The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Islamic/Viking contacts… October 13, 2017

Reading this I have an image of some heads exploding…

A Swedish university has discovered Arabic characters for “Allah” and “Ali” woven into Viking burial clothes. Researchers at Uppsala University describe the finding of the geometric Kufic characters in silver on woven bands of silk as “staggering”.

It’s a very interesting piece with information about the very strong contacts between the Islamic world and Scandinavia.

Curious friends… October 13, 2017

Reading how Richard Spencer et al had a ‘flash mob’ rally at Charlottesville which lasted all of, count ’em, fifteen minutes at the Robert E Lee statue, I was struck by this…

On Saturday, the protesters gathered at Emancipation Park near a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee. Spencer posted a video on Twitter showing the protest, in which opponents of the removal of the statue chanted “You will not replace us” and “We will be back”.

The Post reported that the crowd also chanted: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.”

The reference to Russia is intriguing isn’t it? Given nazism’s fairly clear cut thoughts as regards Slavic peoples one has to wonder just what brew and stew of noxious beliefs Spencer et al hold. Or is it that the proximate issue of white supremacy in respect of African Americans makes any racial ‘ideological’ constraints moot?

Ireland, the Tories and the Brexit referendum… October 13, 2017

Depressing, piece here in the IT from a chief press officer for Europe and Economic Affairs at 10 Downing Street from 2015 to 2017 which underlines one key issue, that Ireland (and Matt O’Toole is Irish, from Downpatrick, with an Irish passport) was just not part of the issue in the Brexit referendum.

He points to one very interesting reason for that:

Vote Leave had virtually nothing to say on Ireland or the Border, but sustained no identifiable damage to their cause as a result. They were assisted by two things.
First, Theresa Villiers. The serving Northern Ireland secretary’s imprimatur offered legitimacy to Leave’s lack of a policy, and prevented both the British government (and probably also the Irish Government) from attacking their position with the zeal they might otherwise have done.

And:

Second, the Remain campaign was based on focusing swing voters’ minds on a narrow proposition: that a vote to leave the European Union was too economically risky. That approach had worked in the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2015 UK general election.
That strategy was also a rational response to polling data. English voters were going to win or lose the 2016 referendum.

Clearly it didn’t work in 2016.

But he points to how the Northern Ireland and the current dispensation is wrested away by Brexit, that while EU membership was not central, it was hugely important contextually, to the Good Friday Agreement and after. And how all this is different now. He also notes how he ‘travelled on an Irish passport to do British prime ministerial business. No one batted an eyelid’. One has to wonder how the web of relations currently existing are going to deal with the future of post-Brexit Britain.

Still, it also points up something else. He writes:

My colleagues on Cameron’s political team were certainly sympathetic – many of them were also angry about Leave’s approach to the Irish question – but the truth was that not enough target voters cared enough to make it a central campaign issue.
And there wasn’t enough time to make them care.

But this is the great void at the heart of British political activity for decades. The reality of the EU, bad and good, has never been truly engaged with – still isn’t (to judge from the utter nonsense in relation to nationalisation being impossible in the EU and so on one keeps hearing from people who should know better), by governments and parties of various complexions. Instead Britain has largely conducted a conversation with itself and one which uses caricatures rather than the actuality. So, the actual EU, an entity which is deeply problematic is never addressed usefully, instead being conceptually ignored or literally bypassed as with Brexit. Except the EU is going to continue to exist whether Britain leaves or not and all the superheated rhetoric on line and off about it facing an existential crisis over Brexit is yet more hyperbole from people whose perspectives seem to be rooted in London.

O’Toole is no fan of SF and I think his positioning of that party and the DUP as equidistant is too pat, as well as ignoring that SF is actually euro-critical and not at all happy with Brexit but the insight his writing gives is undeniably compelling into mindsets in the UK.

Minority report October 13, 2017

It’s difficult to feel that the complaint from some members of the Committee on the Eighth Amendment is very valid…

Independent TD Mattie McGrath and Senator Rónán Mullen say they are actively considering whether there is any point in them remaining on as members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment.

They feel that…

…the committee’s work has become “skewed in favour of abortion”.

But it is difficult not to feel that they are only belatedly realising that the weight of opinion in the state on the matter is tilted some way away from them, and certainly sufficiently so that Repeal (whatever about further movement on the issue) is feasible and this has been reflected in the Committee.

It’s interesting that there are also complaints about a lack of decorum. That may well be true to a degree, but I’m long in the tooth enough to recall the visceral rage hurled at those who even mildly dissented from the absolute certainties on abortion in the 1980s and after. Many of us here are. That that has left a legacy is hardly surprising.

This Week At Irish Election Literature October 13, 2017

From the November 1990 edition of the UDA magazine “Ulster” , the correspondent isn’t too happy with the Irish team singing rebel songs!

Córas Bua -Fianna Fáil Election Campaign Manual Circa 1976

An Anti Chemtrails leaflet from IMAG- International March Against Geoengineering

Diseases and vaccination… October 12, 2017

Interesting podcast here from Australia on safety and vaccinations from the Science Vs series. They asked a vaccination sceptic person to go researching with them in regard to that subject. And tellingly there was one point where the person was, as it were, convinced as to the effectivity of vaccines. It sounds simple but it does point to the necessity to combat myth and misrepresentations that are out there.

She realised that the anti-vax case was simply wrong when she realised that, in the case of the measles vaccine the mortality rate for those who catch measles is 1-2 per thousand.

‘I compared that to the data I was finding on the injuries you might get from the vaccine and they pale into comparison to the bad bad things that can happen if we got one of these diseases – I was like forget it… get the vaccine. And the measles is really contagious, it can live in the air up to two hours’.

In a way it’s depressing because that’s the calculation one has to do – yes, there is no absolute lack of risk, but the risks of catching a disease are much greater and more likely to occur if vaccines aren’t used. I wonder if the problem is in part that hitherto with many of these diseases on the run there’s been a sense that people had the luxury not to use vaccines – a completely delusionary sense, but one nonetheless.

But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the way disease works. It pushes back continually trying to gain traction. Remove the use of vaccines and diseases that aren’t eradicated completely will return, sometimes in even more virulent form.

I’ve noted, as a parent that I understand the emotions at work. The idea of putting a child at risk, any risk, is difficult, but the central point is that not vaccinating is putting children at much much greater risk. And there’s another point too, and this locks into a broader misunderstanding and misperception in terms of risk – few fret about strapping their kids into cars, or aircraft, or whatever. And yet every single decision taken incurs some degree of risk.

The outline of mortality rates for the diseases being vaccinated against is actually quite troubling. Look at diphtheria, tetanus … etc. The case answers itself.

Or does it – because for some the case isn’t enough.

It’s worth listening though to the succeeding podcast which interviews anti-vaxxers and in particular a woman who has become heavily involved through social media – who was absolutely hostile to vaccines but appeared completely unrealising of the actual risks in relation to the diseases. And she seemed completely unwilling to seriously accept or engage with the reality of the latter. To say the argument put forward against the pro-vaccination side was incoherent would be too kind…

A lot of adverse events aren’t reported… because parents think its normal because it’s what doctors tell them… we’re only being educated by scare tactics…

And finally… ‘I don’t know, I think it’s just mother’s intuition’.

I sympathise with the depth of emotion but as I’ve noted before I think this comes back to this lack of control and fear of death. Because so much is uncontrollable in life and unknowable the effort is made to micro-manage (however ineptly and counterproductively) a small portion of life – unfortunately a very important small portion. But it’s based on a lack of knowledge and a sort of egotism, a belief in one’s ability. And yet in our daily lives we know we have to subcontract out expertise to so many different people – structural engineers, scientists, planners, food hygiene authorities.

I can only think that all this necessitates a serious push back by state authorities, and it is good to see in Ireland the case being made – most immediately for HPV. The sheer ignorance on display in these matters is in its own way terrifying, the absolute certainty that expertise is tainted or corrupted, the resistance to math and statistics.

None of this is to argue that everything is perfect, but it is to argue against a sort of pointless hostility and paranoia. Not everything is a conspiracy.

Signs of Hope – A continuing series October 12, 2017

Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:

I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.

Any contributions this week?

Politicians who were members of more than one, two or three parties in the Oireachtas October 12, 2017

Perhaps mischievously the Phoenix in its current issue suggests that Katherine Zappone might wind up in Fine Gael, in part due to the electoral terrain she is likely fight the next election on. Interestingly she wasn’t a member of the Labour Party, nor of the Social Democrats, and has had the Independent badge thoughout her time in the Seanad and then Dáil. But I was wondering, what is the largest number of political identifiers including independent that any single politician has had in the Oireachtas?

Increase taxes for the rich… October 12, 2017

The Guardian reports that:

Higher income tax rates for the rich would help reduce inequality without having an adverse impact on growth, the International Monetary Fund has said.

The Washington-based IMF used its influential half-yearly fiscal monitor to demolish the argument that economic growth would suffer if governments in advanced Western countries forced the top 1% of earners to pay more tax.

And:

The IMF said tax theory suggested there should be “significantly higher” tax rates for those on higher incomes but the argument against doing so was that hitting the rich would be bad for growth.

But the influential global institution said: “Empirical results do not support this argument, at least for levels of progressivity that are not excessive.” The IMF added that different types of wealth taxes might also be considered.

This one suspects must be regarded as a shot across the bows of the Trump regimes plans to cut taxes for the wealthy there.

Still, big news, yet not a mention of it on the IT or RTÉ websites…

Stories from a border kitchen – Brian Hanley on aftermath of Bloody Sunday. October 11, 2017