(67)

It has emerged that the Provisional IRA, rather than its deniable offshoot the South Armagh Republican Action Force, was responsible for the 1976 Kingsmills Massacre. If you do not know about that event, the grim story is here.

On 5 January 1976, the 10 textile workers were travelling home from work in the dark and rain on a minibus in the heart of rural County Armagh.

....

A man asked their religions. There was only one Catholic left on the bus. He was identified and ordered away from his Protestant work mates. He was able to run off.

The lead gunman spoke one other word - "Right" - and the shooting began.

Mr Black was the only one to survive.

I had remembered the Kingsmills massacre. The last question put to the men and the awful choice of what to answer when you did not know whether the terrorists asking were Loyalist or Republican had stuck in my mind. Today I have advanced a little further in knowledge: I now know that analysis of the guns used confirms that it most likely was the IRA after all. The thing is, though, that my level of knowledge, which I tend to think of as average, is actually way above average. I have known for three decades that this massacre occurred. I knew that a few days previously five Catholics had been murdered and that the Kingsmills massacre was carried out in reprisal for this. And here's the point, I know that there are Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Republicans and Loyalists, and could give you a basic account of which side is which and how that situation came to be.

My own background is Irish Catholic. My family loathed the IRA. So I grew up paying a slightly above average amount of attention to Northern Ireland and I noticed over the years that plenty of people in the world literally did not know that there were any Protestants there. These people thought that that it was a case of "the English" occupying Ireland. Partisans on the Republican side also spoke thus, but selective rather than complete ignorance was their problem, as it was for partisans on the Loyalist side. The way in which those soaked in the history of a conflict can blank out the other side and talk of "the people" when they mean "our people" is tragic but a quite different phenomenon from that of ordinarily well educated members of society who simply have no idea - but not, alas, no opinion.

I have explained the existence of a Protestant population in bad French and worse Italian. I remember reading of angry editorials in American newspapers of thirty years ago that appeared to be unaware that the Republic of Ireland was an independent state. Colonel Gaddafi of Libya - now there's a name from the past, wonder what happened to him? - at one time was visited by a delegation of Protestant paramilitaries who convinced him that this was not a straightforward anti-Imperialist struggle and got him to cease sending arms to the IRA.

I think a few of the commenters to this article still literally do not know of the existence of the Protestant population. If they do know of it, they ain't showing it.

The ignorance that is rational for individuals can do great harm.

What are your experiences of spectacular historical ignorance? What effect does that ignorance have? To count, examples should not be the ignorance of the illiterate and semi-literate. There are millions on Earth who do not know the world is round. That is sad but not interesting. What is sad but interesting is the state of those for whom some basic historical fact is an "unknown unknown", to use Rumsfeld's formulation.

On second thoughts, why confine ourselves to history? A Scottish friend of mine relates that some of people she talks to in her part of the world literally think that the financial crisis of 2008 arose because bankers took "all the money" for bonuses. They think the government could get all the money back and make everything OK again, had it but the willpower. Discussing the matter, she modified that slightly, and said that if these friends and acquaintances were ever to articulate the idea I have just described they would probably see that it could not be correct, but they never have articulated it. This is in a Labour-voting but by no means deprived area near Glasgow, but I would not bet on the proportion of people thinking thus in my Tory part of Essex being much different, for all that 'banksters' keep the local economy going.

These holes in peoples' knowledge will have their effect in the end. One could call it trickle-up ignorance.

(32)

The IMF auditors have arrived in Dublin. What should Ireland do now?

(20)

According to Allison Bray writing in the Irish Independent the smoking rate in Ireland has soared despite the Irish smoking ban.

Despite hikes in tobacco tax, the smoking ban and a new law against the public display of cigarettes for sale, the number of smokers has steadily risen since 2007 when 29pc of the population smoked.

The survey, which was conducted between March and September, revealed the largest group of smokers -- 45pc -- is aged between 16 and 30.

The Irish Independent article is actually over a year old, but still of interest, I thought. I found it via a comment from Dave Atherton to this post by Mahendra Jadeja at Big Brother Watch.

(5)

Is this how the EU got a Yes to Lisbon from the Irish? asks Mary Ellen Synon in the Irish Daily Mail, reprinted in the British one.

Ireland and the other eurozone countries might be suffering savage spending cuts, but the EU self-publicity budget thrives: in 2008 the Open Europe think-tank calculated that the EU was spending at least €2 billion a year on 'information'.

Much of it bent, which is to say, propaganda. The commission actually admits that its information is bent. One of its publications declares: 'Genuine communication by the European Union cannot be reduced to the mere provision of information'.

Hotel Manos Stephanie (‘the Louis XV furniture, marble lobby and plentiful antiques set a standard of elegance rarely encountered,’ the hotel brags, and so it should since the rate is listed at €295 a night for a single room).

(24)

I've had a busy day, so do not have time for much Samizdata-ing, but I think that most of us will be agreeing that this is quite good news:

Irish homeowners can now legally use guns to defend themselves if their homes are attacked under new legislation.

Yes it's not good when your home gets "attacked under new legislation". Sorry. Carry on.

The new home defense bill has moved the balance of rights back to the house owner if his home is broken into "where it should always have been", say top Irish police.

The police association of superintendents and inspectors, the AGSI, stated that "the current situation, which legally demands a house owner retreat from an intruder, was intolerable".

I know, I know, it probably doesn't go far enough, but it is a step in the right direction. I particularly like what "AGSI" said. Wish we had something like AGSI here. Our policemen have the default position which just goes: leave everything to us sir. As in: leave everything to us and if you dare to do anything except surrender, just because we only got there a day late, we'll arrest you.

Thank you Guido, where this piece is currently number two on his list of "Seen Elsewhere" stuff.

(12)

Shane Greer reports on his attempt to get Westminster City Council to recycle business waste. It turns out that the council, while willing to collect his office's waste, will not recycle any of that waste - and will fine him if he puts his waste in recycling facilities aimed at domestic users. That sounds awfully like punishing businesses that try to be green.

The problem with councils running recycling services is that they are inefficient and fail to innovate. They use outdated methods that are expensive, and end up recycling in the same way as British Leyland used to make Austin Minis (at a loss).

In large parts of Ireland, a recent report by Gordon Hector points out, the state has let the free market deal with refuse collection: individual customers choose from private companies and pay directly, rather than through council tax. Competition has meant that technologies and methods unknown in the UK have been deployed. Greyhound, one of Ireland's larger waste companies, recycles 87% of the rubbish it receives (because recycling is good for its profits). The best-performing council in the UK only recycles 55% of waste; the lowest 11%.

This might not compute with environmental activists, but yet again we see that the free market is greener than state control.

- Update: On another brain-dead environmental issue, have a look what the council at Basingstoke is doing to destroy the local environment and harm taxpayers simultaneously, by pushing development into the beautiful Lodden Valley, instead of on the bod-standard land it already owns in Manydown.

(3)

Anyone worried by Natalie's posting below should be aware that you ain't seen nuttin' yet. Tom Griffin of The Green Ribbon has obtained a full listing of the information it is intended to collect (and distribute among various authorities) concerning those buying tickets to move from any one of Britain, the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland to any of the others.

There has been a common travel area since St Patrick, and this was formalised in the 20th century when the countries of Britain and Ireland came incompletely apart. Now it seems both governments are in effect conspiring to introduce internal passports and replace a common travel area with a common surveillance area.

[hat-tip: spyblog]

(5)

Some fine folks have set up a message board called the Irish Liberty Forum for anybody interested in libertarian ideas, with a focus on Ireland (the name is a dead give away). So... check it out and feel free to report on the quality of conversation.

Now that the Freedom Institute is sadly defunct (it went belly up last year), there is great need for some genuine pro-liberty voices in Ireland to counter the paleo-Marxist Indymedia crap that seems to be in such evidence there.

(29)

There's a new social trend in Belfast whereby women are dropping their children off to school still in their pajamas. This has got the local worthies of Belfast worried, and a little peeved.

In a bulletin to parents, Mr McGuinness wrote: “Over recent months the number of adults leaving children at school and collecting children from school dressed in pyjamas has risen considerably.

“While it is not my position to insist on what people wear, or don’t, I feel that arriving at the school in pyjamas is disrespectful to the school and a bad example is set to children.”

Women walking round Belfast estates in all-day pyjama gear is a phenomenon that has been well documented by Robin Livingstone, a columnist in the Andersonstown News, but until now it has been confined to the west of the city.

Mr Livingstone said that he first identified All Day Pyjama Syndrome (ADPS) in 2003. He knows a student at the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education who is writing a dissertation on the subject.

The women are colloquially known as “pyjama mamas” or “Millies”. Their pyjama ensembles are often complemented by large, gold hoop earrings known as “budgies” – because such cage birds could swing from them. They also sport “scrunchies” to create the “Turf Lodge facelift”, in which the hair is scraped so tightly to the back of the head that it pulls the facial skin taut.

There is even a dress hierarchy among those suffering from APDS: the wearing of silk-effect, baggy pyjamas with fluffy, mule-type slippers contrasts, for example, with the traditional dressing gown and hair rollers.

Bloggers, who of course are famous for working in their pajamas, should rally around the millies, and defend their right to drop off their offspring at school, no matter how unsightly it may appear.

First they came for the millies....

(16)

The Irish government has this week succeeded in their plans to help restore a monopoly in health insurance, as the main private insurer was yesterday forced to withdraw from business, leaving the state behemoth with only one tiny rival left to prevent it from controlling the market. Risk equalisation payments which cost them a million €uro every week left BUPA with no choice but to leave.

For those unacquainted with the health insurance market, risk equalisation is a device designed to underpin community rating: a regulation of health insurance whereby the level of risk a consumer poses to an insurer must not affect the premium paid; i.e. everyone must be offered the same products at the same price regardless of their age, gender, or personal health characteristics. A sceptical observer might wonder why a healthy young person should have to pay the same as a sick geriatric, or in what sense this is really insurance at all. Well, the justification given is that, without this scheme, and the associated regulations of lifetime cover and open enrolment, no-one would be willing to offer sick or old people a health plan they could afford. Therefore, the argument goes, it is acceptable that young people are overcharged in order to prevent this. Community rating is designed to produce inter-generational subsidies, and is a clear example of cradle-to-grave statism.

However, community rating alone does not fully prevent competition - it is possible for more than one insurance company to offer community-rated products simultaneously, as indeed was the case in Ireland for the last ten years. It's a heavily regulated market (imagine if car insurers were not allowed to discriminate according to the risk profile and vehicles of their customers, or house insurance had to ignore the likelihood of flooding or earthquakes in any particular area), but we proved that it can exist sustainably.

So, to really cut out competition, there are several other things you have to do. The first thing that the Irish government did for the last number of years was to give its dominant state provider preferential treatment with respect to the requirements of its solvency reserves. While that did hurt the private operators, it did not totally force them out of business. So our supposedly pro-market government decided to trigger risk equalisation: a device which is theoretically meant to correct discrepancies between customer bases by forcing insurers with younger customers to subsidise their rivals with older, costlier, riskier members. In our case, what it actually did was threaten the main private insurer with having to subsidise its wealthy state rival with nearly three times its operating profits, for little discernible reason and despite clear, logical protests from professional economists in Ireland's major universities (for example listen to this file).

The result of all of this: BUPA is forced to quit, leaving increased power to the state company. According to leaked documents, this company is preparing to increase its premiums by 15% each year over the next three years, clearly exploiting its position of power to the fullest. The public has been duped, and has absolutely no clue.

What's more, no-one is going to stand up for them. An Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern revealed his lack of understanding of the issues by launching an ignorant attack against BUPA. The powerful trade union controlling the state monopoly then announced that it would fight against any efforts to break up this company into competing units. And the mainly left-wing opposition has, predictably, come up short in its handling of this issue.

My question is this: what would you call a private business that was able to intimidate and then forcefully eliminate anyone who dared to compete with it? That's right, you would call it a highly organised criminal outfit. So why is the government any different?

(12)

Although I have lived in Belfast for a very long time, I have rarely written about it, primarily because of hate-mongering gits who turn any mention of Northern Ireland into an excuse for personal attack and pointless flaming. So... if you are one of them, go away. This article will bore you and any attempt to discuss politics will be deleted on sight.

Few of our readers have the slightest knowledge of Belfast outside of what is written over drinks in the Europa Hotel bar or from live media feeding frenzies where a handful of rioters get photographed, filmed and interviewed by a small army of bleeding-lede starved media mavens. This creates a distorted view of our town and has virtually no relationship to the daily lives of anyone who lives here. The 'exciting' Belfast is long gone. This is not to say we do not have some problems with hooligans, particularly around July 12th...

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Reporters at the Europa missed this one!

What the reporters do not bother to show you is that this is an incredibly beautiful place. When we get a perfect day like today, It is simply stunning. That is what this article is about. Nothing newsworthy. Nothing political. I simply went shopping, about a mile or two of walking on foot, and took a few photos to share with you. Since the small size allowable on the front page does not do the images justice, I have made them clickable for those who really want to get the full impact of the high resolution images.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
The geography of Belfast is dominated by the Belfast Lough and the hills on either side.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
There are a fair few churches about.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Even a wee neighborhood shopping center looks nice in the summer sunlight.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
There are parks and parklets everywhere.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
There is a bird sanctuary just the other side of this railway bridge.

Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved

If there is any point to this article other than a hot day diversion, it is that journalists are trained to see and report what is ugly and mean in life while bloggers are free to show what is fun and beautiful and good with nary a worry about getting sacked for it.

Now... where did I put those extra icecube trays?

(8)

Slugger O'Toole has a picture and a round up of links of what the 'bogosphere' is saying if you are interesting in what happened in Dublin.

(4)

I received a web launch reception invite via email a couple days ago and had no particular idea why I was on the list. However, as is the case in the music world and a capital offense in that of journalism, one never, ever, passes up free food and drink.

Much to my surprise, this launch of the Britain and Ireland web site for contemporary conversations is the brain child of the British Council and our good friend Mick Fealty (Slugger O'Toole).

The new site will encourage discussion on historical and current entwinement (or entanglement) of Irish and British affairs with monthly articles as talking points. The site was introduced by Trevor Ringland and keynoted by footballer Niall Quinn. I am sure the 'discussion as a contact sport' I expect on this site will make even a rugby game look tame, let alone league football.

If you are interested in this part of the world, I am sure this will become a 'must read'.

Mick Fealty practices being an amputee and nailed
to a cross in preparation for discussions on Britain and Ireland
Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved.

(25)

In the last couple days I have written, and then deleted unpublished, several articles about the IRA's much ballyhooed decommissioning (or 'decommissioning', depending on what you believe to be the truth) of its weapons. In short, I am not sure what I think.

To try and make head or tail of what is going on, I have been hanging out at Slugger O'Toole.

And I still cannot figure out if it is cause to celebrate or just another ploy.

(29)

Forgive me if I am not breaking out the champagne just yet at the announcement that the ethnic collectivists of the IRA have declared their 'armed campaign is over'. Of course the fact their 'decommissioning' of arms will take place in private, in marked contrast to the indecent haste with which the UK government has started very publicly ripping down its fortifications, just conforms my view that Blair is a credulous fool.

Contrary to the woolly impression some of the media's dafter talking heads are giving (I really must stop watching early morning TV, bad for the blood pressure), the IRA is not disbanding and unless I see large piles of semtex being burned in front of Stormont, I very much doubt anything more than a token number of already unserviceable weapons and expired explosives will be put beyond their reach as an organisation.

I may not be a huge fan of the ethnic collectivists of the DUP either, but they are the ones who seem to me to be exhibiting the most appropriate amount of continuing distain for Sinn Fein/IRA and so are offering only highly contingent acknowledgement of this latest 'breakthrough'.

My guess is there is a lot less to this that meets the eye. Like the song says: "Don't believe the hype."

(80)

Whilst Britain remains fixated on the aftermath of Tony Blair's unprecedented third term victory against their intellectually bankrupt and dependably inept opponents, it would behove people in Britain to pay a bit more attention to the electoral earthquake which shook Ulster which has resulted in David Trimble's relatively moderate Ulster Unionist Party has almost completely collapsing in favour of Ian Paisley Democratic Unionist Party.

Now that the only two significant political players locally are the two extremist parties from either side of the sectarian divide, things look like they are about to get dramatically more... interesting. The message from the Northern Ireland's protestant majority seems pretty damn clear to me but is anyone actually listening? I have a feeling I am going to be spending a lot more time keeping tabs on what get said on Slugger O'Toole, that most indispensable source of insights for all things Northern Irish, to see how things develop.

(3)

I usually steer clear of 'local' stories because I will almost certainly be pilloried no matter what I say. But this is just too silly to pass up.

It seems that a sociology professor, one not from a Northern Ireland university, thinks the Red Hand of Ulster is a sectarian symbol. In most cases I would just roll my eyes and mutter about 'outsiders' who can not possibly be expected to understand a place as confusing as Northern Ireland.

This is not the case for the Red Hand. In fact, it is partly a symbol of some of my own ancestors: The O'Neill clan. The 'Kings' of Ireland. My maternal grandpa was an O'Neill and there is a wee red hand in that family coat of arms.

Now, if you please Herr Sociologist, tell me why you believe the Red Hand of Ulster is merely a sectarian Unionist symbol? Could it be you have actually never read any Northern Ireland history?

We return now to our regularly scheduled programming... and yes I do intend to post a number of photo stories from Manhattan.

(42)

Hate crime. What it is exactly? Opinions vary but in essence it means that a given crime, such as assault, murder or defamation, will be treated more seriously if the perpetrator is judged to be motivated by certain politically disfavoured prejudices.

It means that if someone smashes a bottle in your face because you are black (or catholic or muslim or homosexual), rather than because they want to steal your wallet or because they caught you in flagrante delicto with their girlfriend, then that is more serious. The actual substance of the crime is not what makes it a 'hate' crime, just the motivation to commit it against a member of a designated group of people based on their race (which in reality means 'certain races'), religions (meaning 'certain religions') or sexual orientations (meaning 'homosexuals'), that then becomes a hate crime... crimes against philanderers, drunks, football supporters, loud mouths etc. are not hate crimes.

You may hate supporters of Celtic Football Club but if you bash one of them over the head with a two by four, that is not a 'hate crime', it is just assault and perhaps GBH. Unless of course the Celtic supporter in question happens to be a nominal Catholic but you are a nominal Protestant.

It is a criminal act which attracts extra sanction because of what the perpetrator was thinking at the time. In short, a 'hate crime' is a 'thought crime', albeit one usually only applied to thoughts held by certain politically disfavoured classifications of people.

Do you really trust something as corrupt and fallible as a political process to create laws not on demonstrable facts (who hit who with the two by four) but on what people think? Sure, motivation matters: for example being put in fear of your life can justify violence in self-defence, even (sometimes) in Britain. But to legislate that certain groups are more sacrosanct than others is collectivism at its most intellectually pernicious because it denies the individual basis of rights and assigns value on the basis of group membership. We all know where that can end up.

If you think laws should be based on crimes against individuals regardless of what race/religion or sexual orientation they have, then you might want to go over to the Hansard Society on-line consultation on Hate Crime in Northern Ireland and tell them that group rights are not a form of human rights, they are their antithesis.

(8)

News of large scale arrests of criminals in Baghdad carried out by Iraqi police are welcome, provided there is due process and it is not simply a trawling operation. It does however demonstrate the differing priorities of an army of occupation versus a police force.

The International Herald Tribune article taken from the New York Times also mentions a drop in 'spectacular' terrorist attacks over the past three weeks. Those of us who consider that terrorist groups usually prosper in a climate of lawlessness will ponder the Iraqi situation and reflect on Northern Ireland.

There is little doubt that massive police activity will uncover some terrorist networks and disrupt potential attacks: for example raiding the home of a criminal can turn up equipment intended for terrorist actions.

In Northern Ireland all sorts of crimes, from welfare benefit fraud, fraudulent elections, fire insurance scams, drug dealing, protection rackets, unlicensed gambling and alcohol premises, contract killings and woundings, are tolerated on the grounds that the 'peace process' must be kept going.

For the first time in months, I get the sense that Iraq may be going in the right direction. I wish this were the case of Londonderry and Belfast. I have felt for a long time that the violence in Northern Ireland should be considered a law-enforcement problem, separate from politics.

(13)

Given that Ireland is almost a poster boy for 'before-and-after' for what liberalising an economy can do, it is a pity that the people who argue for continuing that process have to couch their words in defensive language. Nevertheless, the Progressive Democrats seems to be making a far better case in Ireland for freeing markets than the pointless British Tories are.

Progressive Democrats president, Mr McDowell, last night issued a rallying call to fellow Ministers to hold to the Government's liberal economic policy agenda, saying tax-cutting and deregulation have helped transform the State.

[...]

He rejected the accusation that supporters of this way believed in the unleashing of unbridled market forces. "It is the essence of the liberal, republican tradition that the market is the servant and not the master of the people. No one I know argues that Ireland is or should be an economy rather than a society."

"Market is the servant and not the master of the people"... but what does that actually mean? It seems to me that an economy can be social, but only when it is not political... and Ireland can only 'be an economy, rather than a society' if politics (i.e, manipulation of the state) has so much control over what is done as to make the economy simply an adjunct of the state and its political processes, wiping out the economic underpinnings of society and the social underpinnings of markets.

So yes, I am all in favour of people in Ireland living in a society, and the only way to do that is to have a free social market rather than a politically regulated economy.

(5)

Occasionally, one stumbles across actions of the regulatory state that masquerade as market policies. Irish health insurance falls into this category.

Health insurance is always a tricky subject as it falls into the wider issues of how private sector medicine can be established. In Europe, with its wide diversity of state driven medical practices, plus voluntary health insurance and complentary health insurance as a tolerated private sector, it is difficult to envisage how one would wean the populace off these systems, even with impending bankruptcy looming. The 'Big Bang' approach of deregulation would not work as the infrastructure and skillset to develop an entrepreneurial model does not exist and this is one area where the gradual replacement of state structures by the private sector and/or civil society may be more appropriate. Complex and difficult issues to grasp with few answers.

One of the wrong answers has been established by the Irish Health Insurance Authority. Most Irish health insurance was the monopoly of a state mandated organisation, the VHI, until the European Union forced the government to open up the marketplace to competition.

In order to ensure that consumers were protected, the Irish government has enforced certain regulations that were written into EU law. The health insurance marketplace has to observe three rules: community rating, open enrollment and lifetime cover.

Community rating is a system that equalises the premiums of health insurance contracts for all consumers, regardless of the health risk individuals represent to a health insurer. Basically, subject to certain terms and conditions, the cost of private health insurance to consumers is the same irrespective of age, gender and state of health.

Open Enrolment is the practice whereby all applicants for private health insurance cover are accepted by a health insurer, regardless of their risk status (subject to maximum age limits and prescribed waiting periods).

Lifetime cover is a system that guarantees health insurance consumers the right to renew their policies, irrespective of factors such as age, risk status or claims history.

In practice, health insurers in Ireland are not allowed to differentiate risks on an individual basis, refuse candidates for insurance or cancel a policy. Furthermore, if the market structure develops so that the risk profile of some companies, based upon the claims experience and age profile of their insureds, worsens at the expense of others, the Irish Health Insurance Authority has the power to levy cash transfers between companies with favourable risk profiles to those without.

What are the consequences? Removing the individual differentiation of risk from insurers prevents them from incentivising individuals through lower premium payments to follow potentially less unhealthy lifestyles. Through the prevention of risk management, the Irish government has ensured that health insurers will be unwilling to innovate in order to maximise profits from their customers. Even if they do, they will probably be penalised for having a favourable risk profile (since this can be the only explanation for a more profitable health insurer in Ireland). Worst of all, they prevent their own population from understanding the risks and actions that are required to live a long and healthy life. It is now clear that health insurance policies do not provide for all of the health needs of individuals, families or the community. To provide for anticipated health costs, health insurance must be complemented by self insurance with people setting aside certain sums for these particular bills.

The Irish, like the British, will get a poor health service, due to the lack of market forces, and will still have to provide self insurance (or as it is known in the old fashioned sense, their savings), in order to save themselves pain and time.

(43)

It is galling to read endless utilitarian articles for and against banning smoking on commercial (but nevertheless private) property with nary a mention of whether it is actually just to enact authoritarian proscriptions on the acts of others who are, after all, in voluntary close proximity.

At least the erratic Telegraph takes a fairly good stab at doing just that:

Other politicians throughout Europe will be watching the Irish experiment closely. You can be sure that if the Irish surrender to the new law without a strong show of resistance, it will not be long before a similar ban is introduced in Britain.

So Irish smokers have a responsibility to freedom-lovers everywhere to make their displeasure felt. They have already come up with some ingenious suggestions for exploiting loopholes in the new law. We wish them luck in finding more.

We note that prisons are among the very few workplaces exempted from the ban. So anyone incarcerated in the cause of freedom will at least be allowed the consolation of a smoke.

Light up, Ireland. Do not cooperate in your own repression.

(8)

recoup (v.) recouped, recouping, recoups v. tr. To receive an equivalent for; make up for: recoup a loss. To return as an equivalent for; reimburse. Law. To deduct or withhold (part of something due) for an equitable reason.

v. intr.
To regain a former favorable position.

So when we are told that a committee of the Irish parliament will tell the Irish government that it should...

�use taxes or development levies to recoup some of the windfall profits made by property speculators when their land is rezoned.

... we are being told the Irish government should receive an equivalent for; make up for: recoup a loss.

Now how exactly does a property owner profiting from a change in the manner in which the Irish state abridges their property rights (i.e. land use zoning), thereby cause the Irish state a loss that needs to be recouped?

It should be clear that what we have here is an example of our old friend 'meta-context' at work again. Underpinning the suggested tax increase is the unspoken axiom that the economy exists for the purpose of allowing the state to acquire resources and any profits derived from the economy which benefit someone else other than the state are in fact a 'loss' for the state. That is to say, this is just a slight variation on the bizarre economic fallacy that someone else getting richer perforce makes someone else poorer. The self-evident concept of wealth creation simply does not register.

I wonder how many people sitting in that Oireachtas committee set to tell the Irish leader to increase those taxes would find the notion that the only reason the state 'allows' people to engage in economic activity for their own benefit at all is so that the state can tax them? My guess is that it would not be a commonly held overt belief but if you were to actually strap a number of mainstream Irish journalists and TDs to chairs and question them, teasing out the unspoken underlying assumptions within which they see the world, that is indeed what you would discover to be the case.

(6)

In what is a splendid testament to the sense and wisdom of Irish youth, when the EU held a conference for young people in Ireland (free registration required)... how many young Irish people turned up?

None.

Clearly they had better things to do. How very, very, very, splendid.

(15)

I hope that nobody in Ireland was naive enough to imagine that the recent public smoking prohibition was the zenith of their government's ambitions.

Not even close. In fact, they are just getting warmed up:

After piloting through radical laws that will ban smoking in Irish pubs at the end of the month, Irish Health Minister Micheal Martin pledged to bring in new controls on alcohol.

Martin's smoking prohibition will mean that anyone found lighting up in bars and restaurants after March 29 will face a fine of up to 3,000 euros.

Addressing his Fianna Fail party's annual conference, Martin said he now planned to target the country's alcohol problem and to encourage "responsible" drinking, in particular targeting under-age offenders.

Lord only knows what else is on his 'hit-list' but his blood his up and his nostrils are flared with the scent of victory so its onwards and upwards to new frontiers of micro-management. His is an addiction for which is there is no 'cold turkey'. It is a thirst that can never be quenched and neither reason nor persuasion can divert such people from their mission.

How apposite is the wisdom of C.S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I have posted this quotation here on Samizdata before but the age in which we live demands that it be repeated again and again.

(1)

Our good friends at Slugger O'Toole were featured on the Northern Ireland TV show "Hearts and Minds" tonight. Politicians from across the spectrum heaped praise on what the blog has accomplished for local politics.

We had Mick Fealty's smiling face in multiple cuts. The previous time I saw it was after about six pints (or so) in the local, well... locals some months ago. He didn't look quite the same on TV as when I last saw him that night, searching for his coat under the legs at the bar...

(16)

David is too easily impressed. Over here in Ireland, we were doing public sector cannibalism when public sector cannibalism wasn't cool.

In 1992, the Irish Labour party broke with tradition by entering into a coalition government with Fianna Fail. The Labour party had increased its share of the vote after a campaign of vigorous opposition to Fianna Fail. To placate its voters, most of whom had expected that they were kicking FF out of government, and because they were feeling cocky, Labour demanded a whole raft of rhetorical leftiness in the government program. One of these was to rename the crusty old "right wing" Department of Justice as the brand new, "compassionate" Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. A consequence of this was the establishment of Citizen Traveller, charged with:

implementing an integrated communications initiative to promote the visibility and participation of Travellers within Irish society, to nurture the development of Traveller pride and self confidence, and to give Travellers a sense of community identity that could be expressed internally and externally.

This translates as: a Traveller-advocacy group working out of a government department, their motto: "Promoting travellers as an ethnic minority". So when one government department - the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform - enacted legislation to enable the police to evict caravans which were trespassing on private property, a branch of the same government department - Citizen Traveller - took out expensive billboard and newspaper advertisements to protest this "racist and unworkable law".

We are unfortunate in that, despite his classical liberal background, our current Justice minister Michael McDowell has developed a Blunkett-like authoritarianism but he is to be congratulated for phasing "Equality" out of his department and ultimately shutting down Citizen Traveller.

(2)

I mentioned before that Ireland has an oxymoronically titled Competition Authority. If that level of government intrusion was all we had to worry about, I wouldn't mind too much. Unfortunately we are also saddled with the similarly Orwellian-sounding Equality Authority. Their motto is "Diversity for an Equal Ireland" or "Equality for a Diverse Ireland" or something else equally bland but diversely platitudinous like "Be Reasonable, It Pays!". This bunch of state-stipended, humourless entitlement-enforcers is headed by - some achievement this - probably the most pompous man in Ireland: Niall Crowley. He is an insistent hectoring presence on our radio waves. Through the the op-ed and letters pages of our newspapers he regularly reminds us of our "reponsibilities" in prose laden with jargon, tautologies and sundry infelicities. So it was with delight today that I read Blog Irish's eloquent skewering of this self-serving organisation and supremo.

(44)

One of the most appealing aspects of a libertarian outlook is simplicity. It is often the case that when one examines, in greater depth, what initially appears to be a libertarian conundrum, it proves not to be. One such faux-dilemma, suggested to me by Alan K. Henderson's comments to Andy's post below, is the extent to which liberty can be threatened by non-state interests.

This can be the basis for populist political crusades against "Big Oil", "Big Pharma", even "Big Food". The faux libertarian conundrum is the notion that we need a strong state as a guarantor of "real competition": to break up monopolies in the interests of consumers. Yet surely such interference in the market is un-libertarian? In reality the conundrum evaporates when one examines how such monopolies arise. Put simply, monopolies wither in the free market and thrive under state regulation. Such monopolies, rightfully abhorrent to any free market capitalist or libertarian, are sustained by the very political system which seeks to regulate them. Just as the enforced "tolerance" of multiculturalism is a form of intolerance, so enforced competition is inimical to true free-market competition.

A similar dilemma is suggested by considering the plight of those in Northern Ireland who have fallen foul of paramilitaries. It matters little to a person tortured or exiled on threat of death whether his tormentors are acting for the state or a paramilitary group, Yet so-called human rights bodies such as Amnesty International, pay little attention to the human rights of such individuals, reserving their comments for infringements by state forces. Glenn Reynolds struck a chord when he cheered David Trimble for pointing this out. Needless to say this did not go down too well with some of the socialists and nationalists who comment at Slugger O'Toole. The conundrum is that surely a libertarian can agree with Amnesty's justification: It is proper to be more concerned by state abuses than actions by private agents.

In examining this "conundrum" it also evaporates but leads to a surprising, counter-intuitive insight. In the segregated, working class urban 'bantustans' of Northern Ireland, paramilitaries are in a position to exert punishment and enforce exiles because they have been ceded a monopoly of violence. By the state. Local hostility to police forces means they are reluctant to carry out normal policing and individuals are prevented from defending themselves. This gives the paramilitaries a free run. Though they are nominal antagonists, the IRA effectively operates a monopoly of violence backed by the British state. The plight of its victims should be the proper concern of any agency which professes to uphold human rights.

(6)

French anti-terror police have arrested five people suspected of links with the Real IRA. This is the splinter group of the IRA that is opposed to the peace process (such as it may be) and has been blamed for a series of attacks since breaking away from the IRA. The most serious was the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people and was the worst single atrocity in 30 years of violence.

The suspects were all French nationals and they are suspected of involvement in a support network for the Irish group. They were held after police discovered a cache of weapons and ammunition outside the ferry port of Dieppe.

(17)

This article on White Rose is rather interesting and really rather heartening...

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties says it will prosecute any priests found distributing or quoting the Pope's anti-gay document for hate crimes.

I have long feared incremental statism more than revolutionary statism, because revolutions are easy to notice and thus easy to shoot at and, more importantly, get support from other people when you do. Incremental diminution of liberty however falls within the 'boiling frog' syndrome. By the time people notice, it is too late.

Now I really do not care what the Catholic Church has to say about gays or whatever... that is matter for practicing Catholics, not a well and truly lapsed one like me. But I am rather interested in anything which could well cause a major collision between civil society and the state.

You see, what I see here is that sooner or later, the Irish state is going to find itself confronted by a Catholic Priest who loudly proclaims in unambiguous language what the state defines as 'hate speech' by strongly depreciating homosexual relationships... and the state will be faced with in effect prosecuting someone for being a Catholic and following ex cathedra Catholic doctrines to the letter.

And then all of a sudden, when it becomes clear that the state has decided it will give itself a force-backed say in what gets said from the pulpits of Catholic Churches, millions of people who are voluntary members of a civil non-state social organization called The Roman Catholic Church are going to have to look long and hard at how they see the state. I could not ask for better grounds on which to draw up an army for that particular fight.

I think rather a lot of them will come to the conclusion that...The state is not your friend.

More and faster please.

(37)

As a libertarian I shall boycott Ryanair on political grounds while that state- backed parasite Michael O'Leary is in charge.

Before I explain, my apologies to Andy Duncan, for I intend to exercise the privilege of a Samizdatista and make my comment on his posting below a posting in itself. I want lots of people to read it and think as I do.

Why am I so against O'Leary? No, it is not his cheap flights (in themselves cheap flights are a good thing), nor his not paying dividends (I neither know nor care about dividends), nor his safety record (take the risk or don't: up to you), nor his comments about wishing to be a dictator (unimportant bombast), nor the environment (a side issue: to protect it, privatise it), nor his intention to move his business elsewhere if the bureacrats mess him about (I actively like that bit).

It's because he intends to make his airline strong by massive compulsory purchase of people's homes, homes they love and desperately want to keep, so that airports can be expanded. Stansted Airport is the one I know about personally, but I stress that state compulsory purchase for any airport anywhere is as clear a violation of liberty as you will ever see. Like force-advocates everywhere O'Leary has a pep-talk about how it's all necessary for the greater good, adding a positively Stakhanovite spiel about how Britain must compete with France and Germany. I stress that he doesn't merely go along with this because he can't imagine any other way; he is an enthusiast.

Also my neighbour saw him speak and said he was an arrogant git.

(42)

I don't know if AynRand.org runs an annual awards ceremony, but if they do, I'd like to nominate Michael O'Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, for the Hank Rearden Award for Top Quality Businessman of the Year. Check out this piece, in today's Telegraph.

Just to tempt you, here's some quotes:

We are never paying a dividend as long as I live and breathe and as long as I'm the largest individual shareholder.

It gets better:

Go to Waterside [BA headquarters] and tell Rod [BA's chief executive] he's going to grow profits by 12pc this year and he'd have an orgasm... God speed [Rod]. You're doing an outstanding job. Keep it up.

Our friends, the EU, are also thinking of prosecuting Ryanair on some spurious grounds of whether Ryanair received state aid at Charleroi airport, its Brussels' base. O'Leary describes this as:

Regulatory bullsh*t.

Excellent! Michael O'Leary has also said that if the EU rule against him, he will shut Charleroi down, and sack its 3,000 workforce. He rounded off this promise, in typically uncompromising fashion, with the following statement:

I've no intention of making life easy for bureaucrats.

Bravo, sir! Unfortunately for Dagny Taggart-style ladies everywhere, multi-millionaire Michael O'Leary is getting hitched soon, though he's not letting it put him off his financial stride:

The reception is going to be cheap. The honeymoon is going to kill me.

Though recently, his thoughts have also strayed to politics and sport:

I think a right-wing dictatorship led by me would not only improve the Irish economy but the Irish football team too.

What a dude. I've got some Irish blood in me. If Michael O'Leary ever becomes Prime Minister of Ireland, I wonder if they'll let me swap passports? I quite fancy Dundalk, which remarkably, is also the home town of The Corrs.

(3)

Brendan O'Neill has been lamenting the postponement of elections in Northern Ireland, pointing out this is profoundly anti-democratic. He is of course entirely correct.

However as long as the state is allowed to have more or less unlimited potential power over civil society, it cannot be unexpected that in a tribal place like Ulster, folks in a given community are going to be terrified of The Others having their hands on the levers of power. I suspect trying to share so much power is at worst a futile hope leading to more violence and at best, a Mexican stand-off.

Surely at least part of the solution is to simply bind ALL political power in Northern Ireland hand and foot with a written constitution that places pretty much every aspect of life that really matters off-limits to the vagaries of democratic politics. Worried about those 'dirty Fenian Tagues poisoning our schools'? So abolish state educational conscription completely and leave it to churches, community groups, socialist-group-hug-collectives, business guilds, whoever, that way the 'Tagues' do not have to worry about the 'stinking Orangemen' doing the same to their children. Just apply this to all the centralised power functions (such as planning and land use) for full juicy goodness. Once you have done that, it would seem to me that much of the reason to try and bomb people into/out of power becomes... well... pointless.

Democracy is fine, just as long as the people being voted for cannot actually do anything. Think outside the (ballot) box. Be a radical.

(16)

There will be no ticker-tape parades for the returning heroes of Gulf War II and, given the current political and cultural climate, I suppose that is understandable. However, one would have thought that Mr.Blair might at least see the benefit of a suitably discreet pause before publicly shafting them:

Tony Blair is prepared to radically scale down the Royal Irish Regiment as part of his proposals to persuade the IRA to destroy all its weapons and halt all paramilitary operations, army and political sources claimed yesterday.

So it appears as if the Royal Irish Regiment, whose members fought with such gallantry and tenacity in the Battle for Basra as far back as...ooh, let's see...a few days ago, are to be issued with a whole new set of marching orders. Thanks very much, chaps, now fuck off!

The irony can surely only be desribed as breath-taking. Whilst neither Saddam's Ba'athist thugs nor his Republican Guards could put so much as a dent in them, their very existance as a fighting unit is about to be sacrificed by a government that will stop at nothing in a (vain) attempt to appease the brooding war-dogs of Sinn Fein/IRA.

(27)

Members of Sinn Fein/IRA have been protesting against the war in Iraq, both yesterday and today, as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair meet in Belfast to discuss the shape of post-war Iraq and the Northern Irish peace process.

For some strange reason,
Ba'athist Socialism's crimes do not get any mention...
I wonder why?

That the Marxists of Sinn Fein/IRA should be making common cause with Iraqi Ba'athist Socialism should be no surprise, but that they should be publicly supporting them at a time when the torture chambers and corpse filled warehouses of the regime's victims are now coming to light is very revealing not just of the true character of these people but is a measure of just how out of touch they are. To be honest I can hardly contain my delight at their public display of sheer unalloyed stupidity.

As US and British soldiers fight and die together in Iraq to overthrow a mass murdering tyranny, I wonder how this scene in Ulster will look on television screens in Boston? I look forward seeing what happens the next time someone tries a little fund raising for the Irish Republican 'Army' across the water.

Hello America! We love you!

As stories of the Irish Guards operating skillfully in Basra with tactics honed in Northern Ireland are recounted, I hope a few more noisy protests from the Sinn Fein supporters also make their way across the world's computer and TV screens as they make an interesting contrast.

Irish Guards snipers in Iraq demonstrate the true meaning of Anglosphere solidarity



Irish Guards in Basra

(9)

And British eyes are crying.

The Irish have voted 'yes' in the second referendum on endorsing the Nice Treaty.

Depressing, but predictable given the weight of the government support and the quantity of EU bribe money behind the 'yes' campaign.

I don't suppose a 'no' vote would have scuppered the EU or even slowed it down in any material sense, but it would have dented their own sense of inevitability. Seems now that resistance is, indeed, futile.

The bad guys are winning.

Bugger.

(16)

It had to come out eventually. This week "soldier 027" gave testimony on the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry. He is under careful protection for now so his buddies won't get a chance to silence him.

Those events of long ago were target practice. The Para's were told by an officer before they went out "they might get kills". And they did. They opened fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators and killed thirteen people. Intentionally. With careful aim. Soldier 027 said he believes one soldier was responsible for up to ten of the body count. While his buddies were dropping demonstrators, he was scanning the line of them with his scope, unable to find any threat.

His buddies agreed to a story. His own statements after the event were modified without his knowledge. This shows his superiors were involved and culpable.

It is as if the US National Guard sent to Selma, Alabama did so in hopes of either getting their first kill¹ or adding to their tally, shot a bunch of civil rights workers... and then Johnson claimed the unarmed NAACP demonstrators fired on them... and then by the time an inquiry of "appropriate persons" was convened, the US Army had forged the written record to back up the claim of innocence.

One must note the Paratroop Regiment simply did not belong in Derry. They are an elite war-fighting group intended for serious kill or be killed combat, not police work. I should like to see the persons responsible for that deployment tried and hung for the cold blooded murder of 13 people and the responsibility for all of what came after.

It is not hard to understand why a community would rally around those who would fight back, and I know from discussions over beers in West Belfast that back in those early days of the insurrection the Para's were particular targets.

And they brought it on themselves.

¹ = Unfortunately the Ohio National Guard corrected this oversight. The State is not your friend.

(18)

In the aftermath of what has been bizarrely described as a landmark speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair (or 'The Naive Idiot' as he seems to be known in IRA circles), we are now told in no uncertain terms that the IRA will not disband. Gosh, what a surprise.

As has been the case since British Prime Ministers started making 'landmark speeches' about Northern Ireland from 1968 onwards, and republicans started replying to them, "Sinn Fein's" political spokesmen would have people believe that the Marxist Nationalists of the IRA and the Nationalist Marxists of Sinn Fein are not in fact one and the same thing, regardless of the manifest absurdity of the claim:

Pat Doherty, the Sinn Fein vice-president, said: "The IRA is not Sinn Fein's private army. Sinn Fein is in government because of its electoral mandate and its absolute commitment to the peace process."

And I suppose the SS was not the Nazi Party's private army either. The difference in objectives between the IRA and Sinn Fein are what exactly? Sinn Fein is in government in Ulster in order to induce the IRA to stop setting bombs off. Although it has been manifestly within the capabilities of the British state to achieve a drastic military solution to the main problem of Ulster, the post war British system has ensured that the sort of people who find themselves with their hands on the levers of power in Westminster lack the ruthless Imperial disposition to actually do what would need to be done to put that into effect. Similarly arming the Protestant majority and allowing a bloody 'domestic' demographic solution (i.e. the way it was 'solved' in the former Yugoslavia) is simply far beyond the mindset of modern British polity. None of that is going to change in the foreseeable future of course, as Sinn Fein/IRA are well aware.

So let us not pretend that the persistent terrorist violence of the IRA has not been successful politically and that Sinn Fein is both the beneficiaries and authors of that violence. Accept that and just get on with the process of managing Britain's incremental surrender and withdrawal. Of course if my Green and Orange Northern Irish relatives are anything to go by, what Sinn Fein/IRA will actually get in a post-UK Ulster will be rather different to what they hope for. The Protestants are no more going to disappear under republican pressure than the Nationalists have under British/Loyalist pressure, regardless of what Britain does in the future. The current situation is an Indian Summer, a comfortable delusion that in the long run will be seen to mean a lot less than it currently appears to.

I have always thought it will end extremely badly in Ulster and nothing has changed my mind in the last few years... but to be honest, if I did not know both communities so well I would care a lot more than I actually do.

(13)

In what can only be the yet another indication the the EU intends to ignore even the semblance of democratic norms when it does not suit them, whilst at the same time wrapping themselves in the cloak of legitimacy that the European 'Parliament' allegedly brings:

Günter Verheugen, enlargement Commissioner, said on Wednesday, that it would be difficult to interpret a second No by the Irish: "If a treaty is rejected twice in a country and that country knows exactly that this treaty is a precondition for the conclusions of enlargement negotiations, the outside world cannot make the judge whether the rejections means enlargement or something else."

So if Ireland votes NO to EU enlargement, Günter Verheugen feels it might in fact mean something other than NO to enlargement. I suspect I understand the source of the misunderstanding: When translated by official EU translators from Irish accented English, into Greek and then into Danish and then back into English, the result was:

A pint of Guinness please

However when translated by official EU translators from Irish accented English, into German and then into Swedish and then back into English, the result was:

Top of the morning to you, Mrs. Murphy

Yet when translated by official EU translators from Irish accented English, into Portuguese and then into Italian and then back into English, the result was:

We are just a bunch of Paddy jokers, pay no attention to us

No wonder poor Günter Verheugen is confused as to the meaning of the word NO.

(7)

Not surprisingly the UK and Irish media are filled with the rapidly developing crisis in Northern Ireland. On the face of it, the situation is fairly simple: Following a lengthy investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, culminating in a high profile raid by uniformed officers of the PSNI on Sinn Fein's offices at Stormont itself (the seat of the Northern Irish assembly), Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, has been caught spying at the highest levels of the Northern Irish coalition government of which they are a member. The Ulster Unionists are outraged, the British and Irish governments are stunned and the Northern Irish peace process stands on the very brink of collapse.

And yet...

Can it really have come as a surprise to anyone that Sinn Fein, a Marxist party dedicated to the end of British rule in Ulster and the stripping of the Protestant majority's democratic political power, would be using the fact it is in a coalition government to compile information on its British and Protestant Irish political enemies? Clearly anyone with at least half a brain would expect them to use whatever means presented themselves to acquire information to gain political advantage. The leadership of Sinn Fein are also the leadership of the IRA, which is to say they are people who have gained their place at the very heart of Northern Ireland's government because they have ordered large numbers of people killed over the last few decades. Are these the sort of people who would not use covert means to continue to advance their political agendas?

So if that is hardly unexpected behaviour from people who have got where they are now by the successful use of violence, then why the shock and outrage? Also, are we really to believe that all this information has only now come to light in spite of the fact Ulster is riddled with informants and undercover assets of Britain's rather effective security services? Nonsense. It just does not add up.

Here is what I think is happening:

1. Tony Blair can pretend to Labour dominated Parliament and the readers of the Guardian that the IRA has decommissioned more than a tiny fraction of its weapons and they it had stopped using violence within the Catholic communities of Ulster to maintain their authority, but no one in Northern Ireland really believes that.
   
   
2. Yet Tony Blair was so loath to see his peace process go down the toilet the way of so many before it in Ireland had, that he would overlook almost anything the Republican side did if that was what it would take. As a result Sinn Fein could see all their dreams coming true, in gradual incremental installments.
   
   
3. The Ulster Unionists had been making it clear for quite some time that they have had enough. David Trimble was facing progressively more discontent from within the Ulster Unionists and the crunch point was fast approaching: if he intended to remain as the party's leader, given that the British government of Tony Blair did not have the stomach to face down Sinn Fein, Trimble himself was going to have to pull the plug on the Northern Irish settlement unless Sinn Fein actually lived up to its promises. This would involve him in effect taking the settlement and telling Tony Blair to stick it up his arse.

Result? Tony Blair gets the blame and is shown to have simply been too weak to force Sinn Fein to do what it had promised for real... Political disaster for Labour of the highest magnitude.

So... Given that consummate politician Blair has realised that nothing can now save the Northern Irish peace process from exploding, he decided the only way to minimise the political damage that Trimble would inflict on him is to blame the whole thing going down the crapper on the bad faith of... Sinn Fein. Thus all the information that Blair has in reality known about for years is suddenly 'discovered' following a high profile raid, he washes his hands like Pontus Pilate and says "It's not my fault, oh if only those wicked Sinn Fein people had just been as honest with us as we had been with them".

Of course if Tony Blair, like John Major before him, had not allowed the likes of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to get away with telling a never ending stream of porkies for years in the hope they would eventually 'play nice', we would perhaps have seen a more stable agreement reached... but the fact is there was bad faith on all sides.

(4)

There is an excellent article in the Telegraph which serves as a splendid example of just why so many libertarians regard democracy, as it exists in most countries, with profound ambivalence.

So they are being frogmarched back to the polls to reverse the decision they reached just 15 months ago. This is European democracy, Henry Ford style: you can reach any answer, as long as it is yes. In simply refusing to recognise the outcome of the first referendum, the government makes the point of the No campaigners more eloquently than a thousand speeches.

[...]

Mr Ahern and his supporters are relying upon the electorate accepting that there was something wrong with the June 2001 referendum. Although it produced a clear 54-46 victory for the No side, the turnout was just 35 per cent. This mandate is considered sufficiently unsatisfactory for another to be sought, although nobody for a moment believes that Ireland would be holding a second referendum had the same numbers produced a Yes vote.

If you ever wanted a demonstration of the fact the last thing democracy is about is 'the consent of the people', this is it. It is about justifying the actions of political elites.

As Paul Staines mentioned below, the Irish Young Progressive Democrats explicitly state they are not libertarians and just a glance at their agenda reveals that they are not friends of liberty by any stretch of the imagination. This party is just another bunch of statists pushing the conventional theft based 'welfare' politics of old, claiming responsibility for:

· Introduction of a minimum wage

This is tantamount to saying it is better for you to not have a job at all than to have one at wages that offend someone else.

· Huge increase in overseas aid

In other words 'we have been taking money from you by force and give it to people overseas that you did not choose to give it to via one of the vast number of voluntary international charities'.

· Taxi cab liberalisation

Oh right them... I guess at least someone in the YPDs might have read a book review about a book at about some unpronounceable Austrian free market economist

· Increased social benefits especially pensions

i.e. theft by the state

· Increased funding for education

More theft by the state to fund an activity in which the state has no legitimate role whatsoever

I look forward to being invited to Paul Staine's next garden party with food cooked over a barbecue lit with both his Tory Party and Progressive Democrat Party membership cards.

Paul Staines has views on Irish politics and economics

Whilst I'm very disappointed that Ireland's Progressive Democrats (PD) are campaigning for a Yes vote on the Nice treaty again I noticed Milton Friedman in an interview in this month's Central Banking (sorry, subscription required) excusing Irish membership of�the €uro�because they are a small country with an export orientated economy, he thinks the same can also be said for Central and Eastern European countries eventually joining the €uro.

But the PD's 'Yes' campaign�coupled with the Young Progressive Democrats putting out a policy paper explicitly stating they are liberals, not libertarians, makes me wonder if I'll be throwing my PD party membership card and my Tory party membership card into the fire.

But I've just heard something that strikes me as an indictment of Gordon Brown and a tribute to PD leader Mary Harney's tax cutting agenda. As the Tories tour Europe looking for policies, perhaps they should just dust off some of Thatcher's old manifestos. Mary Harney did just that; she implemented major tax reforms, cutting Ireland's�basic tax rate to 22%, substantially raising tax�thresholds, cutting the number of those liable to pay the top rate of tax, as well as cutting the top rate of tax, exempting the low paid from tax altogether, and finally�slashing capital gains tax from 40% to 20%! State spending went from over 50% of GDP down to 26% today.

Lo and behold, guess�what happened? The Laffer curve smiled on Ireland and the Celtic tiger roared. So much so that Ireland, which was an economic basket case�a little over a decade�ago, now has lower tax rates than the UK, higher economic�growth rates and, unbelievably, higher per capita income than the UK.� Bejesus, would ya believe that?

Come April, Gordon Brown will be putting up basic UK�taxes 2% as we move into an economic�downturn.� Thick Scot, smart Paddies.

Paul Staines

I've actually waited some time and thought a great deal about posting the local angle on the Middle East. I find it sad when a community I am close to sides with my enemies.

Yes, you heard me right. I have known for some time there is considerable sympathy in West Belfast towards everyone in the Middle East who hates the US. I've been in heated arguments with dear friends over it and they and I just let it drop.

The sympathy seems to have moved beyond words in the last few months. A source close to me said there were Palestinian fund raisers at a local Republican bar the last time he spent an evening there. Those of you in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and other heavily Irish cities who remember Republican fund raisers for NORAID should know the model. I never took part in any such myself but I knew well enough about them. A girlfriend bartended one spot North of Pittsburgh that ran them. I also remember being offered a genuine souvineer Derry Rubber Bullet while ordering in my own local of some 20 years standing. Funny enough, that pub was in a Jewish and Academic area of Pittsburgh, so go figure.

If anyone is reading this who actually did "help the cause" back then, I think you should be aware the same people are now using the same techniques to raise money for people who want to see you dead. If the American side of Republicanism has any influence whatever over here, I think a very loud message should be sent back to just "knock it on the head" and send our enemies back where they came from.

I do not wish to classify all Palestinians as my enemy: only those who celebrate the deaths of my countrymen and who support brutal and unhuman tactics of war. Whether the fund raisers are from the suicide bomber tactions or not I do not know. Perhaps someone on the inside can find out.

And yes, I do know a Palestinian or two and they are very decent people thank you. I define my enemies by their actions, not by broad labels.

...Bono

And not for nothing either, as he has taken it upon himself to act as a tool for the Holy Belgian Empire and give the Irish people a sound telling-off for voting 'No' to the Nice Treaty.

"For god sake, if we miss this chance, what are we then?"

Well, obviously, a bunch of unilateralist simplisme Irish cowboys, that's what.

"When I participate in meetings with politicians in Europe then they always bring this up..."

'Louis, Sven, Dirk, come quickly, it's a famous rock star. At last, we can enjoin a profound discussion on the socio-political consequences of Eastward expansion of the existing regulatory framework'.

"They cannot understand that Ireland did what it did with the Nice-treaty. I noted that a lot of politicians became very angry. I think that a 'No' will put Ireland in a selfish light..."

Did you hear that, you scruffy lot in Dublin? If you keep exercising your constitutional right to choose, then the Brussels politicians are going to get very, very, very angry with you. I mean, really angry. They're going to hold an Angry Conference and share their anger. Then they are going to pass at least a few thousand more regulations in pure anger. And then strike primitive, aggressive postures and denounce you, angrily. So just watch your step.

Bono? Is that a proper name? It can't be his real name, surely? Perhaps it stands for something. Somebody once told me that it is Gaelic for 'dickhead'.

Paul Staines points to a party which actually has some commitment to liberty.

I don't vote, well the last time I voted was when Thatcher was leading the Tories. If you can remember those days, it was then that a political party that wanted to lower taxes, promote competition, roll back the state, maintain a fierce fiscal policy, privatise and deregulate got my vote.

What is more it wasn't a fringe no-representative libertarian party, but a governing party. Well there is such a party once more - in Ireland.

The Progressive Democrats have done more for Ireland in the last five years than the other parties did in over 80 years. They brought into politics a party that wasn't genuflecting to the Church nor tracing its lineage back to gun-runners.

As the Tories tack to the centre, my vote remains reluctantly lost to them, but the PDs, the only Thatcherite governing party in Europe, get my vote in principle if not practise.

The Irish election is coming up, see the Progressive Democrats manifesto.

Paul Staines

Monday's Belfast Telegraph headline read Church Facing Priests Crisis. As it was not immediately obvious to me what a priests crisis might be, and because the free copy had been shoved in my bag at Eason's along with my magazine purchases, I spent a few minutes to actually read it.

It seems the Church in Ulster is not attracting many young men to the life of celebacy. Of course, rather than look at itself, the Church blames it on people like us:

"I also think this is a symptom of the culture of liberalism and individualism we live in today. People are not so keen now on life-long commitment, whether that be the priesthood or marriage."

Perhaps if they went back to the old ways: the way things were before Rome tried to use Henry to enforce their will on the Irish Church and got used by him instead. Priests would marry, have great big Irish families and all would be well.

I'll bet this pronouncement did more to up the popularity of individualism in Ulster than all the pub chatter I've done in 15 years.

When he is Irish of course! Well according to Democratic Representatives in US Congress this seems to be the case.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York seems to have allied herself with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (P-IRA). She attempted, with some of her Democratic colleagues, to push through legislation in praise of dead P-IRA terrorists. In this amazing act of stupidity, these Democrats are trying to use the American House of Representatives to further their support for the P-IRA. This group of people obviously do not share most Americans new found distaste for terrorism of any kind. This disgusting legislative act should be widely reported to all who will listen.

Oh yes, and one more point, Ms. McCarthy is a staunch anti-gun zealot.

Surely this is not the best message to send to the US's staunch ally, Britain. Reports on this in the British press will not make it easy for Blair to convince his reluctant back-benchers to stay quiet, when and if the US/UK coalition goes after Iraq.

Either the Democrats need to do some house cleaning/reprimanding or else anyone who loathes terrorism should campaign to make sure all those Democrats who supported this bill are defeated at the next opportunity.

Lagwolf

Yes, you can find some really great electric blues here. Not to sound like an agent for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board or anything... although a women friend of mine does work there. Rab McCullough's band is simply on a level with the best you will find anywhere. He can compete with the best in the USA, and in fact has. He took 3rd in an international blues competition in Memphis a couple years ago. I stopped in to their gig at the Empire after the play since I'd not seen Rab in a couple months, and I'd just gotten an SMS message from a mutual former bass player of ours. Which is not at all to put myself in the same league as the unnamed bass player...

This is not a huge city, nor is Northern Ireland altogether very large. But the place has more talent per square meter than any place I've ever been. And that includes Manhattan. I've lived in the Village too, and I agree there are more fine acts there than in Belfast. But then, there are 10,000,000 people in New York City... and 500,000 in Belfast.

We've got you on per capita talent, no ifs ands or buts about it.

I have to add some comments on the play I was talking about, things that are simply "so Belfast".

The play was held in Culturlann, a lovely venue in the very heart of Republican West Belfast. You can buy books down stairs on the history of the IRA. John is a actor born on the Protestant side of town with certain preferences common to actors. He wrote a play about a British born actor who settled in Ireland and was closely related to the various figures of the Irish revolution.

If you don't understand how this all fits together, I am not surprised. You have to live and take part in Belfast for many, many years before you can hope to understand it. This is why I am usually smirking into my beer along with my native born friends when Americans come over and explain us to us.

Belfast is comprehensible. You just have to keep your mouth shut and listen for awhile... something that all too many people find impossible to do.

There may be better libertarian think-tanks around in Europe than the Irish Open Republic but if so I haven't come across them yet. I don't know if the editor, Paul McDonnell wrote the piece appearing below but, regardless of the authorship, it cuts through all the cant and recrimination to remind us who the real enemies are.

"Post 'peace process' Northern Ireland is like SimCity - a computer simulation game where you get to build and run a city - played by Social Democrats. During the peace process and its aftermath political life in the Province was immersed in a warm, enervating, bath of 'reconciliation', 'mutual recognition', 'sharing of feelings' and general 'feeling' of 'pain' all around. The politicians, think-tanks, civil servants, peace volunteers, community action groups, women's groups, freed murderers of the innocent and, yes, even the White House all hunkered down in a general peace and love fest where a direct question was about as welcome as a swastika flag at Woodstock.

Of course before the whole thing got going no one thought to set conditions that Sinn Fein and their tattooed counterparts on the 'Protestant' side must both respect and actively support the enforcement of the rule of law. Any 12 year old playing SimCity realises that the police need to be able to uphold the rule of law or anarchy reigns and then it's game over.

Not in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland today is what happens when Social Democrats do what they are best at. And what they are best at is Showing Concern Whilst Selling Out To Tyranny. Think of David Owen, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Office and the Bosnian Serbs. 'Bombing the Serbs will make things worse' etc. etc... Meanwhile thousands of innocents die. Likewise Northern Ireland is a product of the Social Democrat school of thought. Another name for it is fudge. Social Democrats are too influenced by the ideology that only groups, and not individuals, have real rights.Hence the 'appeals' to the gang who murdered the young postal worker - as if the murder of the young man was a genuine corporate act and not a conspiracy to, and commission of, murder. The 'community leaders' don't want to insult anyone. If you are a murdering gang then you must be granted 'parity of esteem' with other groups.

Northern Ireland has been moulded into the Social Democrat narrative whose defining characteristics are mob rule and capitulation to mob rule - aka 'achieving gender balance', 'equality' and 'parity of esteem'. The Social Democrat plan is to expand the public sector and use it as a vehicle to provide jobs for their friends and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, those whom they are afraid to confront. They pretend that they are ensuring 'fairness' and 'equality'. This they do by making sure that if it employs thousands of people it doesn't need at tax payers' expense then at least the public sector must hire the right quotas of unneeded Catholics, Protestants, women and murderers.

The Social Democrats who sold the pass in Northern Ireland are the Irish political parties, the SDLP, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British Government and former US President, Bill Clinton. The OUP cannot really be blamed. They were outgunned (literally) and they knew it. So when a postal worker is murdered, trades unionists take to the streets, political leaders 'call for the violence to stop'. Sinn Fein blames the Protestants but nobody seems interested in catching and punishing the criminals."

I have spent the last 13 years of my life in the West Belfast, Andytown orbit. I suspect I know a little bit more about it than some. I certainly don't class as an outsider or a disinterested outside observer on these matters. I am also not going to be drawn into a long discussion that will just rehash verbal territory I have been over many times before.

Comparing any of the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland of either side to the Al Qaeda is ludicrous. Ours are a local problem, not a global one. In any other period of history what happened in Northern Ireland would have been called a civil war. In the early days of 'The Troubles' in the 70's there was actual open small unit warfare between elements of the British Army and highly trained IRA units. This was not reported in the newspapers but I have talked to people who were there.

The British Army purportedly arrived to protect the Catholics from the Protestants, but the people who lived through that time say that the results were otherwise. It was as if the National Guard who went to Selma shot the blacks they had come to protect.

It would not surprise me to find that the USSR was feeding money and agents provacateurs to both sides in the late 60's and early 70's in the run up to the hostilities. Whatever the causes, the problems between the two communities escalated into open warfare. There were real problems here for outsiders to exploit, not imagined ones. In those days the Protestant community ran Northern Ireland the way the Klu Klux Klan ran Mississippi. Catholics were niggers here, and that made a fertile and inflammatory ground for what was to come.

This was not a pleasant place in those days. One friend was held in his bedroom with an Armalite stuck into his mouth - he was perhaps 15 - while his mother was held downstairs and the British soldiers searched for the hundredth time. 30 years ago, but I think if he ran into that officer today only one would survive the meeting. I could give you a hundred stories like that, all from the people it happened to, all from people I know very well.

Almost all of it happened right here in one small province, about the size of West Virginia. True, the IRA did things in England; but it seems to me that is supposed to be part of the same country. Some of the Protestant paramilitaries acted in Ireland, but I would also have to call that part of the same 'country' because there was a rather serious intersection of interests in Northern Ireland.

Did the IRA and UFF commit terrorist acts? Yes. Are they just like the Al Qaeda? Not even close. Al Qaeda killed over 3000 people and injured many more (remember my flame about us never being given an old fashioned casualty figure, dead plus injured?) in one hour. The attack on the World Trade Center was not a military objective; it was planned to maximize deaths of civilians of a nation nearly a half a planet away from where the attackers lived. The same organization killed perhaps another thousand people in the last decade, many of whom were Americans. This is no little local civil war. They aren't killing their neighbors over which flag should be flown over City Hall.

In the global leagues, the IRA and UFF and the rest of the Northern Ireland alphabet soup are pikers. And pretty much out of business pikers at that. I'm sure Natalija can tell us about living somewhere where the terrorists really knew how to go about their job. I think we should all be thankful for the fact that as bad as these people may have behaved, they were not in those leagues. They called and politely told people to evacuate before blowing up places, rather than timing for maximum carnage. They never tried to acquire 'the bomb'. They didn't blow up civilian airliners.

And yes, I do agree that the 'Real IRA' people responsible for killing so many people of both sides in Omagh should be just quietly shot dead if found. I doubt anyone here would shed a tear over their despicable carcasses.

The Peace Process here is working. I have lived through it. I do not want to go back to the way it was. I want the Republican and Unionist leaders jawing and jockeying instead of shooting. I want them to keep it up for another decade. By then they will be out of touch with the reality of day to day life. Belfast is a lovely place with these lads talking instead of fighting. I'd like to keep it that way.

Some day there may be a vote here on which country we are to be a part of. I suspect by the time it happens the vote will be based on pure economics rather than which flag was printed on your nappies.

The shooting of the postal worker mentioned by Perry in an earlier article occurred only a few blocks from where I live. Of course all I knew of it was some sirens (common) and the sound of Brit choppers hovering in the area (likewise).

The postal workers threatened to stop all mail delivery if the neighborhoods in question did not guarantee safety of all postal workers, regardless of religion. I have heard the public outrage from across the entire spectrum shocked the paras to the point that they are talking disbandment, although I have not read confirmation of such. It's probably in the local papers if so. People may be getting shot just up the street, but I still have to get projects out the door (cablemodem?) or I don't eat. It's funny how you can know what's going on all over the world and hardly notice the world news happening around the corner.