Battlestar Galactica as modern theology

With the recent end of long-running sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, many of the nerds were unhappy with the apparent theological conclusion to the space opera.

Moans of 'God did it! What a cop out!' seem to me to expose the huge gulf in understanding between those of a sci-fi (or scientific) bent and those of a more religious one.

One of the things I greatly appreciated about this fine TV show was its many attempts to incorporate difficult contemporary debates into its story arc.

It questioned the nature of democracy and its tendency towards demagoguery. It examined the legitimacy or otherwise of terrorist insurgency when under occupation. These were brave, maybe even dangerous discussions to hold in Dubya's America.

And by bringing them to the TV-consuming sheeple, one might even say that the producers and scriptwriters of BSG were serving a vital purpose in providing a platform for such essential debates in the US at that time.

But the element that intrigued me the most was how BSG, of all recent dramas, gave serious airtime to relative theologies.

The human contingent of the colonies were clearly depicted as polytheist, worshipping a Greco-Romanesque pantheon known as the 'Lords of Kobol.' They believed their Gods appeared, like the Roman and Greek pantheons, to be amoral, flawed and constantly interceding in their lives.

But in many ways, the classical names masked a more Eastern polytheism. From the Gayatri Mantra that was the show's theme music, it is clear that Hindu elements played a part too.

Seers, visions, prophecies all fulfilled important roles in the human theology, implying a much more Hindu vision of polytheism than the names Ares, Apollo and so on might indicate.

On the other side of the war, the Cylons were depicted as rigid monotheists, believing in a one true God. Their Abrahamic theology is particularly focused on predestination and fate, indicating a Calvinist or Jansenist vision of progression that is at odds with the concept of free will - which makes sense in the context of software for a brain.

Others have discerned elements of Mormonism in the show, while some have even posited the thought that the a la carte approach to belief systems presented in BSG could be a template for the future of religious faith in America.

And in its depiction of how women gathered around Gaius Baltar, the programme showed clearly how guru cults are formed, which is the point of origin for all religions we know today, be it an Abraham cult, a Jesus cult, or a Krishna, Buddha or Mohammed cult.

The ending of the series, however, resolved itself in a concept of human history as cyclical, requiring enlightenment of those involved in order to break a cycle of suffering, illusion and destruction.

This, in a nutshell, is the core belief of Buddhism. But even that Buddhist finale was undercut by a vision of angels on the streets of Manhattan, speculating about the amoral, Manichean nature of a solitary godhead.

The result is that the series offered a melange of theological positions, and gave each its own space to be considered in conjunction and in opposition to others.

It's rare these days to see such serious considerations of theology outside of factual documentaries featuring Michael Wood or the like. I for one welcome it.

I hope that one day someone qualified will produce some good academic research that teases out all of the relative theologies and their relationships with science and technology in this superlative TV show.

Some people have made initial attempts, and I suppose this post is mine.

In the meantime, perhaps it will have provoked pause for thought among its many viewers, who may not have been exposed, or taken seriously, other theological positions before. It's possible that the viewers may also take the same a la carte approach to religious beliefs as the authors of the show did while writing it.

I don't see that as anything other than positive. Exposing oneself to alternative beliefs is a creative and productive process, one that destroys sectarian interests and broadens the mind and one's conception of the universe.

And for the nerds who moaned about the presence of God in a fiction, I think they've missed the point and been blinded by their own blinkered attachment to the concept that science is atheistic.

It need not be, as recent research indicates.

I'm an atheist, but I loved the spirituality and relative theologies present in BSG. I hope the debates it raised will run in its viewers' minds long after the show is consigned to late-night satellite station re-runs.

PS: I claim 'Geek of the Week' for learning off the Gayatri Mantra as set to the music of the BSG soundtrack. Maybe that's enlightened of me, or maybe it's just sad. I dunno. But I do find it very soothing.

The Taoiseach has no clothes

UPDATE!
I called the Gardai to ask, in the light of their raid on the offices of Today FM, how many man hours had so far been expended on investigating the non-crime of placing pictures in galleries.
They said they couldn't tell me because the investigation is 'ongoing'. I asked what crime they were investigating, and they said they were unable to tell me. Go figure!

This country gets more and more GUBU by the day.

Yesterday, it emerged that some genius had not only painted passable portraits of Brian Cowen in his birthday suit, but had also smuggled them into the National Gallery and the RHA gallery and then hung them on the walls!



As a form of peaceful protest, highlighting how Cowen is full of shit and how the emperor has no clothes, it was a fantastic act altogether and highly successful, given the media coverage it received.

You'd think those in power might note the message being conveyed. But no. Instead, they responded like the Soviet politburo of old, who brooked no criticism of the glorious leader no matter how mild.


The Gardai were called, and are seeking the guerrilla artist with the intent, no doubt, of sending him off to the gulag for 're-education.'

And now the national broadcaster has been forced by Zanu-FF to air a grovelling apology to the Taoiseach and his family (just how are they affected by a painting, may I ask?)

In reality, of course, it is Brian Cowen who should be apologising to everyone of us. Clearly there is no limit to the hubris, arrogance and puffed up self-importance of the government.

Perhaps they need more reminders that in fact they are not the statesmen they imagine in their heads, but are in fact a corrupt little cabal of one-time teachers, housewives, rural solicitors and the like who lucked out by either inheriting Daddy's rotten borough or else glad handing the right backers.

Some talented individual out there took time and effort to make a witty and genuine criticism of our political leaders and now the thought police are out searching for them while those in power seek to silence all such criticism.

If ever proof of the artist's thesis was required, that is it. They ARE full of shit. And the Emperor DOES have no clothes.

(And RTE remain the spineless lapdogs they always have been, needless to add.)

The Irish Whiskey Tasting Championships

This is what Mammy Skinner raised me for, I have no doubt.

Last night I achieved a podium finish in the Irish Whiskey Tasting Championships!

I came third, and won a nice bottle of Connemara Cask Strength which I suspect will get polished off by my better half.

This marks a modest but notable improvement on my respectable joint fourth finish in the Australian Malt Whisky Tasting Championship last Summer.

Fair play to the lads at the Celtic Whiskey Shop for organising the event.

Hopefully one day the nascent Irish Whiskey Society will take over the reins of running the tasting competition, though.


There were some very interesting drams included in the tasting last night, which meant that everyone had a chance to taste something new to them.

I was especially pleased to try the now legendary Red Breast 15 year old again, and the sherried Connemara single cask.


Needless to say, my head hurts this morning!

Happy (Saint) Paddy's bingefest 09

Well, it seems the annual bingefest is upon us.

Soon, deluded Americans will stand, shivering, on O'Connell Street in Dublin, perplexed at a series of crap floats trundling by in the drizzle.

Later, locals decked out like leprechauns will commence binge drinking in earnest, while their teenage children pass out mid-afternoon from too many Smirnoff WKDs, or have sex in public.

Later again, very drunk people will urinate on each other, vomit on each other, punch each other until blood flows from each other.

Eventually, everyone will pass out, get up late for work the following day and limp in ruefully clutching a handful of paracetemol.

When did celebrating a Christian feast day become this horror show?


You'd think, well, the one positive element of this tawdry annual bacchanalia is that at least it can't get any worse. I've news for you. Sure, it can.

I heard the head of the 'St Patrick's Festival' on the radio yesterday morning. He's reportedly a very nice chap, Donal Sheils by name. He's only the front man for the event, so in a sense cannot be personally blamed for everything.

A priest rang in to complain, legitimately in my opinion and I'm an avowed atheist, that it was ridiculous that Christian themes were barred from the St Patrick's parade.

This festival bod Shiels then wittered on about how the 'festival' wasn't anything to do with a Christian saint - it was a 'celebration of the people and the country' and therefore couldn't have any narrow religious elements whatsoever.

Then he added - to my growing incredulity - that "there will be a float entitled 'City Fusion' in the parade, celebrating 20 different nationalities and 14 different religions will be represented on that."

So, in short: St Patrick's day is neither a day (it's a festival) nor is it anything to do with a Christian saint.

Instead, it's a secular inclusivist 'celebration' of Ireland and the Irish. Hmmm. But let's run with even that debased and state-enforced definition. If it's a celebration of Ireland and the Irish people, then what are they doing with a float with 20 nationalities on board from 14 different religions?

I couldn't care less for the annual bingefest. At it's best it was self-regarding kitsch, and at its very best it was self-regarding kitsch enacted by diaspora descendants in other places. After all, the first parades were in New York.

But as if the annual bingeathon wasn't bad enough, this multi-culti state-funded gobshitery that St Patrick's Day has been turned into is a classic of that odious genre - the public celebration designed by committee.

It represents neither me nor my nation, and consciously denies the feast's origins in Christianity. It is, in short, a state-enforced propaganda spectacle, aimed at proselytising a specific political ideology while seeking to destroy existing ones.

St Patrick's Day, in the hands of Donal Shiels and his paymasters, has become Ireland's Arirang - a thought-police spectacle:


The thought police ideology is, like all such ideologies, utterly simplistic:

Catholic Ireland - bad. Christian Ireland - bad. Irish Ireland - still bad.
But secular Ireland - good. Multicultural Ireland - very good.

Mention of celebrating Patrick's Christianising of Ireland is officially verboten. Instead, we're permitted only state-vetted Paddywhackery with an obligatory side dish of multiculturalism.

The irony is that when the Orla Barry radio show went onto the streets to ask people what the festival meant to them, not one of the foreign born respondents said it meant anything to them other than a reason to drink Guinness, perhaps.

I'm proud to be Irish - not all of the time, but most of the time. I'm proud of Ireland, again not all of the time, but most of the time. One of the times I'm ashamed to be both is on a day when we're told to ignore the origins of our culture and debase it into kitsch and alcohol.

Count me out.

All credit to the Rafa

Manchester United 1 - 4 Liverpool FC


Nuff said!

UN prohibitionist website hacked

The UN office on Drugs and Crime, long run by notorious "Drugs are baaaad, mkay?" moron Antonio Costa, has had its website wonderfully hacked.

Before normal prohibitionist service is resumed, I thought I'd take a screengrab of their hacked jobs page for all to see and enjoy.

While it's still up, feel free to enjoy reading some sense about drugs policies on the UNODC's website for possibly the first time ever here.

But you better be quick. They'll be back to hiring shills to sell the world on prohibition very soon.

Congrats to the publicly minded IT wizards behind this splendid hack.

Football without the bollocks

Football without the divas.

Football without the multimillionaire brats smashing up Ferraris and getting arrested in nightclubs.

Football without the Beckham soap opera.

Football without the expensive flight abroad, mandatory overpriced two nights in craphole hotel and dreadful seats so high in the stadium you'd get a nosebleed.

Football without the fawning commentary from bitter ex-pros with vapid insights who missed out on the lottery cheque paydays.

Football without the mind-numbingly bland autobiographies, ghostwritten by anonymous sports hacks who don't get credited, that invariably feature a chapter on kicking a ball against a wall as a kid, a chapter on cleaning someone's boots, and a chapter on their debut game, but entirely gloss over the teen roastings, coke snortings, attacks on people in nightclubs, rows with t he trophy WAG in the mansion and six figure gambling debts.

Football without the bribed refs, fixed matches and corruption scandals.

Football without the Sky Sports network dictating the kick-off time.

But...

Football with the passion, the skill, the talent, the excitement, the drama.

Football played by ordinary guys in your local area at a reasonable ticket price where you can get right up close to the pitch without remortgaging your house.

Football with heart, with soul, with community.

Football as it used to be and ought to be.

Welcome back, the League of Ireland. Go watch your local team this season.

The Celtic Tiger disease

Image courtesy of The Community Voice.

I was listening to Start The Week tonight. (Well, it beats watching Prime Time, obviously.)

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson was on explaining how come a disease researcher like him ended up penning a book about why societies need to be more equal.

His book is top of my 'must buy and read' list already. But if I got him right, basically he was researching illness caused by lifestyle (stress, obesity and so on) and found it more prevalent in the most unequal societies, even if they were overall very affluent.

By contrast, more equal societies like Sweden have much lower levels of all these social and personal ills, despite having less disposable income overall.

Then he looked into things like violence, and found again that deeply unequal societies have the worst violence. What was really interesting was that he discovered that the very rich elites in these societies suffer too. Their wealth merely takes the edge off the risks.

He made the very good point that in such unequal societies - America, Britain, us, but also places like Singapore and Portugal, as well as the obvious African despotocracies - everyone suffers from status anxiety.

In other words, having the big car is no comfort because someone richer has a bigger car. And meanwhile, everyone works harder to earn the money which they then squander on such status symbols instead of using it usefully to develop their lives and society in a genuinely positive way.

Any of this sound familiar?

This goes to the core of the Celtic Tiger lie. The rising tide may well have lifted many of the boats (although you'll always meet plenty of people who it completely passed by.) But it didn't improve Irish society or make our lives more fulfilling and happier.

Instead it made us work harder to live in worse conditions (boxy apartments in dormitory estates miles from anywhere) in order to support the ostentatious consumption that was thrust forth as the be all and end all of our human existence.

Now that the Irish people are finally waking up from the nightmare, we can come to acknowledge that the squandering of the wealth we created wasn't just the fault of bankers, politicians and a golden circle, culpable though they all are.

We're all collectively responsible, and that can be seen in the fruits of our labour. The Celtic Tiger disease is best expressed by what we wasted our money on.

The rise of vacuous celebrity magazines, trumpeting the values of vapidity like the Beckhams or Jade Goody is possibly the most defining symptom of our collective disease.

So was the proliferation of bling, the pointless plumage of the self-obsessed. As were the overt penis-extensions like the big cars, the McMansions and the endless foreign holidays where people went to ever more exotic locales with the sole intent of boasting of it afterwards.

There is a cure for both this emptiness and for the deep social inequality that caused it. But that cure is currently a dirty word. Don't believe me? Listen to the shills scaremongering.

Let's start with a personal favourite, the Sunday Independent, mouthpiece of 'Sir' Tony O'Reilly, the man who got our gas and oil for nothing who now resides as a tax exile in Barbados and who closed Waterford Crystal, such is his commitment to our economy.

Here's his trustworthy senior journalist Jody Corcoran, a hack who previously excelled himself by accusing the late Liam Lawler of being with a prostitute when he died in a Moscow car crash (the poor woman was his interpreter.)

According to Jody, there is a battle for the hearts and minds of Ireland, and our Jody fears - gulp - that the battle may already be lost. Apparently the future of Ireland is socialism.

Yup, the S word. The word that the neo-cons successfully, and utterly inaccurately, linked so directly to Soviet gulags and Stalinist purges, to Mao's mayhem and famine and death, that even socialists themselves rapidly felt the need to rebrand as social democrats all over the world.

The word that Bertie Ahern once risibly sought to claim.

Socialism, the big boogyman, the dangerous ideology that would destroy our society.

How did we not see this 'reds under the bed' nonsense for what it is the SECOND time they played us with it? The truth is that it was the exact opposite of socialism, the inane, greed-driven inequity at the heart of neo-conservatism that destroyed what was good about Ireland.

I hope Corcoran is right (that's possibly a first for me.) I hope the future of Ireland IS socialism and for one very simple reason - we already tried the alternative he and his ex-pat billionaire employer espouse, and it's brought us to the brink of destruction.

We've destroyed our social cohesion, squandered our wealth and bankrupted our nation, while simultaneously abandoning the sickest in society to the vicissitudes of Harney's marketplace, and beggaring our young families on lifetime long mortgages for piss-poor accommodation.

Don't let the very people who beggared you, who stole your healthcare and social services, who sold you on extreme debt to fund crap you don't need that enriched only their already obscene bank balances - don't let them scare you any more.

The only way out of our current crisis is to recognise it for what it is, and wake up from the nightmare we sleepwalked into. The way out is to build a more equal society. The way out is to adopt the one political vision that this country has never tried in its entire history.

The disease, as Dr Wilkinson rightly diagnoses, is that we replaced a slightly unequal society with a desperately acutely unequal one.

The cure for that inequality is socialism.

Banana Republic mk 2

We've been thrown our bone.

Brian Cowen said something had to be seen to be done, and hence now we're getting some token action months after it might have been relevant.

The Gardai, at the instigation of the Financial Regulator (the new one, not the utterly incompetent one who quit and swanned off into the sunset with a big swagbag of a golden handshake), have gone into Anglo Irish Bank yesterday evening seeking evidence of wrongdoing.

They follow the path beaten by the Fraud Squad only a day earlier.

There is now a faint outside chance that some of the gobshite criminals responsible for the mess that we're in will actually face criminal charges.

But it's only a bone. The time for all this activity was four months ago not now. You can shred a lot of incriminating evidence in four months.

Don't forget, we still live in a Banana Republic. For those of you who forget that we had a country before the Celtic Tiger hallucination, here's a little bit of Bob to remind you:

Don't posture for me, Argentina

Apparently Argentina has kicked out a Catholic bishop who has questioned the scale of the mid-20th century European holocaust.

And all without any hint of irony.

I've no intention of defending Bishop Williamson, who by all accounts is a very arrogant man. But I have previously pointed out that the way to combat holocaust deniers is with facts and debate, not by trying to shut them up, lock them or hope they go away.

Instead, I'm animated by the pointless posturing of it all. Booting Williamson out of Argentina won't change his views or those of anyone else, I suspect.

And it's not as if Argentina was one of those countries adversely affected by that holocaust. If anything, it greatly benefited from immigration as a result.

And of course, we should not forget how Argentina was one of the foremost destinations for many Nazis who fled justice after World War II. In fact, it now seems clear that they came at the invitation of Juan Peron, who then employed many of them in his government.

But the most compelling reason why this is an utterly hypocritical stance for Argentina to take is the fact that they themselves had their own mass murder of citizens, during the military junta period.

The mothers of the disappeared still gather in Buenos Aires to ask what happened to their relatives and demand clarity and answers which they still don't get. Around 30,000 desparecidos still remain unaccounted for. And the vast majority of those guilty still walk free.

It's long past time that Argentina owned up to its own crimes against its own humanity, and quit this hypocritical posturing about a holocaust that happened long, long ago on a continent far, far away.

Frank Fahey needs to come clean

... or the government will fall.

Rumours have been rife for some time now of a Fianna Fail TD being a member of the so-called 'Maple Ten' investors who bought Anglo Irish bank shares with Anglo Irish's own money, pretty much unsecured, which then helped Anglo prop up their share price last Autumn.

Those rumours continually name only one TD - Frank Fahey (image courtesy of the ever marvellous Green Ink). Now, firstly it must be said that there is currently no evidence of wrongdoing by the Maple Ten. They haven't benefited from their investment since the bank was subsequently nationalised.

Secondly, I must also add that I have no knowledge of any of the ten investors involved. The Sunday Times has named four people they allege are involved and suggest heavily about the identities of two more. Frank Fahey's name is not among them, nor is that of any other TD, Fianna Fail or otherwise.

I am therefore not saying that Frank Fahey is involved in this, and even if it transpires that he is, that in itself is not currently evidence of any wrongdoing.

I personally see the identities of these ten as a sideshow. The real issue with Anglo is whether banking officials themselves were breaking the law, in relation to this deal which appears only to have served the purpose of propping up the share price and misleading the market, and also in relation to directors' loans.

There is a wider issue about whether the government, the regulator, or indeed the people of Ireland were misled when they nationalised Anglo Irish. And that issue is the most important of all, since that bank could now cost us - the people - over 5.3 billion euro in bad debts alone, never mind the piddling 300 million that these particular ten individuals have had written off.

But all last week in the Dail, Fine Gael, who may well have heard similar rumours as me, pushed the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance to assure the house that no government TD was involved in the ten.

And the Taoiseach offered such assurances.

If it subsequently transpires that Frank Fahey, or any other Fianna Fail TD, was involved in this contrary to the assurances of the Taoiseach, mere sacking from the party won't contain the anger of the public.

With a Fianna Fail Ard Feis next weekend, the Government majority party could possibly find themselves facing a very angry crowd of protestors anyway as they go for their annual booze up at CityWest.

How much angrier might that crowd be if it had emerged that one of the ten investors in Anglo was, contrary to the Taoiseach's assurances, a Fianna Fail TD? I genuinely think the government would fall as a result.

Fahey does attract ire in certain quarters. People are unimpressed with how he was involved in the Rossport affair at the outset, and some question his amassing of a massive international property empire at a time when he was expected to be representing those who elected him.

Therefore, it is now incumbent on Frank Fahey to come out and state categorically whether he was in any way linked to or involved in this investment, if he actually cares about his party, the government of which he is a member, and the nation at large.

Twatter

The next big non-thing thrown up (literally, quite possibly) by teh interwebz is, as I'm sure you all know by now, Twitter.

I'm not going to link to it because it's already ubiquitous.

Basically, it's a retrograde medium which reduces the expansive capacities of the world wide web and mobile communications technology to the paucity of a phone text message.

Now, while 140 characters is just about sufficient to let the other half know you're running late in the car, it's clearly not that big a canvas for people to generally communicate to a wider public in any meaningful fashion.

The mobile texting experience might have implied this anyway, but nevertheless that seems to be the appeal to many, oddly enough. People are hanging out of Twitter, updating frantically every few minutes with admittedly brief inanities.

It's the internet equivalent of when a child starts narrating in the present tense, with their limited capacity to communicate meaningfully.

"Mummy, I'm running! Mummy, look at how high I can jump! Now I can reach the branch, Mummy. Look at me, Mummy!"

Yet it appears to have sucked in punters like Jonathan Ross, George Hook and various Hollywood celebs, but since they're all just shills with careers to promote and products to sell, that is only to be expected.

What isn't to be expected or welcomed is when journalists crawl so far up their own arses while using it that they start demanding other people communicate with them using only this vapid medium.

Clearly the prick involved lost sight of his own actual importance (not a lot - he edits a Business website, for crying out loud) a long time ago.

But while you might sympathise with his clear and utter hatred for the oxygen thieves who earn a living in public relations, by demanding that people only access him via Twitter, he's outted himself as a complete twat.

Ironically, he announced his twattish decision in an email - not a tweet (seriously, people, they're letting you KNOW that this is akin to birdsong in terms of relevance).

If there's any sense left in the world, people will respond to him in kind, by refusing his phone calls and emails too. That way, he should be out of his job by, ooh, Monday lunchtime.

If this is where journalism is going, it's even baser than I thought already.

You sick ghouls

I appreciate it doesn't exactly encourage readership of this blog to accuse my readers of being sick, mentally ill, perverted voyeuristic ghouls.

But today, and for much of the past fortnight, that's what many of you are.

This site has been deluged by traffic from people searching for naked images of Jade Goody, the erstwhile reality show 'celebrity' who is now confirmed as suffering from terminally ill cancer.

I don't have such images on my site. I wouldn't want them on my site. I don't find the poor woman attractive in the slightest, and in any case I don't have naked pictures of the women I do consider attractive on this site either.

It's not that type of site. As it used to say in the former strapline up above - rude, not nude.

So if you came to this site seeking a quick wank over pictures of a dying woman, what you need to do is turn your PC off and go and think about what sort of depraved life you're actually leading, and I mean that with the utmost of seriousness.

I have little time for Jade Goody, or her vapid reality celeb ilk. But I'm not going to glory in the death of a poorly-educated mother of small children who had a rough upbringing and sought to use any means available to her to enrich her soon-to-be motherless offspring.

And I'm certainly not going to endorse thousands of ghouls coming here in search of a stomach-churning wank without letting you know that you disgust me.

And you should disgust yourselves. That's all.

Seriously

Why aren't we billing people who irresponsibly go to sea or climb mountains in bad weather?

We've already heard of the surfers who went out to surf in 40 feet surges, only to demand that their rescuers, risking life and limb to save them, bring their boards onto the helicopter too.

Now we've got another flurry of idiots, as predictable as the inclement weather, hiking into difficulties that can only be resolved by their deaths or extremely expensive rescue operations which put the emergency service personnel themselves at risk of life and limb.

According to one rescuer, visibility was down to five feet due to freezing fog, with snow knee deep. Seriously, what the fuck were those morons doing, going up there in the first place, during a cold snap, in Winter?

Twats who go sailing around the world and end up seeking help to stop themselves drowning are, in many parts of the world, subsequently billed for the cost of their rescue. Often this is even covered by insurance policies which acknowledge and reflect the danger/stupidity (delete as you feel is applicable) of their endeavours.

That should apply to all such rescues. If you want to hike up mountains in Winter, then go get very expensive insurance, and let the state bill you for the cost of hauling your moron ass back to safety.

We're in an economic meltdown, for crying out loud.

Emergency services should be for genuine unforeseeable emergencies, not to act as an expensive taxpayer funded safety net for the rash thrill chasing of morons who don't check the weather forecasts (or indeed notice the snow belting down) before gallopping up mountains unprepared.

The truth is out there

According to the best guess of astrophysicist researchers, there is somewhere between 361 and 38,000 intelligent alien civilisations in existence in our galaxy.

I would have thought this was self-evident. The proof that intelligent life exists in our universe is that not one of them have seen fit to come near here:


Or here:


Or here:


Or here:


Or here:


And especially not here:


You have to admit, those aliens, wherever they are in the galaxy, have demonstrated impeccable taste in avoiding this planet.

Bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of money

Ireland is bankrupt financially and its government is bankrupt of ideas on how to solve the problem.

This is to be expected, disastrous though it may be. We are now reaping the property whirlwind that laughably went by the title of 'Celtic Tiger' for the past decade or so.

We were warned, repeatedly, but wouldn't listen. Specifically, we bought into the idea (metaphorically and literally) that there was a property 'ladder' we had to climb, even as prices went up indefinitely and spectacularly.

We bought into the idea that rent was dead money, and that we should all mortgage ourselves to the hilt in the hope of making ever greater returns as prices rose forever.

We know now that it was all a 'Ponzi scheme', a pyramid selling project designed to enrich the developers, who as we know from the tribunals, were backhanding a proportion of that cash to prominent members of Fianna Fail.

Now the credit crunch has happened, and there is a threat of the entire country going to the wall, as Iceland just did.

Our government's response? Raid the pension reserve fund to buy zombie banks that lent money to the developers. Plough hundreds of millions into 'affordable home' schemes, which would be better titled 'developer bailouts'. Then slash public services and public sector pensions (but not ministerial pensions or car entitlements, of course.)

So we're in a series of laughable positions after yesterday's mini-budget (the first of a series, I predict.)

We hand over nearly a billion euro in overseas development aid annually, even as we're expensively BORROWING the money that we then hand over to African despots for vanity projects that achieve little in sub-Saharan Africa.

And this on the same day that the latest exchequer figures came out indicating that we need to find 600 million euro MORE than we thought we needed back in October! (Which is why there will inevitably be more mini-budgets, since this government is incapable of working from up-to-date figures.)

We'd be better off sacking Irish Aid in its entirety and cutting a cheque to Oxfam or Goal, who are at least efficient and responsive to the needs of the communities they work in.

Or we could accept both the argument that we're skint and the argument that Africa does not benefit from the aid we send, and cut our borrowed losses.

But that's just one billion out of around 20 we have to find from somewhere. Sure, cuts are necessary, especially in the public sector. Actual staff cuts are needed, to weed out the Tetris-playing chaff. And pay cuts too, though that sort of happened yesterday.

What's most frightening about the position we find ourselves in is that clearly the government, such as it is - a village solicitor who inherited both his parliamentary seat and the Taoiseachship, a rural housewife as number two, a moustachioed gun-toting idiot in the jump seat and a collection of failures, ne'er-do-wells and shysters as supporting cast - haven't the foggiest notion what to do.

They should quit is what they should do. They should go to the country and seek a mandate to reverse the damage they have inflicted on this country over the past decade. They won't get that mandate, of course. Instead, they'll be slaughtered at the polls. But it would show good grace, respect for democracy and that rare thing in Irish politics, penitence for their mistakes.

But they won't quit. They won't even admit to doing wrong. Last night, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern told the nation that our current economic plight was no one's responsibility. Wrong, minister. It is YOUR responsibility, and that of your government.

Fianna Fail historically has always been a shallow organisation when it comes to principles, and they are beloved of playing government and opposition all at the same time. Instead of policies, they fly kites to guage public opinion, backing down if pensioners march on Leinster House, or pushing ahead if the public sigh heavily and accept another bitter pill.

But at this point in time not only are Fianna Fail bereft of ideas, they have also bankrupted the country quite spectacularly.

It's time for them to go. Those who created the problem cannot be trusted to resolve it. Especially since they are Fianna Fail, who can never be trusted with anything anyway.

Every day, every hour until they leave office is another day, another hour where the possibility of recovery is postponed or delayed further.

And while that continues, while they take 160K flights to America and swan about in 150K Mercs driven by Gardai on 70K euro a year, things will keep getting worse for us, up and until the point where the International Monetary Fund is called in.

We're really not too far from that vista right now, and if it comes about, the pain will be unimaginable - Russia in the late Yeltsin era, Argentina a few years back, that sort of national, hard to forget, deprivation.

We can't let it come to that. The bereft bunch of chancers on the government benches today looked guilty and sheepish and most of all tired. They should go, for their own dignity's sake, but primarily because every second they stay they hurt this country more.

Obama busted for drug possession

Oh dear, things aren't getting much better for poor George Obama.

You may recall I previously discussed George's plight as an unemployed drug addict living in a Nairobi slum without any help from his famous half-brother before.

Now, George has gone and got himself arrested for marijuana possession.

Two thoughts occur to me:

Firstly, have the Kenyan police, in a country rife with corruption and where tribal violence is rampant, genuinely got nothing better to do than hound a troubled man with a famous name over smoking a joint?

And secondly, even if he is a hard-hearted cunt who feels no bond with his brother, surely there comes a point when the President of the United States recognises that his caring, sharing image is taking a hit as long as he does nothing for poor George?

I mean, we're not talking Roger Clinton here. We're talking about the brother of the POTUS living in a shack in a slum next to a dollar-a-hooker knocking shop, suffering from illness and drug addiction.

The optics are terrible. Even if I loathed my brother terribly and wished him dead, if I was POTUS and he was living in a slum, I think I'd have the political sense of self-preservation to intervene and make a deal of it.

Congrats to the Irish Whiskey Society

Who had their inaugural founding meeting this week in a packed Bowes' pub in Dublin.

(Off on a tangent: I've been loathe to add my voice to all the others gabbling incessantly about the recession. After all, I'm not an economist, and it's all pretty obvious what's going on and how it's going to get worse in the months to come.
Instead, I've been trying, in these dark January days, to find something to be positive about. It hasn't been easy, which is why I haven't been posting much. But at last there's something to be cheerful about. Ireland's finally getting it's very own whiskey society! End of tangent.)

It's been a long time coming, but the response has been staggering, especially when you consider that all advertising of the society was done solely by word of mouth.

People from all over the world have inquired about joining. I mean all over. We're talking India, North America, Sierra Leone even.

People came to the inaugural meeting from Hungary, Belfast, Galway and plenty of other places. It just goes to show the massive interest and passion there is for Irish whiskey.

And fair play to the two of the four Irish distillers (Cooley and the Porterhouse) who showed up. No doubt once the society is established and on its feet the big two will come in behind it as well. After all, it's a society founded on a devotion to their industry!

Anyone interested in finding out more should contact (Scottish!) founder of the society Michael Foggarty via the society's website.

In the meantime, David Havelin's excellent blog about Irish whiskey is available to keep anyone who loves Irish whiskey informed about all the latest developments.

Get there early if you want a good seat

My mum always used to say that you should always go early if you want to be sure of a good seat.

Looks like Denzell Washington's ma told him the same thing. Either that, or he got the day of the Obama inauguration wrong.

Sick of Northern European winters

I'm fed up to my back teeth and beyond with this whole Northern European winter thing.

You'd think I'd get used to it after 30 plus years of experience, but you don't ever, do you?

Not like the Scandinavians, with their dry cold that plummets to eyeball-freezing temperatures. They've been able to adapt by wrapping up like the Michelin Man and learning to slide down mountainsides on smooth planks.

Nope, we don't get that sort of weather. We get the niggly, wet, 'cold snap' instead, which is a euphemism for someone upstairs switching off the light and heat and turning on a cold shower in November and letting it run for five months solid.

And this year, I truly think I may be cracking. Last year, I cracked in February, and I sold pints of my own blood and pawned my firstborn for the price of a ticket to South East Asia for a week.

This year, I'm low on the blood and the firstborn refuses to be sold into slavery for the benefit of my mental well-being.

I spend morning and evening in at best a dank twilight punctuated only by the rhythmic sweep of the windscreen wipers, momentarily making the licence plate of the completely stationary car in front legible through the rain.

In short, I need a holiday, but I can't have one because it's only just after Christmas and it doesn't matter if I only got a few days off and couldn't leave this godforsaken climate because I was ill. So was everyone in Ireland, down with some infectious lurgy or other.

There's no sympathy out there for my quest for sunshine and warmth.

Every year I swear it will be my last unbroken Northern European winter. Every year, around the time when more constructive people think of resolutions to improve their lives, I fret and daydream preposterous plots which would enable me to circumvent another cold, damp season.

I still haven't cracked it. But each day like today, I like to think I'm one day closer to doing so.

Let's all stop denying the holocaust

The Irish holocaust of the 1840s, that is.

Our gombeen government has decided, a mere 160 or so years on, to finally commemorate the fact that half of the country died of hunger or were forced to leave their homeland due to a deliberate policy of forced starvation.

They've decided to call this commemoration of the dead a 'Famine' memorial day. The commemoration is long overdue.

But it's not a famine we should be commemorating. Because there was no famine. A famine is when there is not sufficient food to feed the population. What happened in Ireland in the 1840s was attempted genocide.

Let's look at the evidence, and I don't mean the mounds of dead, some containing the remains of over 10,000 people, that dot our landscape. Nor do I mean the ghost towns of the West of Ireland. I mean the documentary evidence of genocide.

What is a genocide? In common terms, it is the attempt to murder an entire race of people. But the United Nations has a legal definition. In fact, it has an entire convention on genocide. The relevant part is section 2, which defines acts of genocide.

As a single reading of 2c reveals, what happened in Ireland in the 1840s was a genocide. This has been confirmed by international legal expert F.A. Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wrote:

"Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People.... Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention."

But some people object to the suggestion that there was intent on the part of the British government of the time. They suggest that the famine was an act of God, of nature, a tragic accident caused by a fungus on a tuber which had nothing to do with any human action or intent. To demonstrate the intent of the British colonial administration of the time, it is important to look at their own stated documents on the matter.

Firstly, let's consider what Robert Murray, writing in his 1847 book "Ireland, Its Present Condition and Future Prospects" had to say about the alleged famine:

"The surplus population of Ireland have been trained precisely for those pursuits (unskilled labor or agricultural) which the unoccupied regions of North American require for their colonization. That surplus is an overwhelming incubus (demon) at home, whether to themselves or others. Remove them and you benefit them in a degree that cannot be estimated. Precisely as you do so, you raise the social condition of those who remain."

In other words, a policy of clearing Ireland of its 'surplus' of people and driving many of them to America would be of benefit to the American economy and to the easier administration of Ireland by Britain! Bear in mind this was written at the height of the horror - Black 47. This isn't some sort of 'Modest Proposal' type of joke. This is a genuine policy proposal.

But perhaps Murray did not represent mainstream British opinion? Let's consider instead the London Times, which crowed:

"They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."

In other words, the newspaper of record in England records with glee the imminent demise of the Irish as a nation in the hope that its land can be cleared for plantation by Britons. But again, perhaps it is unfair to attribute these mainstream British opinions to the government itself? Let's look at what they had to say.

On April 26th, 1849, one hundred years before the Genocide Convention was signed, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, wrote to the then British Prime Minister, John Russell, expressing his feelings about the lack of aid from Parliament:

"I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination."

Bear in mind, this is the voice of Britain in Ireland speaking. And he is speaking of a policy of extermination of the Irish people. I call that genocide. But perhaps I'm wrong. So let's look around for other views. According to holocaust historian and expert Richard L. Rubenstein in his book "Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World":

"A government is as responsible for a genocidal policy when its officials accept mass death as a necessary cost of implementing their policies, as when they pursue genocide as an end in itself."

Rubenstein is the man who invented the term 'genocide', so I think we can defer to his definition of the word. So it seems absolutely indisputable: under the terms of the UN convention on genocide, Britain was guilty of conducting genocide on the Irish people during the period variously and incorrectly referred to today as the great famine or An Gorta Mor.

Now, I'm not interested in a Brit-bashing exercise. I can't imagine that the British of today would in anyway feel guilty (nor should they) for something committed by an elite that ran their country and ours a century and a half ago. Britain is historically responsible for a number of attempted genocides, at least one committed on their own soil (the Highland clearances.)

Indeed, the 'great hunger' was not the only attempt at genocide on the Irish people. Cromwell's exploits two centuries earlier spring to mind. I can't imagine that it would ruin relations with Britain or indeed the British people if we were simply to pay proper tribute to our own dead.

In fact, I think many British people might find it illuminating to know what really happened. Certainly, given how the 'famine' is taught in our schools, I believe it would be illuminating for a lot of Irish people too. I accept the British apology for what Tony Blair's word is worth. Which is little, in fairness, but I accept it anyway. But that's not the point.

The point is that our own government fails to acknowledge that it was a holocaust, not a famine caused by a lack of available food. The Irish holocaust had little in common with famine or hunger. Should the focus of Jewish holocaust commemorations be on preventing gas poisoning?

What would any self-respecting Jewish person say if people expected them to euphemise away the horror their people suffered, or suggested that they get over it and grow up as a people? The Rwandans and Armenians would not accept anyone else trying to diminish the attempted genocides that happened to their peoples. So why do we accept it?

Sure, some Shinners might want to use the designation of any commemoration for some Brit-bashing. But that in no way invalidates the core point, which is nothing to do with the Brits of today. It's to do with our own acknowledgment of our own history in accurate terminology.

When we can do that, then we can really move on as a nation.

A close brush with death

I'm sorry again for another extended absence from this blog.

This time I have a better excuse than the dog ate my blog post. I was in hospital, in the cardiac ward, after an unfortunate incident earlier this week.

I was rushed to hospital by ambulance by a crew which arrived almost instantly they were called, ushered me quickly but professionally into the ambulance and rallied me safely to A+E.

In A+E, I was triaged instantly and moved to the resuscitation area (though I was conscious at the time.) That's where I had my first brush with death. As I was receiving morphine and being examined, the person in the cubicle next to me (an elderly lady who'd been found in her nursing home room unconscious) failed to recover and passed away.

Later, as I recovered in the cardiac area of casualty, two more elderly patients who had suffered cardiac incidents failed to make it.

I was in the hospital for two days, and I saw up close and personal the tremendous dedication and ability of our frontline medical staff. From consultant cardiologists to porters, and all the student doctors, nurse practitioners and other staff in between, I couldn't fault the professionalism, patience or ability of anyone of them.

These people work in a literally hellish environment. Like the rings of Inferno, the wails of the ill pervade.

In some cases, the patients just do not stop fucking moaning. Sure, they're unwell and they're in hospital. But why add to a difficult situation by moaning your hole off all the time? Especially when the staff are performing superhuman efforts in almost impossible circumstances?

Anyway, my case ended up not being anywhere near as serious as it first appeared, thank goodness. I'm fine and dandy now, and after witnessing the deaths of three people this week, I'm very thankful and grateful to be so.

And it is the staff of our beleaguered health service I have to thank for that. I owe them all a great deal of gratitude.

And on their behalf and on behalf of all patients languishing on trolleys in casualty wards across Ireland tonight, may I just add, I hope Mary Harney dies alone in absolute untreatable agony with alsatians chewing her bloated carcass while she still lives, the fat evil bitch.

Mystic Skinner foresees again

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?

There I was, getting all carried away with my new Axis of Evil. I'd gone and forgotten to make my 2009 predictions. Nope. I hadn't. It's just that they're so depressing I was in two minds about posting them.

Make no mistake, this isn't going to be the best year for the vast majority of people on the planet. There will be economic upheaval, recession, war, famine, epidemics, poverty and the continued denial of human rights and democracy.

But specifics. You want specifics, right? Okay.

1. A severe crash in the housing market of Britain and Ireland, even worse than what's already occurred. The governments forced to intervene with banks to prevent massive scale repossessions and defaults.

2. The credit card lifestyle bill finally lands on the mat. Plenty of people with no assets other than a few payments on a 08-D car are going to find themselves defaulting on some very expensive credit loans. The problem of arranging refinancing, from semi-bankrupt banks who themselves cannot get credit, for these unsupported loans is going to stretch the banking sector beyond breaking point.

3. Multinationals use the excuse of recession to relocate to Eastern Europe. Cue 100,000 redundancies next year in Ireland.

4. Euro or no euro (and given that 40% of our trade is with the sterling zone even today, the euro is not currently helping), we might actually have to call in the IMF if the government cannot raise the funds to deal with their income shortfall AND that of the banks, especially if the credit card bill arrives too.

5. Empty shopfronts in high streets. Cars with for sale signs. Travel agents, estate agents, motor retailers all going bust.

6. A general election in Ireland after either the Greens grow stones and pull out of Government or they lose a crucial Dail vote, an election which Fianna Fail lose quite significantly to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

7. Obama's Clinton re-run presidency gets off to a poor start with a series of foreign affairs crises that even Bill and Hill can't solve for the noobie. For potential flashpoints, think Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Indonesia and as usual most of Africa.

8. Britain definitely starts pulling out of their occupations. Troops to start leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. As recession bites, there will be a further round of culls in the Northern Irish public service sector.

9. Chelsea for the league, with Liverpool nipping their heels in second. United a distant third. Fergie to quit at long last. Perhaps Wenger to join him in walking from the Premiership.

10. The beginning of the end of low cost air travel. As airlines consolidate, and routes decrease, and more and more craft are parked in the Nevada desert, the consumer ends up with the worst of all worlds - prices like the luxury days of the 1970s with service of contemporary Ryanair.

The real axis of evil

Anyone recall the Bush baby's hilarious 'axis of evil' speech?

It was basically his shit-list of countries that he didn't like. And wanted to threaten. It included various rum locations like North Korea and Iran. None of them places you'd like to wake up a peasant in, but equally none of them currently occupying other people's countries.

So I thought it might be useful to put together an alternative axis of evil list, based on the proportion of misery particular countries are responsible for in the world today.

1. United States of America. Well, who else? Two foreign occupations, the ongoing 'wars' on 'terror' and 'drugs', state-sponsored kidnap and torture, funding Israel. They're really in a class of their own.

2. China. Repeated famines of their own population, the ongoing occupation of sovereign Tibet, the suppression of internal minorities, the sabre-rattling at Taiwan, and some extremely dodgy dealings in Africa.

3. Israel. An illegal state formed on other people's land, currently engaged in a particularly vociferous and unjustifiable genocide of the indigenous inhabitants. 300 dead in Gaza in the past couple of days alone. Israel is the terrorist state destabilising the entire Middle East, with American assistance.

4. 'Great' Britain. America's lapdogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that makes at least three foreign countries their military are currently engaged in, including their occupation of the North of Ireland.

5. Zimbabwe. Mugabe's syphilitic insanity should not be permitted to stand in the way of the self-determination of these beleaguered people any more.

6. Russia. Putin has seen how America has been permitted by the international community to wander into other countries with impugnity and has decided to emulate them. Their 'near abroad' of former Soviet states remains under constant risk of invasion if they don't tow Putin's line, as Georgia discovered this year and the Ukraine may well the next.

7. Pakistan. Politically in ruins, riven by terrorists in the tribal areas, deeply repressive to women and non-Muslims, Pakistan is a nuclear power with a series of border disputes with equally nuclear neighbours India and China.

8. Somalia. Without any apparatus of government for many years now, Somalia is now a devastated zone of anarchy from which pirates flood in droves to prey on the world's transit traffic.

The list of honourable mentions, where the people are denied democracy and self-determination by unelected elites, runs into dozens, sadly. There is no room to list all the states, on every continent, which refuse to permit their people free rein over their own destinies.

Mystic Skinner to stay in day job?

It's near enough the end of the year now, and since I still don't know where I will be on the 31st (though I can pretty much guarantee I won't be sober), it is now time to review the annual Skinner predictions.

It might be time to return to the day job. Perhaps the crystal ball needs a good wipe down. But it won't stop me having another go tomorrow on what 2009 has in store for us.

Now, on with the show:

JC said: Pakistan becomes the no. 1 threat to world peace. By no. 1, I mean the return of the nuclear fear and five minutes to midnight.

2008 said: This is true. It's not covered so much on the Western media, but Pakistan is desperately unstable and is easily the biggest threat to global security (apart from the United States ongoing foreign policy, which we've had for some time.)
What with the Islamist bombings of Mumbai, the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the ongoing Kashmir issue, the porous tribal area borders with Afghanistan and the instability of Pakistani politics internally, we're set for more sweats from Pakistan, I suspect. Good prediction.

JC said: Bertie gets dumped at long last by Fianna Fail. When the chairman starts offering support to the manager in soccer, it's invariably followed by a sacking. So how else to read the fact that half the cabinet are sympathising with El Berto's ongoing tribunal antics?

2008 said: Jumped before pushed. If one disregard's Cowen's visit to Bertie's office on the Friday before he resigned, that is. That makes two for two.

JC said: A Republican, possibly Romney, will be the next US President. Pace Richard Delevan, who's been proselytising for Obama for some time (which is odd as eggs for an American right-winger), I can't see the US electing a black man. If he ran as Hilary's Veep, they could do it, but the 'dream ticket' will never come off, now that Obama thinks he can gain the nomination.

2008 said: Wrong, wrong, wrong. Change I couldn't believe in occurred. It remains to be seen of course what this leads to. So far, judging by the shape of Obama's cabinet, it's looking like Clinton II anyway. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, I feel. But he's yet to be tested, and that is nailed on to happen sooner rather than later.

JC said: Man Utd for the premiership, annoyingly. Ferguson to again fail in Europe, and again to delay his retirement, much to Carlos Queiroz's chagrin. Real or Sevilla for the champion's league. Rafa Benitez to leave Liverpool in the summer after row with the club owners.

2008 said: Half right. United did their double, albeit helped significantly by twinkletoes John Terry. Fergie did delay the long-promised retirement, and Queiroz looks less likely a United manager by the day. The Mirror's Oliver Holt is tipping Martin O'Neill for that job now. Somehow both Benitez and the Americans remain involved in Liverpool. And they're currently top of the league. No one would have predicted that a year ago.

JC said: The SDLP and UUP to leave the Northern executive and set up in proper opposition. The SDLP will be courted by FF and Irish Labour who both finally formally set up as Northern parties, thus simultaneously copper-fastening the union and pissing off the unionists.

2008 said: The SDLP and UUP should have but they didn't. And with Bertie gone, FF's desire to push North has withered. Labour's eyes are all on the 26 county local elections. No sudden movements from anyone in this area.

JC said: British final pull-out from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan too.

2008 said: Well, they've announced it. But don't hold yer breath.

JC said: Ongoing dollar collapse, commodity surges, oil spikes, banking crises and falling house prices in Northern Europe, especially the bubbles like NI and Spain. In other words, job losses, house repos, and the end of living beyond your means on credit. There will be no credit available this time next year.

2008 said: Couldn't be more right. Unfortunately, we're in for an awful lot more of this.

JC said: No boycotts of the Beijing Olympics, despite the appalling behaviour of the Chinese government. The Chinese will finally outperform America in the medals table. People will mutter about drugs, as if that's a surprise. The 13 year old British diver will be the new Eddie the Eagle Edwards. In other words, he'll be crap but the British public will love him.

2008 said: Nope, no boycotts. But there was an unbelievable public response to the journey of the Olympic torch about the planet. It's cheering to know that the world at large genuinely does care for the fate of the occupied people of Tibet.
China did top the medals table. People did mumble about drugs and one or two even got caught. But the Brits did especially well and had some actual winners to talk about as 'personalities of the year' as opposed to the usual plucky telegenic losers.
On the other hand, Ireland now is apparently worse at Olympic sports compared to mighty nations like Trinidad, Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.

JC said: People will realise that 'social networking' sites are a waste of their time. Others will migrate from one site to another with increasing frequency. Astronomical share valuations in these firms will collapse. Call it Dot-bomb 2.0.

2008 said: Everything tanked economically last year. But this phenomenon keeps on trucking. There has been some consolidation, and there will likely be some specialisation in store in future. In the interim, everyone's on Facebook bar me. And that seems to suit everyone and me just fine.

JC said: I will finish my damn novel. Really, I will.

2008 said: Errr...

Enjoy the holidays

Seriously, do.

Eat, drink and be merry. Be nice to family and friends if you can. Get over the cloying schmaltz of the season and roll with it. Allow yourself to be suffused with fellow-feeling.

Because I am fearful that this could be the last opportunity for some indulgence for a little while.

Next year we'll see jobs lost. Many of them. Houses repo-ed. A spike in the dole, the homeless, deprivation and poverty in general.

The credit bubble is over and now the bill's arrived. Many people literally won't be able to pay.

It would be nice to think that as a society we can look after the less fortunate in hard times. But that's not the sort of society Ireland is today. Perhaps it was once. If so, that was quite a while ago, and to be honest, I don't remember.

After a decade of gombeen government and PD-brand Thatcherism, we're all out for ourselves now. I've already overheard conversations between people discussing where they hope to buy repossessed houses on the cheap. It's sickening, but that's life today in Ireland.

It will get worse before it gets better. That's the nature of these cycles.

I really hope people throw themselves into Christmas this year, learn to reconnect with each other and get a perspective on true value in society. It might turn out to be the difference in how we survive this depression.

I also hope that people push the boat out one last time this year. A little irresponsible indulgence on top of the already preposterous national credit bill won't make a massive difference. And it might keep a few people in jobs who'd lose them otherwise.

See ya next year. Be good.

Enough to make a Jackal puke

Dan Kennedy, writing in the Guardian, is spot on.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney, the real power in the White House during the Bush presidency, is attempting to claim that the invasion of Iraq has worked out well.

Not well for Saddam Hussein, obviously, who was caught hiding in a cellar some five years ago and subsequently executed rather than sent to the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

And not well for the people of Iraq, unless one considers the faint autonomy of some of Kurdistan to be worth it.

Of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq went really well for Dick Cheney himself, as he was able to transfer large amounts of US tax dollars into the hands of his old pals at Halliburton.

Increasingly, as one listens to the whining of Tony Blair about his anguish over the war, or indeed scoffs at corrupt old Bertie Ahern as he pleads to be considered the great peacemaker of Ireland, I have come to realise that the place to hurt these people is in their legacy.

Blair's not stupid, and now realises that his legacy will be ever ruined by his involvement in Iraq. Ahern is rather stupid, but his arrogance and ego demand that history credit him with things he had at best a tangential involvement in (peace in the North of Ireland and the boom economy), rather than the things he was up to his greasy little neck in (endemic Fianna Fail corruption, clientelism and gombeenism).

Cheney is also concerned about the legacy. And he remains in cynical denial about the wrongs he has committed.

His only out now is to try to persuade the rest of us to see things from his twisted point of view - a point of view which says that it doesn't matter if there were no weapons in Iraq, it doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands died needlessly, and it doesn't matter about America kidnapping and torturing people in third countries.

As Dan Kennedy says in his excellent commentary on Cheney's delusions, it is enough to make a jackal puke.

Irishmen are rapists says state-funded ad

The fake hunt for the imaginary tortured people continues, even in recession.

For years, I've been asking one simple question of Ruhama, the ever-growing state-funded religious quango dedicated to rooting out human sexual trafficking and to supporting those smuggled into Ireland and forced to work as prostitutes.

Where are the trafficked women you claim to help?

Frankly speaking, they don't appear to exist. Despite Ruhama's latest wheeze - a TV advert which depicts Irishmen as laughing casual rapists enjoying a pint after sexually assaulting a beauteous Slavic blonde - the evidence still doesn't stack up.

We'll wait and see what arises from the arrest of an Irishman and his partner in Wales last weekend. It is alleged that he may have been involved in a string of brothels across Ireland, some of which may have had trafficked women working on their premises.

But in the unlikely event that it does emerge that women were trafficked in this case, it would be virtually the first in Ireland. I quote below a parliamentary question from Denis Naughten to the Minister for Justice this week, in which it swiftly emerges that almost no one has been prosecuted for the offence of trafficking people into Ireland for sexual exploitation.

Six people. That's how many people have been done for human trafficking in Ireland in this century. Six people.

So, now that Ruhama have gone all multimedia, at least we know what they spend their significant state funding on. What we don't know is why they are funded to the extent they are, and why they are given money from the exchequer to slander Ireland as a rape nation and Irishmen as casual rapists.

Ruhama says it exists to support the victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. How many have they helped?

The reality of this sad, dark world is different to that which the sisterhood and their state-funded hysteria campaign Ruhama would have you believe.

Repeated studies, as well as police evidence from Ireland, UK, America and European countries, indicates that nearly all non-national women who travel to affluent countries like this one to work in prostitution (or indeed as lapdancers, strippers or erotic dancers) do so because they choose to.

Now, some feminists, especially those who make common cause with orders of Catholic nuns, don't like the idea that other women would volunteer to work in the sex trade, and might even travel abroad to do so. And indeed, no little girl ever grew up saying she wanted to be a hooker when she was older.

But the money is good, countries like Ireland are much safer than Eastern Europe or Africa, and the quality of living is higher. The sad reality is that many women do choose this profession, they travel to Ireland and elsewhere to work at it for a period of time, then they leave to go home or to ply their trade in another country.

Ireland is not a nation of laughing rapists, no matter what the sisterhood might say. How about they start justifying the expense they cost the taxpayer by telling us how many people they help annually and how they were helped.

Because if their only role is to create hysteria about a wrong that does not exist so that they can malign Irishmen as casual habitual rapists, then Ruhama has to be top of the list of quangos we need to cull.

Parliamentary Question for Written Answer:

284. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of prosecutions and convictions for human trafficking and sexual exploitation in 2007 and to date in 2008; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45075/08]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Deputy Dermot Ahern): It is assumed the Deputy’s question refers to prosecutions and convictions for human trafficking in the broadest sense, i.e. for both labour and sexual exploitation.

Section 4 of the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008, which came into operation on 7 June, 2008, creates a new offence of trafficking of children for labour exploitation and trafficking of adults for sexual and labour exploitation. No prosecutions have been commenced or convictions recorded for this offence to date.

Section 3 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (as amended by Section 3 of the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008) created the offence of trafficking of children for the purpose of sexual exploitation. To date one person has been charged by the Garda Síochána on four counts of attempting to incite another to commit an offence contrary to Section 3 of this Act. The accused was charged in January 2007 and has already pleaded guilty to one count. The case is listed for sentence hearing at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 24th February, 2009.

Prior to the enactment of Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008, An Garda Síochána utilised the provisions of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000, which remains in force. Since September 2000 over one hundred people have been arrested and detained in respect of alleged breaches of Section 2 of this Act. Five persons have been convicted in respect of twenty-five individual breaches of Section 2 Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000, which relates to the facilitation/organisation of the illegal entry of persons into this State for gain.

One in the eye for Big Brother

Never mind the TV show.

There is not, never has been and never will be anything relevant or important about sitting on your couch talking bollocks with your mates about the strangers sitting on a different couch, also talking bollocks, that you can see on your telly.

Never was the idiot box a more appropriate phrase than in relation to that nonsense.

But of course, like all entertainments permitted to us poor plebs, it serves as a distraction from the fact that in Britain more than anywhere else worldwide, the government really is watching you.

That's the real Big Brother in action. But thankfully it has for once been stymied in its tracks by the most unlikely of opposition - the European Court of Human Rights.

So immunised to the constant sight of human rights abuses are we today that the plight of people in horror states like Tibet or Zimbabwe just seems to become almost the way things seem destined to be in some parts of the world.

The abuse of people's individual basic rights is so widespread, so ubiquitous that we end up desensitised even to the erosion of our own rights as they disappear before our eyes.

Even with the images of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib before their eyes, American citizens still allowed both 'Patriot' Acts to be enacted with barely a word of protest.

And in the UK, the New Labour regime has presided over a wholesale eradication of basic human rights, with its most extensive public surveillance system in the world monitoring citizens whose DNA it takes without permission and stores forever without justification.

So the news today that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled this practice to be illegal should be celebrated by ALL EU citizens, whether British or not, whether resident in Britain or not.

It's not and never has been an issue of 'those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.'

We've all lost count by now of how many times public records and sensitive information like bank, medical, military or political affiliation records have been lost, stolen or leaked into the public domain or sold to criminals.

There is a simple principle at stake here. The state apparatus has no right to take and store the DNA of its citizens, especially of those never convicted of a criminal offence. And if the European court rules that it is illegal in England, then it is illegal throughout the EU.

That's one in the eye for Big Brother.