Tangents

The likelihood of any new EU treaty passing in an Irish referendum must at this point be nil. It would take some doing to argue both sides of the core/periphery chasm around to further intgration

On the Irish (peripheral) stage, the likes of Pat Cox, ex-president of the Parliament, are promulgating the argument that there was no fault in the European institutions structures and protocols and that Ireland needs now more than ever to turn to Europe. He says we were not good Europeans during the boom years and now sentiment is against us so what can we expect. We mis-spent our opportunity. This is being referred to as the “we all partied” line of argument, as that was ex-Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s unfortunate way of putting it. Now we must reform and recommit.

On the German (core) stage Habermas and Fischer round on Germany and Merkel for their current behaviour and their lack of collegiality, that they are acting too self-interestedly and have forgotten their European vocation they claim. They say that at the very point at which they could realise that calling they are instead myopically acting in their own limited interest. To which the German man on the street who reads Bild, might say why not; when do we get to become a normal nation like the Finns who are also in favour of punishing the periphery?

The stresses are still mounting. The ECB’s interest rate rises are worrying. Wages in the Eurozone are unlikely to follow the inflation in price of oil which is what the rate rise nominally seeks to counter. If they do to any extent it will be in the core. In the periphery wages and salaries have dropped like stones. In the Irish case average income has dropped from being top in the EU15 in 2007 relative to the average income of the group to 2nd last in 2010. That’s some serious volatility. Now the ECB signals wage “restraint”. When incomes have already been cut to the bone, the only thing that results is redundancies. So central bank policy is now functioning to alleviate inflationary pressure on employed core workers rather than avoiding increasing the burden on struggling peripheral workers whose income has dropped, or who are suffering high unemployment. This in countries needing bailouts. The ECB are required to take this narrow view by design. And while Central Banks should be above political interference it remains that the design of the institutions is either faulty, being incapable of holistically adressing problems, or the economic integration of the Eurozone is a sham that is being slowly and painfully exposed.

Mortgages, which have already been supported by forbearance measures etc will continue to grow as a problem, and the next two ECB meetings appear to be heading for further rises. This against a backdrop of a banking crisis which everyone suspects is not over. That they did this the same day that a peripheral Eurozone member sought a bailout is nearly blackly funny. Portugal’s mortgages are virtually all variable rate. The price stability doctrine of the ECB was rigidly built in when the Germans gave up the DM. Now we are all learning just what it means to be peripheral to Germany. The very word “peripheral” is embedding itself in the discourse, in news reports and debates.

I cannot foresee any drive to deepened integration succeeding. It can only happen when, or rather if, the Eurozone can declare victory over these grinding problems. That would be when the window for integration would open. As it stands the very thing that was supposed to drive integration by knitting economies together is being destroyed by the institutions who are trying to isolate Eurozone problems in peripheral economies, and in turn is undermining the EU. May you live in interesting times indeed.

If we could figure out how to make societies run like the socialist camping trip, we would rejoice.

Yes, that’s quite out of context. Jason Brennan tackles G.A. Cohen.

On Sunday I expressed my fear that there was too little attention being paid to the potential for a disastrous outcome to what was being celebrated as a turning point in Egypt. While some were trying to temper the call for Mubarak to go by raising the spectre of an Iranian-style outcome to the current  crisis, I pointed out that a successful clampdown could result in a descent into a form of hellish civil war seen in Algeria in the 90′s.

The horrific scenes on the streets yesterday and last night broke my heart. Under vicious attack from pro-Mubarak thugs, who appeared to have the backing of the State, if not under the direct direction of the regime, the demonstrators of Tahrir sq have been sucked into a situation of violence of the Mubarak’s making. This is a trap to cement the army’s position. Robert Springborg on the Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel reckons that this means the end of the anti-regime protest’s aspirations. His pieceis well worth a read. I hope he’s wrong but there’s a clear logic to what he says that is reflected in the surreal goings on being relayed live to the world by Al Jazeera.

If this is the case, those who saw in the protesters a shadow of the Shah and the events of 1979 will sigh with relief while pointing to the Potemkin village of progress the army will construct. While there are countries that have slowly grown a civil society and civilian government in the shadow of the army before emerging strong democracies (Turkey or Chile for example), the bitter truth is that if the regime and army really are engineering a defeat of the people like this, it will open the door to extremism unseen before in Egypt.

And this is precisely what the Quilliam Foundation is warning against in a briefing note [PDF] issued today.The British think-tank which deals with Islamic extremism, explicitly likens the situation to that of Algeria in the wake of the 1992 elections:

“The situation in Egypt is now reminiscent of events in Algeria in 1992.”

The scenario that they outline is one of:

• peaceful pro-reform demonstrations being discredited
• faith in democratic reform being lost (reinforcing the message broadcast after the Hamas victory next door during the PA elections)
• the west losing influence amongst the people for failing them in their moment of potential victory
• violent extremists winning the argument, becoming emboldened and dragging the country down a spiral of violent action and reaction as happened in Algeria.

If the regime and the army really are on the verge of extinguishing the protests through trickery and instability, the role of West is heightened. A democratic transparent Egypt is a better partner in the Middle East than one fractured and humiliated.

The Dáil dissolves today and the nation will embark on a trip through the electoral fairground with all its accompanying rides and sideshows. The IMF/ECB “bailout” will certainly be one of the most popular rollercoasters to ride as it channels so much energy, naturally enough. The “bailout” of course has such a severe and immediate impact on how we live as a society, function as an economy and continue as a state, that that is as it should be.
However, given the mutterings of renegotiation of interest rates and the rumours of bondholders finally taking a hit on their involvement in the banks I wonder if the whole “bailout” is designed to require redesign.

In other words with no monetary tools available to adjust the Irish economy such as inflating debt away, devaluing the currency etc, the ECB and IMF are playing a game of chicken and are relying on the economy to go through a period of internal deflation up to a point before throttling back on the price we pay for their support. The “internal deflation” policy is an explicit policy of the ECB etc, true, but I wonder just how much they have planned a step down on the “bailout’s” punitive terms after a certain period in order to encourage deflation initially before reviving the economic prospects somewhat after a period. If they have designed the package to do that then aren’t they playing chicken with the economy?

A multiple choice question for you today. How dead are Obama’s plans for, and influence, in the Middle East?

-Dead

-Very Dead

-Extremely Dead.

Obama’s been so completely caught out on pro-democracy movement in Arab states it’s mind-boggling. Nobody is mentioning the US during the protests, no US flags are being burned; in Egypt much like Tunisia, it’s an Egyptian movement to reclaim an Egyptian future. Washington seems baffled with little to say other than “calm down, please.” And those noises are being totally ignored as Egyptians seize their moment. In truth the character of events is self-defining, no US intervention is going to sway events too much right now; a popular democratic movement is difficult manipulate from afar unlike an autocrat in recipt of aid. This is beyond America’s influence.

Meanwhile in the Occupied Territories the Palestine Papers show George Mitchell and the Obama administration threw the Bush administration Roadmap in the bin after the Palestinians had met their obligations under the first phase. They absolved the Israelis of meeting their parallel obligations to cease building settlements as part of the same first phase. Mitchell told Erekat it wasn’t an agreement in any legal sense and pretty much to get over it, that the new talks meant new parameters, parameters like allowing Israel to continues the development of illegal settlements. There won’t be another attempt at restarting the peace process for some time if it means a repeat of the last round of talks which amounted to little more than humiliation of the Palestinian leadership and even more rapid settlement expansion once the building freeze was lifted. Whatever incarnation it takes next, the US will not be the chief broker. The PA and Abbas are now  making a unilateral move to gain the recognition of their final status aims in the international community but one wonders will Ramallah be shaken as Tunis and Cairo have been?

I remember reading plenty of opinion in the run up the 2000 election that Bush would be less prone to bowing to Israel than Gore on the peace process and more realist in his approach, but I thought that post 9/11 he fell in with the “security” agenda of Netanyahu more than Gore might have. It’s still pretty surprising to see Obama undermine the small amount that Bush actually did on that peace process and I wonder if any US President will see an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel inked under his (or her) guidance. When Obama claimed to have pressed the Reset button on relations with the Arab world after his Cairo speech did he in fact mistakenly press the Sleep button?

Now there’s revolution in Cairo and the peace process is dead and the US’s words have never mattered less between Casablanca and Muscat. As the neighbourhood teeters and pursues a logic of its own, that Nobel is an embarrassment. And for Israel these must be deeply troubling times.

Egypt really is on a knife edge at the moment. You would hope of course that the popular outcome is achieved with little violence. Reading blogs on politics in the Middle East for the past few months (like the  excellent Arabist blog) shone a light on the anxieties building up in these societies and given the example of Tunisia, the speed with which Egyptian protests have mushroomed is no surprise at all. There’s clearly been a very large build up of tension in that country: a strata of informed people with hopes for the future, a middle class frustrated by the suffocating atmosphere and in particular the huge amount of speculation and anger building around the prospect of Mubarak’s son being lined up for succession, have been parallelled by a history of protest and opposition. Tunisia was like a light illuminating a way that was very much anticipated.

Now reading the newspapers you’ll spot several columnists warning of the situation developing like Iran post-79. These writers don’t have a positive contribution to proffer on just how Egyptians should handle their frustration and repression. Instead it’s the same reactionary, pro-”stability” canards being rolled out again. Some of these reactionary columns come dressed in the clothes of a form of Western Liberalism that fears any Arab world which does not aspire to their post-Fukuyama end of history liberal democracies and dreads a moral universe informed by Islam rather than Kant. But they do not stray too far from the more caustically realist Cassandras in their acquiescence in the crushing, humiliating reality of “stable” Arab states dominated by aging autocrats.

The true dark possibility that I fear, however, more resembles Algeria post-92 which is a far far worse spectre. There the regime reaction to the FIS’s clear course towards power following their dominance of the first round of the general election led to the second round being cancelled and a nightmarish civil war matched only by Lebanon’s in the region. But of course Algeria was never substantially on the radar of the US so that nightmare isn’t a part of the idiot columnists’ mental universe and they don’t consider the horrors of a military regime holding on as happened in Algeria. Luckily Egypt doesn’t have the equivalent of the GIA. At least not yet. Just Hamas on it’s border and a peace process killed by Israel. But then the GIA didn’t begin it’s campaign of carnage until the FIS had been outlawed and repression made the order of the day. The sooner Mubarak’s gone the better for everyone. Even the US.

The pataphysician Alfred Jarry was so excited by the close-fitting kit that, before the First War, he took to dressing in the uniform of a cycle racer. He caused a scandal by following Mallarmé’s funeral cortège on his bicycle.

FROM: The Raging Peloton by Iain Sinclair in the London Review of Bikes Books, an article available at:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/iain-sinclair/the-raging-peloton?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3302

The quickest way to dismiss an argument is to obstruct it from taking place at all.  Failing that you try and dismiss the premises as quickly as possible. So Cowen tried to avoid the issue (and inevitable argument) over his links with Anglo and Sean Fitzpatrick by first not allowing it to see the light of day.

When Seanie put paid to that approach, Cowen has acted as though he has no reason to engage with the flurry of consternation because the very premise that there could be any wrongdoing ascibed to the conversation was simply impossible. The “I cannot tell a lie” response is clearly no use when no one trusts you. You cannot trade on credit(ability) you do not have. Nor can your party. Quite apart from that it is illogical, a case of begging the question. “I act in the best interests of the country, therefore I could not have done anything wrong” is no argument.

The real problem for Cowen is that is he so far behind the curve on where the conversation is that he has no possible way of shaping the narrative.

The Irish people clearly believe that what has occurred to the country is a crime of historic proportions, so why not look at the breach that has opened between Cowen and the country in the terms of a crime. Look at this way:

When trying to convince a jury it is popular to sum up the allegation against a defendant (in the US at least) under the headings: means, motive, and opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty ten has settled on the shelf, a bundle of bitter pages in the main. What an ill-temepered, merciless year it has been. So it is time to bundle what good as come of it and carry it with us as patient and humble resource on which to draw when 2011 throws up some bleak echoes of it.

So some random thanks to:

Friends: The one’s who’ve slept on my floor, whose floor I’ve slept on. The ones I’ve eaten with, heard music with, seen plays with, walked and talked and drank with. You were great.

Twitter: Your torrent of tweets describing meals in restaurants, hangovers and puns on film titles at first annoyed but then amidst the scratched together words of people’s quotidian observation there was both scattered pearls of fruitful thoughts, the crossings of paths, solutions sought and rendered, a measure of the tidal surges of anger and joy, and distraction when it was needed.

Ice cream in Beirut, orange juice in Shatila: After walking the Corniche in August heat, chatting, with a part-lame friend, that ice cream near Hamra street will live forever. There’s a a corner of a foreign tongue that will remain forever Beiruti ice cream. In second place might be an orange juice in Shatila and several Almazas supped in Adma and elsewhere.

Border friends: The Syrian lady from Hull who helped me at the border crossing into Syria when my passport disappeared. The French couple who exchanged dollars into Syrian pounds for me when I got the bus out of Syria without realising there was an exit tax. The bus driver who kept moving slightly but didn’t drive off when it turned out the Syrian border guards had screwed up my visa and insisted on shouting at me in Arabic. Syrian border guards for not just taking all my money off me.

Beach House: Songs from Teen Dream in Whelans, more at Primavera; summoning up those spooked hearts and pushing at the veil of love. Plenty of music this year worthy of shout outs, but I’ll stick with just one

Coffee: Where would I be without you? Sleeping soundly, but you eclipsed tea in twenty ten. So I think I’ll give you thanks and maybe become pals again with tea.

Verbs: You make things happen. More of you in 2011.

Soy sauce: I don’t need to explain my thanks to soy sauce.

The Atlantic ocean, when I get as far as you I’m home.

America is the world’s leading exporter of both regular and irregular verbs.

FROM: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, a research paper availabe here  http://www.librarian.net/wp-content/uploads/science-googlelabs.pdf [PDF]