2005: Let Me tell you how it will Be

Predicting the future is a dangerous business. Who would have thought a year ago that George Bush would have been reelected in dubious circumstances, in spite of Michael Moore’s efforts to topple him, that Chelsea would be top of the league by eight points, that people paid to kill people in Iraq would also torture them, or that David Blunkett would do something colosolly stupid? Or that U2 would release a new album that was respectfully received by the media? Nonetheless, I’m going to stick my neck on the proverbial block, dust off my crystal ball, drill a hole in the top and use it as a kettle and see what the tea leaves have in store for humanity.

January

Ralph Nader declares himself a candidate in Iraqi election claiming that Shia and Sunni are basically the same religion. Bertie Ahern seen wearing Che Guevara T-shirt. Jose Mourhinho tries to buy striker, claiming that God told him to switch to 4-4-2 formation. Dick Cheney mentions Asian Earthquake and Iranian Nuclear Weapons programme in Same Fox News interview. Dollar drops to $1.41 against Euro.

February

Nader urged to soften anti-gun stance. Claiming to stand for disenfranchised, visits Fallujah, subsequently disappears. Bertie Ahern walks into health food store wearing Kaftan and buys some Granola. Chelsea reach final of Coca-Cola cup after beating Man United. Wayne Rooney dropped after missing chance; video footage shows him eyeing up babes in OAP section. Condoleeza Rice points out that earthquake epicentre roughly equidistant from Iran and North Korea. Dollar drops to $1.63

March

Sadaam Hussein reelected unanimously. Lawyers challenge verdict, Baathists buy “Sore Loserman” posters on eBay. Iraq sees levels of violence unmatched since previous week. Bertie Ahern joins in M20 protest in Dublin. Mary Harney moves to tackle Irish obesity crisis by applying for foreign nationality. Donald Rumsfeld claims that aerial photography shows Iranian nuclear scientists trying on some scuba-diving gear. Dollar drops to $2.04

April

Sadaam’s appearance deteriorates, US military deny trying to poison him by adding subliminal messages to his Britney Spears albums urging him to eat the dirt under his toenails. Michael Moore points out that no such accusations had been made, ignored by mainstream media. Mary Harney applies for US citizenship. Sent home from Boston airport after temperamental response to “Are you or have you even been a communist?” query. Paul Wolfowitz claims that evil laughter has been heard emanating from University of Tehran seismology department. Dollar drops to $2.21

May

Sadaam found dead in cell. Baathists claim North Korean precedent for having asentient leader. Mary Harney applies to become German. Berlin says it would prefer Michael McDowell. Bush mentions war on terrorism in speech about plate tectonics. Chelsea win premiership, FA Cup, Champions league. Roman Abramovich buys Labour Party, elected Prime Minister. Mike Skinner releases new 3-CD concept album Waterloo, about the time he lost some toilet roll. The Guardian hails it as a “White-Knuckle ride into a Dostoevskian underworld” Dollar drops to $3.35

June

After Iraqi recount, Dick Cheney elected president. Single cheering Iraqi repeatedly shown on Fox News. Cheney moves to Baghdad, given harem with forty comely maidans. Arnold Schwarzneger appointed Vice President of US. Mary Harney applies to become Brazilian but told would fit into tight speedoes. Bertie plans to spend summer in Calcutta feeding hungry children. Hears about monsoon season, changes mind. Dollar drops to $9.99.

July

Iraq renamed Halliburtonia. Hating freedom made capital offence. Incarceration rates reach US levels. One comely maiden turns out to be a lesbian. Given phone number of daughter, name of good barber, instructions on how to wear baseball cap backwards, and US citizenship. Bush declares that war on terrorism and war on Earthquakes are inseparable. Prime Minster Abramovich agrees, foreign Minster Mourhinho dissents, gets sack. Bertie Ahern stands outside Brown Thomas Naked in protest against sale of fur coats. Dollar drops to $14.92

August

Mary Harney becomes Halliburtonian citizen. Irish obesity levels drop by 8%. Record Heatwave hits France, killing 100,000. Bush responds by announcing new “Save the Trees” initiative in which any American who lives near a wooded area is given free chainsaw. Minor tremor hits California, Bush declares that time has come to invade Iran. Dollar drops to $50.

September

George Bush asks congress for half a trillion dollars to fight war in Iran. Head of finance subcommittee says he can’t work out if this is viable as he only has eight digits on his calculator. AIB lend Bush money, financing the loan by selling three repossessed houses in Foxrock to Chinese industrialists. Shocked by violence in country, Mary Harney tells Cheney that she knows someone who can sort out this mess. Value of dollar falls to 2 Vietnamese dong.

October

Abramovich warns Bush not to Invade Iran at this time of year, as it gets nippy there in winter. Bush dismisses claims. Donald Rumsfeld shows American public computer-generated images of the Iranian governments secret under-water earthquake-making machine, urges American mothers to knit woolly jumpers. Bertie buys guitar and sits in a tree outside the US embassy singing “Masters of War” repeatedly. China declared world’s pre-eminent economic power, rubs hands together gleefully.

November

Invasion of Iran begins. Rumsfeld dismisses claims that American soldiers are underequipped, arguing that the crossbows sold to them by Navajo tribesmen are more than a match for the armour they sold the Shah in the 70’s. Dollar bills sold on eBay for use as wallpaper by Europeans. Germans stop making stuff altogether. ECB considers rate cut. Michael McDowell appointed Hallibutonian minister for justice. Seeks to ban drinking and smoking. Cheney checks to see if Halliburton have interests in Brewing or Tobacco. Brian Cowen announces substantial welfare increases. Unemployed Dubliners buy small American villages on eBay. Ian Paisley dies of Heart attack after being sent envelope with “decommissioning photos” stamped on it, which turn out to be pix of chix with dix. Gerry Adams tries to deny responsibility, bursts out laughing.

December.

Smoking, drinking, dancing and watching funny stuff on TV banned in Halliburtonia. Former Baathists call McDowell a fascist and are publicly shot in Baghdad, which has been renamed Freetown. US military get bogged down in Iran. Asked if the country is becoming another Iraq, Rumsfeld says he can’t remember which is which. America renamed eBayland. Dutch government buy New York for E24 and rename it New New Amsterdam. Tulips planted in Central park. Jose Mourhinho declares self God, Frank Lampard his representative on Earth, tries to decide whether Duff or Robben is best suited to Holy Spirit role. Meditating nakedly on the Beach in Inchidony, Bertie sees bandwagon and jumps on it. Bush tells world that God told him to invade Iran. Mourhinho says he recalls no such thing. Ebaylish Christian right become disillusioned and commit mass suicide. Power Vacuum ensues, Michael Moore becomes president after coup d’etat. Promises to pay off national debt by having lipsuction and selling body fat as bio-fuel. Promises to pull Ebayish troops out of Middle East. Soldiers refuse to come home, set up own military state, declare war on eBayland. Moore wonders how he got into such a mess, falls asleep on nuclear button. Armageddon averted after it turns out eBayland’s nuclear arsenal was sold over web. Mystery buyer turns out to be Osama Bin Laden. World says “Oh Shit!”

The Seamus Awards 2004

So, 2005 is upon us. I never thought I’d say those words, not because I thought the world was going to end at the end of the milenium, but because I never thought I’d live this long. That I am in a position to do so is a testament to how much more careful motorists are when driving than I am when cyling or being a pedestrian.

So here I am, in a position to say how ‘04 was for me. For people in hill tribes in Africa, Latin America and Asia it was just the same as any other year, and that’s not such a bad thing. But I live near near enough to the cutting edge of western civilisation to need a mask some days, and I’m gonna get even closer next year, as Cork, where I live is going to be European capital of culture next year. Dowtcha Bouy!

So here’s my awards for the year. I’m not going to make them so obscure that someone might email me and ask what his or her prize is. But you never know.

Best Film: Old Boy

Best Film in English: 21 Grams

Best Documentary Film: Fahrenheit 9/11

Best Irish Film: Bloom

Best European Film: Aaltra

Best Novel: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Best Non-Fiction Book: So Shall we Reap, Colin Tudge

Most annoying publishing phenomonon: Lynne Truss

Best Album: (Rock) Franz Ferdinand

Best Album (Electronica) Talkie Walkie, Air

Best Single: Can’t Stand me Now, The Libertines

Best Concert: Pixies, Phoneix Park, June 12

Most Overrated Artist: The Streets

Best TV Drama: The Sopranos

Best Simpsons episode: The one where they go to jail with Michael Moore

Worst TV Show: How Clean is Your House?

Most Unjustly criticised TV Show : You are what you eat

Best Play: Crystal, Meridian, English Market, Cork

Best Website: www.Engrish.com

Best Blog: This one. Also, Chomsky

Best Magazine Article: That one by Ron Suskind

Worst Magazine Article: Observer article blaming vegetarians for Rainforest Depletion

Best Event: Birth of my niece, Aisling Enright, May 4th

Worst Avoidable Event: Re-election of Bush

Worst Unavoidable Event: Asian Earthquake

Most Missed Person: Marlon Brando

Least Missed Person: Charlie McCreevy (though he’s only going to Brussels)

Most Annoying Phenomonon (Ireland) Continuing depletion of Countryside

Most Annoying Phenomonon (British Isles) The Rise of Chavism

Most Annoying Phenomonon (Worldwide) Growth of the Religous Right in the US

Most worrying Development: Turkey accepted for talks to join EU

Most Exciting Sporting Event: Liverpool 3 Olmpiakos 1.

Biggest Sporting dissapointment: Irish athletes and Horse’s continuing inability to win Olympic Gold without taking drugs

Most Shocking TV Image: Torture at Abu Gharib Prison

Most Enthralling Real Life Soap Opera: Pete Doherty

Most Boring Real Life Soap Opera: David Blunkett

Most Encouraging Development (Ireland) Fianna Fail becoming Socialist (Only joking)

Most Encouraging development (Worldwide) Liberal Americans moving to Canada

Best New Legislation: Smoking Ban

Worst New Legislation: Threat to close nightclubs at 1.30

Best Goverment Minister: Dermot Ahern

Worst Government Minister: Micheal McDowell

Best Protest: Shannon, Bush Visit

Worst Protest: May Day, Patrick’s Bridge, Cork

That’s about all I can think of at the moment, but then my head is a bit addled from the whole Christmas thing. I’m off to clean my crystal ball with some eco-friendly cleaning fluid so I can see what 2005 has in store.

Mary Harney is a BIg Fat FARCin Liar

About two and a half years ago, Henry Kissinger, the architect of the greatest genocide of the last fifty years, visited my home town of Cork, to give a talk in the university.
Thousands of students, staff and other protestors braved the nasty weather to shout as loud as the man who ordered saturation bombing of Cambodia, continued the bombing of Vietnam and Laos, supported the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile, not to mention allowing the Indonesian Government to eviscerate East Timor.
I was one of those shouting.
Normally I'm a mild mannered sort of guy and I get all the anger out of my system by putting it into my writing.
But when one of the people who's most directly responsible for so much of the pain and suffering in the world visits your home town, there's only one thing that you can do, and that's shout.
I shouted so loud that day that I was exhausted. I was hoarse from calling out the names of countries that lost literally millions of people as a result of Kissinger's decisions.
I got really close to Kissinger, so close that I could have spat at him or even hit him, though this would have landed me in jail.
The protest got a lot of media attention, covered on the national news that night.
The following Sunday, an Interview with the "man" was broadcast on TV3. Just after being asked about how some sceptics thought about him, he replied in his gravelly, cement-mixer voice that he didn't want to talk about it, and you could here the noise that me and my friends were making outside.
After the interview was broadcast, oleaginous TV3 presenter David McWilliams asked our beloved Tanasite, who'd been at the lecture, to give her feelings.
She was scornful of the protesters, arguing that if it had been Gerry Adams that was speaking, we wouldn't have been there, went on to accuse us of hypocrisy and then went on to excoriate Sinn Fein in her usual manner, indulged by the slimy McWilliams.
You almost have to admire the chutzpah of a woman who travels 300 miles and pays €300 to listen to one of the great mass murderers of history, lambasts a group responsible for a miniscule fraction of the deaths that Kissinger caused, and then accuses her opponents of hypocrisy, based only on her own fascistic if-you're-not-for-us-you're-against-us logic.
Yet she managed to outdo herself last week by making common cause with two of those freedom-loving groups, the Ulster Loyalists and the Columbian government, when she defended the latter's sentencing to 17 years in prison by labelling the FARC group with which they were associated as "narco-terrorists".
It's hard to get a perspective on how bizarre it is for such a senior member of a country's government to take the side of another against it's own citizens. Fatty Harney is surely aware that her heroes in the White House will go to any lengths to ensure that their citizens get a fair trial anywhere in the world. It says a lot about Harney that she's so ashamed of her national identity that she's willing to accept the verdict of a jury in Columbia, probably the nastiest police state in the Western hemisphere.
Of course, she also accepts the word of the US government when they call the FARC "narco-terrorists" who are trying to overthrow a "democratic" government. Well, why wouldn't she? It's not like they've ever lied before.
Unfortunately for people who share her simplistic, manichean view of the world, the truth is way more complicated.
Columbia is far from being a democracy. In the election before last, all four of the left wing candidates were killed by US-backed right-wing paramilitaries. I'm sure there's a side of Fatty Harney that would like the same privilige, but it doesn't do much to support her belief that Columbia is a democracy. In any case, peasants who want to vote for left wing parties know that if they do come into towns, they're likely to be shot anyway.
The claim that the FARC are narco-terrorists is similarly ill-founded. Like the Maoists in Nepal, the FARC are the effective government in many areas of the country and tax the people in these areas to provide them with services, particularly protection against the army who want to kick them off their oil-rich land.
If they tax coca production it's because coca is a lucrative crop, which it is largely because of the American governments misguided policies on drugs and their people's seemingly limitless appetite for the drug.
If this makes the FARC narco-terrorists, then by the same token, so are the US, which subsidises and taxes the production of one of the most addictive substances on earth (tobacco) and uses some of the tax dollars to pay for arms.
And so, I'm sad to say, are our own government, which also taxes tobbaco and booze, and the incomes of many involved in illegal drug production, and gives massive tax breaks to firms involved in producing weapons for state terror regimes in places like Israel, Turkey and Indonesia, though I pity the person who tries to get Harney to admit this.
Meanwhile, it seems the Columbia Three have escaped to Venezuala, another target of the US "War on terror", and possibly onto Cuba.
It's hard to see what Fatty Harney has gained from all of this. Bertie is already haemmoraging support to Sinn Fein, and this latest outburst will convince many in the nationalist wing of Fianna Fail that he's in with the wrong crowd. After the next election, the maths result in Bertie coalescing with the Shinners.
And Fatty won't be able to appeal to George Bush that democratic norms aren't being respected and ask him to intervene.
At least I hope not.
More info on Columbia here

and "justice" for all

So it seems that David Blunkett has fallen on his sword, and no-one will be more glad to see the back of him than me, although he may be waiting for science to give him the ability to see the back of himself.
But I wish it was our own minister for "justice" that was being given the heave-ho. After all, he's constantly curtailing civil liberties and abusing his power, and in addition he's from a party that only get about 4% of the vote, yet have 2 major ministeries.
When the Fianna Fail/PD coalition came to power in 1997 they were warning us all that crime was getting out of control and that the only solution was "zero tolerance". Yet whether you judge by statistics, media or film coverage, or your own experiences walking down the street on a Saturday night, things have gotten immeasurably worse.
And that's exactly what the government want us to think, so that when they put more police on the street, they can claim that they're merely responding to public demand.
Yet the Gardai seem to want to erode public support for themselves, maybe because having more police on the street will result in less overtime oppurtunities for the cops already on the beat.
Recently they almost put an elderly woman in jail just for feeding a stray dog, telling her that she didn't have a licence for the animal. What sort of cowardly, petty, monsters would act in such a way, and why would the public want more of them patrolling the streets?
What amazed me most about this story was not that the guards would act so small-mindedly, which is hardly a surprise, but that there was actually room in a jail for this misfortunate woman.
The country has one of the lowest proportions of people in jail of any country, not because crime is low, but because the ratio of prison officers to prisoners is so high, amazingly, there is one officer for every prisoner, in most countries the ratio is between 3 and 4.
Prison officers protest that their job is a difficult, dangerous one, as if they were doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, when they get paid €100,ooo a year. One told the Tribune that prisoners will often hide a syringe that could be infected with HIV under the lock of their cells and they often have to wait weeks for the STD test to get back. Not that I'm unsympathetic, but if there's one officer for every prisoner, surely it isn't beyond them to ensure that they don't get syringes in there in the first place?
Mad Mullah McDowell is taking on the prisoners union, and for once I have a modicum of sympathy.
I'm curious, though, that the new pay deal he's offering includes bonuses for "Productivity"
I'm a little worried about this, as it seems to suggest that he thinks that incarceration is a business like any other and this could lead to prison contracts being farmed out to private concerns like Group 4.
But what exactly constitutes productivity for a prison officer?
Maybe at the moment they have one officer on each side of the corridor banging the cell bars with a truncheon to wake the prisoners in the morning when this job could clearly be done by one person if they gave him really long truncheons.
Will prison officers put in for a pay rise claiming that they've been looking 20% tougher this year? Will they claim that they've broken more spirits, that they've reduced more immigrants who can't speak any English to tears?
I think more prison spaces might be a solution to the crime problem if it was the people who deserved to go to jail were the ones who ended up behind bars.
But, as Monday's Prime Time shows, this is clearly not the case. In a survey of district courts throughout the land, they found some alarming anomalies. In one case, a dangerous drunken driver whose victim was so permanently brain-damaged that he can never work again got away with a fine, while someone who sold 6 Ecstacy tablets for €40 got three months in prison.
The going rate for E is about €5 a shot these days, so he wasn't nicked for below-cost selling. But there's an alarming moral relativism at work here, where someone can ruin someone else's life and walk away, while selling some drugs that'll merely leave someone depressed a few days after goes inside. It's the result of a system that gives so much discretion to judges who are most often untrained political appointees.
The system is clearly in need of a radical overhaul, and it ought to be clear that putting more cops on the streets won't improve the crime situation that much, particularly when so many of them are deployed trying to stem the flow of recreational drugs and trying to ensure that nightclubs close earlier.
The logic behind this move is particularly Orwellian, as they claim that the longer people spend in nightclubs the drunker they'll get and thus likelier to get into a fight. Yey anyone who does get into a violent fight will get away with a suspended sentence, while the vast majority of non-violent clubbers will be punished for the actions of a small minority.
How would Michael McDowell like it if the powers of the minister for "justice" were reduced so there was less likelihood that they'd be abused? This would be following the exact same logic.
Last night there were riot police on horseback patrolling the streets in case people rioted in oppostion to the proposed new law. Of course, nothing like this happened, as most Irish people are decent, peaceful people, in contrast to the Manichean view of people like McDowell who believe that we need to be under some sort of Totalitarian jackboot before we behave.
The PDs have clearly had too much power for too long and this power has gone to McDowell's ugly bald head. I can only hope that after the next election we get a "justice" minister worthy of the name.

City of Culture, City of Commerce

In a few weeks time, the Real Capital of Ireland, the fair city by the banks of the Lee, where we sported and played will become the European City of Culture.
Getting to host events like this was one of the reasons that we Corkonians threw those awful British out of most our country. The Event comes round to each EU country every 25 years at the moment, and with further expansion it might only come around every 40 years. So if Cork was still in the UK, we'd probably have to wait for around 1000 years to get to host this festival, though at least there's a prospect that they might have the drainage system sorted out by then.
Though Cork's roots are as a trading city and it can hardly claim to be an Athens of a Weimar, the city does have a rich cultural heritage. Writers like Frank O' Connor and Canon Sheehan, and Musicians like Rory Gallagher all hailed from our fair city. In the Crawford we have a world class Art Gallery, the Vanburgh String Quartet, artists in residence to UCC, are the finest in the country, the city has 2 Arthouse cinemas and a host of fringe theatre companies, writers like Tom Creed and Trevor Joyce, and a host of up-and-coming musicians like Fred, Niall Connolly, Wondrland, Boa Morte, Cartoon, and Queen Kong. We've got artists like June Fitzgerald and Angela Morrisey. Cillian Murphy and Jonathon Rhys Myers, two of the finest young actors of their generation, hail from Cork.
Yet, though the city hosts one of the best Jazz and Film festivals around, the preparations for being city of culture don't inspire me with all that much confidence.
I'm reminded of the time Homer Simpson got a job as a teacher and spent all his time preparing for the job by focusing on externals, getting it arseways by sewing tweed Patches on a leather jacket.
Likewise, the city fathers have spent all their time preparing the city for all those rich Eurotrash types they expect to be enriching our city and precious little on actually bringing any culture here. In fact, the budget for infrastructure was around €200m whereas that for cultural events was only €13, a small fraction of what the likes of Lille spent. When you consider that one of the property firms in the city is said to be worth over €1 billion, this sum seems fairly paltry.
The irony is that in restructuring the city, they've destroyed a lot of what made it unique. It's really sad to see Patrick Street turned into a Parisien-Style boulevard when at heart Cork is a prolitarian city of red-brick terraces and faded Victorian buildings.
It's even more ironic that in the city's rush to enrich itself, many of the places where some of the most important events in Cork's cultural history, at least over the last 50 years, have been or are being destroyed. The Arcadia ballroom, where U2 were first appreciated and which also hosted The Clash, is being converted into yuppie apartments. Sir Henry's, a nightclub where Nirvana and Sonic Youth played, has also been bulldozed. The CAT club, one of the best places for alternative music and theatre, faces the same fate. The Examiner is moving out of it's old, art-deco building and down to a new commercial behemoth where the docks used to be.
It's not quite all doom and gloom, though. Neil LaBute, a dramatist and Film-maker misantrhopic enough to make Roy Keane look like Gandhi, is coming over here, and Daniel Libeskind (His name means Love-Child, of whom their might be one or two in Cork), the trippy German architect who's designing the replacement for the twin towers will be installing a pavilion here, though I'm sure there's a few people out there who think his work might be enhanced by spray-painting the words "Stanners luvs Stella" on its side. There were rumours that some of Rembrant's paintings were going to come here, but I think the Rijksmuseum owners may have thought better of it, realising how easily they might end up in a car boot in Knocknaheeny.
It seems, though, that the majority of Corkonians find all this fairly underwhelming. One Examiner interviewee said he thought the whole thing was for the "Glitterati", though if you've ever seen the organising comittee sitting round in one of the cafes in the English market in their tweed jackets this might seem a bit ironic.
It's a pity that people feel alienated from "Culture", because unlike "The Arts" Culture is an inclusive term that includes what everyone does in their spare time. Cork used to have a thriving popular culture represented by places like the Father Matthew Hall but the dawn of Television put an end to much of this. Now, the term "Culture" is an off-putting one for many people and this might be why the business community might be unwilling to invest much money in the event.
It's a pity, because there is a desire for high culture among Cork people. When Corcadorca put on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Fitzgeralds Park two years ago, it was sold out every night for a fortnight, as is the case with many theatrical productions in the City.
In fairness, I think the organsising comittee are doing a reasonably good job with their limited resources, but I think the fact that these resources are so limited says a lot about the Celtic Tiger. In our rush to become the fourth richest country in the World, we may have lost our soul.

Despite all SHAC's rage, there are still loads of rats in a cage

Tucked away in the Business section of Sunday’s Observer was an 8-page supplement on the contentious issue of animal testing. It’s a pity that it wasn't in a part of the newspaper that more people read, though the fact that it was in that section did give me a clue to where the publishers might be coming from.

In the best traditions of liberal journalism, the section strove to give coverage to all viewpoints on the issue. I’m sceptical about the PR-speak of big companies at the best of times, and a piece in the wonderful Onion e-zine only accentuated this natural enough prejudice on my behalf.

The piece introducing the issues was so cliched that I could probably have written it myself. It’s the same sort of argument used by the likes of Monsanto: if it wasn't for their work, we wouldn't have cures for all sorts of diseases, thousands of people would live in horrible pain, etc.

Then in their piece on animal rights activists, who they refer to as the extremists, they suggest that some of the people involved might be as much motivated by a hatred of capitalism as much as by a love of animals. Judging by their tone and the section of the newspaper in which this piece was found I get the feeling that, strange as it may seem to me, they don't mean this as a compliment.

Yet the fact that groups like Huntington Life Sciences are businesses goes to the very core of why people are opposed to them. As a business their primary responsibility is not to sick people but to their own shareholders. A couple of years ago a saw a documentary on genetic modification where a Monsanto representative was claiming that their research was intended to help desperately sick people, the righteous indignation dripping from his lips like oil from one of their genetically modified sunflower seeds.

I’d love to believe that in spite of their massive wealth and influence, companies like Monsanto and Huntingdon Life Sciences were motivated primarily by altruism. But this is so patently not the case. Pharmaceutical companies have gone out of their way to stop countries in Africa and Asia from manufacturing their own generic anti-aids drugs, because they want to sell them their own drugs at massive profits. In turn they invest massively into researching mythical diseases like female impotence, which - Hey Presto! - they have the cure for. A fraction of the money which goes into this research could probably wipe out polio altogether - it only costs a mere 3 cents to immunise people against this disease, yet many in Africa and Asia still walk around on all fours like beasts.

But hey, we’re not all that different from beasts. Animal testers assure us that we’re quite like mice, and that’s an argument in favour of using them for research. But surely if mice are so like us, then they have the same capacity for pain.

Research into lab mice indicates that after prolonged use of MDMA their endorphin-secreting synapses burn out completely and they suffer a lifetime of depression afterwards. I suspect, though, that the mice weren’t popping E in the general cultural milieu in which the drug is consumed, so when they’re down in the dumps they won’t have happy memories of dancing on the Beach in Ibiza or Ko-Pha-Ngan to look back on. The revelation that mice can suffer depression is such a shocking one, though, that it should lead to a total cessation of experiments on mammals. Do the people who do these experiments ever consider how cruel it is to inflict a lifetime of depression on another animal? At least they probably save them the bother of committing suicide themselves.

And there’s been some progress made. Back in the 50’s the CIA were still testing LSD on people, with at least one human guineu pig throwing allegedly throwing himself out a window as a result. Now testing on great apes is banned, and organisations like HLC claim that they use cats and dogs only when really necessary, preferring to use rats and mice where possible. It’s interesting that the two species are in the same category, because while mice are cute animals that you could keep as pets, rats are the English football hooligans of the Animal world.

They go on to say that the average domestic cat will kill more rodents in an average year than any geeky scientist a white coat. This is what animal rights philosopher Tom Regan refers to as the Franklin Fallacy. Apparently Benjamin Franklin used to be a veggie until he was gutting some fish for a carnivorous friend and saw that the fish wasn't a vegetarian. It’s obviously a fallacious argument to say that because animals eat each other, we can eat them too, as we have the capacity to empathise with other animals and there’s only scant evidence that any other species has this capacity. It’s an argument that Samuel Butler made a hundred years earlier in his utopian satire Erewhon. In addition there’s an natural balance in the ecosystem that sustains a predator-prey relationship and this isn't the case in science labs.

I was amused to find that anti-testing “extremists” like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) have actually caused more damage than the IRA over the last 30 years, though I doubt that any foreign parent company will ever refer to this phenomonon as “The English Problem” or that English middle-class pseudo-hippies will ever be routinely asked if they are animal rights extremists.

Though I have some sympathy with their cause, I think they have targeted the wrong organisations. The cruelty that goes on in industrial agriculture is actually far worse, both to animals and to the environment, and the animals that are it’s victims are generally higher up the evolutionary chain. I’d much prefer to see the meat aisles in Tesco’s being bombed, though as some of the activists mums are likely to be buying their Sunday Roast there, this is unlikely. But abattoirs, processing plants and trucks are all there for the molotov cocktailing. And when they do get what they want from the government, no-one will ever ask them to decommission their arsenal.

$' decline: My 1.492 cents

In the fifties that snooty, inward-looking, jingoistic English newspaper the Telegraph printed a memorable headline “Elizabeth Taylor says she feels like a million dollars (£358,000)”

This was back in the days when a million dollars was a lot of money. Today, if Zinedine Zidane looked a million dollars, Real Madrid would wonder why they paid a hundred times over the odds for him.

A few weeks after I read that amusing story, I came across a editorial in the same newspaper, which is always a useful gauge of how people on the opposite side of the political spectrum see things. They complained that Sterling had declined severely against the dollar over the last 50 years and somehow managed to pin the blame on Tony Blair for not taking a stronger anti-euro line.

Today a quid will get you almost two bucks, a euro is worth almost once and a half as much again as it was three years ago. Shoppers from Europe are flying across the Atlantic in droves, impervious to either the threat of terrorism or the environmental impact. If the Telegraph is celebrating, it’s because their tongue is as far up George Bush’s ass as Blair’s.

I’m not an economist, and I have no wish to be. I think members of that profession are for the most part antisocial little nerds who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Nevertheless, I live inside the cash economy and until I learn to grow my own food and weave my own clothes what happens on the world’s currency exchange markets has a bearing on my life. I rely on people like William Keegan and Joseph Stiglitz to translate economics into English for me.

The consensus among many economists is that the Bush administration is deliberately letting the dollar slide because they are the sperm of Satan and want to impoverish the rest of the world while enriching their own fat, greedy asses. And who am I to argue with such wise men?

The reason the dollar is dropping is that the US borrowed so much to buy Iraq and it’s proving to have been an extremely unwise investment. The war in Iraq cost over $250 billion - that’s around $40 for every person on Earth, and it’s hard to see how they can ever pay back that money until the Iraqi oil wells are pumping, which might not be for years.

According to Paul O’ Neill, Dick Cheney insists that deficits don’t matter, as that great intellectual, Ronald Reagan, proved. In a sense, they don’t matter to the republican party, as they can always rely on the democrats to clean up the mess they make when they get back into power eventually, and this commitment to fiscal prudence prevents them from spending money on anything progressive that might make America better for anyone but the very rich.

The weak dollar is providing a stimulus for the US as it makes their exports cheaper. The American economy is growing at a rate of around 3% while those of France and Germany hover under 1%. American treasury secretary Jon Snow seems happy to see things continue this way as they want to punish France and Germany for not helping them to steal Iraq. The complaints have so far only come from Belgium and Austria, though there's no sign of the term "Freedom Waffles" or any indication that Arnie will be forced to change his name to Smith.

But the weak dollar policy could also be aimed at China, which has been pegging it’s currency to the dollar. Poor old America claims this is unfair, though when Liz Taylor was a saleable commodity and America was the world’s economic powerhouse, all exchange rates were fixed. By pushing the rembini further and further down, they increase the chances of China’s economy overheating, so they’re hoping that the weak dollar will break the back of the fixed exchange rate.

Like every other Bush administration policy, this policy is both malign and fraught with risk. The US has been happy to exploit China’s cheap labour for years and years but when it becomes a threat economically they decide to change the rules. It mirrors the development of Britain, which allowed free trade when it’s economy was growing, but introduced protection when it was the world’s biggest economic power.

Today we live in a world of so-called free trade, though everyone knows that the policies of the WTO are fiercely biased in favour of rich nations. Again, it’s rules seem to apply to everyone equally, except of course the US, which applied sanctions on EU steel, which was being produced more efficiently and cheaply at the time. It’s a worrying reflection of the moral compass of the Bush administration that it seeks to punish other nations for not joining in imperialist wars or producing steel cheaply. France and Germany tried to complain to the WTO and impose retaliatory sanctions, but by the time they had the weak dollar made them unnecessary.

Thankfully for the rest of the world, the policy of letting the dollar slide isn’t sustainable. The only reason the US can run up such a huge deficit is that the dollar is the currency of choice for other country’s foreign reserves: the war in Iraq was basically financed by other country’s like China buying it’s currency. If the currency continues to weaken, China will start buying Euros instead, as a few countries which have a bone to pick with Uncle Sam already have. It’s in China’s interest to do this politically as well as economically, as continued purchase of dollars would allow the US to invade Iran and tighten it’s control over oil, on which China is heavily dependent. My hope is that if the Euro replaces the dollar the EU will use it’s new power more benignly, though it’s hard to see how they could do otherwise.

If this doesn’t happen then the EU will have to start considering what’s in WTO membership for them. It seems only reasonable that countries which are faced with aggressive economic policies. The tragedy is that while they are allowed to flout WTO rules with impunity when it comes to Africa, when it comes to the US, which has an effective veto over WTO policy, any violations meet with massive fines. But the EU is no position to let the Euro slide as it’s constitution favours stability ahead of growth.

What other choice does it have but to impose tariffs? If this means leaving the WTO, so be it. It’s an organisation which the US ruthlessly uses to enforce it’s own profit-driven, privatisation-fuelled economic system on the rest of the world. It pushes down both taxes and wages around the world, and leads to commodities travelling inordinate distances with no concern for the environment or the use of limited fossil fuels. So what is the EU, which donates huge amounts of money for foreign aid and takes the lead on climate change, doing in such a body?
I’m all for a trade war against the economic terrorism of the US. I hope taxes are imposed on McDonalds and Burger King so high that no-one will be able to buy them. I hope anyone wearing a pair of Nikes or Jimmy Choos will be shouted at on the street. I hope anyone driving a Ford or a Chrysler will have to pay double the congestion charges of anyone else. I hope anyone coming back from a shopping trip to New York will be treated the same way that Irish people visiting England have been for so long, ignominiously strip-searched to see if they’re hiding Sex and the City DVDs in their underwear. But I’m forced to acknowledge that while the US is a virtual dictatorship, the EU is so fragmented that this is unlikely to happen.

Meanwhile Liz Taylor still looks like a million dollars, though that’s only about E746,000, the cost of a des-res in Foxrock. I think I know what I’d prefer.

Blind Squire Dave: Him with his foot in his mouth

A couple of years ago I found myself wandering through the Mala Strana region of Prague and thought I’d wander into the Museum of Sport and Physical Culture. Housed in a wonderful baroque building, it sounds a bit like a relic from the Stalinist era, and that’s probably what it is.

Back then it cost 3 koruna to get in; thats about 7 cents at today’s exchange rates. I had nothing smaller than a 50 and they had no change. I offered them the fifty but they wouldn't hear of it, and told me a place where I could go and get some change.

I decided that this was a bit too much hassle, but I was coming back that way later and I had some coins on me so I thought it would be worth a look. The museum staff thought I’d been the whole time looking for change and they didn't understand my English well enough to figure out that this wasn't the case. (I don't know any Czech).

So they treated me to a full guided tour of the museum. I learned a lot about the history of Czech sporting history, how Bohemia was one of the first countries in the world to have tennis courts and one of the first to play soccer as well.

Then the guide started telling me about Blind King John of Bohemia.

I knew as much as I really wanted to know about him already. I read about him in A Distant Mirror,

Barbara Tuchman’s magesterial account of the Fourteenth Century, and in an early Saul Bellow novel called the victim, where some New York Jews are showing off their knowledge of History.

Hmmm.

Blind King John was blind as a bat, and he used to work as a mercenary. There was plenty of work for mercenaries then, as there is now, as those awful English were doing what they still do best: going over to other countries and causing a ruckus. Blind King John hired himself out to the French, whose country the British spent over a hundred years trying to take over because of some dubious regal claim. If they were doing the same thing today they’d claim it was a war of liberation and would strenously deny any claims that the new admistration would be a puppet of the English Monarchy, but nowadays England has no issues with the rest of Europe, so the question is academic.

Back then, being blind wasn't the disadvantage that it would be in a warrior today. It’s hard to imagine a blind sniper getting work in Fallujah, though Americans are generally so loud that you can hear them coming. Mind you, if he was on the American side he’d have as much chance of finding the WMD as anyone else.

King John would ride into battle swinging a mace wildly around the place. He’d be impervious to the shower of arrows hailing down around him and the English warriors to whom his scalp became an increasingly desireable one as his repution grew.

The key, of course, was for his allies to push his horse into battle just before everyone else so that no-one would get caught in what today would called “friendly fire”.

I was reminded of this when I heard of comments David Blunkett made about some of his cabinet colleauges. Gordon Brown throws his weight around, Jack Straw left the home office in a state of chaos, John Prescott is very sensitive (sic) about the “Two Jags” label. It might have been a little bit better if some of those barbs would been better aimed at some of his manic critics on both sides of the political spectrum.

It’s tempting to suggest that Blunkett has got himself in a hole and should stop digging, except that as a visually challeged person he’s probably never had cause to dig a hole so the efficacy of the metaphor might be lost on him.

Accuse me of jumping on the Blunkett-bashing bandwagon if you will, but I disliked the man immensly even before it was revealed that he got someone else’s wife pregant then lied about it then tried to abuse his powers to get a visa for her nanny.

I thought that Bill Clinton was unfairly hounded but this was because he never made any secret of the fact that he was a philanderer and never claimed to support “Family Values”. Blunkett, in contrast, once rang up the BBC to complain that there was a naked person on TV. He was blind back then as well, but apparently he could sense the shock of other people in the room.

Knowing what teachers are like, it was a bit mean of Blair to make him to make him education secretary. I can’t imagine how many times he was told: “David, we know you can do better. Stop using your blindness as an excuse.”

He didn't find his real metier till he was appointed home secretary. I’ve always thought this was a weird term and always visualised the holders of this office sitting in the kitchen answering the phone and taking dication from the gas man. But then, our own “justice minister”’s title is becoming increasingly ironic as well.

Until recently, the guy who’s called “Defence secretary” was called “War minister”. Orwell must be laughing in his grave.

But I digress. When Blunkett was appointed as “home Secretary” he promised to make Jack Straw look liberal.

I notice Jack Straw is having his own problems with his optical modality lately, arguing that he shook hands with Robert Mugabe because it the room was badly lit. He was never asked to defend his meeting with the president of Indonesia, responsible for far more deaths in East Timor, though there weren't any white people among them.

To be fair to Blunkett, he hasn’t always lived up to this threat (“promise”, for Daily Mail readers). He actually liberalised marajauna laws, which Straw always resisted like some mild-mannered Canute trying to catch the dope smoke blowin in the wind. This reminds me of the blind guy in the Simpsons who needed medicinal marajauna to stop him becoming even more blind.

In other areas, Blunkett’s been just as illiberal as he said he’d be. He was appointed a few months before September 11th (of 2001) and like a dour Lanca shire Tireasias, he’s sensed acts of terror looming all the time ever since. He’s taken the lead of John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge by clamping down on what he dismissed as “Airy-Fairy civil liberties”. While Straw set his “sights” on trial by jury, which had existed in England when Blind King John was a twinkle in his daddy’s eye, Blunkett is trying to change trial format in “terrorist” cases so that “terrorists” can be convicted on “balance of probabilities” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt”, another cornerstone of Anglo-Saxon justice. And would you believe, most of the “terrorists” convicted in England since 9/11 are actually alleged members of the Real or continuity IRA, though it’s possible that his braille scriptwriter might have punched “mullet” instead of “mullah”.

But the most frightening thing he’s planned to do is to introduce identity cards. It’s possible that as a blind man who’s always had to be shepherded around that he can’t concieve of how important basic civil liberties like the ability to go anywhere you want without the government knowing where you are are to those of us lucky to be able to see. Criminals in Britain already have to wear electronic tags but forcing everyone to carry a biometric ID would rests on the assumption that everyone is a potential criminal, which is a bit of a kick in the teeth for the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, another putative axiom of the British judicial system.

If Blunkett can’t “See” what an infringement of people’s basic rights this is, perhaps he should consider the cost, estimated at £13billion assuming the computer system never crashes. This is possibly enough money to cure everyone in the world who suffers from trachoma, a horrible disease that robs children in Africa and Asia of their sight; to liberate them from the small, dark world in which, like Blunkett, they live, at least in a physical sense.

But Blunkett is more interested in liberating British Muslims from the taunts of Secularists who claim that they all follow the word of a psychotic middle eastern goat-fucker literally. Under his proposed new Blasphemy laws, those insulting muslims could face a prison sentence of seven years, and as British jails are so over-crowded means they might have to share cells with the likes of Abu Hamza.

It’s interesting that this law is being proposed by a man who could never see what it’s like for like for a muslim child to be starved to death by sanctions or have their house reduced to rubble, but could probably feel the pain of those who’ve suffered discrimination.

I don’t think Blunkett should resign either because he’s blind or because he was shagging a rich-bitch publisher and acting like a whiney teenager from a song by Pulp or The Smiths when she gave him to heave-ho. I think he should get the sack because if he doesn’t it means that everything Tony Blair learnt in college about due process and the rights of the defendent were mere empty words.

Blind King John’s place in history was assured when Owen, the then Prince of Wales, killed him at the battle of Crecy and adopted his ich dien motto, which is still the Prince’s seal today, though Charles would never go into battle with anything more threathening than a fox. (soon he won’t even be able to do that, ha ha). But I’m hoping Blair will do the right thing for the right reason and make Blind Squire Dave a mere footnote in history.

Meat kills you slowly and painfully

More bad news this week: Red meat gives you arthritis.
This is only bad news if You're one of the people who live in Rich Industrial countries where there's a plentiful supply of red meat and you're not suffficiently troubled by the waste and cruelty of the meat industry to make the choice to become a vegan.
The science behind this study seems pretty sound, though I'm no expert on that sort of thing by any means.

I'm a guy who's pretty in touch with his feminine side, and I prefer to intuit things.
My grandfather used to be a construction worker, and used to eat a lot of red meat. It was hard to blame him, as I worked on buliding sites for two summers and the sheer volume of veggie food I had to eat just to keep from starving to death used to stun everyone I used to live with. Working in as a construction labourer (My title was actually "general operative") you need to get over 3,000 calories a day and this is quite a challange for a veggie, though to be fair the Hindus who built the Taj Mahal seemed to do a pretty good job.

Eating meat effectively outsources the the job of converting carbs to protein to animals. Like all recipients of outsourced jobs, they get treated pretty shittily, being forced to eat far more than they need to, fed food that their bodies aren't designed to digest, to have children every year till their bodies give out after which they are brutally slaughtered.

None of this ever bothered my grandfather. When he'd go into a restaurant he'd always order the biggest steak. He'd have red meat for dinner almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. When he found out I'd become a vegetarian, he was critical, telling me that when he was my age he was grateful for every little bit of meat he got.
Grandfathers often come out with stuff like that, but mine was more honest than most, leaving the exagerated tales of poverty to my father. In addition, he grew up in Ireland at a time when the country was horribly poor, so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

While my grandfather didn't consider the environmental or ethical consequences of eating meat - at least if he did he never discussed it with me - his years of steak-chewing did come back to haunt him in horribly painful ways. For the last few years of his life he lived in almost constant pain and for the last two he was virtually paralytic from the neck down. He also had gout, which many people think is a disease that decadent 18th Century aristocrats got from drinking too much gin, but is actually one of the most painful things that can happen a human being. When he died of a massive heart attack last year it was probably a happy day for him.

In a way his life mirrors the history of the Human Race. When we were hunter-gatherers, the only way we could get protein and some micronutrients from eating animals, but there were so few of them around that it was impossible to ever eat enough to develop any health problems as a result. Now, those of us who live in the west can eat as much meat as we want, but our bodies are still wired to crave more of it, and there's plenty of it there. This time of plenty won't last forever as the meat industry is heavily dependent on limited fossil fuels, but for the meantime meat is cheap for consumers and this is why obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and now, it seems, arthritis have all skyrocketed in the last 50 years.

My family's own horrible experiences with meat-related diseases incline me towards believing this latest piece of research, but others are sceptical. A couple of days earlier, I was reading a columnist in the Examiner complaining that contrary information about which foods are good and bad for you comes out every week. Well, there's a reason for this. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, shows how the big food corporations - in the US, five companies control around 90% of the market - deliberately fund research that produces wildly contrary results so that many consumers just say to hell with it and eat whatever they want.

I wasn't that shocked to hear that an industry that does unspeakable things to animals, destroys the environment, emacites biodiversity and contributes massively to global warming would do something so underhand. Needless to mention, the Meat industry has massive wealth and in the US in particular it's easy for wealth to buy influence. The Food and Drink administration would love to tell people to eat less meat, but the meat industry will only let them give coded messages like "eat less saturated fat".
Like the tobacco industry with which it has links, the meat industry cleary can't handle the truth. But they have such massive power that poor old consumers like myself who want to stay healthy without destroying the planet have to deal with a barrage of contradictory information. For example, I drink blackcurrant juice that's sweetened with saccharine. One is an anti-carninogen, the other a carcinogen. Who wins? Does anybody know?

On the other hand, though new information seems to be published every week, I've never heard a bad word said about Quinoa, Wholemeal Bread, Linseeds, or almost any type of organic fruit or vegetable. And those of you who think the Atkins diet is based on reputable science have to admit that that can't be said about Beef.

D'y'know, A camera's interesting when you think about it

This weekend I heard the latest twist in the never-ending opera bouffe that is Northern politics. I imagine that if you tried to explain the history of the troubles to anyone uninitiated (I, personally can never be arsed) then they’d assume you were making it all up and repeating the same bits over and over again.

It seems Ian Paisley’s latest demand is that the IRA take some photographs of themselves putting weapons out of commission. I don't know about you, but does this suggest that, like the guns, Paisley himself has been in Ulster politics for far too long?

It may have been that when Paisley was exhorting Protestant bigots to attack Catholic estates in the ‘60s that portable cameras may have been the cutting edge in technology. Unlike the psyches of Northern politicians, though, the rest of the world moves on. Today people can sneak digital camcorders into movies and film them and sell them to Chinese gangsters and backpackers can buy them in places like Hanoi and Kuala Lumper and post them home. This of course is an abhorrent breach of copyright laws that deprives Hollywood studios of the money they need to pay Julia Roberts and anyone visiting Vietnam should avoid streets in the old town just north of the lake like Hang Ba and Hang Bec where this sort of thing goes on.

Surveillance cameras are so ubiquitous these days that even the farmhouses where the weapons are stored probably have their own web-cams, which are accessible via the internet.

As you undoubtedly know digital images are really easy to manipulate and anyone who knows his way around a computer could produce juxtapose shots of building sites and guns and make it look like the guns were being encased in cement. This could lead to a new commission being formed with Oliver Stone at it’s head and the usual gravy train following in it’s wake.

Then of course, there’s virtual reality. If Paisley gets a DVD of Martin McGuiness dressed in shades and a black crombie saying “We’ve got guns. Lots of Guns! We need Concrete. Lots of Concrete!” I’d hate to be the hip young DUP member who had to explain that that wasn't for real.

Perhaps I’m underestimating Paisley, who might secretly be hoping that they use their camera phones to take snaps, making them vulnerable to surveillance from mobile masts, though not of course if they’re on Meteor, in which case Paisley will be pressing his fingers together, rasping, “You win this time, Mr. Bond, I mean Mr. Adams.”

None of this is to denigrate the role of cameras in the modern media. During the Irish famine, many people in Britain refused to believe the extent of the suffering as there were no photographs, though there were at least half a dozen cameras in the country at the time, except of course that they were all owned by the landowning classes who were feasting on the backs of the skeletal waifs that they were systematically starving to death.

There are quite a few photos of the American civil war, though most of them are off generals with unfeasibly big sideburns. In fact sideburns are named after Edmund Burnside, a federal commander.

In the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian war Prussian surveyors would disguise themselves as tourists and photograph sites in the Alsace-Lorraine region with typical teutonic attention to detail. When moving pictures were invented the camera still remained a tool of the ruling classes with propaganda shots of soldiers running to their deaths at improbably fast speeds. Astonishingly, during the second world war Josef Goebbals ordered 100,000 soldiers away from the Eastern front to make a Technicolor picture called Kolberg, about a battle in the Napoleonic wars.

There are lots of pictures of the death camps, though there are some loony right-wing types on both sides of the Atlantic who argue that they are forged.

The camera really came into it’s own during the American war in Vietnam. In keeping with Johnson’s “Great Society” journalists were allowed pretty much free access to the troops. This didn't go down too well with the military, who argued that civilians just don’t understand that if you’re hanging around Saigon smoking pot, shagging prostitutes and listening to the Doors and then suddenly put in the heat of battle you’re going to crack and start raping and massacring peasants.

The shot of Kim Phuc, a child in Southern Vietnam, the area that the US was supposed to be protecting, running nakedly from planes that were spraying napalm, did more than anything else to provoke opposition to the War back in the States.

The US government learned a lesson from this. It wasn't to stop getting involved in wars in places they knew nothing about or to reduce their dependence on massive force, but to restrict access to photographers. During the first gulf war, only accredited photographers were allowed to join the military, and their photographs gave many people the impression that war was like a video game, so much so that some of the soldiers of the second gulf war interviewed by Michael Moore seemed genuinely surprised that war involved loss of life and horrific injury.

The US government have still done all they can to shield people from this uncomfortable truth. The bombing of Baghdad took place just before US networks licences were due for renewal. And guess who’s the head of the federal broadcasting commission? Why, it’s none other than Michael “Son of Colin” Powell.

There are encouraging signs, though, that photojournalists are finding a way out of this Orwellian nightmare. The first came with the pictures from Abu Gharib prison earlier this year. It was notable that while Donald Rumsfeld criticised the perpetrators of the awful torture that went on there, his real venom was reserved for those pesky photojournalists with their digital cameras, which they didn't have any of in his day.

Rumsfeld is the sort of guy who’d shoot the messenger only if he couldn't think of any slower, more painful way of terminating his existence. The ironic thing is that so much of the “Evidence” that Saddam had WMD was photographic in nature. It’s as if he believes that only Americans should have cameras as well as weapons.

But America’s policy of leaving Iraq’s borders open means that people having been bringing in cameras as well as guns, with Qatari network Al-Jazeera in particular becoming unlikely Robert Capas of our age and the subject of Rummy’s latest hissy fit. Ironically it’s the cameras could ultimately do more damage to the US, exacerbating divisions in a society which is already dangerously polarised. The people who are against the war will be angered by shots of people being mown down in hospital beds, while those in favour will put pictures of that soldier smoking a Marlboro, who could become a Che Guevara of the American Right on their walls.

There are rumours that, once again the US is using Napalm, this time in Fallujah. If you’ve got a strong stomach, you can download pictures of the victims of this chemical and their children. I saw a person in Vietnam who had a huge scar in the middle of his face where his nose ought to be, and dozens of people crawling on all fours because they had only stumps growing from their hips.

If it does turn out that the American military is using this agent in Iraq there’ll be plenty of people who’ll argue that the towelheads had it coming for hating freedom so much. And there’ll be others who’ll want to take their country back from such vicious, bigoted monsters.

This could lead to a conflict which would make the Northern troubles look an argument in a hairdressers salon. But I wouldn't expect Ian Paisley to gain any sort of perspective.