Booming Back

Books I should have read last year - Reamde

2012-01-29T14:31:00.002Z

Continuing on with the next in our occasional series of "Books I should have read last year", we arrive at the first work of fiction in our list, Neal Stephenson's Reamde.

Fiction is a rarity for me, ten years ago it was probably all I read, but spending a few years in a college town in the US with a pretty good second-hand bookstore or two while hanging around with a group of ridiculously knowledgeable post-grads flipped a switch somewhere in the cavernous recesses of my then pop-culture-obsessed brain and I began to devour knowledge with a thirst that would have put my own post-graduate self to shame (my Masters was something I did by accident, not even my supervisor could explain why studying the Reformation and the Enlightenment would be a good idea), beginning with many of the books I should have read as a student and then expanding out into other topics, philosophy, history, politics, sociology, linguistics, theoretical physics - my bookshelves are littered with the remains of temporary obsessions as the index of one book would lead to the purchase of several others, most of whom loom down over me now as a constant reminder of all those things that I do not, and will never, understand fully.

With so much guilt radiating from my shelves, I find fiction problematic, a consumption of time that could so very well be used for something more fulfilling, a problem compounded by the fact that when I do read fiction I somehow seem to fall into the trap of reading ridiculously long books. While I do read fiction at a much faster speed than non-fiction, I cannot escape the nagging thought that in the time that it took me to finish all 1,042 pages of Reamde I could have zipped through a Badiou or two (or several Virilio).

Reamde is best described as a thriller, a return to the style of novel Stephenson first explored with Cryptonomicon, and just as that earlier book dealt with the then exotic world of off-shore data havens, electronic currencies and encryption, Reamde combines an exploration of the economics of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORG - think World of Warcraft) with the War on Terror, though not in the usual red-top "terrorists training in Second Life" meme. I'm not a gamer (not a computer gamer at least), and have never played a MMORG, but I do understand enough about the business model behind them to appreciate this aspect of the book, and in the end it serves more as a vehicle for the interpersonal relations of the characters than as the main plot element of the book. In fact the MMORG mainly acts as a massive Deus Ex Machina to bring the characters together (and keep them together), then gets left somewhat awkwardly on the shelf in favour of some large explosions and a climax that manages to be both abrupt and maddeningly long in its execution.

I enjoyed the book, but have to admit that at times it struck me as an over-long airport thriller desperately in need of a good editor. I don't read airport thrillers, yet anyone who has ever spent time in an airport bookshop knows the type - think Tom Clancy or Dan Brown - and it has always struck me that these books seem to have a fetishistic approach to brand names, every car, gun and watch is described in great detail with make, model, year, colour and accessories as if the author cut and paste directly from the dealer's catalogue. My political awakenings coincided with the publication of No Logo, and twelve years later I still bristle at the unthinking worship of brands, almost inescapable now in a world of "promotional considerations" and "marketing synergies". While there is an unhealthy does of gun-fetishization in Reamde, it is the constant name-dropping of mass-market Web 2.0 giants that really got me down. It's not enough for the characters to look at an online map, they have to use Google Maps (and they do, a lot), and Wikipedia is name-checked almost as frequently.

I appreciate that "to google" has entered the English language, but reading the phrase "he/she looked it up on Google Maps" sounds as linguistically clumsy as someone saying "I searched for it on Bing" (which nobody says except on TV when Microsoft has paid them to do so, and even then they look pretty embarrassed about having to do so). When used as extensively as it is in Reamde it seriously jars, I just cannot understand what contribution to the story repeated reference to a specific brand actually makes.

It is not just technologically-inclined business folk who love the web-giants, a post-lecture conversation with Susan George (Grande Dame of the alter-globalisation movement) about my then web-giant employer lead to an invitation to join her group for dinner, and our own Grande Dame of Ireland's Occupy Movement, Helena Sheehan, has embraced Facebook whole-heartedly and regularly holds online salons on her page. Both George and Sheehan spoke to me in glowing terms of the difference to their research abilities made by the web-giants.

Working at the centre of this all for so many years, it could just be a case that I can no longer see what a transformative effect these companies have had for many folks (in fact I often find myself frustrated by how poor some of their offerings are, at least in comparison to the internal-only versions I remember with fondness from my time as an employee). I am reminded of the Simpson's episode where Bart captivates an audience far in the distant future by showing them a yo-yo, to which a man gasps, "What's normal to him amazes us. He will be our new god!", where things that only serve as a frustration for me because of their limitations are for the majority of users so great an improvement over what came before that it instills an emotional response beyond simple loyalty in the user.

It still doesn't explain Zune Guy though, nor does it explain why Stephenson felt the need to pepper Reamde with so many brand names - did he do it because he loves them or because he thought his readers do?

Anyway, its a reasonably good book, certainly not as strong as Anathem, but with less made-up words.

Unless you count 'Google'.

You can find out more about Stephenson here, and Reamde is available from Amazon here.

#OccupyDameStreet - What is it going to take?

2012-01-26T15:04:00.008Z

Taking a break during the Carnival of Resistance
Former Anglo Irish Bank offices, Stephen's Green, Dublin, Monday 23rd January

RTE Six-One News, Wednesday 25th January. €1.25 Billion had just been paid to holders of unsecured Anglo Irish Bank Bonds, €1.25 Billion that would literally just disappear with the click of mouse, the equivalent of all the cuts announced in last year's austerity budget to Health, Social Protection, Education and Overseas Aid vanishing into the ether, never to be seen again. In between the twin smokescreens of a partial return to the bond markets and the arrest of a bilocating phone-loving Senator, RTE illustrated public outrage against the bond-payment with footage of two dancing pigs on Merrion Street.

Two dancing pigs.

Less than one hundred meters away around the corner forty people had chained themselves to the entrances of the Department of Finance since six am that morning. The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, TV3, 4FM and many others had all run with the #OccupyDameStreet protest as one of their main stories during the day. RTE showed two men dressed as pigs, dancing all alone on the street.

On the other side of the Dáil, on Kildare Street, four hundred farmers protested over septic charges. This RTE Six-One dutifully reported. Four hundred people outraged that the government would dare to ask them to ensure that they are not polluting the land with their own human waste. Four hundred people, ten times the number of those protesting the theft of €1.25 Billion a hundred meters away, angrily proclaiming that a €50 charge would destroy their way of life.

On Tuesday night at the first public meeting of the 'Anglo: Not Our Debt' coalition, I sat in front of a journalist from the Financial Times. He wanted to know why the Irish people weren't protesting. He talked to two women in their late fifties, who then left the meeting during the coffee break, muttering that it was "just another talking shop". The first half of the meeting saw Tom McDonnell explain the history of the Anglo bailout and the apocalyptic effects that ongoing payments of the promissory notes will have on the country, the second half was a call to arms asking the audience themselves to identify ways to resist the payments. The two women who left seemed unwilling to make their own contributions, they wouldn't even give the journalist their first names. They wanted something to be done, they wanted action to be taken, but they wanted someone else to do it for them.

For three days a Carnival of Resistance was held outside the former Anglo offices on Stephen's Green. The Anglo name may be long gone and its business transferred to Burlington Road, but the shadows of the Anglo sign can still be seen on the ESB International building and for many it remains a potent symbol of all that went wrong with our country. From early Monday morning and continuing on until nearly 10pm on the night of the bond-payment itself, bands played and speakers rallied on the pavement, children danced and drew pictures with chalk on the ground, passers-by stopped, listened and engaged with writers and academics from the #OccupyUniversity program, artists, musicians and, most importantly of all, each other. Outrage was expressed but the message was one of positivity.

As I stood on the street uploading pictures from the Carnival from my phone, I saw a series of comments from a member of Dublin's underground Street Art community decrying that it all looked "a bit amateur", that the public would never respond to a bunch of guitar players and home-made signs, that no movement could succeed without a strong and visible leader. He believes in action, but not in protests, "Protest in Ireland was kidnapped years ago, rendered harmless and pointless. It's all a token" he said.

#OccupyDameStreet activists locked-in to cement filled barrels
Department of Finance, Merrion Row, Dublin, Wednesday 25th January

For seventy-two hours I resisted the Anglo bailout. I stood on Stephen's Green through sunshine, rain and dark of night and bent the ear of any passer-by who stopped to listen, and when the speakers and musicians had packed up for the night I swept the pavement clear. I educated myself and attempted to educate others, I attended meetings and publicized them to all and sundry, live-blogging from within for those who could not be there in person. For the day of the bailout itself I stood outside the Department of Finance with forty Dame Street activists who had chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels and watched Alan Dukes walk by, eyes firmly fixed ahead to avoid any contact with the cold harsh reality of the situation.

I have done everything in my power to resist what I believe to be an act of heinous injustice, and the feeling I am left with today is what was the bloody point?

Dancing pigs on RTE. Self-interest more likely to bring people onto the streets than public calamity. A wider population eager to highlight the problems but unwilling to get up off their own backsides and do something about it themselves. The radical underground telling me we need hierarchies and leaders.

I don't mean to criticize the two costumed performers, they are to be wholeheartedly commended for the effort they went to. Similarly the septic tank charge is a serious issue, yet another stealth tax like the Household and Water Charges that will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, imposed by a Government bent on taxing the marginalized to bail out the wealthiest in our deeply unequal society, and while some sectors of the street art community may not believe in the effectiveness of current protests, others actively engage in their own protest as shown by CANVAZ on the city's walls at the start of the week.

What depresses me though is that there were only two pig performers, not thousands. That RTE treat the bailout like the "and finally" story of a water-skiing squirrel at the end of the news. That the people only take to the streets when they can feel their own money being taken directly from their wallet. That it is fifty quid they shout about, not €1.25 billion. That it is one wall, on one street saying "Not Our Debt", and not every wall, on every street, in every town and village in the country.

Where are the people? Where is the anger? Where is the action?

What is everyone waiting for?

"We do not have the resources to mount a national campaign" said 'Anglo: Not Our Debt' on Tuesday night, "but we will give you all the information you need to mount your own". The information is out there for people to educate themselves, why must they wait to be told what to do? For nearly a year the villagers of Ballyhea have been staging their own weekly protests, come rain or shine, they didn't wait for an external group to organize something, they didn't wait to be given permission, they just did it, and they haven't stopped. For three weeks a small group of activists planned to blockade the Department of Finance on the day of the bond-payment, none of whom had ever done anything like this before. They reached out to others with more experience and learned how to make lock-on barrels and passive-resistance techniques (not that they were needed in the end). They had an idea, commitment and educated themselves, then they took action.

Just before Christmas Vincent Browne visited the #OccupyDameStreet camp and for twenty minutes he asked the Occupiers, "Why aren't the Irish people protesting?". On Tuesday night the Financial Times asked me the same question, "Why aren't the Irish people protesting?". I had no answer then, and I have no answer now.

All I know is how sad it all makes me feel. What is the bloody point?

Four months ago I was a passive observer. On October 8th everything changed. I stood on Dame Street, skulking in the background, snapping pictures and trying not to be noticed, then someone handed me a guy rope and said, "here, hold this", and suddenly I was protesting.

When will the rest of the country have their own Dame Street Moment?

What is it going to take?

Give a man a loan...

2012-01-23T12:14:00.003Z

Dublin-based street artist CANVAZ was out and about last night adding his latest stencil-work to the city's Outernet.

Appearing this morning on the corner of Abbey Street and Capel Street, the piece reads "Give a man an education and he will build a new world but give a man a loan and you can own that man forever", and signs off with "Not Our Debt", a reference to the €1.25 Billion payment to unsecured Anglo Irish Bank bondholders scheduled to be made by the Government on Wednesday, part of over €9 Billion that will be paid on behalf of Anglo from the public purse this year alone, in addition to the countless billions that will be paid directly to the ECB and IMF for gambling debts that the citizenry had nothing to do with.

CANVAZ was also responsible for the "Occupy All Streets" piece last year, and the response to our current economic, political and cultural crisis from artists has been an amazing thing to follow. You can see more of CANVAZ on his Facebook page and on lusciousblopster's Flickr set.

Surface Tension at The Science Gallery

2012-01-20T13:02:00.003Z

Somehow I seem to have developed a nasty habit of only making it down to The Science Gallery on the last day or so of their current exhibition. This is a difficult thing to do for I am actually in the Science Gallery quite a lot, both to attend lectures and for meetings (The cafe is a great place to meet clients when its not too busy), but somehow lately I never seem to find the time to actually walk through whatever exhibit is currently being staged until the volunteers are starting to take it all down around me. This means that taking the time to write about their current exhibition is almost a waste in bits and bites, for you can do nothing with this information beyond saying to yourself, "well that looked great. Pity you didn't say anything about it at any stage in the last three months when I could have actually gone to it".

No matter, I took some time on Wednesday afforded to me by a surprisingly light calendar and a strong case of the AhFeckIts to head on down and make up for lost time.

The current Exhibition, entitled Surface Tension took 'Water' as its central theme, and had a wide range of pieces ranging from an exploration of Dublin's water table and the various ways of producing potable water (even from Dublin's canals) through to prototypes for cleaning up oil-spills. As I wandered through I was, as usual, intrigued by many of the pieces while wishing some had something more tangible, and at times found it hard to distinguish between the Art and Science, which I suppose is the whole point of The Science Gallery.

Take The Sea Chair Project for example, illustrated with a rather nice series of plastic models (above). The ocean contains an awful lot of plastic. Every day tons and tons of plastic gets washed into the sea, or lost overbaord from shipping containers. It gradually breaks down into tiny 2mm plastic pellets called nurdles and these are everywhere, approximately 13,000 nurdles float in every square mile of the ocean according to the UN. These get into the aquatic food chain and as they are indigestible cause untold problems for marine life. The Sea Chair Project envisions a trawler being repurposed for harvesting these nurdles from the ocean, then using the plastic to manufacture chairs, boosting decimated fishing communities across the South-West coast of the UK. "Brilliant" I said, but as with many works exhibited at the Science Gallery I couldn't tell if this was an actually work-in-progress, a workable concept, or just a science-fiction artwork designed to provoke thought.

Even if only a concept, it is still pretty cool though, giving rise to notions of giant oil-rigs being repurposed to decontaminate the sea while feeding our insatiable thirst for plastic.

One piece that definitely wasn't science fiction, and my favourite of the exhibition, was David Bowen's Tele-Present Water. Using data relayed from an ocean buoy, a lattice suspended on moveable wires recreated in real time the movement of waves. The model was built to a scale of 1:12, meaning that for every inch of movement by the model, the corresponding wave was moving by a foot. During my visit the peaks and troughs were separated by at least a foot, meaning that wherever the bouy was it was experiencing waves of at least 12 feet high. I say "wherever" because its exact location isn't actually known, for although it was originally moored 205 miles South-West of Honolulu, it broke free of its moorings in April of last year and has been wandering the oceans ever since. The volunteer that I spoke to reckoned it was currently near Alaska based on a correlation between the size of the waves a few days ago and a massive storm that hit the Alaskan coast at the same time. Like Silent Barrage in last year's Visceral exhibit, there is something about telepresence that really captures my imagination.

While sadly now closed you can find out more about the exhibition here, and find some photos that I took here.

Overall I have to say that it did indeed look great. Pity I didn't say anything about it at any stage in the last three months when you could have actually gone to it.

Anglo: Not Our Debt

2012-01-19T17:57:00.014Z

The launch of the 'Anglo: Not Our Debt' campaign
Central Hotel, Dublin, Wednesday 18th January

I have written more than once on the subject of Anglo Irish Bank and the ongoing repayments to holders of Anglo bonds, both secured and unsecured, and of the crippling situation we find ourselves in because of these private debts that have been socialized onto the public purse. It should come as no surprise to you therefore that I found myself yesterday morning in the audience at a press conference announcing the launch of a new coalition-based campaign calling for the Government to cease paying these bondholders and the associated Anglo promissory notes immediately.

Organised under the banner of the Debt Justice Action coalition, the 'Anglo: Not Our Debt' campaign (or #NotOurDebt with the obligatory hashtag) brings together academic, political, economic, development and religious groups from across civil society all calling on the Government to suspend Anglo-related payments immediately, beginning with the €1.25 Billion payment to unsecured Anglo bondholders on January 25th (less than a week away). This payment, which we are under no legal obligation to make, is almost exactly equal to the cuts of €475m to Social Protection, €543m in Health and €52.9m in Overseas Aid, and "savings" of €132.3m in Education announced by the Government over the course of two budget days back in December. #NotOurDebt is not calling for the Government to default, rather they are calling for a suspension of payments to bring the ECB back to the negotiating table with a view to adjusting the principle of the debt, and the repayment schedule.

The #NotOurDebt campaign argues that a) the Anglo payments, and in particular the nearly €50 Billion in Promissory notes, are not part of the EU/IMF memorandum, so non-payment will not affect our wider bailout or relationship with the Troika, b) Anglo is not a pillar bank, and it is highly unlikely that suspension of payments would lead the ECB to retaliate by punishing our pillar banks as this would lead to the same sort of contagion they have been fighting to prevent since this crisis began, and c) with our Government bonds already rated as 'junk', it is hard to see how the markets could have any less confidence in us than they do already, suspension of payments realistically could not make the environment any worse for external investment than it already is.

There were a good few familiar faces there, with John Bisset from the Spectacle of Defiance and Hope speaking at the launch, and both UNITE's Michael Taft and TASC's Tom McDonnell doing a lot of the number crunching for the campaign. Mrs Browne's Boys (Harry and Vincent, sadly no relation to each other but its still worth trying to coin a phrase) were also there in the audience, and #VinB had both John and Michael on his show last night to discuss the Anglo fiasco.

There will be a public meeting of the #NotOurDebt campaign next Tuesday 24th in the Teachers' Club, Parnell Square in Dublin, at 7pm, the night before the next Anglo payout. This falls nicely in the middle of three days of planned defiance around the bond payment, which sees a broad alliance of groups come together for joint actions, as well as autonomously-planned events.

The country sat by last November and quietly watched the government hand over €720 million to holders of five-year Anglo Irish Bank bonds. Next week's payment will be almost double that. We cannot afford another week of silence.

You can find out more about the #NotOurDebt campaign here, read their full statement from the launch here, and watch #VinB's show from last night here.

Tell me now, how do I feel - Redux

2012-01-19T17:06:00.004Z

New piece by Solus
Corner of Drury Street and Fade Street, Dublin, Wednesday 18th January

And we're back. Bet you didn't even notice our SOPA inspired absence, did you?

*sigh*

Well here at Boomingback we took advantage of an enforced day of rest from the internets to get out into the Really Real World (you remember, that place that is permanently AFK) and do the things that ordinary folks do, ordinary folks without anything else more pressing to do. The day started off with a press conference (more about that later), followed by a brief sojourn on Occupied Dame Street and a more lengthy visit to the second last day of the Surface Tension exhibit in The Science Gallery, all wrapped up in an impromptu walking tour of Dublin Street Art.

At the start of the week I wrote about a new piece by Dublin Street Artist Maser commissioned by the First Fortnight program in aid of Mental Health awareness, but Maser was not the only artist to contribute new work to the festival. ADW (right), CANVAZ, Aidan Kelly and Solus (above) all picked up their spray cans and stencils and set to work in Temple Bar and Drury Street.

Street Art is definitely more The Very Understanding Girlfriend's cup of tea than mine, but through her I have come to have a healthy appreciation for the work of a good few Dublin-based artists, and seeing their work around the city has a tangibly softening effect on my often antagonistic relationship with Dublin (I can no longer call it a love/hate relationship since I find there is so little to love, it's more like a "can't-afford-to-ever-move-away-thanks-to-the-property-crash-so-I-might-as-well-grin-and-bear-it/hate" thing).

The irony/synchronicity of being cheered up by Street Art commissioned by a Mental Health campaign is not lost on me.

You can find a map of the pieces here, First Fortnight's Street Art blog here, and my own photos of the pieces here.

Books I should have read last year

2012-01-17T15:11:00.008Z

Something odd happened last year. Well, actually, many odd things happened last year, but the thing of oddness that I am specifically referring to here is the fact that I lost the ability to read books. Now I don't mean that I suddenly went blind or developed dyslexia, rather as a consequence of pain and medication I lost the ability to concentrate long enough to finish anything longer than a few pages at a time.

I am a voracious reader, my not-so-secret vice is book buying, real dead-tree books, and a typical month sees the purchase of far more books than I could possibly read in the same period even if I treated reading as a full-time job (which at times I have). In Nassem Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan he recounts an anecdote of a vistor to Umberto Eco's house remarking on how big a library Eco had, asking him how many of the books had he actually read, to which Eco replied that the real question was how many of them he had not read. That is the way I treat my library, all the books on my shelves that I have not read serve as a constant reminder of how much there is that I do not know, how small and insignificant my understanding of the world around me really is and this helps keep my easily inflated sense of self-worth in check.

However last year was particularly poor for pushing the read-to-unread ratio on my shelves in a favourable direction, as I lost the ability to concentrate and absorb anything of weight for most of the year, and it is hard to convey just how great a loss this was. Slowly my powers of concentration have come back to me, and my mission this year is to catch up on a good deal of what I failed to read last year, and in the interest of having something to write about I thought I might share some of these lost books with you all in the first of an erratic series of posts entitled, "Books I should have read last year", and as a special bonus we'll start this series off with not one, but two, Books I Should Have Read Last Year.

Sins of The Father - Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy, Conor McCabe

I have had a chance to meet Conor a few times on Dame Street, even chatting with him on one particular day before he went down to the launch of this very book, and I really wish that I had been more familiar with it before talking with him, because then I possibly would have upped my conversational game beyond the "uuuurgh, Capitalism Bad" level. Many of the recent explorations of our current economic woes have focused solely on the Celtic Tiger years, on the property boom, light-touch regulation and crony-capitalism of the last two Fianna Fail administrations. While McCabe explores these themes as well, it is in the context of a broader examination of Irish history from the foundation of the State, and an analysis of the near-universal myopia that affected successive Irish governments.

Beginning with the rule of the Cattle Barons, who saw Ireland's role both pre-and-post Independence as predominantly to supply England with beef, continuing on with the abandonment of any serious attempt to form a large scale native-owned industrial sector in favour of the courtship of foreign Multinational Corporations (MNCs) who would treat Ireland primarily as a tax haven, through to the creation of an actual tax haven in the form of the IFSC and the subsequent property boom fueled by tax-avoidance legislation such as Section 31 Relief, McCabe shows how the one constant in Ireland since Independence has been governance by a hereditary minority in the interests of the wealthiest citizens. The political and economic inequality of the Celtic Tiger years was nothing new for Ireland, just merely is most extreme manifestation.

A very accessible book, it deserves a place on your shelf beside Fintan O'Toole's Ship of Fools, and Shane Ross' The Bankers as an examination of how we arrived in our current dystopic fantasyland, providing a much broader context than either and complimenting their more in-depth analysis of recent events.

You can read more by McCabe at Dublin Opinion here, and Sins of the Father is available at Amazon here.

Vultures' Picnic - In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores, Greg Palast

Journalism-noir from everybody's favourite misanthrope. Its been five years since Palast's last book, Armed Madhouse, the examination of voter-caging and other political skuldugery that led one student brandishing it at a meeting with John Kerry to be forceably subdued by security, uttering the now immortal line, "Don't tase me, bro". While the Bush era may long be gone, Palast has not been resting in the subsequent years, but perhaps paralleling the Occupy Movement's focus on our economic rather than political masters, Palast has turned his raincoat and hat away from election fraud and towards the much murkier world of Big Oil, Big Nuke and the vampire squid itself, Goldman Sachs.

Travelling from Alaska to Azerbaijan by way of New Orleans and Ecuador, Palast explores the dominance of BP in global affairs (ironically linked via our own Peter Sutherland to Goldman Sachs) and the countless lives destroyed by their ultra-capitalism. It is also, somewhat surprisingly, a love story, but any good noir tale needs a mysterious love interest.

I love Palast's writing style, unapologetically polemical with a healthy swathe of grumpy, a man critically aware of his own failings but somehow reveling in them all the same. Highly informative, wrath-inducing and exceedingly entertaining at the same time and while perhaps not as focused, a worthy companion nonetheless to Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

You can find out more about Palast, watch his video reports for the BBC and others, and read more of his investigations on his website here, and Vultures' Picnic is available at Amazon here.

Tell me now, how do I feel?

2012-01-16T11:57:00.002Z

Good news everyone - the most depressing day of the year has arrived!

Blue Monday is here, scientifically proven by a guy who works in a building to be the saddest day of 2012 (once December 21st and/or 22nd are excluded, depending on how many credit card bills you are planning on not paying this year).

What everybody needs of a morning like this is nice cheery positive aphorism, which for those of you in the Camden Street area has been supplied courtesy of street artist Maser (he who loves you). As part of the First Fortnight program that ran for the first two weeks of the month, "seeking to challenge mental health prejudice through creative arts", Maser was invited to contribute a piece and the Simon Community donated their wall for the project. The piece went up on Wednesday of last week, and while the First Fortnight program is now over for another year, hopefully Maser's words will be brightening up many a Blue Monday for weeks to come (and blue Tuesdays, and Blue Wednesdays etc, etc).

What pleases me most about today is that while January 16th is traditionally the most depressing day of the year for me, today everyone gets to share in the misery. And if misery loves company, today I am a Mormon fundamentalist.

Speaking of which, it occurred to me that since in America corporations have the same constitutional rights as people and are treated as citizens under the eyes of the law, Mitt Romeny's aggressive acquisition of companies and their subsequent gutting is a) staying true to his ancestral Mormon practices of polygamy and b) possible spousal abuse. But I digress...

On this, the most depressing day of the year, spare a thought for those of us who have just entered the twilight of their thirties. Winter is coming, my friends, our youth is disappearing over the horizon on a galloping steed, its place by my side being taken by a pale horseman with a fondness for garden implements and size -1 dresses. While there is still far more ahead of me than behind, I fear that much of it will involve incontinence, jazz and Inspector Morse, and the survivors, as they say, will envy the dead.

Happy Blue Monday to me,
Happy Blue Monday to me,
Happy Blue Monday Unkie Da-aaaave!
Happy Blue Monday to me.

#OccupyDameStreet - The First 100 Days

2012-01-15T20:56:00.001Z

And we don't look a day over 39
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Sunday 15th January

I've been very under the weather these last few days, hence the tumbleweeds blowing through the pages of this blog, however I did make it down to Dame Street this evening for an hour or two to share in the celebrations of this, the 100th day of the #Occupation!

I wrote my own summary of the year to date back in December, but for an alternative perspective I recommend you take a look at lusciousblopster's post over on No Fixed Abode, or take a look through her extensive Flickr album chronicling life on Dame Street since day one, way back on October 8th.

I don't think any of us would have thought that we would have lasted even ten days, let alone make it to 100. I wonder if the President will send us card?

Can drumming circles be that far behind?

2012-01-11T17:01:00.000Z

When you take away alcohol, caffeine, carbonation and fat, what is there left to drink really?

The answer, of course, is tea, or rather, herbal tea-like beverages. While all the fun in my life may have indeed been surgically removed, that doesn't stop me from trying to find a reasonable alternative. High on the list this month has been Teapigs, a UK-based speciality tea blender, introduced to me by my sister over the Crimbo period.

Abandoning the traditional paper teabag design in favour of a biodegradable corn-starch "tea-temple", these lads veer dangerously close to skinny jeans and NHS-glasses worn in an "oh-so ironic, but before it was cool, like" hipster way, but given the lack of other fun stuff on my menu I will allow them these transgressions. My favourite so far is liquorice and mint, which leaves an amazing aftertaste that coats the back of your mouth and throat like a friendly oil slick covering a stretch of wilderness with a warm, gooey blanket of love.

You can get a reasonably large selection in Listons on Camden Street, but I'm sure your own local overpriced, can't-believe-the-celtic-toiger-is-dead-roish foodmongers might stock it as well. This morning I didin't even have to go that far, courtesy of a care package sent by the amazing sister whose tea-temples I depleted over Crimbo while she wasn't looking.

Going to hospital is great when people send you prezzies afterwards.

What's your favourite scary movie?

2012-01-09T11:05:00.012Z

To the B-movie horror pantheon of zombie banks, ghost estates and the grasping, mauling tentacles of the bloated vampire squid that is Goldman Sachs, we can now add Lisbon 3, the Treaty That Would Not Die! As the initial shock of this revelation subsides and the beads of perspiration begin to cool, it slowly starts to dawn on us all that we have found ourselves in the final part of a scary movie trilogy.

"...here's the critical thing. If you find yourself dealing with an unexpected back-story, and a preponderance of exposition, then the sequel rules do not apply. Because you are not dealing with a sequel. You are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy. That's right. It's a rarity in the horror field, but it does exist, and it is a force to be reckoned with. Because true trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn't true from the get-go. Godfather, Jedi, all revealed something that we thought was true that wasn't true. So if it is a trilogy you are dealing with, here are some super trilogy rules. One: you've got a killer who's gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won't work. Shooting him won't work. Basically, in the third one, you've gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up. Number two: anyone, including the main character, can die. This means you, Sid. I'm sorry. It's the final chapter. It could be fucking Reservoir Dogs by the time this thing is through. Number three: the past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you."

- "The Rules of a Trilogy" as explained by Randy in Scream 3

Of course it is not actually going to be called Lisbon 3, currently going by the far more technocratic "Draft Agreement on Reinforced Economic Union", but the fact remains that for the third time in four years the people of Ireland may be called upon to vote on the future of Europe. I say “may” because the Government is currently doing everything in its power to avoid the inconvenience of taking this Treaty to the people, and odds are it will all end up in the courts or with the President before a single ballot paper is printed.

So as we all wait with bated breath it might be worth taking a few moments to prepare ourselves for the horror that lies ahead.

Forewarned is forearmed!

Rule One: We've got a killer who's gonna be superhuman

We voted 'No' and it rose from the dead, we voted 'Yes' and were told it was gone for good, and now as we rummage around in the attic looking for some old junk to sell off on Ebay so we can pay our heating bills it leaps from the shadows, knife gripped tight, ready to rip and slash its way through the pitiful tattered rags of economic sovereignty that we have wrapped around our shivering body, leaving the rest of our family downstairs wondering where we've gone and why we've been so quiet since we told them, “I'll be right back”.

While the more cynical amongst you might reason that given the mess successive governments have made of the economy, handing over economic control to someone else might not be such a bad idea after all, but the type of control imagined amounts to a prescription for permanent austerity with minimal room for Government spending on such luxuries as education, welfare or health, even after such time as we have managed to pay back the private bank debt that has been socialized onto the public purse.

As we learned the hard way at the start of Lisbon 2, voting 'No' the first time wasn't enough to lay this beast to rest. Its going to take something special this time, and we might not be able to do it on our own.

Rule Two: Anyone, including the main character, can die

When Greece decided to have a referendum on their own EU bailout, the EU forced them change the wording to be on the subject of Euro membership, and by implication EU membership. "The referendum must be on whether Greece is to remain in the euro," Angela Merkel said, Sarkozy (Kodos to her Kang in our Treehouse of Horror) said that he knew the Greeks would "make the right choices". The threat was clear, take the money or leave the EU, vote the right way or die.

The stakes are even higher with Lisbon 3 and the unavoidable truth is that no one, despite all the predictions and assertions made by a veritable rogues' gallery of talking heads, no one knows how this all will end. We will hear talk of impending Euro collapse or a full-on global financial meltdown, of a Europe without Ireland or a total disintegration of the EU, and most of all of the Irish people who selfishly dare to put their own interests ahead of The Grand European Dream. While “there is no alternative” sounds just as hollow in German and French as in English, talk of reprisals is not entirely misplaced for while there may be no mechanism for pushing a member state out of the EU, as David Cameron learned there is nothing to stop all the others carrying on without you.

But even if the Irish behave like responsible European Citizens and do what Kang and Kodos tell us to do, even if the referendum is passed and the Treaty is enacted will it all be enough to prevent the collapse of the Euro? And if we sign away the tattered rags of our economic sovereignty and the Euro still collapses, what then?

As the man said, “It could be Reservoir Dogs by the time this thing is through”.

Rule Three: The past will come back to bite you in the ass

As Conor McCabe helpfully pointed out last year in his book Sins of the Father, we have a lot of bodies buried in our national cellar, from the construction and development of the IFSC where morality was as light on the ground as regulations, through to the introduction of Section 23 tax relief on investment properties that fueled a property boom as a method of tax avoidance. Our light-touch financial sector attracted inward investment from European banks eager to cash in on the Celtic Tiger, and when the house of cards upon which the property sector was built collapsed and the corpses of our national sins started popping up through the crumbling foundations, the true horror of the situation began to dawn on them. Their reaction was swift and, for Ireland, catastrophic.

"No Irish bank will be allowed to fail", the ECB told the late Brian Lenihan, and thus the disastrous Bank Guarantee was issued, staple-gunning the fate of Ireland to that of Anglo Irish Bank forever and the Government was forced to surrender the bulk of its economic sovereignty to borrow money to pay back the European banks. While events in Greece and Italy have overshadowed our own misfortunes on the global stage and Lisbon 3 is as much a response to the actions of Burlusconi who bunga-bungaed while Rome burned as it is to the antics of Fingers, Seanie and our own 1%, we will not be allowed to forget that we were the first to answer the ECB's late night phone call, its raspy voice asking with glee, “What's your favourite scary movie?”

As for the big revelation at the end of this particular frightfest, the rules of a scary movie say that you can never have sex, drink or do drugs, for sin equals death. If greed was our sex and property our drugs then, boy, did we sin as a nation. From the start of our own economic collapse we have been told that it was of our own devising, that we lost the run of ourselves as a nation and partied too hard, but true trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn't true from the get-go.

When the dust settles and Lisbon 3 has been passed (for surely that is the only outcome we will be allowed to deliver), and we stand looking over the costumed killer of Irish economic and fiscal sovereignty, my money is on the mask being pulled back to reveal not the grizzled visage of Seanie or Fingers, but the razor-sharp beak of the vampire squid itself, Goldman Sachs.

The Grand European Dream that Lisbon 3 is fighting to preserve has been replaced by the Nightmare of The Vampire Squid, for after engineering the financial collapse of two continents Goldman Sachs now finds itself wrapped as tightly around the EU as it is around the US Federal Reserve. ECB head “Super” Mario Draghi was a former Goldman Sachs executive, current Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti was an international advisor to the firm, Lucas Papademos as Governor of Greece's Central Bank colluded with Goldman Sachs on the massive €2.3 billion Credit Default Swap that was a major factor in Greece's current economic crisis before being hand-picked by the EU as his country's new Prime Minister, and our own Fine Gael draw inspiration for their economic policies from their patron Peter Sutherland, Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who back in June of last year declared that Ireland must give up control of its budget to Brussels to save the EU in a manner uncannily similar to the propsed "Draft Agreement on Reinforced Economic Union".

Follow the money, as they say, and if you do you will normally find a bloated tentacle of the vampire squid wrapped tightly around it.

Lisbon 3 is a very scary movie indeed. Even scarier, however, is the thought of not being allowed to vote on it at all.

Update: 11/01/2012
Interesting article this morning on RTE that suggests US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put direct pressure on the Irish Government not to burn bondholders. While Geithner himself never worker for Goldman Sachs (he is a lifelong public servant), he was head of the New York Fed (a close partner of Goldman Sachs) where he oversaw the bailout of AIG that substantially benefitted Goldman Sachs, and both his predecessor as Treasury Secretary and his current Chief of Staff are both ex-Goldman Scahs employees.

The mask is slipping and the tentacles are crawling out!

The time to hesitate is through

2012-01-06T13:56:00.005Z

Burning down The Man
Burning Man, August 2008

Of course January 16th won't really be the most depressing day of the year, or even of the month (maybe it will be in the UK, but given that this is the country that spawned The Only Way is Essex it would seem that they are playing by a whole different set of rules for national melancholy), for on January 25th the government is due to handover €1.25 billion to unsecured Anglo Irish Bank bondholders. In fact over the course of 2012 alone Michael Taft estimates that the state will pay Anglo bondholders €6.3 billion (of which €2.6 Billion is to unsecured bondholders), in addition to nearly €3.1 billion to cover the promissory notes issued to Anglo to allow them pay of other creditors, meaning that this year alone Anglo will cost the Irish taxpayer over €9 billion.

Which would be horrifying enough if you didn't notice that the tax take for 2011 was only €34 billion, missing its projected target by almost €900 million despite the draconian changes to the Universal Service Charge and the pension levy. Of note in the year end report from the Revenue Commissioners was the fall in revenue from VAT, due to a slowdown in consumer spending. It would appear that when times are tough, people buy less, so its a good thing that no one went and radically increased the prices of almost all retail transactions earlier this week.

Oops.

So payments arising from Anglo alone this year would account for over 25% of our entire national tax take for 2011, and this is before the bondpayments for AIB, BOI and the others have all been factored in.

And the worst part of it all is the high level of payments that we will be making to unsecured bondholders, ie those holders of bonds that were issued without being tied to any form of collateral, and thus who we have no legal obligation to pay back. However a quick perusal of the list of Anglo bondholders will show that a significant number of them are German banks, which is all the information you need to make sense of the European Central Bank's order to the late Brian Lenihan that no Irish bank would be allowed to fail, delivered mere hours before he issued the universal bank guarantee.

German banks bought Anglo bonds, and when Anglo collapsed the Irish government was forced by the ECB to borrow money to pay back these German banks. And where does this borrowed money come from? Why from German banks of course.

No don't get me wrong here, the Irish financial collapse was a beast entirely of our own making, but there can be no denying that the vultures of the ECB and the German and other European banks on behalf of which it operates have been pretty quick off the mark to swoop in and ruthlessly pick clean our carcass.

There really is only one course of action that can morally be taken in all this, and that is to burn the unsecured bondholders. If I buy shares in a company and the stock price collapses, I cannot then ask for my money back. If I place a bet on a horse and the horse comes last, I cannot then ask for my money back. Why should unsecured bondholders be treated any different? Investemnt is a gamble, every ad for investment firms is obliged to say so, "the value of your investment can go down as well as up, past performance is not a guarantee of future success". Every bond buyer knew what they were getting into, why should the lives of Irish women and men be sacrificed to pay the gambling debts of the banks, foreign and domestic?

On the 6th of December, the first of two extraordinary Budget days, the Government announced cuts of €475m to Social Protection, €543m in Health and €52.9m in Overseas Aid, on top of "savings" of €132.3m in the Education budget, a total of just over €1.2 billion in cuts. On January 25th the same Government will hand over €1.25 billion to unsecured Anglo bondholders that we have no moral or legal obligation to pay.

Mark the 25th of January in your calendar, if the Government follows through on its plan to place the shareholders of foreign banks above the citizens of Ireland, then it is a day that every Irish man, woman and child should take to the streets.

The May2K Bug

2012-01-05T19:03:00.011Z

The Temple of the Inscriptions
Palenque, Mexico, August 2008

Good news everyone, January 16th has been declared the most depressing day of the year according to a group of UK mental health charities. According to the website beatbluemonday.co.uk: "The day was identified according to a formula devised by happiness and motivation expert, Cliff Arnall, formerly a researcher, lecturer, and post graduate tutor at the Medical and Dental School of Cardiff University", so its a scientific fact.

Why is this good news? Well because it is also my birthday, of course. That's right, this, the last birthday of my thirties, coincidently falls on the scientifically-proven most depressing day of the year.

Of course it does.

On the plus side, it means every day afterwards is guaranteed to be all sparkels and unicorns, at least until December 21st when according to the Internets everything sort of comes to an end thanks to the slap-dash horological skills of the Mayans whose Long Count calendar stops somewhat suddenly on that date, in an event that surely someone else must have decided already to call May2K.

Well fear not my friends, because Unkie Dave holds no truck with the doom-mongers of May2K, for as a Consulting Theologian he knows a thing or two about eschatology (the study of the End of Days, not the eating of French snails). The May2K bug (as I hope you will all now refer to it as) is based on the notion that the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar this year means that the Mayans thought the world would come to an end long before we had a chance to see part two of the Hobbit (due for release in December 2013), and only a week to catch part one (An Unexpected Journey opens on December 14th, though its probably too soon to start queuing now). Sneaky Mayanses. However instead of heralding the End of the World, the calendar's end could instead signify a transition into something new, like a utopian era of peace and harmony or a bowl of soup and a small potted plant (both being as statistically likely as the End of the World).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Mayan Long Count Calendar does not actually end on December 21st 2012, or at least if it did the Mayans certainly thought other events would take place after its end, for hieroglyphs found in Palenque, a Mayan city abandoned in the 9th Century CE in Chiapas in southern Mexico, make reference to events that will occur on 21st October 4772, meaning the end of the Long Count Calendar should be seen less as an apocalyptic event and more as a marketing tool to shift some end-of-season stock (no doubt Tesco will try something similar come November).

Take that David Icke!

Interestingly enough the same ruins in which these hieroglyphs were found, The Temple of the Inscriptions, also housed the famous 7th Century CE Sarcophagus of Pakal, the lid of which has graced many the page of an Erich von Däniken book as it portrays a figure reclining on a couch in what apparently resembles the inside of an Apollo space capsule, leading to all sorts of hilariously trashy books from the 60s and 70s that said aliens visited the Earth in our prehistory and our ancestors worshiped them as gods, after they gave us fire, pyramids and possibly velcro.

Now before you scoff at the notion that prehistoric aliens traveled through the stars in the finest technology the 1960s had to offer, keep in mind that since last year's retirement of the Space Shuttle (the finest technology the 1970s had to offer), that is exactly what every human astronaut is reduced to doing now through their dependance on the Russian Soyuz capsule or its Chinese derivative, Shenzhou. What's more if you look closely at Pakal's Sarcophagus you can clearly see that it has an iPod dock, something not even the Space Shuttle had. Truly these ancient god-astronauts were all-powerful and all-knowing (they didn't bother with a Zune dock you'll notice. "What's a Zune?" I hear you ask. "Exactly!", I reply).

I had an opportunity to examine both these objects a few years ago (The Temple of the Inscriptions and Pakal's Sarcophagus, not an iPod and a Zune, though that should have been obvious for no one has actually ever seen a Zune), or rather while I was able to explore The Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque unfortunately access to Pakal's Sarcophagus was forbidden, so I had to make do with a very good replica in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City (photo above-right), and based on my superlative knowledge of Mayan hieroglyphs I can confidently say that you will indeed all need to pay your December credit card bills, so don't start going crazy now.

Whether those bills will be paid in Euro, Punts Nua or sacrificial hearts was a bit less clear, but you might want to start sharpening up your good knife just in case.

All of which leads me to believe that, as predicted by scientists, the most depressing event of the year will indeed be my birthday, and not the end of the world.

Hooray for me!

Links
More photos from Palenque can be found here.
Photos from the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, can be found here.

The Top Five Places that I have Occupied this year

2011-12-31T20:04:00.019Z

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Ah, Mr Charles Dickens, the well from which has sprung many a Christmasy blog post, but no ghosts of crimbo past here, my friends, no indeed, for this last post of the year shall attempt to convey the best and worst of times that was my 2011. In keeping with the well worn tradition that at times seems to keep E4 afloat I will once again offer up my annual review in the form of a list, though given the year that is in it this year's theme will be "The Top Five Things That I Have Occupied This Year".

#5 - #OccupyUpStart

February of this year was notable for two things, it was the month when the citizenry of Ireland finally rose up and waddled to the polling booth to rid themselves of the festering boil that was the Fianna Fail/Green Government and usher in the era of happiness and prosperity that we are all enjoying today, and, more importantly, it saw a small arts collective take advantage of the relaxed littering laws enabled by the election campaign to mount a bold project that covered the lampposts of Dublin in a series of artworks and poems that brought art to the masses in a way Dublin Contemporary could only dream of. Operating on the tinniest of crowd-sourced budgets UpStart transformed the city centre into provocative gallery that caught the imagination of all who passed by, even if they had no idea what was going on.

For more than two weeks I cycled the streets of Dublin photographing all the posters I could find and posting them online, and though at the start of the project I knew no one involved by the end I had interacted with many of the writers and artists all happy to learn the location of their pieces, and my own photos and their geotags formed the basis of UpStart's official map of the project.

UpStart recently announced details of their next project for 2012, a pop-up outdoor theatre and park somewhere in the city centre, and they have secured over €10,000 in funding to do so. keep an eye on these folks, they are inspirational.

You can review my Upstart posts here and see all the photos on my Flickr set here.

#4 - #OccupyVenice

For reasons that I will elaborate on later, much of the year was a complete write-off for me health wise. In September two good friends got married in venice (good friends of mine that is, I mean they were also good friends of each other, but that's probably taken for granted with the whole marriage thing). I love Italy, I spent much of 2009 there traveling around by train at a leisurely pace, but I had never been to Venice before. I was a bit hesitant at first because, by and large, I try to avoid anything touristy like the plague, I loathe large slow moving crowds (a good reason why I wasn't chosen to narrate that penguin film) and have very little patience in such situations, but I was blown away by how easy it was to escape the herds in venice simply by stepping away from the main squares. Its almost as if the majority of vistors arrive magically in the morning, are marshaled around like cattle up a Temple-Grandin chute, and then disappear like dew in the morning sun come nightfall.

The wedding was beautiful and moving, and it was amazing to spend so much time with good friends in such a deeply personal time.

To top it all off the Art Biennale was on at the same time, and two glorious days were spent wandering around the various pavilions and exhibition spaces taking in the best and the worst that contemporary art has to offer. In retrospect I might have been less harsh in my analysis of Dublin Contemporary if I hadn't just visited the Biennale a week or two beforehand. Better luck next time lads.

Also, I love canals. I love boats on canals. In my future utopia all public transport will be boats on canals.

That is all.

You can read all my posts on Venice and the Biennale here.

#3 - #OccupyTheAirwaves

In 2011, or at least the last three months of 2011, it has been impossible to escape me. I have been everywhere, and this has been a positive thing for me (I think). Up until now I have tried to maintain a separation of my online and offline lives. Although I have be writing this blog for nearly six years now, it has always been as 'Unkie Dave', and never under my real name. This isn't because I do not stand over what I say, more because I have a deep ingrained suspicion of the internets and am a strong believer in that old-school notion of privacy. A quaint notion in these Facebook times, I know. While I stand over everything I write, I have been concerned that some of my clients or my business partners might not be too happy about being associated with the rabble rousing ramblings (and erratic spellings) of a grumpy misanthrope, and so I opted for the safe harbours of pseudonymity.

#OccupyDameStreet arrived like a tsunami against my harbour walls, for shortly after I started writing about it first Politico.ie and then TheJournal contacted me to repost some of my articles, and then did so under my real name. Oops. To be honest it was already too late by that stage, for I had given a number of interviews to various newspapers and my name and face were already plastered across the airwaves to the amusement of my friends and family.

Still, I didn't expect what was to happen next, as appearances in The Guardian and on Al Jazeera were followed by an invitation to appear on Mariane Finucane's Sunday radio panel on RTE, along with Alan Dukes (chairperson of Anglo Irish Bank), Declan Ganley (absolutely not a CIA front) and others discussing the week's events. This was followed by the Charlie Bird Show and Vincent Brown just before Christmas, and somewhere along the way I seem to have ended up in The New York Times. All of this without having to sleep with a Premiership footballer first.

Meanwhile my relationship with Politico has developed, and a good few more posts by me on topics from World Aids Day to the State of the Nation (by way of Brian Cowen's friendly thighs) have appeared, with hopefully more to come in the New Year. I am always surprised to find that anybody reads what I write, I mostly write as an extension of my thinking process, a way to tease out and clarify ideas that have been bothering me. These last few months have provided more opportunities for surprise, and the feedback both negative and positive has been altogether humbling.

Which is good, I usually could do with a good dose of humbling.

You can read my initial article on Politico here, the post on TheJournal.ie that Billy Bragg linked to and kicked off a ridiculously long and heated comments thread here, and my response to Enda Kenny's State of the Nation address (also on Politico) here.

#2 - #OccupyDameStreet

After the highs of Venice and the lows of my health, on October 8th I wandered down to the Central Bank Plaza on a sunny Saturday afternoon with my camera and a healthy dose of cynicism in tow. Expecting to see the usual crowd of placard waving lefties accompanied by a drumming circle of hippies, I thought I would do my usual thing of taking a photograph or two before retuning home to write a post about how apathetic the Irish citizenry are and castigate them for never getting up off their arses and taking a stand against the ignominies and injustices that the government, that successive governments, have heaped upon them.

Then somebody passed me a rope and said, "here, hold this", and the next three months of my life disappeared.

#OccupyDameStreet has consumed me, given me a new lease of life and motivated me to be something more than I ever thought I could. It has also broken me down and brought me perilously close to the end of my tether. Sixteen hour days have left me both energized and destroyed, and the highs of one night are laid low by the setbacks of the following day, a cycle repeated over and over on a giant roller-coaster of emotions that someone rather unsportingly seems to have broken the off-switch for, meaning there is no gentle wind down between peaks and troughs, and the only escape is a foolhardy leap as it approaches what you hope is the ground.

I love #OccupyDameStreet, and it has been a privilege to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people there.

All my posts from Occupied Dame Street can be found here, there's quite a few so be warned, and photos from the last three months can be found here.

#1 - #OccupyHospital

This is it, the biggy, what 2011 will be mainly remembered by me for. This year I have mostly been... ill. Very, very ill.

Less than a week after the election that ushered in the era of happiness and prosperity that we are all enjoying today I woke up in extreme pain, started vomiting, and then the pain got worse. This continued for a number of days before I finally had the good sense to pack myself off to hospital where I received the good news that my pancreas was broken, and no, I couldn't have a new one. Sorry.

Over the course of the year I have had seven separate stays in the hospital (two separate hospitals actually) for a total of almost fifty days in all. I've experienced eight CT scans, three ultrasounds, one endoscopy, three surgical procedures and had my gall bladder removed, pancreas carved up and attached to my stomach. I lost a quarter of my bodyweight and will never again be able to drink alcohol or caffeine, and at no stage has anyone been able to tell me why any of it happened. After all this my pancreatitis still isn't cured, nor will it ever be.

It is difficult to put into words how this has affected me this year (though that hasn't stopped me from trying). It destroyed my life for most of the year, I was in ridiculous amounts of pain for many weeks and the times in between recovering have been just as debilitating. I try to be stoical about it, saying, "It is what it is", but sometimes that isn't enough.

This is why I have thrown myself with gusto into things like #OccupyDameStreet, why I have stood for sixteen hours a day on the freezing stone of Dame Street mere weeks after getting out of hospital, to end the year with a positive memory, to be in charge of my own destiny once again and no longer to be the hostage of my own broken body.

It hasn't worked out so well these last few weeks, which is why this takes the top spot in my end of year charts, snatching victory away from ODS in the 11th hour, but all the same as I stand here on New Year's Eve 2011 I hold my head up high, look out across all that has happened these last twelve months and say proudly to my body and the world:

Fuck You All, I'm Still Alive!

Thank you all for sticking with my ramblings this year, I look forward to boring you senseless with many more come 2012. Happy New Year to you all!

#OccupyDameStreet - #OccupyOuroboros (an End of Year review)

2011-12-31T18:00:00.005Z

On what has to have been the mildest Christmas Day in living memory there was just enough time between the whys and the wherefores to stop off on Dame Street for the briefest of visits to wish everyone well and make an embarrassingly paltry contribution to the planned Christmas meal later that day. While you might happily write off the residents of the Camp as a bunch of idealistic lefties and hippies, do not write them off as a bunch of idealistic leftie hippie vegetarians, for I have never met a more carnivorous group of activists in my short but frenetic time of hanging around watching other people march and shout. Many is the night when the Camp has almost come to open revolt at the thought of having to eat another bowl of "vegan mush", and so on this of all days I thought my own preferred fare of Tofurky or Quorn Roast would be as welcome at the table as Fingers Fingleton or Seanie FitzPatrick, and so I opted to bring along an altogether less gastronomically-charged pack or two of mince pies.

Which was nice, until less than two minutes after I arrived a member of the public stopped by with a rack of piping hot home-made ones that caused my own store-bought contributions to wither away in shame like a water-soaked witch in Oz (the technicolour children's wonderland, not the prison drama). If you have seen the Christmas dinner photos on Broadsheet, those are not my mince pies being enjoyed.

Oh well, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", as the man said, as true for pies as it is for revolutionary egalitarian utopian planning.

Christmas on Dame Street was nice (however brief a visit is was for me), and a chance to see some familiar faces that, like myself, hadn't been down to the Camp for a while. Illness had kept me away for the bulk of two weeks, venturing down during the eye of my pancreatic storm to staff the information stand, get harangued by Vincent Browne and facilitate a three-and-a-half hour long Active Participants Meeting (the supposedly twice-weekly planning session that figures out what the Camp is doing on a day-to-day basis) that was an exercise in Bionian group dynamics as seen through the lens of the Stanford Prison Experiment. It was this experience that was foremost in my mind as I spent the bulk of the next week battling the twin evils of my pancreas and An Post's humorous approach to Christmas postal deliveries (items that I ordered from Amazon in the first week of December still haven't arrived as of this morning, leading to a mad dash around town on Christmas Eve Eve in a fevered state to find last minute replacements, a very First World problem, I know), and the enforced break presented an opportunity to sit back with a little distance from Dame Street and try and make some sense of the last two and a half months.

When we first gathered together at the gates of the Central Bank on that second Saturday in October, I don't think any of us thought that we would still be there on the following Monday morning, let alone on Christmas Day. #OccupyDameStreet has survived attempted take-overs by external groups, floods that threatened to wash away the entire Camp and sub-zero temperatures that made hypothermia a genuine fear, attacks and assaults by drunken passers-by and more coordinated exercises by trouble-makers armed with video cameras, Range Rovers and the sense of superiority and self-worth that only comes from being born into privilege. It has lived through media frenzies and journalistic blackouts, marched and sung and shared its experiences both good and bad with the nation, and witnessed both the very worst and the very best of the Irish public (happily not in equal proportions), and as of today it has outlasted almost all the other physical Camps in the US and beyond that it drew inspiration from.

#OccupyDameStreet is still here, but 83 days later is simply still being here enough?

At the Information Stand I have been asked by many, many passers-by, "What is this all about? What do you hope to accomplish?", and for 83 days I have been saying that #OcupyDameStreet is a catalyst, a starter of conversations and a symbol of people power, and while all these things are true I am left wondering if these have enough value in and of themselves or if #OccupyDameStreet needs to become something more.

To begin with let's dispense quickly with some of the things that #OccupyDameStreet cannot do. It will not overthrow capitalism, it will not lead to a single imprisonment of a corrupt banker, developer or politician, it will not remove the IMF from our national affairs nor return economic sovereignty to these shores. #OccupyDameStreet is a just group of tents at the gates of the Central Bank and the hundred or so people who have coalesced around them and while, as Margaret Mead points out, one should "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has", the probability of a hundred people by themselves overthrowing decades of corruption and crony-capitalism in this banana republic we love to call home (until such time as we are all forced to emigrate) by standing around on a city thoroughfare making soup and handing out leaflets is unfortunately rather low.

However a question asked by passers-by almost as frequently as "what are you doing here?" is "how are you getting away with it all?". For 83 days a group of activists have built and lived in a shantytown in the centre of Dublin, existing as living proof of the viability of alternative and self-organised social, cultural, economic and political spheres. As a symbol of defiance it is a pretty remarkable one, and according to the listeners of Joe Duffy #OccupyDameStreet was the fourth most important thing that happened this year, after The Queen's visit, Dublin winning the All-Ireland and Ireland qualifying for Euro 2012, but ahead of the Arab Spring and Obama's visit. A chord does indeed seem to have been struck with the wider Irish public, while they themselves may be unwilling or unable to take to the streets it seems they are rather glad that someone else is mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore.

In fact many is the time that someone has approached me to say, “I am working all the hours that I can just to make ends meet, otherwise I would be down here standing beside you. I am so glad you are doing this when I cannot”, and I have frequently said that it is kind words like this from passers-by that have kept the Camp going, as much as their donations of food, clothing, tents and more.

Since its inception #OccupyDameStreet has always been about more than just the Camp, though that certainly has been the core around which all else rotates. From the General Assemblies that opened up decision making to the wider public to the rallies and marches that attracted up to 3,000 people one Saturday to hear Billy Bragg sing the Internationale, fist clenched defiantly in the air, from the pop-up soup kitchens outside the Dail to the Mic Checks inside the bailed-out banks, from the musical nights in Sweeney's to the musical days on the Central Bank Plaza that have seen Michael Franti, Kristin Hersh, Damian Dempsy, Christy Moore, Liam O'Maonlai, Glen Hansard and many, many others all stand in solidarity with the Movement, #OccupyDameStreet has continuously sought new and imaginative ways to engage with the wider public beyond its plywood walls and guy-ropes, and as the poll on Joe Duffy has shown the public are certainly engaged.

In fact Joe Duffy's show is but one example of the widespread and largely positive coverage the Occupation has received since its inception. TV3 broadcast live from the Camp during its first week and returned just before Christmas with Vincent Browne, who devoted twenty minutes of his show to interviews from the Camp. Charlie Bird has broadcast live from the Camp, and Occupiers have appeared on Marian Finucane’s Sunday radio panel and on television on Frontline and The Late Late Show. Newstalk radio has been a frequent visitor to the Camp and there has been a steady stream of requests for interviews throughout the Occupation from radio stations as far away as Derry, and the newspaper coverage, ranging from full page articles in the Sunday Times and Irish Daily Mail (not normally noted for their radical sympathies) through to international papers like The Guardian and The New York Times, has been both comprehensive and surprisingly positive. Al Jazeera even broadcast from the Camp on the same day that Col. Gaddafi was captured and killed, making for a very unusual news cycle indeed. Beyond the mainstream media, online coverage from TheJournal.ie, Politico.ie and Broadsheet meant that rarely has there been a day that something from Dame Street hasn't appeared somewhere in print, on the airwaves or online. Early cries from the Camp of a media blackout quickly faded and sound very hollow indeed when they resurface.

Relations with the Fourth Estate have not been the only triumph for the Movement, for its engagement with The Academy has also been a roaring success. The #OccupyUniversity program, organised by a group of academics and students, has brought the classroom onto the streets of Dublin with a series of workshops and lectures from academics, economists, writers, authors and activists all held in the open air and free for anyone to attend, participate and learn. Harry Browne, Gavin Titley, Fintan O’Toole, Michael Taft, Helena Sheehan and many, many others have all braved the elements to offer concrete examples of how another world is possible, and what form that world might take. All these talks have been recorded and will provide an online resource the like of which has never been seen before in Ireland. Dame Street has also been brought into The Academy, with participants appearing as guest speakers in a number of university classes, and at second level a host of imaginative teachers have brought their students on field trips to the Camp, to learn first hand of the joys and challenges of real participatory democracy.

The Political Establishment too has taken notice, for the Camp has seen frequent visits from TDs, Senators, MEPs, Presidential candidates and Party Leaders, all who have been asked to leave their office at the door and engage with the camp as individuals. Some have come to genuinely engage and some perhaps just looking for a bit of publicity, and while not all have been welcomed equally and not all in the Movement have wished to engage with the established order, it is a clear sign that the established order is aware of the Movement and sees it as something more than just a curiosity.

It is also important to note that since October 8th Dame Street has not stood alone, with #Occupy groups taking root in Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Letterkenny and Waterford, all separate and autonomous and all emerging to highlight a complex group of issues both local and national. Through an informal arrangement of websites and social networks the sharing of ideas, inspirations and aspirations finally brought all these groups together for two national meetings, first in Dublin in November and the second three weeks later in Cork. A third meeting is scheduled to happen in January in Belfast showing that the demand for social and economic justice is not just a Dublin issue, or a Cork issue, but an all-island issue.

Thus in 83 days the Movement has emerged from nothing to a central position in the Irish consciousness with politicians, the Media, the Academy and most importantly the citizenry themselves all engaging with the Idea of Dame Street to varying degrees (even if only to dismiss or belittle it). By any measure if the purpose of #OccupyDameStreet was to capture people's attention, then it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. But now that it has everyone's attention, what is it going to do with it?

I have talked before about the disconnect between The Idea of Dame Street and The Reality of Dame Street. In my mind Dame Street exists somewhere between the Battle of Seattle and Paris ’68, a coming together of workers, students, the unemployed and the disenfranchised, academics and tradespeople all coalescing around the idea that another world is possible, and that they will demonstrate this by building that new world right on the gates of the old, self-organised, non-hierarchical, leaderless and egalitarian, a shining beacon in space, all alone in the night. This is The Idea of Dame Street, and it is, of course, complete nonsense.

The Reality of Dame Street is that of a group of disparate folks from varying backgrounds with widely differing motivations have ended up together, and against all the odds, are still managing to just about hold together a ramshackle collection of tents, yurts and wooden shacks in the face of extremes of weather and whose greatest threat, as with any family, is never anything external but the never-ending risk of internal conflict boiling over into catastrophic implosion.

Ironically it is perhaps this lack of external threat that paradoxically has hindered the Movement the most, for other Occupations from Wall Street, Boston and Oakland to London have all experienced their greatest moments of unity when faced with the threat or actuality of external institutional violence, bringing everyone together in an instant of shared lucidity and a clarity of purpose - to simply make it through the next few hours alive and unharmed. Without this threat of external trauma, the adrenaline-fueled and sleep-deprived world of Dame Street sets loose the specters of imagined internal conspiracies, where paranoia and suspicion are twin bedfellows that like to see more time spent on arguing over the washing up than how to realign society along the themes of social justice and equality.

That is not to suggest that The Reality of Dame Street is either all trivialities or endless talk (though it cannot be denied that there are hefty elements of both), but I cannot escape the fact that nearly three months later there still exists a gaping chasm between The Idea of Dame Street and The Reality, a chasm that erupts at your feet every time you ask someone in the Camp, “Ok, so you have everyone’s attention, now what?”, for three months later there is still no unified answer to this. The danger is that the Camp has become so fixated on its own continued existence that for many that has become the sole purpose of the #OccupyDameStreet Movement, simply to be.

In the beginning the Movement talked about the twin tracks of The Protest and The Process, that the Camp and Direct Actions were a symbol of protest and defiance and that in parallel to this would be the discussion, proposal and implementation of solutions, an ongoing process. Themed Assemblies were held to solicit ideas and alternatives from the general public, and these ran in parallel to the #OccupyUniversity program, the idea being to offer education on a particular subject then provide a platform for productive discussion leading to actionable alternatives. Somewhere along the line The Process seems to have fallen by the wayside, and though the #OccupyUniversity program continued on the Assemblies and other Camp meetings all turned inwards, focusing more on how the Camp organised itself rather than how the Movement could effect change.

An early criticism of the Movement from the media, borrowed from their counterparts across the Atlantic, was that #OccupyDameStreet had no aims and no goals, this despite the early adoption of four key demands at General Assembly (The IMF/ECB out of Irish affairs, a rejection of the transfer of private bank debt to the public purse, a return of natural resources to sovereign control, and a call for real participatory democracy on a local and national level), and when these goals were highlighted the subsequent complaint was that Dame Street offered no alternatives. My answer to this has always been that #OccupyDameStreet is about starting a conversation on theses issues, gathering ideas and then bringing back alternatives, that to offer alternatives at such an early stage in the process would be to miss the point entirely. Dame Street was a call to intellectual arms, saying to the citizenry that the language of “There is no alternative” is a lie, that the alternatives lie with the citizenry themselves and that Dame Street could be a platform to articulate those alternatives.

Three months on it is clear that that conversation has most definitely started, and that groups and individuals across the nation are offering alternatives, but I fear that at times Dame Street is no longer actively listening, so consumed is it with the challenges of day-to-day existence.

There are legitimate reasons for the current ebb it finds itself in. The composition of the group has changed significantly over the months, with only a determined handful of the original Camp residents still in situ, as are a core group of non-residents like myself who still participate as much as life, work, families and other commitments allow. But the toll it has taken on many has been great, both physically and emotionally, and I can only hope that the New Year will see many familiar faces return refreshed and rejuvenated and ready for the next stage of this amazing adventure. These absences have been balanced somewhat by an influx of new faces, all drawn to Dame Street with fresh ideas and enthusiasm, though hampered by a lack of institutional knowledge and perhaps more focused on the excitement of The Protest and uninterested in the perceived tedium of The Process. As always there are never enough people to do all the work, a challenge exacerbated by the holiday season, and quite rightly those tasks essential for the survival of the Camp are prioritised.

But for #OccupyDameStreet to remain relevant in 2012 it must do more than simply survive, its reason to be cannot simply be “to be”, a rain-soaked snake forever swallowing its own tail. It once again must be more than just a collection of shacks and tents and must become the platform that it so aspirationally proclaimed itself to be.

#OccupyDameStreet is at a crossroads. Along one path it can re-engage with The Process to drive itself closer to The Idea. To do this requires the support of a much wider group of active participants who are willing to do the less glamourous tasks necessary for The Camp to survive, and in this way free up more time for everyone, residents and non-residents alike, to refocus on the ideas that brought everyone together in the first place, and how to effect positive change. While not everyone will want to be part of The Process, its value to the Movement as the equal of The Protest needs to be recognised by all.

Along the second path lies a Movement disengaged entirely from The Process, existing purely to Protest. This too is a legitimate course of action. From its inception people have been drawn to Dame Street as an outlet for the expression of their anger and outrage. They know something is wrong and they are tired of sitting back and accepting it quietly, and for them resistance is an end in and of itself. This is a greater act of defiance than that shown by the majority of the citizenry and is to be commended, but if this is the path chosen by Dame Street then someone else needs to continue The Process, for the knowledge that has been gained and shared these last three months is too precious to be abandoned by the side of the road. While this path of Protest alone has a value both symbolic and real, it is a road I have little interest in traveling.

Something truly revolutionary could happen to Irish society in 2012, only time will tell if Dame Street is the mother of this revolution, or merely its midwife.

Links
All my posts from Occupied Dame Street can be found here, there's quite a few so be warned.
Photos from the last three months can be found here.

This is not what I asked Santa for Christmas.

2011-12-29T22:16:00.006Z

Cannula-tastic! I'd almost forgotten how much I hate these things. Almost.

This week I have mostly been... in hospital.

Well, that's not technically true for on this particular occasion I was in hospital for less than twenty-four hours, just enough to get all needled up and experience my eighth CT-scan of the year.

As I believe I have mentioned I have been somewhat under the weather these last few weeks with an ongoing Mauve Revolution against the increasingly totalitarian regime of Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Pancreas taking place within my innards (what the less politically inclined might refer to as a "mild pancreatic episode"). The masses took to the streets and demanded a rerun of recent intestinal elections (Where The United Pancreas Party won under highly dubious circumstances), and this simmering dispute finally boiled over into full-on agony on Tuesday morning, with much moaning and gnashing of teeth on the part of your humble narrator. After a consultation with the independent observers of my intestines (namely my GP and surgeon), it was decided that the best course of action would be to decamp to a nearby hospital for a series of pokes, prods and scans.

And the outcome of this marvelous trip down gastric memory lane? Well, apparently I have had a mild pancreatic episode for the last five or six weeks.

*sigh*

You see that is what I love about the whole medicine/hospital thingy, they are fantastic at telling you what you already know, but are less helpful when it comes to areas that you don't already know. My chronic pancreatitis is something of a mystery, with no apparent cause and no specific course of action left beyond treating it when it bursts into revolutionary fervor. I've tried asking it for a list of coherent demands but it just shrugs and says, "hey, demands are so last century". If I'm in pain for more than two consecutive days I have to go to the hospital where, as I discovered today, apparently the course of action is to nod and say, "well sir, it appears that you have been in pain for two consecutive days", and send you on your merry way.

To be fair now the pain went away within 12 hours of getting into hospital (luckily for me, if the pain hadn't gone away the hospital visit would have been an awful lot longer and involved a good deal more morphine), but that is the way this has been going these last few weeks, two days of pain followed by a week of normality, followed by a day or two of pain again, as if I am being orbited by my very own moon of pancreatic poison. If I'm still experiencing all the same wondrous cyclic symptoms over the next ten days I'll be heading back in for something altogether more invasive with cameras and magnets and resonance (oh my).

But at least I won't be ringing in the New Year from a hospital bed.

Which is nice.

#OccupyDameStreet - 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

2011-12-24T23:07:00.006Z

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through Dame Street,
Not a creature was stirring, except for Liam Ó Maonlaí, Steve Wall and Glen Hansard.

Yup, eighteen year old me would have been pretty blown away to be spending Christmas Eve with The Hothouse Flowers, The Frames and The Stunning, and thirty-eight year old me was pretty impressed too.

All that was missing was Dave Fanning's dulcet tones between each song.

The lads were down busking for an hour or two this afternoon in solidarity with #OccupyDameStreet, and raising money for The Simon Community, and all in all a good time was had by all. Damian Dempsey dropped by last night as well, adding a little more festive cheer to help drive way the winter blues.

As you tuck into your holiday turduckens tomorrow and figure out new ways to torment your relatives while waiting for Dr Who to begin, spare a thought for the fine folks camping over on Dame Street this year. Or better yet, drop by with a mince pie or a nice bit of crimbo pudding.

Sure what else is open on Christmas Day?

Steve Wall, Liam Ó Maonlaí and Glen Hansard tune up
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 24th December

Liam Ó Maonlaí in full-on Sean-nós mode
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 24th December

Liam Ó Maonlaí, Steve Wall and Glen Hansard brewing up a storm on Dame Street
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 24th December

Liam Ó Maonlaí and Glen Hansard sit back and watch some of the younger lads have a go.
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 24th December

Surprised passers-by get their Christmas Eve unexpectedly brightened up.
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 24th December

mega toughest hundred on the epic scribble fish

2011-12-19T18:18:00.009Z

This year as we approach the the orgy of consumerism religious folks like to call Christmas I have done my best to make a good few of the presents I will be socially obligated to give to people myself. No coupons good for an hour of "Joey love" here, my friends, no indeed, for I have attempted to create or recycle as many gifts as humanly possible short of recreating an entire season of The Wire out of toilet-rolls and a camera-phone.

Unfortunately the corollary to this anti-capitalist approach to the celebration of these conservative and patriarchal festivities is that I have found myself with a little bit of extra change in my pockets, more so than I would normally this time of year, and after whatever suitable donations to charities and other worthy bodies as are necessary to soothe my troubled soul have been made there is still enough left for my notoriously low money-to-sense ratio to kick with a cry of obscene mirth.

Behold, my friends, the majesty that is Underworld fridge magnets.

Yup, other folks have fun rearranging Shakespeare quotes while waiting for the toast to pop, I choose to create my own remixes of dirty epic tunes of Romford, shouting, toughest hundred scribble, shouting, jumbo spoonman burnout.

Foot.

All these words and more can be yours for the princely sum of £8 from Underworld's website, where you can also pick up a new collection of tunes or two, if that's your particular cup of hot beverage.

Think of all the hilarious ransom notes I can now compose.

Only Stupid Bastards Help EMI

2011-12-19T14:50:00.024Z

Just because something is talked about a lot on the Internet doesn't mean that it is actually of any great importance, in fact I am tempted to say it is often quite the opposite, the smaller the dog, the louder the bark as they say (“they” being the people on the Internet). Today I found my morning feeds and streams full of chatter about the Government's proposed new legislation to allow music publishers, film producers and others go to court to compel Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to certain websites, and for once I thought the alarms being sounded were not ringing loud enough.

In 2008, EMI Ireland - along with three other record labels - launched a series of cases against Irish ISPs, first against Eircom and subsequently against UPC. Under the terms of the settlement of its case, Eircom instituted a 'three strikes' rule, meaning that those found to be downloading copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holders, such as through peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing sites, would be warned and if caught three times would be banned from internet access through Eircom. In other countries with a wide range of ISPs this might not be such a big deal, but there are still parts of Ireland where Eircom is the only broadband service provider. In addition Eircom voluntarily blocked access to the Swedish P2P directory Pirate Bay for all its customers.

But this self-enforced policy was not enough for the music industry, particularly EMI, who wanted all ISPs to block access to any P2P site capable of hosting copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holders. In October of last year High Court Justice Peter Charlton ruled that this policy was unenforceable under current Irish Copyright law, and dismissed EMI's case against cable company UPC. However he did believe that EMI's rights were being infringed, and the Fianna Fail/Green government agreed to introduce a Government Order to close what Charlton perceived to be a loophole in the law.

Last month the Court of Justice of the European Union (EUCJ) ruled that web filtering by ISPs was fundamentally incompatible with human rights (Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM, November 24th, 2011), ruling that such an injunction “could potentially undermine freedom to receive information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications”, and yet today we learn that the new Fine Gael/Labour Government intend to follow their predecessors and introduce legislation in the new year to do exactly that.

Now to be honest I couldn't care less about file-sharing or the illegal downloading of music. I have never illegally downloaded a music file nor do I have any intention of doing so. I think artists should get paid for their work, but I don't for one minute believe that EMI or any other major corporation cares about any of their artists given the meager slice of the pie that any artist actually gets, for the record labels artists are a commodity to be bought and sold like any other. My concerns are more about the precedent being set of a Government censoring the internet and blocking access to content legally available elsewhere that it disagrees with.

Back in the deep dark mists of time known as the Nineties, I had the pleasure of spending a number of days in the Supreme Court at the tail end of the infamous SPUC V Grogan case. SPUC (The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child) had taken a case against the Students' Unions of a number of universities to prevent them from distributing information on pregnancy options that included abortion information. The case went back and forth between national and European courts for a number of years and after a final ruling by the EU Court of Justice it ended up in the Supreme Court during my tenure in the Students' Union in 1997 to decide on final costs. The EU Court Of Justice ruled that while abortion was a legal service in other EU member states and that one member state could not block its citizens from availing of a service legal in another member state, as the Students' Unions were not themselves providing the service nor were they acting as paid agents on behalf of the service providers, EU law (specifically Article 56 of The Treaty of Rome, on The Free Movement of Services) was not being compromised. In fact had the Students' Unions charged for pregnancy option information or had engaged in a contract with a specific UK clinic to direct people to that clinic, they would have been protected under Article 56. Capitalism trumps human rights every time, it seems.

Of course in this age of the Internet everybody has access to information on a full range of pregnancy options at the click of mouse or the touch of a screen (except users of the Siri service on iPhones) so the effect of the SPUC V. Grogan ruling has been overtaken by technology. A clinic in the UK where such services are legal can freely advertise itself online in its home country, and any other EU citizen has the right to access that information once it is provided directly by the provider of that service or an agent thereof. However today's announcement by the Government has worrying implications, particularly when the EUCJ has already ruled that web-filtering by ISPs fundamentally affects human rights because it could lead to “the blocking of lawful communications”.

Our Governments have traditionally been quite socially conservative and much of our human rights legislation has been introduced into Ireland by the EU in the face of strong opposition from successive hostile Governments. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1993, five years after Senator David Norris won his case in the EUCJ that criminalization of his sexuality was in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights, and who is to say that in the coming decade abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia, all illegal here but legal in a number of other EU member states, might similarly come to be viewed as fundamental Human Rights within the EU? Whether you agree with any or all of these, access to information on these activities is the key to education on the issues, and this is why the proposed Government legislation to compel Irish ISPs to block access to websites that offer a service deemed illegal under Irish law while legal elsewhere in the EU is a very dangerous precedent to be setting. While you may not care about the Government blocking P2P sites, what if it attempted to compel ISPs to block websites that gave detailed instructions on how same-sex couples could get married in Belgium?

Furthermore having access to a P2P site does not automatically entail that you will break the law. Many P2P sites (like Pirate Bay) also facilitate the sharing of non-copyrighted material, or material hosted under a Creative Commons license that permits non-commercial sharing. Blocking access to a site on the basis that it might facilitate an illegal action assumes a criminal intent on the part of all users of that site, effectively categorising all users as guilty until proven innocent, a troublesome development indeed. While there are signs that the controversial Blasphemy law introduced by the last Government may be repealed, since online Blasphemy is now a crime should the Government take similar proactive steps to block access to any website or online forum where a blasphemous statement could be made, say through a public forum or unmoderated user comments?

If someone breaks the law, then by all means prosecute them for doing so, but restricting access to knowledge on the basis that it could under certain circumstances be used to break the law or assuming guilt before any wrongdoing has occurred is a worrying action for any Government to take. You may be tempted to dismiss all today's online chatter about EMI and the Government as the loud barking of a small and irrelevant dog, but this would be a mistake. The Government's proposed course of action leads down a very dark and dangerous path indeed

Links
Full text of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling in the Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM case, November 24th, 2011

Image: Only Stupid Bastards Help EMI, album cover by Conflict.

#OccupyDameStreet - Stop haranguing me, Vincent

2011-12-15T12:49:00.007Z

Vincent Browne gets ready to harangue
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Wednesday 15th December

Though things may be quieter on Occupied Dame Street of late, with the normal frenzy reduced by cold and rain to a steady hum of well-insulated-shed-building (the tents that have survived thus far just won't be of any use in a prolonged sub-zero spell or snow), there was more than a flurry of activity yesterday afternoon as Vincent Browne (#VinB himself) dropped down to interview a few folks involved in the Movement.

In the end, after hearing about a number of people's backgrounds and reasons for participating, he chose to speak to four of us with a fifth person invited on to the show later that night. Somehow I found myself included in the group to be interviewed on site, but thankfully he wanted to have a Camp resident participate in the live discussion later on, so I could happily rule myself out of that little shindig.

Talking with his producers beforehand it was clear that he had wanted to come down to the Camp for a long while, but that events in Europe and the Budget had been of more immediate concern. His questions were hard and direct, and he strongly challenged my use of Michael Taft's analysis of the recent Credit Suisse Global Wealth report on income inequality in Ireland, but all-in-all I think I acquitted myself without too much dishonour. "Come home with your shield, or on it", is what my imaginary Viking mother always used to say, and I think I can stand here proudly this morning with my shield held aloft and intact (as can all those interviewed, but I know not that nature of any advice given to them by their imaginary Viking mothers, so I am unsure as to the relevance of my somewhat rambling metaphor for their specific situations).

Be your own media, #VinB!
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Wednesday 15th December

The main thrust of #VinB's questioning both onsite and for the panel later was his amazement that the Irish people are still so acquiescent after all the calamity and indignity that have been heaped upon them. Where was the outrage, where were the marches and the masses in the streets, a question that those of you familiar with this blog will know that I have been asking myself for the last three years.

Watching it all later on TV was not as traumatic as I expected. In the months before February's election I was a fanatical viewer of the show, not so much for the panel discussion or even #VinB himself, but more for the accompanying Twitter conversation that accompanied it. Tonight with Vincent Browne is not so much a news show as a spectator sport, and many is the evening that I have sat back and mused loudly on the throbbing, pulsating vein in Conor Lenihan's head or the unusual colour of puce he was turning, so I was actually more apprehensive about the reaction to the show amongst the Irish Twitterati than I was to what my imaginary Viking mother would think. Aside from a comment or two on my sartorial elegance, on the whole it wasn't too bad, and the reaction to the other interviews with my colleagues was also surprisingly positive.

To be honest though it shouldn't have been so surprising, we see the support of the wider public every day as they pass by and give us the verbal and material encouragement we need to carry on thorough the rain and sleet and gloom of night.

The whole experience almost makes me want to track down Conor Lenihan in whatever Oligarch-funded undisclosed location in Russia he is hiding in and congratulate him for going on #VinB as often as he did.

Almost.

In a perfect example of media consuming itself, the event was covered by a DCTV film crew, who stopped #VinB afterwards for quick interview on what he thought of #OccupyDameStreet (video included above), and they in turn were filmed by Donnacha Ó Briain (Director of The Revolution Will Not be Televised) who has been following protest movements in Dublin for the last few months and is an almost permanent fixture in the Camp, the unblinking eye of his omnipresent camera capturing all and sundry, pretty much part of the furniture at this stage.

Anyway, the show is now up on TV3's website (though I'm not sure if it is accessible to our international readers, sorry), so you can watch it and pass your own snide comments on my sartorial elegance below.

You know you want to.

something, something, pun involving the word "Mugshot", something

2011-12-12T14:08:00.001Z

Behold, the Colonial Eggacy mug in all its resplendent majesty!

As you may remember our good friend Léan over at String Revolution broke away a number of weeks ago from her normal string-and-thread-based endevours to transform a rather marvelous/breathtakingly-terrible pun into a range of mugs and shirts via the good burghers at Zazzle, and mine arrived through the post this morning. It is actually a thing of wonder and beauty and I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of it all.

I remember a good while back an American President, probably George Dubya (given his close relationship with Meg Whitman) but it might have been Clinton, singing the praises of Ebay and declaring that this was how the hard working but low paid citizens of middle America would empower themselves, by buying and selling their unwanted tat to each other, a vicious cycle of ever-increasing circles of impoverishment through consumerism, a capitalist ouroboros where the poor sell their legacies to buy the discarded history of their neighbours, with the only true winner being the corporation in the middle taking a hefty percentage of each sale, the world's largest pawnbroker smiling all the way to the Republican National Convention.

A much more positive story of online empowerment can be told by users of Zazzle, Etsy, DaWanda and the like that provide a home for those who have created things themselves, even when those things are only ideas in search of t-shirt to carry them forth. A good few of my friends sell through Zazzle or Etsy, and I myself have been known to make more than the occasional purchase of things from complete strangers that catch my magpie-like eye.

Yes, I still have ethical issues around corporate middlemen profiting from interactions between individuals, but unlike Facebook and the like who insert themselves into conversations that could easily occur elsewhere, the service provided by an online marketplace like Etsy for makers and crafters is not one that can be easily replicated by most users of that service.

Yet.

Anyway, if the Colonial Eggacy mug takes your fancy its not too late to order one for Christmas here, though you will need to pay for express shipping rates before December 19th to sup your eggnog from one under the mistletoe on Crimbo morning.

#OccupyDameStreet - Drums and Brotherly Love

2011-12-10T17:54:00.004Z

Remember folks, Pearse wrote these words almost a hundred years ago. My how things have changed...
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 10th December

The internal dispute in my body between Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Pancreas and Dmitry Anatolyevich Duodenum has entered what may be best described as a tense ceasefire, after my Duodenum denied sending a Tweet that read "It has become clear that if a pancreas writes the expression 'party of swindlers and thieves' in their blog then they are a stupid sheep getting [censored] in the [censored]", alleging that its Twitter account had been hacked.

Very suspicious.

No matter, this momentary lull in their ongoing hostilities allowed me to slip away and rejoin all the excitement and action on Occupied Dame Street, taking my turn for a few hours on the information stand. This is one of my favourite jobs in the Camp providing an opportunity to engage directly with passing members of the public, answer their questions about #OccupyDameStreet, hear their grievances about life in a 21st century Feudal state and, more importantly, hear their suggestions for how to make things better. As I have mentioned before it is the constant encouragement from the wider public that makes life on Dame Street manageable

A note of Solidarity all the way from the City of Brotherly Love
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 10th December

Of particular interest today was an Irish gentleman who had been visiting Philadelphia last week, and had stopped by the #OccupyPhilly camp to see what was going on. When he said he was heading back to Dublin they wrote a short note of solidarity on the back of one of their fliers and he brought it back with him to the Camp today. I had never seen him before, he was just a passing member of the public who wanted to express his support in this most unique of ways.

Just amazing!

Although I have been feeling bad that illness has prevented me from fully pulling my weight this last week or so, this interaction cheered me right up, no end.

It was almost enough to distract me from the drumming circle.

Almost.

I turn my back for a moment and a drumming circle sneaks in. They're like that, you know, very sneaky.
#OccupyDameStreet, Dublin, Saturday 10th December

After the pop-up soup kitchen and other protests at the Dáil over the two Budget days last week, life on Dame Street has grown a bit quieter and with the arrival of sub-zero temperatures the focus now is on simply making it through the month and into the New Year. Tents are gradually being replaced by wooden huts with much more insulation which should make things much better for the Camp Residents (and reduce the genuine risk of hypothermia). At just over two months old #OccupyDameStreet must surely now be one of the longest running #Occupy Movements unevicted and still in its original site, and it needs your support to keep on going! Information about what is going on, and what support you can give and how can be found on the website here, or just drop by the Camp during daylight hours and say hello.

You really wouldn't believe just how far a kind word goes on Dame Street!

UpStart Park is go!

2011-12-09T16:16:00.002Z

In other news, UpStart have won the Better Together Giving Challenge, with a total of 1,051 unique donations.

I wrote about this project last month as UpStart were planning on creating a pop-up park and performance space in Dublin's inner city, and the participating Better Together project that received the most individual donations by November 25th would receive €10,000 towards their project. Now thanks to 1,051 of you they are €10K closer towards making this happen, on top of the value of all the individual donations.

On their blog they write: "we’re working hard on re-imagining a Dublin city centre plot as a Pop-up Park. We want to create a sustainable green space where creativity and community can thrive, where people can share inspirations, innovations, and good times. We’ve already received lots of offers of help and expertise and are delighted that so many people have been inspired to offer their advice and skills. We think there are more of you out there — in fact, we know there are — if you can help, do get in touch at hello@upstart.ie."

Congratulations to all involved, and I look forward to watching this take shape in the new year.

(A quick reminder of their first art project can be found on my Flickr set here)

Occupied Fortune

2011-12-09T15:43:00.009Z

So by now you have probably all seen Shepard Fairey's Anonymous Hope #Occupy mashup that he has released as a free .pdf for all and sundry to use. Although I will admit to having an Obey piece here and there around the house I find both the Obama/Hope and the V for Vendetta mask thing a bit overexposed at the minute (I may have mentioned this once or twice recently).

While it is definitely great to see artists getting behind the global #Occupy Movement (for example both Alan Moore and David Lloyd have signed up for the Occupy Comics project, and Dublin-based street artist CANVAZ created a piece for #OccupyDameStreet) Fairey's latest just isn't to my taste.

Much more pleasing is Stanley Donwood's new work Occupied Fortune (right, click to greatly embiggen), based on the text of a placard he saw at the #OccupySheffield site. Originally released as a free .pdf, Donwood has decided to create a limited run of 99 signed and embossed prints with the proceeds from the first fifty going directly to #OccupyLSX.

While you will probably recognise Donwood's iconic work from a number of Radiohead and Thom Yorke projects, his portfolio is far more extensive and imaginative than those alone and I am a huge fan, as can be demonstrated by the fact that I am now the proud possessor of number 9/99 of this edition.

Wahoo!

You can find out more about this print on Donwood's website here, and the .pdf can be downloaded from here.

#OccupyDameStreet - Christy Moore rides on!

2011-12-08T12:20:00.000Z

Christy Moore dropped by Occupied Dame Street late last night for a cup of tea and an auld sing song. Unfortunately I was otherwise engaged (having a bit of a disagreement with Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Pancreas and his pointy-stick of tough love) so I missed it, but Dave Donnellan was on site to record part of it and kindly uploaded it on to Vimeo early this morning.

Christy Moore - what a legend!