Martin Meenagh blog

Translations My favourite play is Brian Friel's Translations . It speaks to a past world, in which it was possible to imagine the reclamation of individual freedom through the discipline of Latin, Greek, and Irish. I think learning a language is a very good thing, and if I ever have the time to do more than a little, I want to emulate those I used to know who would teach themselves at least one new language a term at Oxford. The cleverest woman I ever knew sent me a message from Bologna yesterday couched in the Latin of Justinian, and it's yet another reason I stand in awe of her mind. Anyway, not all of us have the luxury of multiple languages in our heads. A friend has asked me to plug this excellent service, Morfosintactica.com. They offer high quality translations at Mexican prices all over the world, very quickly, and they are one globalised business I'm happy to put an advert in for. And, of course, should any interested business party have stumbled on this blog, rea...

The diversity of public ownership This past week has been full of portents of the times to come as the oil available at viable prices, regardless of any momentary fluctuations, runs out. For instance, the American Congress, of all people, voted to increase subsidies to the state-run local railways and public transport systems that will be a vital way for people to get around as oil-dependent cars become unaffordable and replacement technologies unavailable. Similarly, in Pakistan, and in Nigeria, there were increased calls for local governments and publicly accountable bodies to control energy supplies. This follows April's riots over power shortages in Pakistan. Nigeria is involved in high-level talks with Venezuela to study models of how to do that, and has been considering the Putin and Asian Petronas examples of state oil control closely. In Britain, a new group was launched to make the railways accountable to their customers by the Co-operative Party, which is affiliated very...

New Scientist recognises peak oil, and associated dangers The media is waking up to the global crisis associated with the age of oil. Here is a fascinating graphic from the New Scientist magazine, which also illustrates some of my own worries about demographics and the arcs of instability, both of which would correspond to their 'danger areas'. Also, take time to look at the graph of oil consumers, and ask yourself how the USA is going to cope in the mid-term. We have only a few years, if that, to prepare for the combination of peak oil, demographic crisis, war, and financial catastrophe occasioned by a vast overhang of government and private debt and a funny-money futures market which is on the edge of collapse. Learn now how to grow food, pay off your debt, make yourself less oil-dependent if you can. If I am wrong, what you have done will be good anyway; if I am right, you will need to have taken these steps. And hug your loved ones close, and enjoy life. We face a very tou...

CERN : The Large Hadron Collider Safety report gives the 'all-clear' A few weeks ago, I had a very interesting conversation (from my point of view anyway) with some concerned people focused upon the European Centre for Nuclear Research, known as CERN. CERN has built, by international effort in which the United States is a mere observer, a large hadron collider . The aim of this device, which is so big that the tidal effect of the moon on land had to be taken into account when planning it, is to smash particles together at high speed. By doing so, scientists--and I am not one--hope to discover or confirm insights about the leading theories of the universe. They could, for instance, confirm if multiple dimensions of gravity are wrapped up in the everyday world; if time travel on a particle level is an everyday event; and if a complex form of cosmological speculation called string theory can actually be confirmed. They also hope to confirm the existence of highly theoretical par...

George Monbiot, Middle Class liberals, and crime When I was a child, the steelworks in my hometown, Corby, closed down. Corby had always had a 'rough' reputation as a town full of Scottish, Irish and Serbian immigrants. There were parts of the town that no one in their right mind, and even a few of those who were not, would go near. Still, the core of the place would be recognisable to anyone from a prosperous industrial town anywhere. The welfare club had a bowling green, the catholic club was open after well attended masses, men often wore ties and rings when they went out. Crime, as such, was viewed in a double way. People almost universally wanted tough criminal sanctions, particularly women; yet many looked the other way at property offences and saturday-night fights. The succession of tough pubs we ran after the steelworks mostly closed and my dad had to get a new job confirmed me in the growing childish impression that an awful lot of nonsense is talked and written about...

Join the Dots Many thanks to the oil drum for doing what the mainstream media are not, and keeping an eye on Saudi oil promises. On August 11 2004, Saudi Arabia promised to increase oil production to 9.3 million barrels per day, for the foreseeable future, and then to increase production further. On April 26, 2005, the Saudi government promised to increase oil production to 12.5 million barrels per day. On July 31, 2007, they were back, promising an increase again--but this time, to only 10.8 million barrels per day, which they should have reached anyway. And today's great promise of an increase? to 9.2 million barrels per day. How much oil does anyone realistically think they have left at viable prices? Two years ago, the writing was on the wall. It was written by a combination of food and oil price increases because of peak oil, combined with a falling off in money markets, and a vast global overhang of capital. It said that these things would lead to stagflation and monetary cr...

Barack Obama has a new, presidential-seal style logo. Watch how the heads of conservatives, McCainiacs, and Hillary supporters explode when they see this, and the accompanying Latin motto. UPDATE : Unfortunately, this logo has been dropped like a hot brick and officially 'retired, withdrawn, removed, relegated and otherwised dispensed with'. The prospect of exploding heads was not in any wise welcomed. Ah well, as Neil would say--'that's a pity, what a shame, never mind'

The West African Monetary Experiment: Repeating Mistakes or part of a new order? I have spent the latter half of this past week quite happily lecturing to members of the Nigerian House of Representatives and Senate--sharp, clear minded men--on the lessons of Europe's legal and economic order. A great many people might not know of the new constitutional and international architecture that has risen over the past decade within Africa. An African Union and African Economic Community have been proposed and brought forth. Alongside these bodies, which in truth cover a continent too big and diverse to be organised on European lines, regional bodies have been given a new prominence. The South African Development Community , the Economic Community of West Africa , and the East African Community are just three examples of these developments. In addition, some lessons have been learned from European developments. So, for instance, the West African community (ECOWAS) has set up a Court of Ju...

The Canada Foot mystery deepens The crazy story of the human feet , usually right ones, that keep washing up in Vancouver from the sea has deepened with a discovery of a fifth one. I've been following this mystery for some time, and my eyebrow is now fully raised! Does anyone have a particular take on this story, or any links?

Bloggers in Jail The picture at the side of this blog post is the Liberty tree of Boston Common fame. Since 2003, according to this report , at least 64 people have been jailed across the world for blogging. Possibly many more have faced trumped-up charges. It is worth asking just a moment to think about people whose only crime was self-expression , elsewhere in our 'globalizing' world. Of course, more people have got into trouble for 'menacing' behaviour or harassment via a blog. There are in fact quite strong sanctions available to the crown prosecution service in this country, which they are reluctant to use. The libel laws, about the chilling effect of which I wish to blog at some point, are the chosen English way of restricting things. My advice to anyone not in fear of their life or employment is not to sue, but to ignore or laugh off the critics. It is almost always a mistake for ordinary people to be involved with the civil courts beyond the generally excellent ...

B.J.Vorster and the Sabotage Act The Apartheid state, of late and horrible memory, was established by various pieces of legislation. Votes in a parliament of men who thought themselves liberal and acting for their security, ensconced in a racist and cold war mindset and unable to see that what they were doing was the logical result of their sickness, were obsessed with security. After the Sharpeville uprising of 1960, the leadership elites of South Africa, with a few honourable exceptions, became convinced that their white state faced the possibility of 'sabotage'. They identified communist terrorists as the worst threat to Africa. Their panic was of a piece with their construction of Apartheid. Apartheid wasn't a generic name for all imperialist racism. It was a specific scheme in which a state would eventually confine huge numbers of people who belonged to a country to 'bantu' areas. In the name of security , it would label them, extend its power over their readin...

I resign from the Labour Party The likes of Andy Burnham, Hazel Blears, Mary Honeyball and Luke Akehurst are now representative of the Labour Party. They have at least given me a clear mind in recent days, and for that, I suppose, I should be grateful. I have been a Labour member since I was 16, in a steeltown. I can just about accept that student union hacks with no proper job experience can spend their time undercutting unions and selling public administration to their mates, because something could arise that may be better. I can also accept that some immigrants, because of a misplaced desire to avoid the appearance of racism, are more 'acceptable' to the Left than others, so my own family's Irish Catholicism can be something to be sneered at by the ranks of Labour activists. I can accept that there may be a fiscal case for not taxing the super rich with capital gains, but not for truckling to them or sucking up to the likes of Rupert Murdoch. I can accept that there mig...

A country not owned by the rich and fashionably sophisticated One of the main concerns of members of middle classes anywhere, and not just in the West, is to appear rich and sophisticated. Sometimes fidelity to this appearance does lead to a genuine gentleness of spirit; to an engagement with art, and culture and music and the idea of enlightenment neither as an affectation nor snobbery but because they hold the hope that souls can be opened and made generous. It's fashionable on the left to demonise the middle classes and to hold dear to working class roots of the sort I have. It always has been. Yet so many give their lives as teachers, as people who genuinely think that they are doing good and some of them are, in quiet dignity. I know others don't, but that's true of many classes and all people sometimes. People shouldn't be blamed for their backgrounds anymore than they should really be applauded for them. Over fifty per cent of the people of this planet now are ...

People Power Granny I received a comment last night from an individual known as 'People Power Granny', based in the southeastern united states. I think that it was a sort of generic mailing, or 'spambot', though I don't really understand the terminology. Anyhow,People Power Granny is a real site which has lots and lots of polls on it (so it takes a couple of seconds to load) but which seems fun and interesting and which is focussed on the 2008 elections in the USA. I thought that I might repeat the link here , in case anyone missed it below and wanted to have a look. The link is to the blogger profile associated with the site.

A partial solution to peak oil? Not really...but a Start At this time last year, the LS9 company indicated its plans to proceed with a new method of making a sort of artificial oil . It was to be made with the aid of microorganisms , and would use the same procedures as are used to make ethanol. Today, the company is reported to have been successful in its initial trials . The problem for it is that it takes a week for a small amount of microorganisms, and a good amount of water and biomaterial, to produce a barrel of oil. To replace the present American daily consumption would take a continuous output from a facility the size of Chicago. However, credit where credit is due. I remain hopeful, in the proper sense. The peak oil moment is here or very near, or has passed recently. We do not have the luxury of planning. Though there is a great deal of 'natural' oil around, extracting it at viable prices is less and less practical, to the point of impossible. I think that human ing...

Barack Obama I'm all in favour of clean elections and playing the issue, not the person (within limits). As you know, I was keen on Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama in this electoral cycle. Obama has made it and is now faced with a prodigious lie machine which is gearing up for an onslaught. So, here is a link to the Barack Obama 'Fight the Smears' site, and also to the Michelle Obama watch site, which you should believe ahead of superheated blogosphere commentary rehashed by the media. Even people I respect and whose work I enjoy, like Melanie Phillips, are a little guilty of some of the stuff I see refuted on here; for instance, check out the link to Obama's birth certificate. I've also put the link on the blogroll, in case this doesn't work. Happy hunting! Hat Tip: Kate Harding at Salon.com

Southall Black Sisters Some time ago, the Southall Black Sisters were (as they still are) threatened with closure. They organised resistance to the move, which I supported, because they are a vital link between minority women attempting to escape abuse and the forces of justice. They save lives. As part of their action, they organised a petition on the government's 'number ten petition site'. The government, months later, has responded. This is what they said; We recognise the good work Southall Black Sisters have done in the local community and the national impact that they have had. In February of this year we published a consultation document on cohesion guidance for funders, setting out how building relationships with people from different backgrounds helps to ensure stronger community relations, as well as identifying some risks run by work focused only on a particular group. We published a consultation rather than final guidance as we want to learn from the experience...

Je chante avec toi, Liberte Verdi, Liberte, and Nana Mouskouri; who could beat the combination?

The Political-Media Class I enjoy Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon very much. Greenwald, a former professor of constitutional law, is a long-time critic of the cosiness which subsists between high-profile American journalists and the politicians they reflect and report upon. In truth, this is a matter of class and circumstance. In a big country like the United States, those who follow national or even local politicians around are very quickly divorced from any local grounding. They become subject to all sort of pressures, the main one of which is not to be exposed as wrong or maverick because of the long moments of isolation, and the loss of their access, that plain-speaking would create. Those few free of the Stockholm syndrome-genesis of political reporting are so for two general reasons. Either they aspire to the group, and thus emulate the group's attitudes and expected responses, or they are licensed as 'outrageous' because of the quality of their writing or the e...

Well Done David Davis David Davis is resigning as a conservative MP to contest his own seat. The legal side of me wonders how he will do this, since resigning in the middle of a parliament is usually a matter of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds, (and thus has to have his resignation approved by Alistair Darling). Applying has in the past was expected to debar a person from being a member again, though this did not apply to the Irish Unionists who resigned en masse over agreements between the British government and the government of Ireland. He has presumably researched the issue. If any legal reader can show me how Davis has got around the technical bar on resignations I will be grateful, though I will proceed on the basis that he has, by applying for a crown sinecure, resigning from that, and standing again. In any event, I have been deeply impressed. I am not a conservative. Yet every day, I read stories about councils, elected on a small minority of the local vote, abusing powers...

Why the CAP is a good idea The European Common Agricultural Policy is a highly criticised European activity. Globalizers and free traders despise it as a programme of subsidy which inflates food prices. They say that the CAP displaces third world and Cairns group farming by creating huge surpluses that are subsequently dumped on others. Egregious examples of waste and carousel frauds are often and rightly highlighted. The CAP is also, from time to time, tied to the Common Fisheries Policy, which has frankly been a disaster. Most of the time, the CAP is presented in Britain--as are most European ventures-- as a vast, essentially political, boondoggle. Yet we are now entering a world of high food inflation tied to a relentless rise in oil, the demands of Asia for meat, feed protein, and staples, and a rise in commodity prices that impacts on the ability of food companies to move their products around the world. Food security is important again. These are two words that people are relucta...

Robert F. Kennedy My friend Neil Clark has waxed lyrical about Robert Kennedy's many qualities, as have I and as have the oil drum , where I found this lovely video of something Jimmy Carter couldn't be taken seriously saying but which RFK did perfectly. Have a look and have a think.

The Energy Export Databrowser Those great people over at The Oil Drum have just linked to the energy export databrowser . It is a fascinating resource. If you want to see how natural gas and oil trends can be represented graphically, based on the latest data, go and have a look. It illustrates how dependent the developed and the developing world are on oil and natural gas, and on how the combination of rising demand, falling supply (in the case of oil) and monopoly producers from outside the rich world (in the case of as) are affecting us all. As you know, I have been going on and on about the dangers of food price rises, rising oil costs, the imbalances within the global financial system, and demographic trends for nearly two years now. It gives me no pleasure to know that some of what I said would happen would happen. Rather, if I could see it, why couldn't those paid a lot more with a lot more official experience and qualification understand how the present crisis came about? Wh...

The arcs of instability In 2003, the International Review of the Red Cross published a paper on 21st century war. In it, Herfried Munckler identified asymmetry, the globalisation of the arms industry, and the 'demilitarisation' of war turned against civilians by semi-militarised combatants as essential to understanding war at the start of the twentieth century. The future Munckler projected that we faced was one similar to that between 1215 and 1648 or so; a period of shifting alliances between bandits and mercenary gangs. That changed somewhat with the war of choice launched by the American administration against the regime--not just the government--in Iraq in 2003. This war was partly launched with the inspiration of a group of individuals who have become known as neoconservatives. Works such as 'an end to evil' revealed their conception of their motivation. The book , published in December 2003 after the launch of the Iraq war and distributed in Europe in 2004, p...