Martin Meenagh blog

Blair; Wannabe or Lookalikey? I know that her Britannic Majesty's Former First Lord of the Treasury is, shall we say, a little non grata around these parts at the minute. He's seen in this country rarely enough for some to call into question his resident tax status, and even then there's usually a Judge and a couple of my learned friends in front of him. Such, Marcus Aurelius would sigh into his ear, is the life of an ex-Emperor. But, well, really--what is he doing impersonating the Majority Leader of the Pennsylvania House, under the name of Mike Turzai (pictured)? Having regretted that Britain is 'too small' for his ambitions , has he really dropped us for Harrisburg? For Harrisburg ?

For Brave People Standing and Dying Like Men for Freedom Tonight Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate; va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli, ove olezzano tepide e molli l'aure dolci del suolo natal! Del Giordano le rive saluta, di Sionne le torri atterrate... Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta! Oh membranza sì cara e fatal! Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati, perché muta dal salice pendi? Le memorie nel petto raccendi, ci favella del tempo che fu! O simile di Sòlima ai fati traggi un suono di crudo lamento, o t'ispiri il Signore un concento che ne infonda al patire virtù . Odd things are happening in the partner countries of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue tonight as they have been for some days past. I can't get the man in Cairo who told the BBC on the telephone that he was prepared to die like a man for his boy and his freedom out of my mind. I thought of the best of Ireland, of my grandfather, and of various songs. Such are my middlebrow references, I couldn't help but think ...

Told You So I was having a snarfle through old posts this morning, and this one from June 23 2008 sprang out. I know that this blog has about five readers, and that two of them may be in a coma of one sort or another, but, well, don't say that the writing wasn't on the wall ; 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 pric...

Because There's Still Hope.... I love Merle Haggard songs, and have previously put up the Seashores of Old Mexico . This one occurred to me today though. When you contemplate how deep the real recession still is for workers and the middle classes on both sides of the Atlantic--who have suffered the worst decline in purchasing power and wages since the Great Depression--it might be easy to just give in. Equally, rising oil and food prices, the flood of QE into paper derivative markets, and the takeover of the western Treasuries by the banks and corporate world, disguised as a sovereign debt crisis, might make one despair. There are wars and plagues all over the place and the sky is dark with Damoclean swords. But then again, all one needs in moments like that is a bike ride and a spot of Merle, and all is resolved. Things will get worse before they get better, but there is no need to wallow in despair; you and me, reader, will ride between the blades and raindrops. Good luck!

The Sort of New Orleans Gospel Song one does not often hear.. ... I found this yesterday whilst looking for a theme tune for La Palin's 'blood libel/sippenhaft' gabble. Arty Semite likes it, Generation x Yiddishe Mamme says that evil has never sounded so good (though the Horst Wessel Song's obscene corruption of My God, How Great Thou Art is memorable), Crimes Against Music lists it and Hound Blog has a recording. I wish I could see the reactions of people when they see this blog sometimes. Take it away, Sister Albertha Lewis Harris.* *A Protestant lady, for the avoidance of doubt.

Six Terrorists Inspired By Glenn Beck and Fox News This link to business net further illustrates yesterday's conversation. The people named killed Six Americans and injured seven more and directly cited Fox and Beck as explanations for their motivation. Words have consequences. UPDATE: 'Gobsmacked'. Apparently, only Muslims in imaginary mosques in New York, and Islam in general, create a climate of fear and division in which people may be encouraged to identify enemies where others see human beings* (alternatively, if you are on the left, 'sexist' speech is really a form of rape). It's beginning to look, as I suggested it might the other day, that this isn't directly true of what happened in Arizona the other day; rather, a fatal combination of drug use, guns and schizophrenia may well be to blame. Chalk another massacre up to marijuana, the cuddly brain surgery of choice for bourgeois youth. However, if you are the Junior High school bully and patented ...

Gabrielle Giffords on Violent Political Rhetoric Words have consequences, as Ms Giffords reminded Ms Palin last year.

Because American Politics is Not Just A Game There are, and always have been, very dark energies swirling around the politics of the republic. Those who seek to lead it, and who have deserved to, have in the past understood that. The narcissistic culture of the past forty years, though marked by sentimental emotionalism about the sundry and disastrous assassinations for which it was responsible, has never really got the point. I think that the boomers understand the darkness, but that they get off on it. From Oswald to Oklahoma, the other side was always to blame, and badness was in some way, way cool. Many people are dropping the Giffords shooting at Sarah Palin's door tonight. Fox News understands this, which is presumably why they were going around suggesting that the gunman, Jared Loughner , may have been an illegal immigrant before anyone knew anything. They are now suggesting that, like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, he is some kind of deluded libertarian in terms which s...

Well, I like it. Normal blogging will be resumed soon, but in the meantime, here is a video of the Lion Pope to keep you amused.

Quite Endearing, Really....

McAlpine's Fusiliers For every emigrant who ever had to go somewhere else and build stuff for money...and because I am avoiding doing the pile of work in front of me. You could never have said that of a 'Navvy', which for American readers is a British industrial word for the sort of good tough madmen who in other places became US Marines.

Bird Deaths, Earthquakes and a Mischievous Spot of Totally unreferenceable stirring.... I have absolutely no evidence for the correlation which you may choose to identify between the map of apparently random mass animal deaths (this January's 'silly season' story) and the map of earthquake fault zones. In the depths of the last Depression, when 'prosperity was just around the corner' and the economy had of course, according to every whitebeard, 'rebounded', the Loch Ness Monster was invented, completely coincidentally by the Daily Mail . Quite a few people made a lot of money out of that. I've seen how much money can be made out of rubbish like global warming too. So, if you fancy sending me some money so that I can study the link between these two maps in, for example, different colours, or with a wider variety of statistical programmes than are at the moment available to me , feel free! Of course, if this all becomes in the slightest way predictive, ...

Mad Cow Disease Causes Global Warming According to Shub Niggurath's cheerfully named 'total distortion of the facts' climate site . I did like that. It's still true, and has been for the past three years, that both hemispheres have been registering cooling, that global warming ideas do not pass a null hypothesis, that no reliable mechanism for global warming can be found, that cyclical cooling linked to the sun has proven robust in terms of predictive validity, and that anyone now going on about global warming as a reality must be by definition either malign or silly. It's also clear that a bunch of middle class types high on themselves and their own thanatic busyboots drama--and desperate for research grants and camera time--have been making up figures to appeal to ex-hippies and wannabe Dylanites in the political class right life and centre. People should get back to conservation and the challenge of dealing with peak oil--by building up nuclear and coal supplies-...

A Conscious and Determined Resurrection At its height, the East India Company dominated half of recorded world trade, owned its own army, and was the single most important reason for the expansion of the British Empire. The company's flag (which I have put at the top of this post) is not coincidentally related to the American and Malaysian ones, as a consequence. The Company had a very proud career (and I am fully aware that pride is a sin) before its final over-reaching. It effectively ran India, below the princely states, but its corporate policies went so awry that it caused, more or less, the abortive War of Independence of 1857, known to the British as the Mutiny. The Company was effectively nationalised in 1858, but re-emerged as a tea-trading enterprise, which was formally dissolved in 1874. One hundred years later, it was resurrected for a second time, by a group of post-Imperial 'Britain backers', and again, it fell prey to the trade winds--this time in the form o...

That 'Sovereignty' Bill I'm bored and avoiding work, so let's have a look at this week's ' EU no surrender bill' . There is a longstanding clash between what the British political classes tell themselves and reality, when it comes to European Union matters. The European Union has believed since 1962 that it is engaged in the construction of a New Legal Order (Van Gend en Loos) capable of overriding local constitutions (Costa v ENEL, Simmenthal, and Factortame) and which must be read into all state laws if possible (Von Colson, Marleasing and Thoburn v Sunderland). The European Court of Justice simply views membership of the club as denoting obedience to the rules regardless of any special pleading. British politicians appear to have convinced themselves that their rubber-stamp parliament, the sensible part of which admits that it cannot control the EU, is still in some sense sovereign. Like some raddled Hollywood star of the fifties, the place keeps assertin...

January.... And like the vast majority of people on this fetid island, I am fantasising about emigrating. Probably never would, though, for long-- I like my rainy days and cups of tea and London too much for that, but of course if I were ever forced to contemplate living outside London, in England or somewhere, I'd have to find a working airport pronto. So, here I am, watching Canadian, Australian and Hong Kong videos and even humming ' the sidewalks of New York ' to myself; but of course, in this mood, you can't beat The Leaving of Liverpool . What a great song.

Science Corner Before modernity entered into the arc that is now played out, St Anselm suggested an interior proof of God's existence. Not only did God exist, he stated; because he could imagine God, God must exist. If one could imagine the greatest thing in the universe, in all universes, then it must exist because otherwise, there would be no greatest thing and nothing would exist at the end of things; since nothing was less than something, something had to be there. There's a neatness to Anselm, but also an insecurity, which one can find in St Thomas too. Both men were products of a Western tradition which required proof for things, but which believed that proof could emerge from intimation and faith, rather than the other way around. Some forms of modernity are like that. Modernity was, above all, about a particular sort of objectification. It held that all things were measurable, and that things existed outside of our immediate intuition or knowledge but which could be ac...