Concrete Walls and Ghost Trains

Well winter is well and truly upon us now; the heavy duvet is out of storage and on the bed, no journey out of the house without at least three layers is considered and in some circles there is even talk of turning on the heating for a limited time, later on in the evening. That's loser talk if you ask me, sure it was only 3C last night, 2C at a push, nothing that an extra layer and a belly full of wrath and ire can't handle.

Thus it was in the aforementioned multitude of layers that I bundled myself up and out onto the streets of our Fair City this weekend for a series of adventures that can only be described as, with some not inconsiderable exaggeration, epic.

After returning from [REDACTED] earlier this year I went on something of research drive to try and understand much of what I had seen there from a socio-historic context. The main question, indeed the only question, that I am struggling to deal with is how a nation born out of the greatest horror in the western world's history could in the space of the last twenty years become the very antithesis of everything that its foundation was supposed to herald. How could the children of those who suffered the greatest oppression of the 20th Century themselves become some of the greatest oppressors of the 21st? For me this has nothing to do with religion, history or geography, and everything to do with the very core of the human psyche, it is as if the 60 year history of [REDACTED] is one giant Stanford Prison Experiment writ large, exposing the base inhumanity that lies in the soul of every man.

Pretty depressing stuff, really.

Mixed in my reading with books by Sand, Shahak and other local writers was a rather nice book by London-based photo-journalist William Parry, "Against The Wall". Parry travelled to [REDACTED] and [FURTHER REDACTED] in the wake of Banksy's 2007 visit and catalogued the artistic resistance to the Separation Barrier, the massive 8m high and 700+ km long (when completed) wall that snakes along, very approximately, the border between [REDACTED] and [FURTHER REDACTED] and divides, entraps, impoverishes and imprisons entire communities in the process.

Parry was in Dublin on Friday both to speak about his book and the situation in [FURTHER REDACTED] and to support a street art event at the Bernard Shaw that highlighted the [FURTHER REDACTED] message of 'To Exist is To Resist", complete with a mocked-up section of the Separation Barrier. Over pints much later in the evening I said that one of the things that struck me most about the book was that almost all the tagging on the wall was in English, suggesting that it was either by foreign artists, or was aimed at the international media, and asked where all the Arabic tagging was. Parry replied that all the Arabs were too busy just trying to survive to develop a local tagging scene.

Pretty depressing stuff, really.

Saturday saw a trip out on the opening day of the Luas Green Line Cherrywood extension. At Parry's talk the previous evening the IPSC had drawn attention to their Irish campaigns against companies involved in dubious activities in [REDACTED] and [FURTHER REDACTED], highlighting Cement Roadstone (which owns 25% of the company that supplies almost all the concrete used to build the Separation Barrier), and Veolia, operators of the Luas and original partners in the planned Jerusalem Light Rail system, currently under construction with a controversial route that travels across territory seized by [REDACTED] in the Six-Day war and servicing settlements in East Jerusalem considered illegal by the international community.

I love the Luas. If I was asked to stop being grumpy for sixty seconds and name one positive thing about Dublin, it would be the Dublin Bikes Scheme. If I was asked to name a second, it would be the Luas. Yes, we probably paid too much for it. Yes, there are arguments that its not the right stock for the city, that we should have gone with a 'lighter' light rail system, but I don't care about that. It looks great, its a joy to be on (except between Jervis Street and the Four Courts on the Red Line, which appears to be the preferred location of choice for junkies and their entrepreneurial dealers to conduct business, seemingly unafraid of the on-the-spot fine of €45 for travelling without a ticket. Have they no shame?), and there is something magical about seeing it travel over the canal at Charlemont, its like living in the future. Thus to learn that it was an active agent in the oppression of those in [FURTHER REDACTED] weighed heavily on my mind.

Pretty depressing stuff, really.

Its worth stating at this juncture that I don't actually support a generic boycott of [REDACTED] or all things [REDACTED]. I don't believe in either the Academic or artistic boycotts because both falsely portray [REDACTED] as a monolithic environment where every aspect of the culture and the entire citizenry supports the current deplorable situation. As I've mentioned before rarely does the international media report on opposition within [REDACTED] to State oppression, nor do movements like the human rights group B'Tselem, without whom Parry would not have been able to work so freely to capture the images in his book, get significant external coverage. I do, however, fully support any boycott of, and campaign against, individuals or organsiations that actively support or profit from activities considered illegal under international law, such as the Gaza blockade or the building of settlements and the construction of the Separation Barrier on areas designated as Arab according to the 1949 UN Armistice Agreement. Nothing about [REDACTED] is ever black and white, and no decisions involving my attitude towards it are ever easy.

Luckily for me though on the very day that I found out about this connection Veolia agreed to divest itself of all remaining shares in the Jerusalem Light Rail (after losing the contract to run systems in Stockholm, Bordeaux, Melbourne, and Hong Kong because of this involvement), so now it is ok to ride the Luas again, Yay! Thus Saturday saw a trip out on the opening day of the Luas Green Line Cherrywood extension.

The Luas was packed, free travel on the Green Line for the day drew out hundreds and hundreds of families and unaccompanied minors all looking for a cheap bit of fun on a cold and blustery day. We rode the full forty-minute length of the line, from Stephen's Green to Bride's Glen (nope, I'd never heard of it before either), then hopped out to walk around and explore the wondrous vista laid out before us. And by "wondrous vista" I mean "half-completed business park full of empty office blocks and concrete shells built atop what can only be described as an open sewer (if the smell was anything to go by)". Yay!

Planning for the extension started in 2000, the route was finally approved in 2005 and construction started in early 2007. A lot can happen in three and a half years, in fact, a lot did happen in three and half years, specifically, the greatest economic crash and property bubble-burst in Irish history. Oops. Thus many of the estates the extension was designed to serve never actually got built, and those that were built are sitting half-empty. Two stops, Racecourse and Brennanstown, have been fully fitted out but will not now open due to the lack of anything actually being at the stops, no streets, no houses, no people, and given the current state of the economy it is unlikely that this will change in the foreseeable future. Travelling along the line is like a Disney/Epcot ride exploring The World of Failure! (TM), a cautionary horror-house tale of hubris designed to scare small children into fiscal responsibility, a glimpse into an economic nightmare that you pray will never come true. Only it did. Poo.

There's a scene in Czech Dream where all the shoppers lured by the filmmakers with the promise of a new supremarket suddenly realise the whole thing is a hoax, that there is nothing behind the hoarding but empty wasteland; they are confused, they are embarrassed, but most of all they are angry. While it wouldn't be fair to say that Saturday's commuters in Bride's Glen were angry, there was certainly bemusement on everyone's face as they got off the Luas after a 40-minute sardine-ride, wandered around the office-block and peaked behind the hoardings for ten minutes, then got back on the Luas for the 40-minute sardine-ride home. The Cherrywood extension is our own Czech Dream, holding up a mirror to our Celtic Tiger fantasies and shaming us all with the reflections that we see.

Pretty depressing stuff, really.

The next post will be about happy stuff, honestly.

Mine how you go, now.

A group of pale, shaggy, underpaid and exploited workers trapped in a sunless hole that while technically of their own creation, was dug at the urging of their bosses, forced to endure politician after politician showing up every few days to tell them that everything possible was being done to make things better before flying off in a government jet to another round of lavish meals and late night drinks with those in industry who were truly responsible for the collapse.

But enough about Ireland.

Like most of the world, it seems, I have tuned in at various stages over the last 24 hours to see the remarkable rescue of 33 men trapped more than 2,000ft below the surface for 69 days, the longest period anyone has survived underground. There was something incredibly moving watching as miner after miner emerged, some praying, some chanting national slogans to the crowd gathered round, and all grabbing hold of wives, partners and children they never thought they would see again, some passionately, some tenderly, all pure and simple displays of love.

Even some eighteen hours after the operation began, watching live images on the Channel Four News was still an emotional affair, not least because of the obvious joy and amazement in Jon Snow's commentary as he too watched the footage with us. There is something so very positive about this rescue, not least of which because it is a story with a happy ending from the Global South, a story where non-white victims have been given the same level of coverage as individuals normally afforded only to white Americans or Europeans by Northern media. We know their names, we know their histories, we know them as people, not as a faceless mass waiting for Western aid agencies to swoop in and save the day.

This happy ending shouldn't erase the hard questions about their working conditions, the fact that the oldest of those rescued, Mario Gomez, is 64 and has been working in the mines since he was 12, and our own complicity in the West through our insatiable hunger for copper. The ever illuminating "Information is Beautiful", and Lester Brown in his 2006 book "Plan B 2.0" both estimated that we have in the region of 25 years worth of accessible copper left in the ground based on US Geological Survey data, current global demand, and current mining and extracting technology. As supplies dwindle more and more risks will be taken with the lives of human beings to reach what little stores remain in the ground and the joyous scenes that greeted the end of this disatser are unlikely to be repeated the next time round.

But maybe for today it is enough to simply be happy that for these 33 men life will continue and perhaps, as a result of the intense interest in their ordeal, improve significantly.

Then tomorrow we can return to our own continuing ordeal, trapped in the damp and the dark with little prospect of freedom, wondering when our own rescue tunnel will be dug and where the escape capsule will come from to pull us up one by one and out of our national nightmare.

In the meantime, maybe someone could sort us out with better broadband, so at least we could communicate with the outside world?

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state

Last night I found myself with some unexpected time to spare and a lack of willpower to do anything more strenuous than shlumphing around on a couch, and so I settled in to watch Horizon on BBC2. Last night's program was on alternative theories to The Big Bang (the 'start of creation' thing, not the 'TV show that is to comedy as anti-matter is to matter' thing), and was misleadingly entitled "What Happened Before the Big Bang?"

This was misleading for a number of reasons. To begin with, many of the theoretical physicists interviewed did not accept that there was in fact a Big Bang at all, preferring to advance the notion of a slowly expanding universe continuously inflating like a balloon. Others, Like Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Fundamental Physics Research near Toronto (home to many of the competing physicists interviewed and the closest thing to one of Neil Stephenson's concents that I have seen in a long time) picture reality as being two parallel membranes (or 'branes') that occasionally bump into each other at a point along an unknown dimension that lies sandwiched between them, such bumps producing universes like our own.

Those who did accept an event that was both Big and Bangy were more concerned with what caused the Bigging and the Banging, presenting various permutations on the theme that there was basically Something Else in existence before the Bigging and the Banging that either contracted into near nothingness or expanded out like a balloon blown up to maximum capacity, before bursting out again into the current universe that we all know and love. Most theories posited that this is a continuous cycle of expansion and collapse, and that not only is our current universe just the latest in a near endless cycle of birth and rebirth, but that there are probably a hella-lot of other universes going through this cycle in parallel with our own, and thus the whole of reality resembles nothing so much as a block of Swiss Cheese with universes expanding inside like the bacteria bubbles that give the cheese its holes.

These second set of theories also contributed to the erroneous naming of the program in a chicken and egg way, in that when asked what existed before our own universe the physicists replied, "another universe", and before that one, "another universe", etc etc, without coming up with a credible answer as to what started the whole process. Thankfully no-one suggested God, but Michio Kaku (America's answer to Brian Cox, not in terms of scientific achievements, more in terms of possessing the necessary funky haircut and willingness to appear on nearly any science show at the drop of a hat, walking across a landscape and looking moodily into the distance like he's posing for an album cover) did relate this cycle to Buddhist notions of death and rebirth.

In any event the underlying theme of the program seemed to be that the theoretical physicists in question had numerous competing theories for what happened immediately before the birth of our universe, but none wished to be drawn on what the ultimate source for all creation was, only on the source for our current creation. One physicist even suggested that asking what happened before the Big Bang was a meaningless question, since all our current dimensions including Time only came into existence at the Big Bang (or similar Beginning Event), by definition there was no "before" such an event, since time did not exist yet. Which seemed like a bit of a fudge to me.

Engaging as all this was, it was unfortunately not enough to distract me from events currently happening in a rather small and ultimately insignificant corner of our universe roughly 70,273 km2 in size and usually covered in a thick low blanket of doom-laden clouds. When asked a question the physicists gave an answer to a slightly different question that they found more interesting (or easier to answer) than the actual question posed. The actual start point for Existence was rarely addressed, only what happened (in cosmological terms if this universe is but the latest in an endless cycle of expanding and contracting births and rebirths) a moment or two ago, asking what happened before that was viewed as missing the point.

(do you see where I'm going with this yet?)

It has struck me that our current Government is a big fan of this most blatant form of obfuscation. When asked to give account of, and to be accountable for, the decisions that they themselves made in the past that led to our current economic collapse, they reply with the stock answer, "Looking backwards isn't helpful right now, we should all concentrate on looking forward". They want to draw a line in the imaginary sand and say everything on one side is no longer relevant. The trouble with this, of course, is that we are being asked to believe that the same people who have systematically destroyed our country over the last thirteen years will suddenly and magically come up with brand new ideas that will make everything better. Their track record, the history of their decisions, is the only thing that is relevant right now.

Understanding what happened before Ireland's Big Bang is the only way that changes can be made to our economic, political and social systems to rectify the situation and ensure that we do not live through such a nightmare again. If cycles are the natural order of things and this collapse will be followed by another expansion, then by repairing the flaws that caused the collapse we can shape the subsequent expansion into something greater than the original.

The silver lining of our current national nightmare is that we have the collective opportunity to create something better than has ever gone before, but this can only happen if the country moves in a new direction, and not down the well-trodden path it has walked for the last thirteen years. The Opposition parties are right to reject the Greens' attempt to cobble together some form of undemocratic party-consensus over the Government's proposed four-year plans. The citizenry must have their say in any such measure that will impact on every aspect of our lives in the years to come, and for that to happen an election must be called, each party go to the country with a detailed plan for recovery, and let the voters decide which they want to work with. Any attempt by the current government to impose a long-term plan upon the nation, a plan that they themselves will not have to implement but to which Brussels will hold us accountable, will not be just an act of craven cynicism, it would be an attack on the very fabric of democracy.

Luckily politics are not the only answer. Like the expanding universe bubbles in our Swiss Cheese of reality, there are alternative and parallel routes that We the People can take. On October 30th TASC, Is Féidir Linn, ICTU, Social Justice Ireland and others are hosting a one day conference in the RDS entitled "Claiming Our Future", seeking to bring together people from all aspects of civil society to develop workable alternatives to our current Government's mantra of "There Is No Alternative". The work of the conference will be continued throughout the country by a series of local and regional groups, with the ultimate goal of building a widespread support for an alternative non-political series of recommendations that will enable a more inclusive, equal and sustainable Ireland. The conference is free, but advance registration is required, which you do at their website.

I'll be going along, let me know if any of ye are too; who knows, maybe we could have a Booming Back meet up? That way, even if we don't solve all the nation's problems, at least ye will all have the opportunity to highlight my numerous spelling mistakes in person, rather than via Twitter, email, the comments threads, etc, etc.

Yay.

Saturday afternoon

Every now and then when the sun is beating down, the cloud that blankets the rooftops with angry oppression has lifted and we see that the sky is actually something other than the colour of cold, wet ash, sometimes in these rare moments of happy tranquility Dublin's not such a bad place to be after all.

Its October. I spent the early afternoon sitting in the Iveagh Gardens and almost had the place to myself. One or two folks sat around the sunken lawn giving each other a respectful distance, everyone too busy soaking up the silence to disturb it with unnecessary chatter. In the centre a lone figure practiced Capoeira, the only sound rising about the breeze his feet as they planted themselves on the grass. Hard. Solid. Thud.

Its October. Not such a bad place to be after all.

What wouldn't we give for

Lest you think my recent foray to The Great Satan was solely for the purposes of gathering material for angry (if occasionally erratically spelled) rants, well, my friends, you would be wrong.

The irony of America being the first place I travelled to after finally acquiring a full and valid Irish passport was not lost on me, but nonetheless time and tide conspired together to provide me with a perfect opportunity to spend some quality time with friends from The Have', something which against all odds I have managed to do almost every year since leaving The Have', and America, altogether. Normally I manage to catch up with folks on a 24-hour stopover en route to somewhere else, but being based in and around NY for ten days allowed two separate extended visits and a more relaxed and leisurely pace, the longest single visit to the Have' since we left in 2004.

Despite the occasional anti-hegemonic polemic that appears on these pages I loved living in America, or more specifically in The Have'. The friends we made there are now scattered across the globe, but we still manage to see a good few here and there each year. Despite the intervening years between encounters it always seems like no time has passed, never more so than with those whom fate (and Very Understanding PhD Programs) has kept firmly clasped to its bosom, and by bosom I mean The Have'.

Any visit there always begins with the ritual visit to Miya's, home of possibly the best vegetarian sushi in the world (I am informed that the fishy versions aren't that bad either). The owner and creator of one of the most imaginative menus I have ever seen, Bun Lai, has an almost religious approach to food and eating, bringing his social, ecological and political beliefs into every meal that is made there, and yet I am hard pressed to think of a more relaxed and welcoming environment to eat in. Four or five hour meals are not unheard of when we get together there, the length of time each roll takes to prepare serving as a good pace-setter, allowing for conversation to flow freely between ecstatic bites.

Communal eating formed a major part of this visit to the Have' with our favourite micro-brewing black-belt Arjedre treating us to a fantastic meal at her place, Mr & Mrs Tim sharing their Sunday afternoon Packers and wings-fest with us (Green Bay won, yay!), and closing out our trip with dinner at Thali Too, a new (to us) veggie Indian restaurant with a ridiculously affordable menu.

This doesn't seem to happen that much here at home. Restaurants in Dublin are just not that enjoyable, being on the whole too expensive and of indifferent quality, more concerned with getting as many covers through the door each night than with their patrons having a relaxed and enjoyable night. Dinner in Dublin, it seems, is what you do on your way to something else, not the object of the evening itself. A few notable exceptions spring to mind, Monsoon in Rathmines (easily my favorite Indian in Dublin), Yamamori Sushi (the larger one on the quays, not the stuffy one on George's Street with the annoying Knuttels on the walls), and The Hop House on Parnell Street, a fantastic Korean restaurant that is relaxed, inexpensive, and delicious. There are restaurants that you go out of your way to visit for the food (Cafe Paradiso in Cork, Hangawi in NY, Millenium in San Francisco, Terra a Terra in Brighton, Joia in Milan and, of course, Miya's in the Have'), but most of the time what you want is something to serve as a perfect accompaniment to the company of your friends, and apart from these three very few places in Dublin do that for me.

Of course the best option is always to eat with friends at home, but these days this seems to happen even less than our infrequent restaurant experiences. The difficulty of getting a group of friends together when economics, family, time and geography seem determined to drive everyone apart means that on those rare occasions when the stars are aligned and real interaction does occur, the moment should be savoured.

And savour we did, our time in The Have'.

Just amazing guys, thanks for such a brilliant time!

Urinals? Where we're going...

Just back from the cinema on a cool Autumnal evening. I went in to see "Winter's Bone". Grim. Rather like "The Road", only with more women, and less cannibalism. Grim, grim, grim.

I saw it in The Screen on College Green (technically just 'The Screen" now, since they closed all the other branches down), a cinema I have not been to in some time. As I left the cinema I stopped into the Gents, I am old, my bladder is weak and the walk home is long. As I washed my hands a man came in, stood in the middle of the room and proceeded to latrinate quite deliberately all over the floor. He noticed me, and shuffled somewhat half-heartedly towards a urinal, and continued. I left.

There have been many occasions when a long film has left me in something of an urgent predicament, but never one so urgent that I could not make it the final three feet to the urinal. There are many films that have left me wanting to make some sort of a protest over the very existence of the film in question, 'I am Legend" springing to mind, but even then a sternly worded Tweet will usual suffice. Besides, this being the Screen there were only a few films showing, and none of them that objectionable. "Winter's Bone", grim, but hardly that enflaming. "Buried"' does have Ryan Reynolds in it, a lot of Ryan Reynolds in it, but its no "Van Wilder". That only leaves "Back to the Future", celebrating its 25th anniversary, and seriously, who could have anything bad to say about Marty McFly?

Well, Biff maybe, But I'm almost certain this guy was not Biff.

Too shocked to really take in what was happening, and too busy trying to look the other way, I didn't get that good a look at the guy, but he neither looked destitute enough to be a random junkie that wandered in off the street and somehow slipped past the alcatraz-like security The Screen no doubt possesses, nor did he look faux-destitute enough to be a neo-Dadaist intent on adding his own artistic contribution to a Fountain. Besides which, he missed.

Nope, this was as far as is possible to tell without actually stopping to ask, simply an ordinary patron of the cinema deciding it was entirely appropriate at 10:30pm on a Wednesday night to empty the contents of his bladder onto a men's room floor.

Somewhat bemused I stopped an usher as I left the cinema and said, "excuse me, but I think there's someone in the men's room pissing all over the floor".

"It happens", said the usher, and he walked away in the opposite direction.

Dublin. Now officially as grim as 'The Road'. But with less cannibalism.

so far.

photo - 'Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, May 2010

Exit through the gift shop

In times past, much on this blog was concerned with political activities across the pond in the land of the free and the home of the brave. These times also coincided with periods of economic and political stability here at home, and a general lack of domestic issues to direct my wrath and ire towards.

Things were just so much more interesting in America, with honest-to-goodness James Bond-esque super-villains running the country for personal gain and mercilessly crushing anyone foolish enough to get in their way. Here at home all we had was an eejit in an anorak with a pint of Bass, and while we all knew he had his grubby little fingers in every brown paper bag and envelope* within a 500-mile radius the general consensus was, "ah, sure what's the worst harm he could do?"**, and so here on Booming Back, as elsewhere, we allowed ourselves to get caught up in the magical narrative that was the 2008 US Presidential elections and took our eyes off the domestic skulduggery ball, though to be fair I think we did a fair job here of ranting against Lisbon I***.

In these more Interesting of times, and with the constant worry of Peak Wrath*** tugging at my coat-sleeves, I have had to take care not to cast my Net of Grumpiness too far and haul in more wrongness than I can adequately complain about, and thus some time during the Health Care "debate" in the US last year I had to make an executive decision and accept that I could only focus on the woes and injustices of a single country, and to be honest what was happening there was just too stupid to try and write a coherent post about.

But now events abroad almost seems like a bit of light comic relief to take our minds off the everyday horrors at home. The US midterm elections are happening in four weeks, and thanks to the Supreme Court lifting a ban on anonymous corporate donations earlier this year more money has been spent on these elections than in any previous, an estimated $5 Billion in comparison to the paltry $1 Billion spent during the 2008 presidential campaign*****. These corporate donations have had some pretty major effects on the political landscape, with not a single one of the 48 Republican candidates for the Senate publicly accepting the existence of climate change, and with the Republican party almost guaranteed control of Congress and within a hair's breadth of regaining the Senate there are grim times ahead indeed.

Sometimes its hard for those of us outside the US to really understand what's going on inside America. We look at the US and think that when all is said and done its really just the same as us, maybe a little bit larger, a little bit louder, and with shinier teeth, but at its core it cares about the same things we do, and stays awake at night worrying about the same stuff as the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, barring a few pariahs on either coast, this couldn't be further from the truth. Nothing is as important to the US psyche than money, and unfettered capitalism has such a control over the country that for the majority of its citizens any deviation from its mantra is a sign of literal Deviation. This is an environment in which a President a little to the right of David Cameron is labeled a Socialist for suggesting that regulating Wall Street to some degree in light of its recent mis-deeds might not be such a bad idea, a suggestion that has prompted Donald Trump to consider a 2012 Presidency bid because "Somebody has to do something. We are losing this country.", 'We' presumably being the gentlemen in the Monopoly cars with the top hats and the monocles.

I travelled to New York two weeks ago during the UN General Assembly, an annual event met with disdain by many New Yorkers, a TV anchor woman on a morning show asking "what is the UN good for anyway, all they do is keep me stuck in mid-town traffic this morning for twenty minutes?". I took the subway and noticed no delays, travelling to Ground Zero as I do on most trips to New York. I lived through September 11th in the US, it happening just a few weeks after we moved to Connecticut, and it affected me greatly, not in the Christopher Hitchens' "Everything the US does now is justified" way, more due to a sense of deep sorrow for lost opportunities squandered in the weeks and months following the tragedy. The whole world stood shoulder to shoulder in sympathy with America in a unique moment of global solidarity, and instead of building on that and forging a new future, well, we all know what Bush did.

Much had changed since my last visit, Seven World Trade Center is almost fully occupied, a fifty-two story building built on the site of the original 7 WTC building that collapsed completely after the attacks. One World Trade Center, formally known as "Freedom Tower", now rises over forty stories in the air, and work on the other buildings continues at a similar pace. Nine years after the attacks an entire fifty-two story building has been rebuilt and occupied, but the memorial to the victims won't be ready for at least another year. This year again the commemoration ceremonies were held in a half-flooded building site, while office-workers gazed down from their cubicles and water coolers fifty-two stores above.

Gone are the memorials and flowers in the chain-fence that surrounded the site for so many years. A hoarding encircles it and directs visitors to the 9/11 Memorial Preview, an exhibition showcasing the final designs for the site and memorial, just across the road from St Paul's Chapel, an Anglican church that was the focus for many vigils in the day's following the tragedy. You enter the Preview and walk through a series of multimedia presentations showing the heroism of rescue workers, capturing the grief of victims' families and of the city itself, then past a scale model of the finished site and on to exit through a gift shop. Almost half the square footage in the Preview is given over to a gift shop, where Ground Zero mugs and "never forget" key chains jostle for space with FDNY hoodies and NYPD baseball caps. A long list of corporate sponsors and donors of the memorial covers the wall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $15 million of his own money, Bank of America $20 Million, Citigroup $10 Million and the list goes on. Over $500 million in corporate and major philanthropic donations to build the memorial and they still have a gift shop. Over $500 million in donations and 9 years later the memorial ceremony is still held in an unfinished building site while workers from the donor corporations watch from their reconstructed offices fifty-two stories above.

Everything you need to know to understand the American psyche and the hold of capitalism on this country you can learn by spending an hour at Ground Zero; At the nation's most sacred site, money comes first, memory a distant second.

The mid-term elections, like any US election, are not about parties, or policies, or even politicians. They are about money, the spending of, the preservation of, the glorification of. Money always wins.

To paraphrase Obama, there are no red states, there are no blue states. There are only green states.

I find it easier to write about our own problems here at home than in the US, for even with our own public apathy and inaction, the blatant disregard our politicians have for the citizenry they supposedly represent, with the bankrupting of our lives and the mortgaging of those of future generations, even with all the misery that we are collectively enduring there is still a sense that somehow, someway there remains a chance to change things and take a different path, a better path, that we still have an opportunity to control our own destinies and forge a future based on equality and social justice. It might only be a sliver of hope, but still it remains.

But today in America 'Hope' seems nothing more than just another word.

Another empty word.

And money always wins.


* I believe the technical term for these is "a dig-out"

** Oops. We kinda blew that one, big time.

*** and Lisbon II for that matter, glad to see it all worked out so well for us once we passed it.

**** Peak Wrath being the point at which I have used up just over 50% of all the anger I will ever have in my life. Everything after this is just a slow, gradual descent into senescencial ambivalence, where I sit in my chair drooling, and smiling like a loon at anybody who even acknowledges that I'm still alive. The current economic crisis is eating through my anger reserves at an alarming rate, nothing bad better happen between 2030 and 2040 because I just don't think I'll have the capability to care by then.

***** Interestingly enough, this means that instead of bailing out Anglo-Irish we could simply put forward our own candidates and effectively run America for the next twenty years or so, green cards for everyone on the dole would go a long way to sorting out our current rate of 11% unemployment, and we could put an end to Mr Obama's unhelpful ideas about off-shore tax havens for US multi-nationals. Its funny how everything is on the table in the December budget, except the Corporate Tax rate, which is now a matter of National Sovereignty. I must have missed the bit where Connolly said "The cause of Ebay is the cause of Ireland..."

Blowing his own horn

Our favourite odd-toed ungulate d'amour, Love Rhino, has a new blog and its definitely worth checking out.

Mr Rhino is a talented guitarist and electronic musician, but like my good self is entirely self-taught and unable to read music. Whereas I rectify this in the most Rube-Goldberg of ways (I am guilty of chaining a Moog to a Tenori-On because I can't actually play the piano), Mr Rhino has decided to go about remedying this in a far more productive way, he is learning the trumpet. The learning process is rather nice, consisting of both practical trumpet lessons and a series of all important music theory lessons that will hopefully aid him in compositions beyond the Brass.

Interestingly enough according to the ever illuminating "Information is Beautiful" (the book, rather than the website) we have less than 10 years supply of Zinc left in the world, and only about 25 years worth of Copper. No Zinc or Copper, no Brass. No Brass, no Trumpets. If ever you were thinking about joining a Colliery Band, now would be a good time to do so, you may not get another chance. Of course with only about 70 years worth of coal left globally (at current usage), once you are in the band you might not get too many more gigs with them at the mine.

Enjoy it all while you can kids.

Anyway, Mr Rhino is chronicling the whole learning process online, and so far its a fascinating insight into what happens when a musician tries to learn music, without offending his neighbours, and it makes for only slightly voyeuristic reading.

Thoughts on ageing

I just got round to finishing José Saramago's 'The Notebook', a book that I have been reading on and off for the last few weeks. It has taken me this long not because it is a dense book, nor because it is not enjoyable, quite the contrary, more because it is a difficult book to read in a continuous sitting. This is not a result of its writing, more because of its episodic nature, being a collection of blog posts each no more than a few paragraphs long, a format which lends itself to being read for but a few pages each day.

As I've mentioned before it chronicles a year in the life of Saramago, three or four posts each week, and while many of the entries are poetic polemics against capitalists and oppressors from Bush to Berlusconi, these are almost outnumbered by heartfelt tributes and obituaries to colleagues and friends that pass away over the course of the year. This is all the more wrenching given Saramago's own passing earlier this year, less than ten months after The Notebook ends. His spectre haunts each page, the whole book being an exercise in melancholic foreshadowing.

My choice of reading location did nothing to lift this mood, travelling as I was back and forth to a series of hospitals to visit my grandmother, or spend time with my grandfather at home. While my grandmother has made a full recovery (indeed is in better form than she was before the episode), spending many hours in a stroke ward while visiting her left a heavy weight upon my mind.

At 37 I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed the company not only of all grandparents, but some great-grandparents, for a meaningful length of time. Though my paternal grandparents, with whom I was not that close, have passed away, they did so both in their mid-nineties. While my maternal grandparents have both had significant health problems, now in their mid-eighties they still (until this latest episode) drove each morning to a nearby hotel for a coffee and a gossip with other similarly-aged folks. Here in Ireland we may not be quite at US levels of Senior Citizen-related activity (my American paternal grandfather played 9 holes of golf three or four days a week until his early nineties), but the quality of life for Irish seniors has changed significantly in the last twenty years, and will change even more dramatically as an ageing population and worsening economic situation forever alters our notion of retirement and old age. Thanks to our current government and their friends in Anglo Irish it is not unreasonable to suggest that I will be expected to work until 75, if indeed the concept of retirement still exists by the time I would be considering it, for no doubt it will continue to exhibit Xeno-like paradoxical qualities, forever being moved just out of grasp as I approach it.

I have therefore always believed that, baring accident or mishap, I would live to a similar age as my grandparents. But I have never given that much thought to the quality of that life, and after spending so much time in the stroke ward I will now admit to thinking about it a little too much. I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, I am a vegetarian for almost ten years now, have never smoked, am less than an occasional drinker, and am fitter now than at any time in the last five years thanks to the auspices of the good folks at DublinBikes. Beyond that there is little more that I can do, and thinking about the future is less than productive.

My only wish is that in fifty years time I am as engaged with the world and as vocally grumpy about it as Saramago was, or indeed as my own grandfather is today. By then I would hope that my ability to complain and critique has been sharpened to a razor-sharp edge, but perhaps I am capable of wielding it with a little more discrimination.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me with kind thoughts and words for my grandmother, it was very much appreciated. She is home now, and in all honesty seems ten years younger than she was before the stroke.

It seems only fitting to finish this post with a few lines from Saramago's closing words from "The Notebook":

"You may find something good in these posts, and on that I congratulate myself, without vanity; and others may encounter something bad, and for this I apologize - but only for not having written of certain subjects better, not for having failed to write of different subjects, since, if you will excuse my saying so, that was never an option."

- José Saramago (16th Nov 1922 - 18th June 2010)

Sunday afternoon, October

Sunday afternoon, October
The cafe closed, the courtyard empty
The streets of the city surrounding are still
Everyone is somewhere else

On Ninjas and Downloads

Amongst the many ideas contained within Accelerando, a collection of short stories republished as a novel, Charlie Stross posits the ultimate trajectory of the music copyright enforcement skirmishes, with a near-future mafia buying out recording copyrights from record companies and 'taking care of' anyone who gets involved with unauthorised copying, distribution or performances, even by the artists themselves. And that's 'taking care of' in the 'friends of ours' way, not the 'kind to bunnies and other small animals' way.

Digital distribution and copyright protection is something that vexes many here in Ireland, as elsewhere, with our former national telecoms company Eircom signing a deal to voluntarily hand over download offenders to, and cut off Internet access to repeat offenders at the request of, the record companies, as a result of the merest hint of legal action being taken against the company. Our own national recording artists' rights organisation, IMRO, has taken action against music blogs such as Nialler9 for hosting music tracks, even when those tracks have been specifically given to those blogs by the artists themselves as part of their publicity drive.

We are certainly living through a transformative period where digital distribution should alter forever the way in which an artist communicates with an audience, with the real prospect that the Internet could remove the middleman from the musical equation and allow direct dialogue between musician and listener, wherein the artist controls their own means of production, and is remunerated directly for their work by the consumer.

But we're not there yet. Information is Beautiful has a fantastic graphic that illustrates how little artists receive from legitimate digital distribution platforms, particularly streaming services. A self-pressed CD burned for $2.00 and sold at gigs for $10.00 nets the artist $8.00; once signed to a label with a typical contract, a $10.00 cd sold through shops nets the artist $0.30, and the label $2.00; selling the album through iTunes for $10.00 nets the artist $0.94 and the label a whopping $6.29; Streaming services are even worse, earning the artist between $0.00043 and $0.0022 per track per stream depending on the provider.

So it is in the record companies' interest to move as much music consumption to legitimate digital distribution platforms as possible, but not necessarily in the artists' interest. What we are thus experiencing is the death of the analog distribution of music not because it allows the artist to directly dialogue with the audience by cutting out the corporate middleman, but because the corporate middleman can make even more of a profit from the artist when no physical media needs to be produced.

This is sad news not merely for the artist, but for the audience, and not simply from an economic position. I love the tangible. I love being able to hold something in my hands, to know that it is Real, to feel that it has a sense of permanence. Digital media, items that only exist as a steady succession of 1s and 0s with no physical presence, just don't hold the same sense of worth for me.

As an electronic musician (or attempted musician) I have lost many, many hours of my own compositions because of failed hard drives, corrupted files, and a stupidly relaxed attitude towards backing things up. I thus find it inconceivable to rely on a computer to be my sole repository for a music collection, even with multiple back-ups. There is an obvious element of irrationality here, for in the event of a fire my entire physical collection would be destroyed, but a cloud-based digital collection would survive any single location-based disaster (assuming the cloud-service is duplicated and distributed across multiple data-centres). But the recording industry has yet to embrace a cloud-based service for fear that multiple users would be able to access the same cloud-stored music instead of each individual purchasing their own tracks.

Herein lies my second ideological issue with digital media, the concept that you purchase the rights to use a single instance of that media, and not the rights to the media in all its formats. With physical media I can understand that the costs involved in producing that media prohibit any universal access to that item in all formats, just because I buy a cd I do not have the rights to demand multiple copies of that cd, or a further copy on vinyl, because there is a cost associated with physical production. However if I buy a track for download on iTunes, and accidentally delete that track after downloading, I see no reason why I should not be able to download it a second time, or a third, or as many times as I want, for free, as there is no additional cost to the producer (beyond bandwidth) for this action. Some of the smaller distribution platforms, particularly those associated with independent labels, allow this, but they are by no means in the majority.

The recording industry fears that the availability of digital distribution outside of its control, specifically anonymised peer-to-peer networks, will send it the way of newspapers. While this would not necessarily be a bad thing (removing the middleman from any equation always seems like an ideologically sound move to me), the actions they undertake to stave off their (inevitable) demise are retrograde and self-defeating. However a few recent actions by smaller labels and individual artists do offer a third way by blurring the lines between analog and digital, or quite simply adding greater value to the analog itself.

As I've mentioned above I love the tangible, the Real, and place greater stock in it than the purely digital, but then again I am also in my mid-30s. For the generation after me, raised in a world where the digital was ever-present and their first introduction to music consumption was through ring-tones, the way to preserve analog sales is by making the analog more valuable than the digital, by packaging it in such a way that the digital could never replicate.

Two releases in the last month illustrate this perfectly, Underworld's latest album "Barking" was released simultaneously on download, vinyl, cd and rather nicely, in a limited edition box set. This Box Set contains 2 CDs and a DVD of videos, along with a 32-page book of notes and artwork, altogether a great little set that just feels right when you hold it in your hands (unfortunately the same cannot be said for the album itself, very, very disappointing after "Oblivion with Bells", they took the decision to hand production for each track over to a wide selection of contemporary dance producers, and the resulting mess loses any sense of the band themselves, the 'Underworld' sound is rarely in evidence, and many of the tracks are rendered bland and forgettable in a generic MTV Dance-esque way).

The second is the far more impressive Ninja Tune XX box set. This is, quite simply, one of the most amazing releases I have ever seen. Warp set the bar very, very high with their twentieth anniversary release earlier this year, but this set layeth the smack down in a way that is impossible to fully convey without unpacking the box in front of your startled and doe-like eyes. Six cds of new, old and remixed tracks, six 45s of rare and unique material, posters, decals and the coup de grace, a hardback 192 page book part-retrospective part-encyclopedia of all things both Ninja and Tune-y. Its not cheap, £100, and limited to only 3,500 sets, but once you open it up you have no doubt in your mind that it is one of the best music purchases you have ever made. And the value doesn't stop there, for each set has a unique code printed on it that when registered online gives you access both to two additional 12"s that will be mailed out to you, and additional remixes and tracks available solely for download.

This is the second way in which the music industry can maintain the analog, by blurring the division between the analog and the digital either through linking additional digital content to the analog, as with the Ninja Tune XX set, or by providing a digital version of the analog content as standard. Warp have been at the forefront of this approach, providing a digital copy of any analog purchase from their label through Bleep as an immediate MP3 download. They realise that almost the first action taken by anyone who purchases a cd from them is to rip a digital copy for their computer, ipod etc. Providing an instant download of the content while the customer waits for the analog versions to arrive in the post is one of those innovations that are so simple the question begs itself why isn't everyone else doing it?

Not every analog release needs to be as elaborate as the Ninja Tune XX set, but Underworld's 'Barking', Radiohead's 2008 release 'In Rainbows', or 'Radio Retaliation' from Thievery Corporation the same year all show what you can with a bit more imagination on the packaging front. Every release should include the rights to unlimited digital copies.

The same, I believe, should be true for films and books. If I buy a film on DVD I shouldn't have to pay separately for a digital version, I am buying the rights to view that film however I wish. If I buy a physical book, and I do this possibly a little too much, I should also be entitled to a digital copy of the book, or at the very least, at a nominal charge to cover any costs associated with the digitizing process (which should be minimal, given that the proofs for the dead tree edition begin as digital). The notion that after paying €20 for a hardback book I should pay a further €15 if I want to read that book on an eReader just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Which brings us back rather neatly to Charlie Stross and 'Accelerando', a free eBook of which is available for download on multiple formats from his website. His books can be hit and miss, and most teeter near the mass-market end of genre fiction (you can normally find something of his in an airport bookshop, which is how I came to be reading 'Accelerando' two weeks ago), but he is a great example of an artist who values direct communication with his audience and at this stage I will admit to being much more of a fan of his blog posts than his fiction. Nevertheless there were many things to like about 'Accelerando', and if you like the eBook, buy more of his stuff.

The universe will thank you.

Foule esclave, debout, debout

The International Labour Organization has released its annual World of Work report for 2010, highlighting the impact the current global economic crisis has had on the workforce and drawing particular attention to the increasing risk of (and actual) civil unrest in developed economies arising from the various measures undertaken by national governments in response to the crisis, and particular attention is drawn to Ireland.

The report analyzes instances of social unrest and determines that:

"Higher risk of social unrest is associated with higher income inequality ... Moreover, experience from past economic downturns shows that low-income households (lower percentiles in income distribution) are the ones most severely affected by a crisis. Rising unemployment causes the bottom of the earnings distribution to fall off relative to the median, which in turn increases inequality in earnings (Heathcote et al., 2010b). In the absence of targeted social measures to cushion the fall in earnings for these households, income inequality could worsen.

Government and private transfers, such as unemployment insurance, welfare and pension income, are some of the counterbalancing sources of income that tend to increase when earning fall, thus damping the increase in income inequality.

An original analysis, using a methodology developed for this report, shows that the risk of social unrest is highest with increase in unemployment rate (see figure 2.7). For example, a 1 unit increase in unemployment increases the odds of being at higher risk of unrest by a factor of 1.2. The second important contributor is income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient. A 1 unit increase in Gini coefficient increases the odds of being at high risk of social unrest by 1.1. Decline in GDP does increase the odds of unrest, but the effect is weaker compared with unemployment and income inequality. A 1 unit decline in percentage change in GDP increases the odd of social unrest by 0.7. The findings presented in this section reveal that a job-rich recovery is the way to reduce social tensions and lower the risk of unrest.

Interestingly, among the advanced economies, the ones with the biggest increases in unemployment rates also saw larger proportions of people reporting declining quality of life (figure 2.8). For example, Ireland and Spain, which had the largest increases in unemployment rates among the advanced economies, had the largest proportions of people who said that their lives were getting worse. The story is similar for the United States. In general, pessimism about the economic future is most prevalent in countries with high rates of unemployment."

Thus the UN is clearly drawing a link to cuts in the basic protections of a welfare state as the main triggering actions for widespread social unrest in developed economies where there exists substantial levels of inequality in wealth distribution. Given that Ireland has possibly the greatest levels of wealth inequality in the EU and, as the above chart illustrates, a population that are clearly aware of this and unhappy with the situation, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the potential for major unrest here is greater now than at any period in our recent history.

Its a good thing that the government doesn't have any more bad news for us, news that will potentially cripple our economy for generations to come.

oops.

The ILO report also charts existing documented instances of social unrest between 2009 and 2010 in developed nations, as illustrated below:

While I'm not sure what instances of "Violence or property damage" they are referring to, unless they are counting the half-hearted attempt by the SWP to storm the Dail in May, but the public protests against the austerity measures and the protests against employers are both well covered by last years Teacher's marches and the general union-driven Public Sector national day of protest. Conspicuous in its absence is a more general protest against the Government's response to the crisis, though I imagine as we get closer and closer to the December budget, our 4th in two years, we might just see some change in that.

The latest MRBI poll suggests that 61% of the population want Brian Cowen to step down, with a further 57% demanding an immediate election in such an event, but to be honest no-one in the Government is going to pay a blind bit of notice to this, or any other poll. The unique aspect of Ireland's crisis is two-fold, the complete disregard with which the populace is held by the political leadership, and the passivity with which the populace have reacted. The Government acts as if it is no longer accountable to the people because the people do not aggressively hold the Government to account.

By the time the outstanding by-elections are held in 2011, the Government will have prevented the citizens of three constituencies from having their voices heard for almost two years. This clearly illustrates the contempt that the Government holds for both the will of the people and the mechanisms of a functioning parliamentary Democracy. The only way that the Government will listen to the voices of the citizenry is if those voices emanate en masse from the street.

However on the day of EU-wide protest over 70% of the Spanish workforce went out on strike, here at home we could barely muster 1,500 people to march on the Dail. To echo Fintan O'Toole's thesis that the worst affected always leave Ireland, rather than stay and fight, The Guardian today reports that an expected 100,000 will leave the country by 2012. If even half those future-emigrants went on the streets, and stayed on the streets, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their Public Sector and Union companeros y companeras as has happened in the rest of Europe then true change, and radical change, would occur.

Eighteen months ago we joked that the only difference between Iceland and Ireland was one letter and eighteen months. The Icelanders took to the streets, their government bowed to the pressure and resigned, and now eighteen months later their economy is stronger and well on the way to recovery, and the politicians that enabled the crisis are facing criminal charges. We, however, are in a situation so dire not even the worst nay-sayer or doom-monger could have predicted it.

The time for passive moaning and bitching over pints and on the airwaves is long over. Our nation is being called to the streets, but do we have the collective strength to act or will we all flee as individuals?

Depressingly, I'm already pretty sure I know the answer.

(and yes, these last few bits do sound a bit pompous and overblown, but in my defense I have had possibly one too many coffees this morning. Still, seriously, what are ye all waiting for? Take to the streets now folks, and stop waiting for someone else to make the first move. Seriously, off ye go now...)

Update: Well, it looks like I spoke too soon on the whole "Iceland being on the road to recovery" thing, for a few hours after I wrote this reports started coming in about protesters disrupting the opening of the Icelandic parliament today, hurling eggs at MPs and the Prime Minister. About 2,000 people took to the streets of Reykjavik outraged over the new Government's handling of the ongoing financial crisis, and more specifically the fact that to date only the former Prime Minister Geir Haarde has been charged for his part in the events that led to Iceland's financial crash, the citizenry want to see many more politicians held accountable.

2,000 people out of a population of 320,000 were angry enough to take to the streets, and out of our 4.5 million we couldn't even manage more than 1,500. Iceland's former Prime Minister is charged with criminal negligence, ours sits in a kitchen cupboard in an ad for a tabloid newspaper, while remaining a serving TD.

Eighteen months on and there is way more than a single letter between us and Iceland.

Way more.