Echos from a distant mountain

Symbol of peace or barbarity?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:40:00 +0000

There is interesting news this morning on the web regarding a move by Germany to want to make Holocaust denial and the display of the swastika a crime across Europe.

There’s just one problem – the swastika means different things to different people, and surprisingly, the association it has with the atrocities perpetuated by the Nazis is actually both new and not widely held, from a global perspective.

Sounds odd, doesn’t it? In Europe and the US, it's an instantly recognisable symbol of everything the nazis stood for and of the evil that was perpetrated in Europe during World War Two. Anyone raised in my culture on a diet of war movies - everything from The Great Escape, to Indiana Jones to Schindler's List - will immediately associate it leather trenchcoat wearing bad guys.

So isn't it an interesting that we presume it means the same thing everywhere? For example, I remember the first time I saw a kid’s action figure in Japan with a swastika on the front – I was shocked - and this was on an official product put out by Coke Cola.

But then I started seeing them everywhere – in particular on the ends of the wooden beams protruding out from under the roofs of Buddhist temples. On a Japanese street map, temples are denoted with a swastika. Even on a friends' sat nav in his car, swastikas fly past on the screen as you drive through the countryside.

There's even a martial art that uses it as a crest - Shorinji Kempo - and indeed there's something slightly surreal about walking into a dojo and seeing 30 kids and their teacher all wearing white karate uniforms with what looks like nazi symbols on the chest.

Although, to be totally accurate and fair, the manji, as it is known in Japan, that is worn by practitioners of Shorinji Kempo is actually not identical to a swastika - the nazis reversed the manji to create their logo. In this part of the world, the manji is a buddhist symbol, which represents heaven and earth, good and evil, life and death - the wheel of life.

Interestingly, the Shorinji Kempo headquarters has now started moving away from using this symbol, as it spreads outside of Japan. It's had to adapt to the fact that their logo doesn't always create the right impression!

In any event, the Japanese example is actually not even the best when it comes to showing how this symbol has been corrupted in Euro-centric minds. It's been used by hindu people for literally thousands of years, and do you know what? There's a hell of a lot of them out there.

Why should an intrinsically peaceful symbol be banned? Isn't that another victory for the people who perverted it, thirty years after most of the original nazis died?

Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain had this to say in the BBC article I have linked to at the top of this blog entry.

"The swastika has been around for 5,000 years as a symbol of peace," he said. "This is exactly the opposite of how it was used by Hitler."

He said that while the Nazi implications of the symbol should be condemned, people should respect the Hindu use of the swastika.

"Just because Hitler misused the symbol, abused it and used it to propagate a reign of terror and racism and discrimination, it does not mean that its peaceful use should be banned."

The group said banning the swastika was equivalent to banning the cross simply because the Ku Klux Klan had used burning crosses.

Review: Fatso

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:20:00 +0000

Fatso
By Lars Ramslie, New Island, €14.95
Reviewed by Alex Meehan, January 7th, 2007, The Sunday Business Post

Rarely has an author set out to create a ‘hero’ so objectionable as the protagonist in Lars Ramslie’s Fatso.

Rino Hanssen is an obese, sweaty, ambitionless thirty four year old virgin who is obsessed with sex. He lives in an Oslo apartment owned by his father and spends his time watching hard core pornography and engaging in what can best be described as deviant behaviour.

He masturbates in phone boxes while watching a local girls’ soccer team, makes nuisance heavy breathing phone calls and engages in obsessive sexual fantasies about the women he sees around him. He’s a tragic figure, convinced that his physical appearance means he will never find true love, and his resultant behaviour virtually assures that he won’t.

He has one friend, the mysterious and dysfunctional Fillip, a hard drinking low life entrepreneur with a penchant for the strip clubs and prostitutes Rino is too much of a coward to frequent himself.

In short, Rino hates himself and is resigned to a world of loneliness, until his father decides to let out one of the rooms in his apartment to Maria, a sexy young liberated woman. Maria brings the outside world and a semblance of normality into Rino’s life.

She has sexy self confident friends and a boyfriend, Hakon, who intimidates Rino and seemingly never leaves his apartment. However, following Maria’s break-up with Hakon, Rino starts to fall in love. Don’t worry though, just in case you thought he might become a nice person, Rino promptly starts stealing her underwear and stalking one of Maria’s friends.

Fatso is written in the present tense and in the first person – something that gives it a sense of immediacy and vibrancy. It also sadly means that the reader spends more time than they would probably want to inside Rino’s head, seeing the world as he sees it.

In particular the opening pages are well past the point of being pornographic as we get to find out what exactly Rino would love to do to the women around him. Do to, not with.

This book was originally published in Norwegian and is author Lars Ramslie’s fourth novel. Ramslie is one of the leading lights of a new wave of young Norwegian authors, writing gritty modern stories that show the ugly underbelly of modern Europe.

Gritty is certainly a word that could be used to describe Fatso, and certainly if your easily offended, this is probably a book to avoid. The sexual references are extremely graphic and while Fatso is very well written, it’s ultimately hard to figure out why Ramslie bothered.

The motif of the self-loathing loser redeemed through the love of a good woman is a familiar one, but in Fatso that’s not really what we get. Because Rino isn’t redeemed, his repulsive behaviour is essentially rewarded and the end of the book sees him essentially unchanged and certainly no more worthy a character.

In one sense, it’s possible to feel sorry for this pathetic person, after all, it can’t be easy to be extremely fat in a world which values superficial ideals of beauty. However, in this case any such sympathy is short lived, because Rino is ugly on the inside as well as on the outside.

Winter sun

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:15:00 +0000

Caught a few days hols in Gran Canaria last week. Fantastic to be somewhere warm and sunny while the heavens opened on green old Ireland at home.

A wicklow walk in winter

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:48:00 +0000

I haven't posted many images here lately, but here are some I took on a recent hike into the Wicklow hills on a cold and crisp winter day.

Sometimes, this country we live in can be very beautiful.

Another one bites the dust

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 12:53:00 +0000

I don't read many blogs online - few are worth the time - but I do read those of people I know or have met. One such blog is that kept by Roger O'Donnell, who used to play keyboards for The Cure but is now out on his own as a solo artist. His album is fantastic and I have a lot of time for him - he's a generous and approachable guy.

Anyway, he recently surprised me by posting this on his blog at www.rogerodonnell.com:

"As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Pythagorus

“Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all living beings, we are all savages.” Thomas Edison

30/12/06> One of the weirdest things that happened to me this year was to stop eating meat. I have been a fully paid up member of the carnivor club all my life, in fact I dont really eat any vegetables, potatoes of course but not much else. When I met Erin and she told me she was a Vegetarian I didn't think too much about it and over the years she has never tried to convert me. We live next to a dairy farm and now see animals every day and they have become real living things to me, not
just a tray in the supermarket wrapped in plastic. This summer I happened to be talking about all the conflict in the world with some very intelligent ( well I thought they were ) people and casually suggested that until we stop killing animals unecessarily to feed oursleves how could we ever expect to stop killing each other. I probably had a ham sandwhich in my hand at the time and certainly wasnt judging anyone but the reaction from them was so shocking and defensive and irrational it took me aback.

It really made me think about how we don't even question doing what we do, in most things actually, let alone having animals slaughtered in our names by the millions every day of the year. So if you have ever thought about it why not think again? its not easy but as I say every time I finish a meal "nothing had to die" ... in fact I got those quotes above form a page of quotes and reading what these people have said over the years makes so much sense. I particularly like the one about not making your body a grave yard for animals !

So I am not going to start preaching but just think about it. If every time you were hungry something had to die and you had to kill it could you, would you do it ? and no Im not going to join Morriseys band hahahah, or Mobys for that matter....

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:59:00 +0000

Well, I finished watching Lost last night - all of it, so I feel like I did something productive with my christmas.

That's a grand total of 54 episodes - two series on DVD and the first six episodes of series three. In total, I've watched 50 40-minute episodes in the last week - that's 33 hours of Lost. (I skipped the first four in this sitting as I'd already seen those).

It's an incredible piece of writing. The first series is undoubtedly the best so far, but then much of its appeal lies in the mysteries on the island - where is the island, who are the others, what's down the hatch? What is the monster? After watching series two, I now know the answer to some of those questions, but now I want to know what the effect of the electromagnetic pulse was? What is the purpose of the Dharma Initiative? How the hell do polar bears end up on a tropical island and what has the Black Rock got to do with the story so far? Also, what's up with the giant statue of the four toed foot?

Hmm.

Probably the most impressive thing about Lost is that after watching 50 episodes of this show, I'm still not sure what it's about and if it's a supernatural thriller or a techno thriller. Does magic work in this world or not? Is there are reasonable explanation for everything that happens or not?

This breaks one of the rules of well, rule breaking in writing. If you want to write science fiction or fantasy, to maintain believabilty you're meant to make it clear early on in the story what rules of the real world don't apply. In Lost, they haven't done that, and strangely enough it works. Still, I'm starting to wonder whether the very thing that makes it the excellent TV series it is will be its undoing. The script writers have a tricky problem - how long can you pose unanswered questions before people tune out. At the same time, if you answer those unanswered questions, will that cause people to tune out as well?

Roll on the second half of series three, though, I'm seriously hooked. This is the best television I've ever seen.

The evil that men do

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 10:35:00 +0000

On a recent trip to Amsterdam, I happened to walk through Dam Square one evening as an animal rights demonstration was going on, in this case trying to educate people about the uneccesary cruelty of the methods used to commercially rear pig and battery farmed chickens. I don't know who was running it, but they had come up with the clever idea of building a man-sized battery of cages to show the kind of conditions that chickens live in, in a way that people might relate to.

I've always been a big supporter of humane treatment of animals (such as, hey, I don't know . . . not eating them against their will, for example) but it's a difficult idea to promote as the abuse of animals is such a widely accepted practice in the world. As a rule I don't attempt to proselytise about this, because I've found that it turns people off and those who are open to the idea are more easily influenced by confident self assurance than a rant delivered from the moral high ground.

Anyway, the Dutch guys who did this got a lot of attention, so I thought it was a good idea.

What's down the hatch?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 14:39:00 +0000

Got a Christmas present of the first series of Lost on DVD. I'm seriously hooked. I've just finished watching the entire first series over the last day and a half - that's around 830 minutes on 7 DVDs, easily trouncing my previous Lord of the Rings 9 hour butt-numb-athon !

It's fantastic stuff - really excellent. Fantastic scriptwriting, great characters. Sure it's highly deriviative, but it just goes to show, you don't have to be original, just good.

Following series one, I'm left with some burning questions - what's down the hatch and who are The Others!!! Thankfully, I got the second series too, so I don't have to wait six months to find out!

Steorn jury selected . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:30:00 +0000

Remember Steorn? This is the Irish company that claims to have come up with a perpetual motion machine that generates free energy - something physicists have declared to be impossible. This got a lot of attention around the world a few months ago and then all went quiet. Well apparently, it still intends to unveal this technology.

The company released this press release earlier this month:

Dublin, 1st December 2006: Steorn, the technology development company, today announces that it has finalised and signed contracts with an independent jury who will test Steorn's free energy technology.

This is the latest milestone in Steorn's efforts to get validation for its technology, which began when the company issued a challenge to the world's scientists via an advertisement in the Economist in August 2006.

Steorn's technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be applied to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars.

The Steorn panel was oversubscribed several times with hundreds of qualified scientists applying to be part of the jury. The final jury hail from several of the world's leading academic/scientific institutions and there will be representation on the panel from the US and several European countries.

The jury have all agreed to see the testing process through to its completion and have their names and findings disclosed once the testing is complete. Steorn has agreed not to identify members of the jury until the results are made public, to protect their privacy and avoid unnecessary interruptions to their work.

Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, commented: "We are very excited to have the contracts in place with this group of highly qualified individuals, because it means we can finally get on with the validation stage. We ourselves have always been confident in the technology but believe that the calibre of the jury will play an important part in helping us to convince the sceptics."

Steorn anticipates that testing will begin early in the New Year. The precise timetable for the testing phase will be determined by the jurors, as will the location and format of the test process. Once the testing is complete the results will be made public via the Steorn website www.steorn.com.

Hogfather

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:01:00 +0000

If you told me that the first major Terry Pratchett story to make it to the screen would be on Sky One, I’d have been . . well . . . very surprised. However, unless I'm very much mistaken, TV has claimed a victory over the big screen and it's a Pratchett first.

Frankly, I thought he’d be one of the first major beneficiaries of the post-Potter rush to find light hearted fantasy with which to fill the cinemas. But last night Sky One screened the first part of its two part Pratchett adaption – Hogfather. Pratchett is an international best selling author, and his many many Discworld books sell by the skip load.

Sky has been carpetbombing its various channels with promos for this for weeks, but I’d mostly not noticed, as I hadn’t heard of the book and thought Pratchett had cynically written a ‘Christmas Carol’ type TV special. I was wrong, Hogfather was the 20th Discworld novel and that means this is actually a Discworld story. And it’s a biggy.

The first half was two hours long, or 90 minutes allowing for adverts, and presumably the second part, on tonight, will balance it out at four hours of transmitted programme. This takes this past the usual length of a feature film, and into epic TV mini series length. It features Ian Richardson as the voice of Death, David Jason as Death's manservant Albert and Marc Warren as assassin Mr Teatime.

And the best news is that Hogfather is fantastic. The Discworld looks exactly as you would visualise it and Pratchett’s characters are as nuts as you would hope. It looks great with fantastic use of CGI in a way that adds to the story without distracting from it.

Probably the only criticism I would lay at this movie’s door is that the overly-bookish and wordy humour of the books doesn’t always translate well onto the screen.

The producers of this had a choice to sweeten it up and emasculate the story or do a faithful version that would appeal to the fans, and artistic integrity won out. As a result, I was surprised at how dark it was. In general, the Discwolrd books are light-hearted reads, but possibly I hadn’t really noticed how sinister they can be.

In particular, Marc Warren’s Mr Teatime is as deeply disturbing as any character Stephen King has come up with. And come to think of it, the body count is probably as high as in a King blockbuster.

Fire engine red . . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 22:03:00 +0000

Cor blimey gov'ner, anyone seen a chimney sweep?

A few years ago I got what I thought was a joke present from my parents for Christmas. An industrial fire extinguisher. I was flumoxed when I opened it on Christmas morning - what the hell is this?

Anyway, I take it all back. I managed to set my chimney on fire tonight, complete with flaming chunks of concrete falling down into the grate. Not cool. The first sign was a vicious roaring sound, like a jet engine in the chimney, followed by the afore-mentioned chunks. I ran outside to see if I could see anything, which indeed I could - vast quantities of smoke bellowing out of my chimney, complete with volcano-style showers of sparks.

Thankfully my neigbour had also noticed the smoke and ran inside to start throwing salt on the fire - apparently it vapourises and helps to extinguish the flames further up. However that only partially did the job, and then I remembered the fire extinguisher. It worked a treat, and I was saved from having to call the fire brigade and subsequently get stiffed for the punitive call out charge. In fairness, I deserved it - we hadn't had the chimney cleaned in four years! The shame.

Free the West Memphis Three

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:50:00 +0000

Sometimes the things people will do to be seen to do something are shocking.

Shortly after three eight-year-old boys were found mutilated and murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were definitely responsible for these horrible crimes. Evidence?

The same police officers coerced an error-filled “confession” from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late— Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994.

Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.

For over 13 years, The West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection our tax dollars will pay for. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.

Is there another side to this story? I'd love to hear the version of events that could make the statement above untrue. Taken from http://www.wm3.org

He's what???

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:47:00 +0000

I am literally stunned. When I heard the verdict on the radio last night, I nearly crashed the car. Padraig Nally has been found innocent.

What? So . . . sorry, can you explain that again? Mr Nally beat Mr Ward 20 times with a stick and shot him twice with a single barrel shotgun as he tried to run away. And he's innocent?

Yesterday evening, Nally was found not guilty of the manslaughter of Ward, a father of 11, at the Central Criminal Court. The jury of four women and eight men took almost 16 hours to reach their verdict. For those unfamiliar with the case, presumably including readers in the US and the Far East, here's what happened from a press report during the first trial:

The court was told Nally arrived at his farmhouse on the afternoon of October 14, 2004 when he spotted a suspicious-looking car parked beside an overgrown lane next to the house with a man sitting in the driver`s seat.

The court heard that Nally had become increasingly agitated and worried that his property would be targeted by local thieves as a number of farms in the area had recently been burgled. His own home had been broken into in 2003 and a chainsaw stolen from one of his sheds in February 2004. Friends and neighbours noted Nally had become preoccupied with looking after his farm and terrified that the robbers would return.

The court was told Nally approached the vehicle and told the driver that whoever was on his land would not be coming back. When he checked around the farmhouse, the court was told Nally discovered 42-year-old Mr Ward at his back door.

The farmer grabbed a loaded shotgun from one of the sheds and shot Mr Ward in the side. Garda sergeant James Carroll, one of the first officers on the scene, told the court there was no forensic evidence to show that Mr Ward had been in Nally`s house.

The court heard that after shooting Mr Ward, Nally shoved him into a bed of nettles. He then beat him repeatedly with a two-foot stick. Mr Ward tried to run away, limping and bleeding from the shotgun wound. He struggled to make it off Nally`s land, the court heard. Sgt Carroll said Nally went back his shed and loaded the single barrel shotgun.

He followed Mr Ward to the edge of the land and as he tried to flee, Nally shot him a second time. He then dumped the body over a wall. The court also heard that Nally returned to his house but minutes later called at a neighbour`s home and confessed to the brutal killing.

Throughout the Garda investigation, Nally was said to have been open and candid about what had happened. But the court was told Nally told officers he had been out of his mind with fear and that he felt suicidal after shooting.

I should stay that I have a huge amount of sympathy for Nally - I am sure he was terrified and paranoid and was imagining the worse, but unfortunately that doesn't make what he did okay.

His victim may have been the worst kind of scumbag, and by all accounts he was - he had 80 previous convictions over 38 different court appearances including burglary, handling stolen goods, assault, and larceny - but does that make what Nally did acceptable?

I also have sympathy with Ward's widow and his children, but she was married to a serial criminal and can't pretend he was an angel. He wasn't - he was a pestilient drain on the society he lived in. However, all of this overlooks the fact that Nally shot this guy, then beat him "like a badger," as he put it in court, and then as Ward tried to get away, Nally coolly went back inside his house to get more cartridges, and calmly reloaded and shot him again.

If that's not an unlawful killing, then I don't know what is. I am literally stunned by this. Personally, I am all in favour of empowering people to defend themselves, particularly in their own homes when criminals bring trouble to them. If Ward had attacked Nally, then I would be much more forgiving. In this instance though, Nally's mental instability with regard to the amount of fear he was living with caused him to massively overreact.

Also, I could even forgive the initial shooting and beating, on the grounds that emotions were probably running high. If had stopped there, I would have said he should have received a suspended sentence and been let go. But he coolly and calmly reloaded his gun and killed him. Shocking.

Interestingly, a talking head on the radio yesterday made the point that this decision is simply one of the quirks of the jury system of government. Irish law works heavily with legal precedent, but this judgement has no effect on future judgements. Only decisions made by judges become legal precedent, not decisions made by juries. This is to protect society from the fact that anybody can make it onto a jury and as a group of people, can decide anything they like - it doesn't mean they are right.

Seriously though. Innocent?

The Iranian question

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:08:00 +0000

What’s happening in Iran is truly scary. It’s hard to believe that the leader of an entire country can be actually stupid, and despite what people say about George Bush, he’s not stupid, and neither is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Instead, both these guys are just working from fundamentally different mindsets. Different from mine and different from yours, probably. I don’t agree with them, but I understand them.

In the case of the Iranians, they are hosting an international conference questioning the Holocaust. Rather, they say they’re holding an international conference to facilitate the free exchange of views and discussion of the holocaust and its implications in modern politics internationally and in the Middle East.

That just happens to mostly involve questioning the holocaust. The two-day gathering has attarcted some of the world's most notorious Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathizers and scholars such as former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

In a horrible way, the Irianians have a strange depraved point. It’s not really possible to freely debate whether the holocaust really happened in the West. But there’s a good reason for this – this is the very definition of a loaded subject, and some things are too offensive to be treated lightly, or in this case, in a way that dishonours the memory of the millions who were brutalised and murdered during the holocaust.

Funnily enough, there is a healthy dose of irony in the fact that the government of Iran says it’s hosting this conference to allow the free discussion of these issues because that’s not possible in Europe and the US. Funny, I wonder how far you’d get questioning the government of Iran on its policies?

Human rights groups frequently number Iran as one of the world's worst violators of free speech. So is the government of Iran really all that concerned with a perceived lack of free speech amongst racists and nutty anti-semetic hate mongers in the west? I think not.

Rather, they are keen to have a go at Israel, the Jewish state parachuted into the Middle East in 1948. Personally, I have a lot of problems with the way Israel conducts its foreign policies - it has undoubtedly committed atrocities against the Palestinians. However, there are two sides to every story, and regardless of where your political opinions on this matter lie, the Israeli question will be solved with diplomacy and support from the international community.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to see Israel disappear, but I think he knows this isn’t going to happen. However, when a politician is faced with a political reality like this, they have two choices.

The first is to admit that this is never going to happen, and deal with the reality of the situation, making the best of the situation. However, when you are the ruler of a country which is home to a very large number of people with a chip on their shoulder about the Western world and in particular the pro-US bastion of Western culture that is Israel, this is not a vote getter, even supposing Iran was a true democracy, which it’s not, and there were votes to get, which there aren’t.

Instead, you appeal to the lowest common denominator. Ahmadinejad has previously referred to the killing of six million Jews in the Second World War as a "myth" and has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". He knows this is never going to happen, but by making comments like this. he is appealing to the basest, least attractive aspects of the personalities of his fellow Iranians. And guess what? A certain kind of person likes that kind of thing.

He’s not unique in this regard – there are plenty of leaders all around the world who have used this exact tactic, and used it well to build lengthy political careers. Adolf Hitler springs to mind, but you can see the same technique in use in pretty much every country in the world, to greater or lesser degrees.

However, in Iran we have another problem – the manner in which this country’s politicians have parleyed a perceived sense of international disapproval into a victim mentality, except this victim probably has nuclear weapons and really is crazy enough to use them.

As a result, we can see that Western governments are treating Iran with kid gloves, in a way that they didn’t Iraq. And rightfully so. They’re looking for the back door for Iran.

There’s an figure of speech that says that even a mouse might attack a cat if it’s cornered. This expression is used in the teaching of strategy, and it basically refers to the idea that backing people into corners is usually not a good idea – people do rash things when they feel they've no choice.

Instead, negotiators need to keep your eye on the goal – what is the best solution to any problem, aside from the personal satisfaction that might come from victory? Give the other side the option of backing down while saving face. That way, you don’t create resentment and you avoid fuelling a future problem.

In this case, stupid and offensive things like this conference are merely condemned vocally by world leaders, but does anyone think Iran gives a hoot what Tony Blair says? Or the leader of Israel or France or any of the many many nations that have condemned the conference. Of, course not.

It does care about sanctions and economic prosperity and a whole host of other less tangible issues, and this is where the back door will be found. Iran will back down as trade is encouraged between it and west and mutually compatible economic grounds are explored. Or it will be the cause of the first nuclear way. That’s if North Korea doesn’t beat them to it.

As an aside, did you know that the name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and literally means "Land of the Aryans." Hmm.

Chocolate, but not as you know it

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:43:00 +0000

A Sweet Deal
(Published Sunday, November 19, 2006. By Alex Meehan)

Twenty years ago there was no such thing as organic food in the supermarket and no such thing as fair trade, the movement for ethical business practice in the third world. There was also very little in the way of confectionary aimed at adults.

However Green & Black's has changed all that. It has taken the concept of dark chocolate made with unprecedented quantities of cocoa solids and married it to the organic movement and a commitment to conduct its affairs ethically.

“Ours was the first fair trade product of any kind – the Fair Trade Foundation had been around for a couple of years, but they hadn’t nailed down anyone to take the fair trade mark until we started getting involved with the launch of the Maya Gold bar in 1994,” said Sams.

Fair trade's strategic intent is to deliberately work with marginalised producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency. However, initially Sams encountered suspicion at this new idea on the ground.

“We had something of a credibility problem at first. In the tropics, there are many people from aid agencies telling the farmers that they need to modernise and embrace new ways of farming – then we came along and told them we wanted them to keep the traditional methods but just get very good at them. At first they were sceptical, because it was outside their experience.”

“But we explained this wasn’t about aid, this was a business deal, that we’d pay them this price and would guarantee to pay it for the next five years on a rolling cancellation basis. They would always have five years notice if we were going to pull the plug on it. This was unheard of. As you might imagine, we’re quite popular now. It’s a bit embarrassing actually,” he said.

You can read the rest of this article at The Sunday Business Post website.

While we're waiting for the next one to arrive

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:29:00 +0000

Right. This is a bit complicated but bare with me. There's this band I like, with a semi-religious name. The Sisters of Mercy are best known as a . . . and it upsets me to mention it, but . . . goth band, although really, they are about as goth as my socks. My white socks, not my black ones.

I've blogged about the Sisters before, so I won't waste too much time going into the back story. The lead singer, and sole surviving original member is the too-cool-for-school Andrew Eldritch. He's an interesting guy, but he's not renouned for getting on well with record companies, with the result that he and his band don't have a deal at the moment, and haven't had in quite some time.
Anyway, the Sisters have released the sum total of three albums, the last in 1991.The band ceased recording activity in 1994, when they went on strike against their record company TimeWarner, which it accused of withholding royalties and incompetence. Although TimeWarner eventually let the band go in 1997, they have not signed to another label, but still tour extensively. They have a hugely loyal fan base, proven by the fact that the band played in 28 countries in 2006, sellign out over 70 gigs. Not bad for a band that hasn't put out product in 15 years.
Anyway, now we get to the point of the post. When the sisters play, around 60 percent of the tracks on any given gigging night are unreleased - essentially the band have this fantastic unreleased album that all the fans now know, due to internet bootlegs, that you can't buy.

For years, people have waited for them to get a deal and release it, but there seems to be no sign of that happening, so a group of fans have gotten together to basically record it for them, in the form of reworked covers and remixes of the unreleased tracks. The idea is really to sort of poke them with a stick a little bit, then hopefully they will do it properly.

This has been organised through the discussion forum, MyHeartland.co.uk and I volunteered to try my hand at a cover of the track "Still". It's a bit rough, and is lacking vocals, but I think it's pretty good. You can download it by right clicking here.

Muchos Kudos on this must go to my mate Quintin, beat master and all round boffin extraordinaire. I merely plucked the strings . . . he made them sing. or growl. You get the idea.

Enjoy, and leave a comment. Preferably a nice one.

Reading habits

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:13:00 +0000

I usually read two or three books at a time, flicking between them as the mood takes me. Because I also read quickly, I presume I read more than the average person. What this says about me I don’t know (‘intellectual colossus?’ or ‘could do with getting out more?’ Hmm)

Anyway, one of the books I’m re-reading at the moment is Stephen King’s excellent On Writing. It’s very interesting and a useful motivator – in it he gives his advice on how to write well and how to go about being the world's best selling novelist. Like everyone else who writes professionally, he says you have to read a lot. So far so good, but then he says he reads between 60 and 80 books a year. Perhaps he’s exaggerating, but even at 60, that’s 30 books every six months, 15 books every three months, five books a month. That’s a lot. (How does he even know? Does he have a quota and perhaps a wall chart maybe? Anyway . . .)

I wonder if he re-reads? I re-read a lot, although the book has to be of a certain quality for me to care enough to do so. Some I re-read because I know I skimmed some on the first read and I know I missed somestuff, some because I enjoy re-immersing myself in that world and some because I re-read them at least once a year for nostalgic reasons, like The Lord of the Rings.

My house is crammed full of books – I hoard them the way Imelda Marcos hoards shoes. One day I’ll get around the having a grand cull – to get rid of all the crappy books I know I will never crack open again. I get slightly nervous and sweaty palmed at the thought of throwing any book out, but frankly I’m running out of space for the good books I will probably re-read, so it will have to be done.

King’s 60 books statistic made me wonder how many books I read a year? The most recent books I’ve read were:

Empire, Orson Scott Card (just started this, it arrived this morning)
Childhood’s End, Arthur C Clarke
Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
On Writing, Stephen King
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
Why Don’t Penguin’s feet freeze? New Scientist compilation
Morrissey – Scandal and Passion, David Brett
Temeraire, Naomi Novik
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Bird
Priestess of the White, Trudi Canavan,
White Slave, Marco Pierre White
On Royalty, Jeremy Paxman
Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrel, Susanna Clarke
Hellfire, Mia Gallagher
The Black Magician Trilogy, Trudi Canavan
The World Turned Upside Down - Medieval Japanese Society, Pierre François Souyri
The Runes of the Earth, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen Donaldson

This takes me back to about July, but before that it starts to get a little fuzzy . . .

Empire

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:49:00 +0000

Orson Scott Card has a new book out - Empire. I haven’t read it yet, but Amazon has informed me it’s on the way, so I’m posting about it now. I’ve a lot of time for Scott – he’s a gifted writer, capable of producing excellent books full of believable characters and compelling storylines. He’s also a very clever guy who’s generous, personable and interesting.

There are also some contradictions – he’s very right-leaning in his political views, being mostly pro-Bush and pro-war although he said to me in the past that rather than considering himself a republican, he prefers to think of himself as a 1950’s democrat – it’s just that the standards or what these labels mean in American politics have shifted over time. (For example, he’s pro-gun control.) He’s also a practicing Mormon – an interesting contradiction and something that is confounding to modern intellectuals.

There’s a particularly entertaining interview with him at Salon.com, which I can only describe as a hatchet job – the journalist who interviewed him genuinely couldn’t get her head around the idea that he was really a functioning believing Mormon. She presumed he was lapsed, or that he just gave lip service to his faith for social reasons, because he was an intellectual who wrote books about liberal characters as well as conservative characters. Clever people can't be religious, can they?

It’s a nasty read, not because of the premise of the article, but rather because of the horribly subjective way the journalist approached the subject matter. Religious views are fair game if the interview subject is willing to talk about them, but making sweeping and belittling assumptions about people’s beliefs based on your own, is not. Also, the interviewer appears not to know that writers can create characters with complex political and social views at odds with their own – if I write a paedophile character who thinks there’s nothing wrong with that condition, does that mean I actually hold that view?

Most people would say no, of course not. So why is it that if you write a character who is a humanist, atheist, liberal democrat then people automatically read their own bias into that? Perhaps that’s why - people automatically read their own bias into it. And this interview was all about the interviewer, not the interviewee.

Anyway . . . leaving aside religion and journalistic bias, why is any of these fair game for being written about online? Well, mostly because Scott has carved an interesting niche for himself as a political and lifestyle pundit, with his columns syndicated and widely read online and in US newspapers. He’s a good writer in this genre as well, but he’s taken things a step further with his new book. It's an interesting idea, based somewhat bizarrely on a video game - the rest of the world seems to think that the US sees itself as an empire, when of course, it's not. But what if it really was a modern empire, in the sense that the Roman's meant it?

The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone.

The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side and militia foot soldiers on the other, devastating the cities and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons, and strategic geniuses of their own.

When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?

Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science fiction and fantasy novels. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near-future scenario of a new American Civil War.

I'll post a review of it here when I've actually read it. Meanwhile, you can watch video interview with Scott here or buy the book at Amazon.com here.

Delusions of divinity

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:12:00 +0000

I want to write something about an important book I am reading at the moment. It’s not a review, in the sense that there are many professionally executed reviews on this blog, rather this is a personal review. It’s for Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion.

The book itself was at the front of my mind because I had a good natured ‘argument’ of sorts with Aoife, a friend of mine, recently in a pub about this, and a couple of things she said stuck with me. She is a rational, reasonable, intelligent person, and most importantly, she had some ideas regarding Dawkin’s work and was capable of expressing them without becoming emotionally involved.

However, on a personal level I approached this book cautiously. I was in a book shop last Saturday in Dublin, picking up my fix of novels for the next two or three weeks, and it was sitting on the shelves, visible from the corner of my eye. I was apprehensive about it, because I don’t like fundamentalism of any kind, and had grouped this book into a particular mental box, with the crackpot ravings of many other idiots keen to cram their own insecure world view down the throats of anyone foolish enough to give them attention.

The title doesn’t help. The God Delusion. Really, it’s kind of inflammatory to begin with, but obviously that’s a sales technique. Anyway, I was apprehensive about this book, but I knew it was probably a good read, because some people I respect had talked about it in positive terms. Even so, I think I was probably afraid in some way it would challenge me in a manner I would be uncomfortable with.

However, I was seriously wrong.

Not about being challenged, I was certainly that. However, this is an important book, and one which everybody should read. It galvanised my thinking on certain things and united different ideas I’d had into a coherent dialogue. Dawkins is an important thinker and this is an excellent book.

I’m glad I’m not writing a professional review of this book however, because it’s an extremely detailed and complex argument, and it would be very hard to summarise it. There’s a wikipedia page for it though, and this is how it explains its central arguments:

In his preface, Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages:

* Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
* Natural selection and other scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis" in explaining the living world and perhaps even the cosmos.
* Children should not be labeled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people wince.
* Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.[4]

Dawkins defines "delusion" as "a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder." Regarding "whether [religious faith] is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder," he is inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, who said: "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."

The book is not without its faults. Dawkins is a man of science and presents his arguments excellently. However, in places he can't resist treating pursuit of and faith in religion as if it were a mental disorder. In many cases he's right, it is, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see someone make fun of others for cheap laughs, when the central tenet of the book is that if a person of average intelligence actually has the case for the non existence of god articulated for them calmly and rationally, they will find continuing faith inherently ridiculous.

Well, nobody likes being laughed at, and I think it's a pity that there are certain groups of people who desperatly need to read this book who won't because Dawkins has made fun of them. I think he would have been better served to simply let the power of his argument stand.

That said, the whole book isn't like that, and this only occurs in one or two places, so it doesn't detract from the book in general. While Dawkin's stated aim is to create atheists, he also somewhat responsibly offers some extremely compelling arguments why this is a good rather than a bad thing.

More from Wikipedia, concerning the reviews for The God Delusion in notable magazines:

The physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, writing in Nature, says that although a "fan" of Dawkins, "I wish that Dawkins ... had continued to play to his strengths". Krauss suggests that an unrelenting attack upon people's beliefs might be less productive than "positively demonstrating how the wonders of nature can suggest a world without God that is nevertheless both complete and wonderful." Krauss remarks, "Perhaps there can be no higher praise than to say that I am certain I will remember and borrow many examples from this book in my own future discussions."[15]

The Economist praised the book, focusing on Dawkins' critiques of the influence of religion upon politics and the use of religion to insulate political positions from criticism. "The problem, as Mr. Dawkins sees it, is that religious moderates make the world safe for fundamentalists, by promoting faith as a virtue and by enforcing an overly pious respect for religion."[16]

Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books argues that Dawkins has insufficient understanding of the religious concepts he is attacking to engage with them effectively. He questions whether Dawkins has read or heard of Christian thinkers like Eriugena, Rahner or Moltmann, and upholds that "Critics of the most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive". Eagleton also disagrees about historical points; for example he asserts that "Catholic" and "Protestant" were not synonyms for "Nationalist" and "Loyalist" in Northern Ireland.[17]

Andrew Brown in Prospect considers that "In his broad thesis, Dawkins is right. Religions are potentially dangerous, and in their popular forms profoundly irrational". He criticises, however, the assertion that "atheists ... don't do evil things in the name of atheism" and notes that "under Stalin almost the entire Orthodox priesthood were exterminated simply for being priests." Furthermore, he cites Robert Pape[18] that religious zealotry is neither necessary nor sufficient for suicide bombers, and concludes that the book is "one long argument from professorial incredulity." [19]

Harper's Nov. 2006 front paged highlighted: "In Defense of Religion: Marilynne Robinson on Richard Dawkins's Hysterical Scientism." Pulitzer prize winner Marilynne Robinson provides a theistic critique of Dawkins. Robinson portrays Dawkins as having superficial knowledge of the Bible and as intolerant of theists, yet demanding tolerance of science: "if religion is to be blamed for the fraud done in its name, then what of science? Is it to be blamed for the Piltdown hoax, for the long-credited deceptions having to do with cloning in South Korea? If by "science" is meant authentic science, then "religion" must mean authentic religion, granting the difficulties in arriving at these definitions."[20]

(Footnotes are revelevant to the Wikipedia entry on this book.

So has this book converted me to Atheism? No, not really. I was pretty much mostly there, already. I retain a strong belief in a sense of otherness regarding the spiritual component of mankind and firmly believe that we very little understanding of the sum total of human experience. If I have any major problem with Dawkins, it's that I think he should leave more room than he does for what we don't yet know. If for no other reason, than the scope of what we have discovered as a race in the last 200 years so profoundly revolutionised our understanding of the world, it seems slightly foolish to assume our horizons won't be so seriously broadened in the future.

Pammy let me down.

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:48:00 +0000

There are a couple of blog entries coming your way today, but first up an unpleasent matter must be dealt with. Sadly, it seems urban myth is well, myth, when it comes to Pammy's ability to boost your blog readership figures. Her appearance on November 28th had a marginal effect on viewer figures for "Echos from a distant mountain," equivalent to around a 20 per cent increase in visitors.

However, considering visitor figures to this blog fluctuate wildly anyway, going from 3 or 4 people to 30 on any given day seemingly without rhyme or reason, it's entirely possible that the 20 per cent extra visitors simply wandered past by accident. So thanks for nothing Pamela Anderson.

Meanwhile, I endured a painful lathering from notable tech journo Ian Campbell in Schipol Airport last night, who claims not to get blogs at all, and wondered why I'd care about who visited my blog in the first place. Luddite Philistine! Still, he has a point of sorts.

Argument Clinic - Monty Python

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:52:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTl9zYS3_dc&eurl=

Someone on a forum I frequent posted this earlier today. I'd never seen it but it's truly a work of genius and it also accurately sums up the nature of most online discussion.

: )

[EDIT - Some people mailed me to say that the video clip I posted here was crashing their browser, so I've removed it.]

Exploiting Pammy!

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:26:00 +0000

I’m told that the best way to cynically increase traffic to your blog is to write something about Pamela Anderson. What does that say about the human race? Presumably there are thousands of hairy palmed teenagers out there, frantically thumping her name into google.

Nice image, eh?

Coincidentally, Ms Anderson seems to be getting divorced from some hairy rocker called Kid Rock. I didn’t know they were married, with good reason – why the hell would anyone care? However, this morning, that story is on the front page of the Irish Independent with yet-another-gratuitous-picture-of-Pammy’s-assets. Somebody in the Indo should be fired for that. Or at least whipped. Or at the very last, slagged off for the rest of their career.

Really, who cares that some two-bit TV actress has split up from her two-bit musician husband. I'm sure they're nice people if you know them, but what has happened to the Indo's news values? I know it likes to have a human interest style pic story on page one, but was there nothing more susbtantial going on in the world today? I'd better shut up now, in case any of them reads this. ; )

Back to Pammy. About the only thing of substance I can find out about her is that she has used some of her celebrity to draw attention to animal welfare issues. More recently, she let Sacha Baron Cohen attempt to put a bag over her head and kidnap her in his fantastic movie Borat: Cultural learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (which is, by the way, the very best piece of social satire to hit the mainstream in a very long time.)

I presume she signed a release to allow that to be released, so perhaps she even has a sense of humour.

Still, I’m not above a bit of shameless exploitation. Apparently, just by writing something spurious about Pamela Anderson, my blog can expect to be inundated with Pammy fans. Presumably disappointed Pammy fans, but hey, it’s not like I care.

And the red man went gold!

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:04:00 +0000

Regular readers will recall this post about a 90 second film made by my sister Ruth being entered in competition in the UK. Well the judging was this weekend, and she won!

Somewhat surprisingly, she came second in the audience vote category (which means someone spent a lot of time online voting for their movie on the depict website.) but she won the main critics award, which is the important one. Congratulations Ruth!

"The band"

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:23:00 +0000

I've always found the relationship between commercialism and art intriguing. So much that is commercial is so disposable and crass, that when something artisticly intact but also commercial breaks through, I'm intrigued. How does that work? What's the secret?

I read an interesting interview this morning with Robert Smith of The Cure.

We did an album in '96 [Wild Mood Swings] and we had a song on there called ''Mint Car'' — it was the single, and I thought it was a better song than ''Friday, I'm in Love.'' But it did absolutely nothing because we weren't the band at that time. The zeitgeist wasn't right. It taught me that sometimes there's a tipping point, and if you're the band, you're the band, even if you don't want to be, and there's nothing you can do about it.

He has confirmed something I've suspected for some time. Nobody knows. If they did know, then they would keep producing quality artistic work that also appeals to the masses, but . . . they don't know how. So instead, populist culture is dominated by nonsense, very little of which will stand the test of time. The benchmark by which I judge the merit or worth of popular culture, whether it's books, music, art - whatever - is the time test.

Will people watch this movie, or read this book or listen to this music in 200 years time? If the answer is yes, then you know you have something of real value. Will Brittany Spears be anything other than a footnote in the dusty pages of an account of the few years at the beginning of the 21st century? Almost certainly not, because catchy as her tunes are (or rather the tunes her songwriters handed her), they have no real value, say nothing about life and don't contribute to the body of work that helps human beings understand and explain the experience of being human.

(For the record, I'm a big pop fan, and catchy pop tunes are important, but pop can be done well and it can be done badly. Most is done badly and is barely memorable, let alone great.)

So what's the conclusion? I think it is that you can't have commercial considerations in your mind when embarking on anything creative. If you do, it's not exactly doomed to failure, but it 's compromised, and is not going to get there easily. Unless like Bob Smith implies above, you happen to be The Band (or The Writer, Poet, etc etc) in which case, your least commerical work will get enough attention to render it notable.

Commercial work is rarely creatively great, but truly great creative work is always commercially succesful. It might take a while to be recognised, but it always is.

"And every time i try to pick it up
like falling sand
as fast as i pick it up
it runs away through my clutching hands
but there's nothing else i can really do
there's nothing else
i can really do
at all. . ."

A Letter to Elise, Wish, The Cure, 1992

Use of force

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Meehan) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:49:00 +0000

There has been some interesting debate in the media today, on foot of a proposed change to Irish legislation in the area of self defence law.

Early today, I listened to a radio show where some idiot suggested that this proposed change would create a situation where people would feel empowered to use lethal force on intruders to their home. The logic seemed to be that sometimes criminals are young and stupid and don't deserve to die for errors of judgement, such as breaking and entering private property.

Now, nominally I consider myself a liberal, and most of the time I fall in broad agreement with the liberal agenda. In this case, I'm not suggesting that trespass should automatically carry a death sentence administered by gung ho householders. However, I feel that this change in the law is crucially important and really, the people arguing against it fundamentally don't understand what they are talking about.

In short, this position is proposed by people who have clearly no idea how difficult it is to use exact amounts of force - they are instead talking about an abstract ideal.

The following article is taken from Irish Examiner

Quote:

Homeowners gain rights to defend their property

HOUSEHOLDERS who kill intruders while defending their homes look set to be given greater protection under the law. The influential Law Reform Commission moved to shift the balance of justice in favour of the victim last night with a set of sweeping recommendations. The State body said someone defending their home should no longer be expected to retreat from attack.

However, the level of violence they use against an intruder must be justified and subject to five stringent tests to receive legal protection.

These include the proportion of the force used and the need for it, and the type, immediacy and unlawfulness of the threat posed by the intruder. In another key recommendation, the LRC stated the “castle doctrine” should be included in Irish law, making the immediate area around the home legally defendable with lethal force in appropriate circumstances.

A person who kills while protecting their home as a result of “an honest but unreasonable mistake” in respect of the five tests for legitimate defence should be guilty of manslaughter, not murder, it recommends.

Tánaiste and Justice Minister Michael McDowell welcomed the “timely” report and signalled he would include many of its recommendations in legislation planned for the new year.

The three-year study examined the controversy surrounding the case of Mayo farmer Padraig Nally, who was jailed for manslaughter after shooting an intruder, as part of its deliberations.

Fine Gael’s justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe said: “This is not a licence to kill burglars, this is a measured response to a serious and pressing issue.

“We have long argued for greater legal protection for homeowners faced with burglars in their homes and threatening their families.

“This report substantially reinforces the case made by Fine Gael that homeowners should not be obliged to retreat if they come across an intruder in their home.”

Labour justice spokesman Brendan Howlin said the proposals avoided giving people “carte blanche” to use lethal violence against intruders, but set the groundwork for a more balanced system. The report also recommended that it should never be permissible to use lethal force to defend personal property. In a case where the intruder killed a householder, the LRC report states the burglar could only use lethal force if faced by disproportionate violence or was unable to retreat.

At present the law lacks clarity, stating householders must react in a ‘reasonable’ manner. The LRC also emphasised the need for clarity over the type of force that may be used by the gardaí in circumstances like the Abbeylara case.

Because of my interest in martial arts, in my time I have trained alongside soldiers, special forces types, police officers, professional executive protection experts and prison guards. The reason I introduce this is that these people use force in their day to day jobs and are legally entitled to do so in a way that I am not. All of these people understand that there are no guarentees. You can never be 100 per cent sure of your ability to "win" a fight, let alone to be able to perform the near mystical act of restraining a violent attacker without harming them or being hurt yourself. Simply put, that only happens in movies.

Police officers and others expected to apprehend criminals rely on the suspect surrendering to the threat of force. If the suspect doesn't surrender, then they are empowered to take custody of the suspect against their will and at risk of injuring them. In short, this is extremely extremely difficult.

It's almost impossible for trained seasoned professionals to capture a criminal who is fighting back without taking significant risk on themselves. The usual solution is to use firearms, pepper spray or even just lots of people to make the risk to the law enforcement officers more acceptable.

My experience as a "martial arts expert" (an inherently silly term) has taught me that it is extremely difficult to restrain someone without hurting them. In fact, I wouldn't be foolish enough to try when I could be seriously injured or even killed in a violent situation. Under current law, I can only justifiably defend myself using force directly propertional to that used against me or threatened against me.

However, by definition, unless you are psychic it's not possible to know someone's intent in the heat of a confrontation. How far will an attacker go? How desperate are they? Is this the first time they've broken into a private house or are they a seasoned criminal with multiple murders under their belt? How much of a risk are you willing to take to stay on the right side of the law?

Guess what we as citizens are expected to do when confronted by an intruder in our home? Yep, the near impossible. We are meant to coolly and calmly ignore any fear or panic we might feel and judge accurately how much force is appropriate to expel the intruder. If they refuse to leave when ordered, we may order them again, but we can't lay a hand on them. If they attack us then we can defend ourselves but if we do so, we must make sure we don't hurt them more than they hurt us or we leave ourselves open to assault charges.

Does this make sense to anyone with even a residual brain?

If someone is in your house at 3am and they have a weapon, and they attack you or threaten you, then I think it should be defensible to use lethal force in the defence of your person and home. I do think you should be obliged to show that you didn't use force lightly - you should be obliged to order an intruder to leave, for example, so that if they don't you can reasonably presume that they represent a danger to you.

However, the current situation is fundamentally unjust. The position being argued from some quarters is that the law as it stands is sufficient - it states that you may use force to defend yourself in direct proportion to that used against you. This position states that it's better to force the home owner to justify any use of force than it is to empower them to decide for themselves in the moment. It stakes the odds in favour of the attacker and it's a fundamentally patronising position, implying that the public can't be trusted to defend themselves.

It also ignores the fact that what is reasonable in the heat of the moment when you may fear your life is in danger and what is reasonable when analysed after the fact may be very different. The justification required for lethal self defence is quite different if you wake up at 3am to find someone standing over your bed than it is at 2pm on a sunny day at the Four Courts in Dublin at your trial.

What seems reasonable when your home is invaded probably won't seem so reasonable if you accidentally kill someone while repelling them from your home and have to stand trial for it. Does that mean that it isn't actually reasonable? I don't think so.