and then, however, my studio is no longer usable at the exact hours when my creative urges burn the most painfully. Thus my memes go un-propagated, and they have no qualms about showing their displeasure.

Poo.

Time to reconsider the merits of grumpy fist shaking, methinks.

Mise Éire

Behold, a humble Irish passport, a possession most prized both of Saudi businessmen and Mossad agents alike, not to mention an accoutrement almost as standard issue as a pair of Timberlands and wrap-around Oakleys for overarmed, overpaid and over-there US contractors in oil-producing hotspots across the globe.

This, my friends, is not merely an official document wherein the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ireland requests all whom it may concern to allow the bearer, a citizen of Ireland, to pass freely and without hindrance and to afford the bearer all necessary assistance and protection. This, my friends, is the joyful conclusion of an epic saga fourteen years in the making that encompasses all aspects of my life and loves and everything in between. It is my story arc, the underlining narrative of my life, a tale the bards will sing of through the ages, and it all began somewhere back in the deep dark mists of time that we like to call 1996...

This was a more savage and barbaric age, long before Unkie Dave had passed the Unkie Trials, stood before the Unkie Council and earned the right to be called "Unkie", back when he went by the more simple moniker of "Dave". It was an time of Paisley shirts, hair worn roguishly to the waist, pints in the Stag's Head and still the occasional night of raucous and boisterous devilment to an accompanying soundtrack that ranged from Faith No More to Alice in Chains, with the odd bit of Sisters of Mercy thrown in for good luck. As the summer drew to a close, and with my Masters firmly behind me I was heading down the route of Student Politics. And so with a year-long sabbatical position starting and a conference in Poland beckoning I headed off to the passport office to get the magical booklet that would be my gateway to the world.

This is where the problems would begin.

Technically the problems all began some twenty-three years previously when an Irish woman and an American man fell in love, got married, and had a baby all in a distant sun-kissed and ever-so-slightly fascist land of Scorchio. Thanks to my parents' blatant disregard for my future travel plans, I was born on a US military base in this distant land, thus not being born in either nation of my parents' citizenship, nor, on a technicality, on the soil of the nation that I was actually born in. This resulted in me having neither an Irish birth certificate, nor a US birth certificate, nor even a Scorchian birth certificate. Instead I ended up with a Certificate of an American Birth Abroad and a Scorchian notice of a foreign birth, which was subsequently lost when my parents divorced eleven years later.

Thus, armed only with a PPS card, my Certificate of an American Birth Abroad and a battered photostat of the Scorchian notice I arrived, metaphorical cap in hand, to attempt to procure my Irish passport. Times were different in the Nineties, it was a golden age when a simple investment of £1 million in the pet food company of the Taoiseach, or the ability to play football at an international level would be rewarded with Irish citizenship, thus I had high hopes that my meager offerings would be accepted, given that I was, in actuality, an Irish citizen.

Alas, not having made a large enough investment, having the dribbling skills of an epileptic giraffe, nor having any of the actual relevant documentation necessary, my efforts only resulted in a six-month temporary passport and a clip round the ear from the passport office to come back with a proper birth cert if I ever wanted to get a full one.

Having been granted this six-month stay of perambulatory execution, I began to plan my trip to the Polish conference. In those days no direct flights existed between Krakow and Dublin, and the best route seemed to enable a few days stop-over in Prague (the Paris of the Twenties for the Nineties) before boarding an overnight train ride to Krakow. This planning process brought me into contact with a helpful young woman who herself had just returned from Prague, and whose advice I sought on where to go and what to do while there. Though I did not know it at the time, that young woman would one day become The Very Understanding Girlfriend ("one day" being about six weeks later).

Being inherently lazy, the prospect of tracking down an original copy of my Scorchian I-can't-believe-its-not-a-Birth-Cert had less than zero appeal for me, and thus when next I needed to travel I hit upon the wildly obvious notion of attempting to procure a US passport. While I realised that this would most likely place me in the first group of people to be shot by any hijacker, the nineties (as mentioned before) were a simpler time, a Democrat was in the White House and the whole world loved America (this may not actually be true), and it was a risk I was willing to take. Good old Uncle Sam was more than willing to accept my Certificate of an American Birth Abroad (never really in doubt, the clue, I think, is the whole "American Birth" thing in the title) and clasp me to his beardy chest, and thus once again the world was my oyster.

The whole world, that is, except Ireland.

So cunning was my plan that I forgot to take into account the whole trying to get back into Ireland on a foreign passport thing. "How long are you going to be here?" they would ask, "um, I live here" I would reply. "So where's your visa?" they would ask, "my, um, what?" I would reply. "You need a visa to be here longer than three months", they would say. "Um, I'm Irish" I would reply, more hesitant and quite nervously, "Says here you're American" they would say, more tersely than strictly necessary. "Um, I'm Irish also" I clarified. "So where's your Irish passport?" they countered. "Aha! well, you see it all began some twenty-three years ago when an Irish woman and an American man fell in love, got married, and had a baby all in the sun-kissed and ever-so-slightly fascist land of Scorchio...."

"Get out" they would cry, "and come back when you have a proper visa."

So there really was nothing left to do but move to America, and so I did.

In the Summer of 2004 life took another twist and turn and brought me back to Dublin on a permanent basis. Over the intervening years my passport had taken something of a battering, being my only form of photo ID and thus an essential element of any night out in the US, to be proffered before entering any bar, nightclub, gin joint, speakeasy, package store or other hostelry or provider of alcoholic beverages. Being a pre-digital passport, the plastic film covering the photo had started to peel away, a disfigurement brought to my attention by a helpful Garda staffing the immigration booth in Dublin airport upon my final return home, who said as he waved me through, "now there's many countries who wouldn't allow you in with a damaged passport like that, off you go now son and get it fixed as soon as you can". "Right you are, Garda" I said, and soon enough I did.

Or at least I tried to.

The Nineties had come and gone, and we were no longer living in a simpler age. The War on Terror was in full flight, Old Europe was now the Axis of Weasels, the domain of cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and despite my lactose intolerance somehow my lucky-charm Irish accent, cheeky grin and a firm belief in the international rule of law marked me out as dangerously Un-American, and the whole passport replacement process escalated dangerously out of control.

"Why were you in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick last year, Mr Unkie?" the embassy official asked. "Um, I've never been to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick" I replied truthfully. "What happened to the passport you were issued in 1981?" the interrogation continued, albeit through the safety of a glass window-counter. "1981? When I was eight years old? I have no idea." I offered somewhat confused. 'Indeed" he replied, mentally preselecting me for further investigations somewhere between rendition and water-boarding. "Is there a problem?" I mistakenly asked. "Yes. Yes there is" came the reply, as his eyes measured me up for an orange jumpsuit. "Can I ask what its about?" I said, wondering would I get to call a lawyer, then remembering that I didn't actually know any lawyers. "Oh, I think you know what this is about, Mr Unkie" he replied, in what was quite simply one of the most horrifying exchanges I have ever had with another human being.

Seriously, I had no idea what he was talking about, and still do not to this day.

It took three months to get a replacement passport. At the time I was interviewing for a senior position with a US multinational, part of the final interview process would involve me traveling to California to meet the leadership team there. While the interview process itself also took over three months unfortunately the two periods did not coincide, and I had to hesitantly explain that I couldn't travel to the US, the country of my citizenship, because I was having some, um, *cough* difficulties *cough* with my passport. Perhaps they thought they were secretly hiring Roman Polanski, or Bobby Fischer, for this didn't seem to phase them, and two weeks after I was hired, and after the Embassy had requested every document on me that had ever been filed with the State Department since I was born be shipped from a warehouse in Virginia to Dublin, I finally got my replacement passport, and so off I went to California to meet my new boss.

Only to be stopped by Irish immigration on the way back and asked "Where's your visa?"

"Um, it all began some thirty-one years ago when an Irish woman and an American man fell in love..."

"Get out."

So, after some consultation with my sisters who were in a remarkably similar boat, I traveled down to the Garda Immigration Bureau with my tattered and faded six-month temporary Irish passport, and within a matter of hours I had a stamp on my US passport allowing me to remain in Ireland without condition - wahoo, problem solved!

Well, actually no.

You see the vast majority of my travel still occurs within the EU, and at the current rate of EU enlargement by the time my US passport needs to be renewed again 4/5ths of the Earth's surface will be under the happy blue flag of Brussels, so unless I plan on only traveling exclusively to the US, Turkey and possibly Switzerland, it might make more sense to try and avoid all the hours of queueing in the non-EU nationals line, and the inevitable response that my "be gob an' begorrah" accent elicits from immigration officials (particularly in Heathrow) as they inspect my passport, "Oi mate", they laugh, "with an accent like that you should pick up an Oirish passport!"

"Funny you should say that," I reply, "it all began some thirty-odd years ago when an Irish woman and an American man fell in love..."

"Get out."

Immigration officials, I have discovered, almost universally have a most singular sense of humour.

And so some months ago I once again consulted with my sisters and from them had procured my mother's original Birth Certificate, and her Marriage Certificate, but the recent work-to-rule in the Dublin Passport Office and ensuing three month turn-around times for applications, coupled with my aforementioned inherent laziness, had prevented me from going any further. Now spurred into action by a forty minute wait in line in Heathrow while all my fellow Europeans breezed by in a matter of minutes, I returned to the Passport Office almost fourteen years to the day of my last attempt and prepared to brave the worst of their ongoing industrial action. Armed with a Kong-sized cappuccino and Hegel's "Outlines of the Philosophy of Right" to sustain me over the coming hours I took my seat two Fridays ago and steeled myself for the coming ordeal.

"Good afternoon", I said, when my number had finally been called. "I would like one of your finest Irish passports please. I have here a temporary passport issued to me fourteen years ago, a Certificate of an American Birth Abroad, my mother's (through whom I claim my Irish citizenship) original birth certificate, and her original marriage certificate"

"Marriage Certificate? Well why didn't you say so, sir" came the unexpectedly helpful, enthusiastic and cheery response. "Sure we'll have it ready for you within two weeks".

And that was that.

Obviously my earlier problem was not explicitly stating that I was born comfortably within wedlock. I must have missed the line in the application process stating "Irish citizenship - bastards need not apply". Perhaps we already have too many as it is.

Thus this afternoon, barely eight working days later, my brand spanking new Irish passport was ready for collection. Now, after having a PPS number since I sat my Leaving Certificate exams twenty years ago, after voting in almost every local, national and European election (and the odd Referendum here and there) since 1991, after cultivating a near addiction in my early twenties to King crisps, Smithwicks, Spice burgers and curry chips, after decades of bemoaning and begrudging any Irish man or woman who achieved even a modicum of success abroad, after carefully cultivating the ability to ride in any taxi longer than five minutes and successfully ignore the driver's overt racism and blatant misogyny, after enduring decades of the inevitable association in foreign climes with Johnny Logan, Michael Flatley, Bob Geldof, Colin Farrell, The Cranberries, Daniel O'Donnell, Father Ted, that bloke out of the IT Crowd, what's his name that does the voice of Aslan, yer man in 'The Field', Miley out of Glenroe looking total lost in 'Alexander', and for-the-love-of-god-would-you-please-just-shut-the-feck-up-for-once-in-your-life-Bono, only now can I really and truly call myself Irish.

I'm off now to the pub to get pissed, pick a fight, urinate in a public place and fall asleep in a gutter.

Huzzah!

Float like a...

While transiting through London on the way back from [REDACTED] the opportunity presented itself for a morning visit to the Natural History Museum. Inexplicably Saturday morning proved to be something of a popular time to visit this most amazing of free museums, and with queues snaking around the entrance Disneyland-style, my eyes were drawn to the side-exhibit "Butterfly Explorers", a pay-in exhibition that offered immediate entrance to the Natural History Museum proper after a quick little stroll through a butterfly-filed enclosure.

After a few minutes in 35+C and ridiculous humidity (to keep all the tropic-loving butterflies happy) I had almost forgotten about the rest of the museum, and once my camera had adjusted to the damp and warmth I lost myself somewhat.

The first image is an Owl Butterfly, from South America, the second is a Julia longwing from North America, and the last is a Tiger longwing, also from South America. Click on any picture to greatly embiggen.

The exhibition is running until 26th September, and you can read more about it here. I've a few more photos here, and for a great look at a few more species closer to home check out some truly amazing shots from An Snag Breac of things to be found in the semi-wilderness she calls her garden.

Žižek in the End Times

As a welcome respite from the mental complexities of my recent trip to [REDACTED] I am working my way through Žižek's latest cultural commentary, "Living in the End Times", which pretty much picks up where "In Defense of Lost Causes" left off. Yes, I am indeed a glutton for punishment with a twisted notion of relaxation.

If you've read any recent Žižek, if not any Žižek at all, you'll know what to expect with stream-of-consciousness chapters encompassing Lacan, Marx, and a bizarre reverence/disapproval for Badiou, all illustrated through numerous TV and Film references and borderline inappropriate sexual jokes. I always come away knowing that I've taken in a lot of ideas that have provoked a few good insights, but I always struggle to pin down exactly what those insights are. Its a bit like philosophical popcorn really, I know I've eaten something, I can feel that I'm full, I just can't quite remember exactly what flavour the food was, or when exactly I finished it off.

Its not earth shattering, but if you like his style, as I do, then you'll enjoy it. Otherwise its probably not the best introduction to his cultural commentaries, try "The Sublime Object of Ideology or "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce" for something a bit more engaging.

Thanks to the wonder of Google Goggles whilst idly scanning the cover of the book to see what would happen (its a slow evening), I was directed to the above YouTube clip of Žižek on a Dutch tv program where he explores some of the themes in "End Times".

Interesting format, amazing platform for a dynamo of provokative ideas, unfortunate choice of shirt.

The Myth and the Word

Two weeks ago I travelled to [REDACTED], and not for the first time.

In 1999 I spent a few weeks backpacking around from Jerusalem and the Dead Sea to the border with Syria and Lebanon in the north. I traveled through [FURTHER REDACTED] territories and into Jericho, and despite a number of bombings and attacks that took place in my time there I still count that first trip to [REDACTED] as something quite amazing in my life. While an avowed atheist I was only a few years out of college where four years of my life had been occupied with Theology, and to walk down the Via Dolorosa was like stepping physically into the texts you had immersed yourself in, helped in no small part by competing groups of Asian pilgrims intent on reenacting the Stations of the Cross complete with willing penitents nailing themselves to crosses.

This connection with the written historic permeates all aspects of life in [REDACTED], whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim the reliance on specific historical texts to justify and validate contemporary existence is something that seems inescapable. Once again I visited the Shrine of the Book, the museum dedicated to housing portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls; eleven years ago I saw this as a monument to learning, a testament to humanity’s insatiable urge to put sense and order on its surrounds through the permanence of the written word. Today the accompanying commentary highlights the discovery of the Scrolls, the earliest example of written Biblical texts, as being in the same year as the foundation of the State of [REDACTED], and notes that many take this to be a sign of divine approval.

In the beginning was the word, they say, and that word was ours.

The written word has power, and no where is this more obvious than here, where things are named and renamed and every building and monument, every park and park bench in the wealthy neighbourhoods are emblazoned in giant lettering with the names of those who contributed financially to its construction, a nation tagged by foreign Ozymandi whose future (they hope) is forever ingrained in the very land itself through the imposition of their sigils upon its soil.

And there is no shortage of works to carry their names, for [REDACTED] is Mars, a barren empty desert that truly has been terraformed, transformed into Nazca lines of poly-tunnels and Blade Runner/Silicon Valley-scapes that sit below Californian suburbs arching along the ridges and hill-tops scattered across this tiny land the size of Wales. Where once there was nothing now civilization flourishes, the blood and sweat and tears of two generations have created prosperity from the land, the physical embodiment of the Covenant between the divine and the citizenry. This is the myth [REDACTED] writes for itself.

Mircea Eliade writes in “Myth and Reality” that all myths are essentially creation myths. To visit [REDACTED] is to see just such an ongoing narrative, a continuously revised creation myth with a million would-be narrators each seeking to impose their vision upon the land. The Old Testament itself (or at least the Pentateuch), was the first such written myth of this land, with Deuteronomy forming a legal constitution and the monarchy given supremacy by being elevated to the role of conduit between the divine and the people; the people worshiped God, in return God gave them the land, but only through the stewardship of the State in the form of the King. Written during the reign of Josiah in the 7th Century BCE the Pentateuch backdates the formation of this Covenant between the Divine and the citizenry to the mythic age of David, a creation narrative woven to justify existent societal structures through faux-historic events now shrouded in the mists of time (see Rainer Albertz’s excellent “A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, Volume I”). Today almost all the land of [REDACTED] is still in the ownership of the State, though a parliamentary democracy with representative coalitions has replaced the authority of the King. Through this the people themselves now collectively own the Land, and they have enthusiastically embraced the role of myth makers, weaving their narrative across the landscape with the horrors and heroism of the 20th Century intertwined so tightly with Josiah’s calculated political manifesto that it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

But at the heart of this myth, like those birthing tales of America, Australia and elsewhere, is a tension that imbalances everything: the land was not empty, was not barren, was not a sterile, sleeping Mars waiting to be transformed. Nearly two millennia passed between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE and the foundation of the modern State of [REDACTED], yet much of the ongoing narrative omits this period entirely. Time and history did not stand still; the land did not sleep, awaiting the return of one group of people. History, civilization and culture moved on, and moved on without them.

The people of [REDACTED] know this, despite virulent protestations and a collective public state of denial, they know the reality of the situation. Private talk of decreasing immigration and higher [FURTHER REDACTED] birthrates feeds a resigned sense of inevitable but gradual doom, replacing the historic fear of instant annihilation at the hands of hostile neighbours still vocal in their contempt and eager to display their willingness to drive the people of [REDACTED] into the sea. Time now is the enemy, not The Other.

Though not often reported by external media, there are many within [REDACTED] that see the harm in existing narratives and seek to write new ones. They understand that History is as great an enemy as Time, and while it should never be ignored one should never be held hostage to either its myth or reality. Thus a new creation narrative needs to be written, and written together by all the people living in the land. It cannot be imposed from outside, and it cannot be written by the few for the many. The more hands that guide the pen, the more voices in the chorus, the greater the acceptance of the myth and the more unifying that myth will be.

In the beginning is the word, and that word must belong to everyone.

Forty shades of Grey

This fortnight I have mostly been in [REDACTED].

Normally upon returning to Dublin after an extensive foray into parts elsewhere I experience an emotional dip, a drop in energy and enthusiasm, a feeling of impending, if not outright immanentized, doom and gloom. Frequent readers of Booming Back might be somewhat familiar with this occurrence, and these feelings can almost always be directly attributed to the gulf between those things that have amazed me elsewhere and the sense of impossibility of ever actualizing those things or something similar here at home.

This time, however, it was the trip itself that has engendered such feelings of discomfort and discombobulation, for [REDACTED] is not an easy place to talk about, let alone visit. We do not live in a Black and White world, and if ever there was a place that embodies the Greyness in-between it is [REDACTED], which runs the full Grey spectrum from battleship to slate, passing through charcoal and almost every other shade of Grey along the way.

And yet it seems that in the media and the court of public opinion this most Grey of places can only ever be discussed in the most absolutist of terms. For the Right [REDACTED] is right, and every action taken by it is justified by its very existence, and the need to protect this existence. For the Left [REDACTED] has come to represent the ultimate oppressor, and every action taken by those it oppresses is a gallant stand in their own struggle for existence. No time is given to those who seek a third way, particularly those within [REDACTED] itself, whose numbers are somewhere between a vocal minority and a silent majority and yet curiously never seem to figure highly in external reporting, no doubt because they fail to conform to the established narratives of [REDACTED] good, [FURTHER REDACTED] bad, or vice versa.

I have been of the opinion that one should never judge the citizenry of a nation by the actions of their government, elected or otherwise, but recently I have begun to modify this aphorism to the more realistic notion that one should never judge an individual citizen of a nation by the actions of their government, for the collective citizenry in a functioning democracy is entirely responsible for the form their government takes. I may not have voted for a particular party but we as an electorate get the government we deserve. As demonstrated by the people of Latvia and Iceland last year the collected public opposition to governments by the citizenry can bring about change, and while (to date) the citizenry of Iran, Thailand and Greece have failed to do likewise their resolve to continue to demonstrate is something that shames those of us here and elsewhere who fail to stand up against official policies and actions that we know to be wrong.

Herein lies the first of my many problems with this trip, is it right of me to attempt to separate the actions of a government from my encounters with individual citizens of that state? [REDACTED] has compulsory military service for every non-[FURTHER REDACTED] citizen over the age of 18, male and female. Conscientious objectors are rare, and often serve jail terms for their actions. Thus almost every citizen you meet has at some time carried out militaristic actions on behalf of the state. While the ultra-religious can exempt themselves from service while studying in religious programs, these same groups tend to vote for ultra-conservative politicians who are the instigators of the more extreme and nationalistic government policies. Thus has almost every [REDACTED] citizen you meet contributed either directly or indirectly to the oppression of [FURTHER REDACTED] simply by being a citizen of [REDACTED]?

Furthermore, does this also imply that simply by being in [REDACTED], no matter what my motives, I too am contributing to the oppression of [FURTHER REDACTED]?

The standard Black and White answer to this from my redoubtable perch on the Left would be 'Yes', but there are no Black and Whites in [REDACTED], only Grey.

With these thoughts on my mind before I even set off, it was never going to be a comfortable trip.

Bear with me over the next few days while I try to explore some of the effects this trip has had on me. Never one to shy away from shying away from something here on Booming Back, I'm not going to touch the specifics or origins of the [REDACTED]/[FURTHER REDACTED] conflict with a ten-foot pole, I'm happy to leave that to others more eminently qualified and/or troll-ish than I. Instead I want to explore a few things that occurred to me while there, both positive and negative, and to do so without a) offending a whole bunch of people unnecessarily and b) attracting a whole bunch of offensive comments.

This being the Internet, I'd rate my chances as 50/50 of doing either.