Mixed messages or mexed missages? Is Iran at the end of its twitter?

The occidental media was raving about the possibility a ‘green’ revolution in Iran. Was this another CIA-sponsored postmodern revolution like the colour revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan? The consensus seems to be that the colour was a mere coincidence. It seems that Adhmadinejad chose a red ball when casting his vote while Moussavi chose green. Green is said to be a colour representing Islam but what about red? We know that Athmadinijad was promising to go the Chavez route by taking control of Iran’s oil resources and redistributing the wealth among the poor where his popularity has soared.

But Athmadinejad is no Chavez. His secret police the Bassijis look more like Hitler’s SS and many of the country’s problems are emanating from corruption of the ruling elite. If Athmadinjad has socialist tendencies they are certainly presented in the western media as of the nefarious ‘national socialist’ kind. However, we do not have a clear picture in the West of Iran and its leader.
Iran’s jeuness dorée, the educated bourgeoisie of the big cities took to the streets to express their desire to see an end to Islamic extremism, while the proletariat chanted for Mahmoud, Allah and oil revenue. We know of course that Iran was never particularly Islamic. In fact, one could say that Islamic fundamentalism was thrust upon them in 1979 and it is merely a moment in the complex and profound history of Persian civilisation.

But to come back to all this talk about Green versus Red, what should we make of this? First of all I should point out that Iran’s trouble is pretty much Britain's fault. They were the ones who planned the 1953 coup by convincing the CIA to destroy Iran’s democracy. The CIA duly obliged and Operation Ajax was a success. The Shah was put back in power, the SAVAK, Iran’s secret police, were taught all the newest techniques in covert murder and torture by the CIA; in short, order was restored. However, even the Shah, realising that it was better to be an enlightened and popular despot than a hated one, attempted to build up the country to a certain extent. It was, however, a disaster. His importation of American arms and aristocratic opulence had bankrupted the country. He then made a big career mistake. In order to save the economy he tried to raise the price of oil. “Oh no you don’t “ said Washington.

The Los Angeles Times published an article in October 17th 2008 claiming that recently declassified US State Department documents show that the Ford administration wanted an end to the Shah due to his insistence on raising the price of oil. According to the Arab historian Said Aborish the Muslim Brotherhood had always been an asset of M16 and later the CIA, but we’re not supposed to know that and neither are the Muslims! It seems M16 persuaded the French to shelter Khomeini in Paris before installing him in Tehran. There was even a joke circulating in Iran at the time that Khomeini was ‘made in Britain’. BBC Persia and MI6 flooded Iran with Khomeini’s tapes. Islamic extremists with little economic expertise were always a useful tool of Western imperialists to de-stabilise resource-nationalizing governments so that Standard Oil, PB and others could continue to plunder Middle Eastern petroleum. When the focus of Islamic rebels like Khomeini was on religion and culture they were supported; when their focus was on quasi-socialist economics as in the FLN of Algeria, they were opposed.

Top foreign policy-makers Zbigniew Brezinzski of Carter’s administration knew that Khomeini would rebel and foment a form of Islamic nationalism but the Western powers already had an answer for that: send in Saddam! It was a hugely profitable war for the US, who backed both sides. Remember the Iran-contra scandal? The upshot of all this is that it is difficult to determine what the Anglo-American establishment wants Iran to do right now. It is likely that they really want Moussavi as he seems to support neo-liberal economic policies. My suspicion is that the Israeli extreme right probably wants to see a civil war, as that would weaken Iran for the next decade or so.

So who won the election? According to the French daily Liberation June 19 ('left wing' paper now controlled by Edward de Rothshild!) Moussavi clearly won with Athmadinejad coming in third place! The Sociologist Professor James Petras, however, writes in Reseau Voltaire that this is a lie.

The French journalist Thierry Meyssan in his article 'De Mossadegh à Ahmadinejad:La CIA et le laboratoire iranien' (http://www.voltairenet.org/article160639.html) has pointed the finger at the CIA for the confusion surrounding the Iranian election result, claiming that they manipulated Iranian communications via Twitter and SMS to spread the idea that Moussavi had won. The New York Times and Reuters reported the story of US intervention but with the usual element of spin. The US State Department asked Twitter to delay their planned upgrade of the service so that Iranian communications among protesters would not be disrupted. How thoughtful of them!

Meyssan claims that the US State Department interference with Twitter was so that the CIA could stir up confusion by diseminating anti-Athmadinejad propaganda, leading to protest and chaos, their favourite activities. Many readers on the Reseau Voltaire accussed Meyssan of inveterate'anti-americanism'.His response,however,was cogent:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article160696.html

The Achilles heel for Iranian security in these troubled times is clearly the Baluchistan province to the South of the country. The Baluchistan province forms part of Iran, Pakistan and borders Afghanistan. Baluchistan is rich in oil and natural resources and is a key region for the US who have been lauching drone attacks around the city of Quetta. With reports indicating Pakistani ISI,CIA,MI6, the Mossad and Indian intelligence RAW all operating in the Baluchistani region, covert destabilisation strategies emanating from Baluchistan are an impending nightmare for Tehran. But it is unclear if the CIA and MI6 have the capability or desire to destabilise Tehran right now. They are probably too bogged down in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq to contemplate opening up a Persian pandora's box. However, NATO's escalation of violence in Pakistan could have serious implications for Iranian security if the US and Britain continue to use Baluchistani rebels as pawns in their proxy wars. The US army has been well-positioned in Balochistan with bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur. On Baluchistan's importance for the US and Britain, Majeed Javed writes:

'The active involvement of foreign agencies in Pakistan's province of Balochistan has been sufficiently proved. Pakistan's Senate Committee on Defence in June, 2006 had accused British Intelligence of "abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran". Also, as per Press Trust of India's press release dated 9 August 2006, Ten British MPs were found involved by the Senate Committee in its closed door session on alleged links of British Secret Service with the Baluch separatists. The British interests in Balochistan were again made conspicuous when its Foreign Policy Centre, sponsored a preposterous one sided propaganda against Pakistan by holding a controversial Seminar in the House of Commons on 27 June 2006. The Centre had collaborated with the so-called Baluchistan Rights Movement then and had invited only anti-Pakistan and self styled activists who only advocated terrorism in the province. No Pakistani scholar or elected representatives from either the central government or the Balochistan province itself, were invited for the seminar'.

http://www.inewsit.com/articles/entry/War-On-Terror-Balochistan-De-Focused-By-Majeed-Javed

The principal geopolitical concern for the US and Britain in Baolochistan is the port city of Gwadar on the Arabian sea. The Chinese in conjunction with the Pakistani government are currently developing this area as it is a key trade route to the Central Aisan republics for the Chinese. The Chinese are also involved in the ambitious gold and copper mining project at Saindak. As Pakistan is a natural ally of China, the US and Britain want to take control of Balochistan. This will inevitably lead to the occupation and disintegration of Pakistan, creating more chaos on the Iran's Eastern border. The key problem here revolves around two proposed pipe lines, namely, the Balochistani Iranian to Pakistani Iranian pipeline proposed by those governments and referred to as the peace line,a plan which is propitious to Chinese interests, or the US backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline; in other words, the war plan. In terms of geography and natural resources Balochistan is the 'black pearl' of Asia, but politically it is a potential nightmare.

The Israeli daily Haaretz published a story on 18-06-09 concerning an alleged CIA/Mossad joint-terrorist operation to place bombs in various election booths and mosques throughout Tehran on election day. The aim of the terror being to destabilise the country.(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094007.html) The CIA have been accused of covertly funding the Baluchistani rebels in the South of Iran since the 1980s.

The Paris-based PMOI were taken off the EU terror list this year. Many US senators and UK lords have been lobbying for the PMOI's removal from American and EU terror lists for years. The French president Nikoloas Sarkozy, succeeded in lobbying the EU this year to have the PMOI removed from its terrorism list. It is still unclear what the US-EU strategy is regarding this group.

To come back to the Iranian election again. Did Athmadinejad win or not? The American pollsters Ken Ballen of the Centre for Public Opinion and Paul Doherty of the New America Foundation conducted a rigorous poll in Iran prior to the election. This is what they have to say about the election result

'Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.
“The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Moussavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over MoU.S.avi.
“Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
“The only demographic groups in which our survey found Moussavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.”

Former Assistant Director of the Treasury in the Reagon administration Paul Craig Roberts knows a thing or two about US scheming. This is what he has to say on the matter:

"As a person who has seen it all from inside the U.S. government, I believe that the purpose of the U.S. government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the U.S. government is setting up Iran for military attack.'

"http://mostlywater.org/why_us_wants_delegitimize_iranian_elections

The problem is we just don’t know what’s really going in Iran. So, now we have complex phenomenon of class and cultural conflict in the midst of an information war. It will probably be enough to stoke Persia’s internal fire for the next few months while Washington and London have a chance to think about the next act in the region's petrodollar tragedy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Obama Doctrine

Six months ago we were all waxing lyrical about the political possibilities presented by the new emperor laurelled on Capitol Hill. But very few actually predicted what an Obama presidency would be like. Now it looks like new mistakes to cover old ones and monstrous lies to cover them all will continue to define US foreign policy as the permanent war economy gears up for more conflict.

Afghanistan would be a good place to start in our assessment of what the Obama doctrine is likely to be. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama’s Foreign Policy Advisor, coined the phrase ‘ the Afghan trap’. He was referring to the way in which the United States lured the Russians into a war in that country which they couldn’t win. It was, as Brzezinski slyly put it, “to give them their Vietnam”.

Brzezinski was one of Obama’s professors at Columbia University and played a key role in his rise to power. He was also instrumental in Carter’s accession to the White House in 1979. Carter is often presented as one of the better presidents in recent times. What people often overlook however is that Islamic fundamentalism was pretty much the brainchild of the Carter administration. As Brzezinski had played such a key role in Carter’s rise to power, he was able to steer the political gunboat of this fine young man.

The Carter Doctrine was proclaimed by the president in his State of the Union Speech in 1980. In this speech Carter articulated what would become US gospel for the next three decades, a policy that would lead to death and torture on a mammoth scale. By this stage Carter had already authorised the CIA and special forces to provoke the Russians into conflict. The Carter Doctrine states:
The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.

Next time you hear an idiot say “I don’t think the war is about oil” Ask him/her is they have read the Carter Doctrine and look out for that Sarah Palin vacuity in their eyes!

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, and now the more or less the same in Obama’s regime, was sent to Afghanistan to arm the Mujahedeen, a motley group of illiterate peasants, who might easily have been attracted by Soviet Communism had it not been for Brzezinski’s theological exhortations. “God is on your side” he told them, as the CIA with help from Osama Bin Ladin and Pakistan’s ISI, proceeded to indoctrinate the poor farmers in religious fanaticism. Madrasas were set up throughout the region, where the Mujahadeen were taught to hate the Russians for being non-muslims. They were trained in the use of the latest military equipment while the CIA and Pakstani Intelligence laundered money from the drug harvests of the future Taliban.

The result of the Carter Doctrine was 911 and a Middle Eastern war which has now cost the lives of over a million people. The inclusion of Brzezinski on the Obama foreign policy team is bad news.

In an interview he gave with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 Brzezinski was asked if he regretted his decisions in Afghanistan. He replied “What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” Back then he thought the idea of Islamic extremists being a threat to the world was ‘ nonsense’. Now on his advice, President Obama, just like his predecessor, repeats the same phony mantra about US ‘National Security’ and the ‘real threat’ from the Middle East. So what then are the challenges for the Obama presidency? Well one of the problems for the new presidency was outlined by Dr. Brzezinski’s in a chilling remark which he made before a group of elites in Chatam House London on November 2008 “It is easier to kill a million people than to control them”

Resisting technocratic interpellation

I resisted the Credit Card for a long time, until a few months ago, in fact. I used to get friends to book flights for me online but Ryanair put an end to my fiscal simplicity. Ryanair are masters of the art of stealth charges. You are even charged at the airport for the privilege of having booked your flight online! After I had checked in for my Paris-Dublin flight a few months ago I had to queue up again in order to pay my credit card fee of 5 euro.
Having queued up for more than 30 minutes, I finally reached the counter. “bonjour Monsieur” said the pretty lady behind the counter.

“ Bonjour Madame” said I. I reluctantly handed her my five Euro note.

“ sorry, we don’t accept notes, you’ll have to pay with your credit card” she said.

“ I’m sorry madam, I do not have a credit card but I am prepared to pay you with this real money” I retorted, politely keeping my growing frustration in check. Then, predictably, cracks soon appeared in the diplomatic equanimity as negotiation rapidly descended into all out confrontation.
“ I’m sorry but you will have to call a friend and ask them to pay for you as we cannot accept real money” she continued. “ What? This is crazy, you do not accept real money!! What is this, a scene from a Kafka novel? You want me to pay you again for the privilege of paying you invisible money, now I give you real money and you say I cannot board my flight to Dublin unless I pay you more invisible money!”
By this stage I realised I had declared war but I was not prepared to surrender. Meanwhile airport security were beginning to take an interest in the lone protester

“ I’m sorry monsieur", she said coldly, “but I cannot change the system” I was caught in an absurd ideological pincer-grip with airport security slowly advancing. As soon as she mentioned the word system I launched my surface to air missles . I knew I had no chance of winning but I decided to lose all guns blazing. “ change the system you say? Fuck the system” the four letter word is the last resort of the broken man “ and fuck Ryanair and it effing capitalist thuggery, its digital fascism. I’m sick and tired of being treated like cog in the machine, a number in the calculus, a superfluous letter in badly written book. Fuck the whole lot of you, you despicable scum!”

I should point you to you dear reader that I said this in French, so it may have sounded less offensive! By this stage other French customers in the queue behind me began to join in and for a moment I thought “ this could be the storming of the Bastille or a Rosa Parks moment”. Not quite I’m afraid. But they kindly paid the miserable five Euro for me and I boarded my flight.
A few months later, I came back to the same Ryanair counter and met the same lady. This time I decided to take a leaf from President Roosevelt’s book when he said that in negotiation you should speak softly but carry a big stick. My big stick was the threat of another vituperative onslaught. From our initial eye contact I could tell she recognised me. The cashier could probably detect the verbal arsenal behind the clenched teeth of my fake smile. I spoke softly, looked her straight in the eye and whispered “ Madam I do not have a credit card”. Then, as if for the sake of world peace, she took out her own card and paid for my flight herself. I gave her my five euro, thanked her profusely and quietly departed. You might think I was a bit extreme calling Ryanair fascists but aren’t they the airline that taxes fat people and wants to make us pay to use the toilet? Kafka once said ‘in the fight between you and the world, back the world”. I surrendered and now back the banking world by paying them for the privilege of my invisible money!

911 agus na teoiricí comhcheilge timpeall an ghréasáin.

Os comhair ríomhaire le déanaí fuair mé roinnt suíomhanna idirlín faoi 911. I bhfírinne, ó tháinig an t-idirlíon go tithe an domhain tá réabhlóid mhilteanach tar éis tarlú ar fud na cruinne. Anois agus don chéad uair i stair an domhain, tá an t-eolas uileláithreach. Ciallaíonn sé sin go bhfuil deis ag gach duine a bheith ina iriseoir, taighdeoir nó bleachtaire. Is é sin le rá, is féidir le gach duine an tsochaí ina maireann muid a iniúchadh agus a scrúdú ar bhonn gan macasamhail. Is muintir na gúglachta ( google) muid anois, mar a dhearfá. Ag gúgláil timpeall an ghréasáin le cuardach ‘911 cover up, CIA’ agus mar sin dé, chuir sé iontas orm an méid suíomhanna agus físeanna atá ann a chúisíonn an CIA agus Mossad a bheith taobh thiar de na hionsaithe ar na túir sa Nua Eabhrac.

Go deimhin, chualamar scéalta mar sin cheanna agus is fíor go mbíonn conspóid ag baint le gach tubaiste a tharláíonn sna Stáit Aontaithe i gcónaí. Tugaim an t-ainm ‘danbrowneachas’ ar theoiricí comhcheilge mar sin, agus ní bhíonn morán suime agam aon aitheantas a thabhairt dóibh. Ach é sin ráite, tá rud éigin go hiomlán difrúil i gcás 911 os rud é go bhfuil daoine ardcháile den tuairim go raibh an CIA agus Mossad taobh thiar de na hionsaithe.

Cuir i gcás, Francesco Cossiga, Iar-uachtarán na hIodáile agus ollamh le dlí san Ollscoil Sassari. Fear measúil, stuama é Cossiga agus tá sé ina saineolaí faoi cheisteanna a bhaineann le cúrsaí slándála. Dúirt sé le Corriera della Sera cúpla blain ó shin go riabh sé soléir dó agus dón seirbhís rúnda na hIodáile go bhfuil an CIA agus Mossad ciontach as an sceimhlitheoireacht sa Nua Eabhrac. Níl aon dabht faoi sin dár leis. Dúirt Cossiga go raibh na hionsaithe pleanáilte chun casus belli a fháil don chogadh san Afganistáin agus Iáráic. Tá alán taithí ag Cossiga leis an CIA. Bhí siad an-ghníomhach san Iodáil le linn an Chogaidh Fhuair san oibriú Gladio. Ba í sceimhlitheoireacht státurraithe nó, sceimlitheoireacht na brataí bréagaigh a bhí i gceist ansin. Ba é Cossiga an chéad duine a labhair amach faoi.

Deireann iar-stiúrthóir na seirbhíse rúnda i bPacastáin Ginerál Hamud Gul an rud ceannan céanna. Ina theanta sin, dúirt sé go raibh an CIA agus Mossad thaobh thiar na hionsaithe sceimhlitheoireachta arís i Mumba le déanaí. Núair a fheiceann tú rudaí mar sin maile le dúrud mór d’ fíricí aisteacha eile a gheofaidh tú san idirlíon, go háiraithe sa U Tube, tosaíonn tú a bheith beaganín buartha!

Ar ndóigh, tá a fhios ag gach éinne go raibh Mossad ag obair sa Nua Eabhrac roimh na hionsaithe agus go raibh réamheolas acu faoi na sceimhlitheoirí. Agus céard faoi na Five Dancing Israelis’ na céad iosraelaigh ag rince? Gabh na póilíní FBI céad Iosraelaigh sa Nua Eabhrac díreach tar éis na hionsaithe de bharr iompair gur mheas siad a bheith ‘aisteach’. De réir an tuairisc, bhí vean plódaithe de phléascáin ullmhaithe acu. Tharla sé ina dhiaidh sin go riabh na céad fir ina bhaill de Mhossad, an tseirbhís rúnda na hIosraele. Mar sin, níor chualamar móran eile faoin scéal. Bhí tuairisc sa Teilifís na Fraince an bhliain seo caite a rá go raibh Mohammad Atta ina bhall de Mhossad, agus arís níor chuala mé aon tuairisc eile faoi ina dhiaidh sin.

Is fíor go bhfuil a lán ceisteanna le freagairt fós faoi 911 ach bheadh sé saonta an iomarca aitheantais a thabhairt don theoiric chomhcheilge sin. Ba choir féachaint ar gach taobh den scéal. Má fhéachann tú ar roinnt físeanna sa U Tube, cur i gcás, feicfidh tú fianaise a bhréagnaíonn alán teoiricí comhcheilge. Dúirt Noam Chomsky nach raibh aon fhírinne ins na teoiricí sin. Ach maireann na ceisteanna faoi Mhossad fós. Cén eolas a bhí acu? Cad a bhí á dhéanamh acu sa Nua Eabhrac? Scéal contúirteach agus rúndiamrach gan amhras, scéal a fhágann i mbun machnaimh mé go fóill.

How many years must a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?

Ten years ago I gave English lessons to a German entrepreneur in Berlin, who had set up a successful wind energy company specialising in the supply and construction of wind turbines. The company was rapidly expanding throughout Europe. I remember asking her if she had plans to expand the business in Ireland. “If I we could promote this form of energy in Ireland” she told me “ we could almost double our business. Ireland is perfect for wind-energy production. But I don’t think your Government has really shown interest in this possibility” She was right. The Irish government was, as usual, doing its best to avoid the winds of change! Their chief interests included urban sprawl, environmental and heritage destruction and the sale of our national resources.

But in these morose times, it comes as a relief to find out that something positive and uniquely progressive could still happen in Ireland. A new think tank was set up six months ago called Spirit of Ireland to explore the potential of the Irish wind energy industry. On their website they confidently proclaim
‘Ireland has enormous advantages of geography and geology. Every day and every night, truly extraordinary wealth in terms of energy blows across our land. Our place on the corner of Europe tipping into the huge Atlantic Ocean, ensures an endless supply of energy on a massive scale and of enormous value. 98% of our Energy is imported at a cost of over €6.5 billion per year. Every year! Ireland has within its reach a truly enormous and inexhaustible source of Natural Energy and Wealth. By taking energy from the wind and by building large Hydro Energy Reservoirs we can make energy from the wind fully reliable and usable’

The growth of the wind-energy industry has always been hampered by the problem of fluctuations in wind intensity and the storage of the energy. What happens when there is little wind? The Spirit of Ireland project has come up with a compelling solution to this problem. The key here lies in Ireland’s unique geography. A Russian by the name of Igor Shvets, who is professor of physics in Trinity College Dublin, (who says the country doesn’t need immigrants!) has pointed out that Ireland abounds in impervious valleys which are contiguous to the ocean. If the Spirit of Ireland project is implemented, these valleys will be dammed and hydro- storage reservoirs will be built, thereby serving as natural lakes storing water which can be used for electricity generation when the wind is down. The project website states the solution thus:

‘Professor Igor Shvets has identified suitable valleys on the West Coast, which are ideally shaped. Basic rock dams in a few valleys, will provide Hydro Storage Reservoirs at modest cost. Positioned close to the sea, water volume is not an issue. Japan’s J-Power had built a successful sea water storage facility in Okinawa over 10 years ago. Senior executives and engineers from Japan visited Ireland and confirmed the validity of this approach. Filling the reservoirs with wind energy and using it when needed means that the intermittency of the wind problem is resolved. International Consultants from Canada, the US and Norway contributed to other aspects of the design.’

Ireland currently ranks 16th in the world for wind-energy production and 9th in the European Union. But according to the Spirit of Ireland project, Ireland’s unique geology, geography and marine environment has not been adequately exploited. Ireland could become a world leader in wind industry, exporting energy to other countries and saving billions in national energy expenditure every year.

The Spirit of Ireland project aims are to create tens of thousands of jobs, achieve energy independence in 5 years, as well as saving thirty billion by reducing the importation of fossil fuels, thereby effecting a radical reduction in the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. The project includes many financial experts who estimate that a fully developed national wind energy project would add 50 billion Euro to the economy! So, perhaps therein lies the solution to our soaring trade deficit which could yet reach 50 billion Euro. This is an innovative and progressive idea. But national progress requires intelligent governance. Ah, there’s the rub!

According to the European Wind Energy Association EWEA, wind energy accounted for over 43 percent of all new energy generating capacity in the EU last year. If the Government insists on introducing its silly blasphemy laws, perhaps they should consider giving a ‘special’ protection to old Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind, or Danu, the Celtic god of wind, wisdom and fertility!
Who knows, it could yet transpire that the solution to our economic despair lies in what we all breath though none of us see; the answer is blowin in the wind.

For a breath of fresh air (sorry, couldn’t resist) see: http://www.spiritofireland.org/

Introducing 'Papal Pull' the new improved condom

The encouragement to procreate by religious despots is a policy they should seriously reconsider if they want to hold on to power.

Elections are due to be held in Iran in June to decide which leader is going to lead the country out of the first decade of the 21st century. Iran is a fascinating country. The world’s first great empire in the 6th century BCE under Cyrus the Great-who some claim to have instituted the first charter of human rights-the country has nevertheless seen a long succession of despots, with the exception of the progressive Mohammad Mossedegh but the CIA put an end to him in 1953. The first thing that strikes one about Iran is its sheer youth. Over 70 percent of the Iranian population is under 30 and over 60 percent of those attending university are women.

President Obama’s address to the Iranian nation a few weeks ago was astute, particularly his decision to use the medium of the internet which the Iranian government is unable to fully control. When the Ayatollah Khomeini assumed absolute power after the 1979 revolution, he encouraged couples to have big families. He also lowered the legal age of marriage for women to 9 years! Khomeini was following the example of the Prophet Mohammad who married a 6 year old girl named Ayesha and apparently consummated the relationship when she was 9! In other words, Mohammed was a paedophile.

There are currently over 700,000 blogs in Iran and this number is increasing in the thousands every day

The result of Khomeini's procreation policy was a population explosion over the past thirty years during which time the demographical figures of Iran doubled. The problem for the clerical oligarchy now is that the majority of the population is composed of young people eager to escape the stultifying shackles of Islamic tyranny. The difference between Iran now and Iran ten years ago when Khatamei was opening up the country to progress, is the omnipresent internet. The internet has become such a phenomenon among Iran’s youth that the secret service, the notorious ‘etellat’ are no longer able to employ enough people to filter the sites and control the flow of information.

As David Macwilliams has illustratively pointed out in his book The Pope’s Children, the pontiff’s visit coincided with a baby boom

There are currently over 700,000 blogs in Iran and this number is increasing in the thousands every day. The blogosphere phenomenon has become so all-pervasive in Iranian society that both the Ayatollah himself as well as president Athmadinejad now have blogs. If you do a search in Wikipedia you can find a list of Iranian blogs in English both from inside and outside the country. Many of them make for interesting reading. For many Iranians the daily oppression is so intense, that keeping a blog and sharing one’s thoughts with the world is a form of catharsis and relief. The ironic aspect about this surge in the country’s youth is their disillusionment with the clerical oligarchy, the very people who encouraged their creation. One could argue that a similar phenomenon happened in Ireland 30 years ago. Was not the year of the Islamic Revolution also the year of Pope John Paul’s visit to Ireland? As David Macwilliams has illustratively pointed out in his book The Pope’s Children, the pontiff’s visit coincided with a baby boom.

In a sense, the encouragement to procreate by religious despots is a policy they should seriously reconsider if they want to hold on to power. Once you encourage a baby boom there is a strong possibility that that new generation will reject you and all you stand for. This is to a certain extent what happened in Ireland in the case of Catholicism and it is already happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the question of contraception, the Ayatollah Khomenei seemed to have realised the danger of his earlier policy of encouraging procreation. He later came out in favour of contraception and condoms are now widely available in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the divine blessing of the imams.

This mandatory contraception policy would entail the Pontifex Maximus transforming himself into the Pro-durex Seximus, as it were

In this sense it is strange that the present Pope should be spreading disgraceful lies about condoms in Africa and denouncing an innocent sexually abused 9 year old girl in Brazil for having an abortion; strange not in an ideological sense but more in terms of totalitarian strategy. Of course, it is all part of the Big Lie which I spoke about last week. But if the church wants to hold on to power in developing countries for the coming generations, then it should be encouraging contraception and abortion. For the less young people there are, the more power for the religious despots.

For the less young people there are, the more power for the religious despots

The key then for the survival of religious tyranny would be the promotion of these two concepts. This mandatory contraception policy would entail the Pontifex Maximus transforming himself into the Pro-durex Seximus, as it were. Vatican inc. could launch a lucrative contraceptive marketing campaign; they could call the new condom ‘Papal Pull’ with the caption :“Make divine love with Papal Pull, a condom proved and tested to stop the sexually transmitted disease of life. Call your parish priest today ! Terms and conditions apply” They could even publish their message on the condom packets just like the Government warning on cigarette boxes: “Church warning: Pre-marital or extra-marital sex seriously increases your chances of going to hell!”.

Some remarks on blasphemy or the laughter induced by the sight of naked emperors and Ireland's theocratic constitution

Blasphemy? http://www.experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/

'Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense' wrote Robert Green Igersoll. But alas,superstition is now a legal obligation in holy Ireland! Atheists in Irish society ought to keep their mouths shut from now on lest they be accused of blasphemy! Yes, according to new legislation “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.” This is the atavistic hysteria of a dull-witted government going through some form of existential crisis. But more worryingly, it is a shameless attack on our fundamental liberties to think and speak whatever we wish and clearly violates articles 7, 21,18 and 19 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.However, from a Irish legal perspective, the new legislation is perfectly in accordance with our theocratic constitution.

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Éire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial

You might have thought this was the opening address of President Athmadinejad to the United Nations with minor changes in nomenclature and mythological reference. Wrong! this elaborate nonsense is in fact the preamble to Bunreacht na h’Éireann, the document that provides the legal framework for the oxymoronically entitled Poblacht na h’Éireann or Republic of Ireland. An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. As you can see from the preamble Ireland is officially a theocracy. The word republic comes from the Latin res publicae -matters of the people and is the Roman equivalent of the Ancient Greek concept ‘ democracy, rule of and by the people. The preamble states that the legal articles to follow are ‘in the name of the Most Holy Trinity’. This pious rubbish is perfectly appropriate for a catachism but we are talking about a national consitution here!

The authority, then, of the legal articles which follow is determined ipso facto by the three persons contained in the Judeo-Christian deity ‘to whom, in the end, all actions both of men and States must be referred’. The use of the word ‘must’ clearly indicates that belief in god is legally binding and universal to all ‘men and States’. It therefore enjoins other nations to take heed of divine law. Secular nations of the world, hear ye oh hear! Thus the articles which follow are laws of the Irish theocracy, their ultimate authority emanating from ‘the Most Holy Trinity’ and not from the Irish people.

If you come from a republic or a more intellectually mature civilisation, you might think this is a joke. How can religion provide the basis for civil society, I hear you ask. To anyone of reasonable intelligence, the preamble to our constitution is nothing short of a thundering absurdity. It makes a mockery of the Irish state and is a flagrant violation of any laws worthy of the name ‘civil.’ The laws of a republic are brought about by the rational consensus determining the best interests of all the citizens of that polity, regardless of whether or not they believe in gods, spirits , goblins or other supernatural entities. The constitution of a republic can provide the conditions for the free practice of all religions but cannot presuppose a theological interpretation of human nature.

The preamble to the Irish constitution not only legalises religious belief, it clearly favours one form of this psychological delusion, namely Christianity. Muslims, Jews, Hindus and all the rest are therefore legally bound to the laws of the Christian deity in its Irish manifestation. As for atheists, they obviously have no constitutional status. In fact it is questionable if they have any rights under the Irish constitution. If the laws of the land are subject to the laws of God and atheists reject the latter, are they not in contempt of the constitution? Is it illegal to be an atheist in the Irish theocracy?

The veracity of people testifying in Irish courts is still determined by placing one’s hand on the Bible. So, if I am arraigned before an Irish court for a minor offence, the basis of my credibility hinges on my belief in one of humanity’s most incredible fables! You are therefore only believable if you are a believer. This kind of thing would be laughed at in other countries such as France or Germany. But France is a real republic. The French theocracy was overthrown in the Revolution of 1789. The French constitution of 1791 opens eloquently with the declaration of the rights of man. There is no reference to the rights of God. It begins by stating that ignorance and contempt for the rights of man are the sole causes of public misery and the corruption of governments. The moral of the story? For the French republic ignorance is misery, for the Irish theocracy ignorance is 'bless'!

Ireland and the poverty of ideas

"Je vais te raconter l'histoire de la philosophie. Pas toute, bien sûr, mais quand même ses cinq plus grands moments. Chaque fois, je te donnerai l'exemple d'une ou deux grandes visions du monde liées à une époque afin que tu puisses, si tu le souhaites, commencer à lire par toi-même les oeuvres les plus importantes. Je te fais, d'entrée de jeu, une promesse : toutes ces pensées, je te les exposerai d'une façon totalement claire, sans le moindre jargon, mais en allant à l'essentiel, à ce qu'elles ont chaque fois de plus profond et de plus passionnant. Si tu prends la peine de me suivre, tu sauras donc vraiment en quoi consiste la philosophie, comment elle éclaire de façon irremplaçable les multiples interrogations qui portent sur la façon dont nous pourrions ou devrions conduire nos existences..." Extract from French ex-minister for Education and philosopher Luc Ferry's book.

Our ex-minister appears on the right above conversing with the agents of Irish stulification. Read on!

While Minister Ferry was promoting the reading of Plato, Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche in French schools a couple of years ago, his Irish counterpart was sending a copy of Diarmuid Ferriter’s quasi-hagiography of Eamon De Valera to every school in the country, the very man who censored any ideas which contradicted our ‘holiest traditions’. The contrast couldn’t be more depressing

One often hears the expression ‘ time for new ideas’. But what is a new idea? What are ideas? Let’s narrow the question down: what conditions are necessary for the creation and advancement of new ideas? First of all, it presupposes an ability to excogitate, to think critically, to examine, dissect, reflect, elucidate, extrapolate etc. But critical examination of the world on an abstract level is disgracefully neglected in the Irish education system; one could go so far as to say it is scrupulously avoided. Although the Irish are wont to cite our superior education system as one of the key factors for the successes of the Celtic Tiger years, the Irish education system is, on the contrary, one of the State’s most conspicuous failures. An example of this failure is the falling number of students taking history as a subject for the leaving cert. We won’t mention the state of Irish and foreign languages! Although the study of history has increased marginally in the past few years, the numbers are significantly smaller than those sitting the exam in the 1980s. Of the 50 thousand students sitting the leaving cert this year, less than 10 thousand will write essays on history, compared with over thirty thousand in 1989. But the lack of interest shown by Ireland’s youth in history is only part of the problem in Irish education. We are facing the bleak prospect of a new generation well-versed in all the intricacies of market economics, technology and natural sciences, while ignorant of the world in which they live. It is the prospect of the ‘mindless moron, immunised for life against the contagion of thought’, as Professor Joe Lee so eloquently put it. Critical thought as a ‘contagion’ rather than an asset is widely nurtured in Ireland. But the lack of historical knowledge is only part of the problem. ‘Enterprise culture’ is what the Irish education system is about. One goes to school to learn skills that will enable one to make lots of money when one leaves. In such a society education simply becomes a byword for material enrichment.

The commercialisation of Irish education is a deeply worrying development. The problem is that the Irish state does not have a philosophy of education. State schools are left to the Church to run; here it is hoped that the combination of a ‘ Catholic ethos’- a term meaning ‘the mindless indoctrination of questionable values’, and ‘enterprise culture’- a term meaning ‘ the tendency to see the goal of life as the production of profit’ , this rabid anti-intellectualism is what the Irish education system fosters and nourishes. In France the contrast couldn’t be more pronounced. There the study of history, geography and philosophy are obligatory for all students sitting the French equivalent of the Leaving Cert. All French students have to spend at least a year studying philosophy before leaving school. That is why France has contributed more than any other country to the domain of the human sciences, philosophy, social science, political science, anthropology, sociology etc. This level of intellectual debate is essential in a multicultural society. The former French minister for education Luc Ferry is himself a highly acclaimed philosopher.
In Ireland, philosophy is not only not obligatory, it is not even an option on the curriculum. Critical thinking is subject to a priori exclusion. This is one of the reasons why multiculturalism in Ireland could become a problem in the near future. When an ‘enterprise culture’ is promoted over a philosophical culture, in other words, when mindless mercantilism triumphs over critical reflection, minds close early on and prejudices ossify. This ignorance about our own past and that of the world, coupled with an inability to think for ourselves constitutes what Joyce called a metaphysical ‘hemiplegia’ or paralysis affecting Irish society.

Morevover,the continuing centrality of the Catholic Church in Irish education is nothing short of a national disgrace, and this absurd situation will ensure the continual stultification of Irish society into the future.

Irish GDP. Gross Domestic Propaganda. On the horrors of national constipation

It seems the average debt-encumbered worker is now going to have to foot the bill for the Government’s feckless economic banquet over the past decade; perhaps banquet should be spelled with a k.When the Irish export boom slumped in the first few years of this century, the Government decided to keep the Tiger economy myth going by borrowing from abroad. This ridiculous credit bubble was handled by what we might call the GPE, the Government’s Private Executive; in other words, the banks. The GPE helped to keep the dream-reality going by kindly ‘helping’ people to buy ludicrously expensive homes, or perhaps we should call them, domestic investment projects (Dips, for short!). Meanwhile the Government collected the revenue from Stamp duty as the newspapers continued to publish copious property supplements designed to induce the naive to buy houses paid for by the bank’s virtual money. According to the economist Patrick Honohon, foreign loans to Irish banks jumped from 10 percent of GDP in 2003 to a mind-boggling 60 percent in 2008. The result was an orgy of property development. The banks borrowed the money from abroad and the people borrowed the money from the banks while the Government collected the taxes from all the borrowed money. This enabled to Government to stay in power claiming that the economy was flying, albeit on virtual fuel. A few years ago, when some analysts ( very few in fact)were beginning to spread rumours that the Celtic emperor may not be wearing any clothes, they were denounced as pessimists and cynical gainsayers or even worse conspiring ‘Marxists’, the ultimate pejorative term in Modern Ireland. The standard critique of those on the left was that they had nothing to offer but ideology. The Government, on the other hand, had no ideology. Neo-liberal capitalism was ideologically neutral, common sense, human nature etc. In reality the Government had a surplus of bad ideology and a deficit of good ideas.
The country was a bit like those cartoons where the central character,suspended in mid-air, only falls when he looks down. It was the unconscious conviction that the artificial air of mindless optimism would keep the whole fraud going. Now we have finally understood the meaning of our much vaunted GDP: GROSS DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA.The media never ceased to remind us that most people earned over 30 thousand Euro a year.Irish people were rich, the richest people in Europe. We were the living proof that liberal capitalism had triumphed over the ideological battles of history. George Bernhard Shaw famously said that an Irishman’s heart is nothing but his imagination. I’m beginning to wonder if the Irish have an unusual capacity for ‘wild imaginings’. But seeing as we’re on the subject of mass overindulgence perhaps we could reformulate the Shavian dictum thus: An Irishman’s fart is nothing but his constipation! I believe constipation is either caused by overeating or a bad diet. It can be particularly embarrassing when sitting in the intense silence of waiting rooms, for example. It’s as if the pious propriety of social convention is being irreverently attacked by the rankling rumblings of intestinal flatulence. At this bleak moment in history, Irish society resembles a patient suffering from acute constipation. The bowels of our society are making lots of embarrassing noises while the Government, our national face, blushes in the waitingroom of the IMF desperately hoping to be supplied with enough Senokot to ease its bowels and flush the problem down the ideological toilet. I think it was the scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam who said ‘stercorum cuique sum bene olet’- everyone’s shit smells good to themselves. This could certainly be said of the Government. Perhaps it is time to ask the question: is not our national constipation the consequence of the Government’s pathological desire for a perverse form of olfactory pleasure? Or perhaps we could put it this way: are we being forced to pay for ideological overfeed, for a meal we never ordered?

The Tale of the Sheep and the Tiger

While taking a stroll through the Jardins de Luxembourg in Paris last week I spotted a photography exposition evoking ideas associated with the 27 states of the European Union. Naturally enough, my first thought was ‘what images would they choose to represent Ireland? The theme for the selection of photographs seemed rather random. There were three photographs representing each country, one of the parliament and the other evoking cultural and environmental themes. Having passed images of British industry in the 50s, the Berlin wall and the sky-scraping financial district of Paris’s La Defense, my irrepressible and perhaps fatuous sense of national pride filled me with fervid anticipation of the photographs representing Ireland. Then, there it was: a green field with sheep on it overlooking a blue sea. It was the classic cliché, the postcard image, a brochure for Bord Fáilte etc. I wondered if this was really the Ireland of grass and tree, stone and sea, the island of romantic dreams, Yeats country, or rather an ‘abode of lost ones each searching for its lost one’, the land of throes and interminable woes, Beckett country. Looking again at the sheep I was tempted to ask: who are the sheep in the photograph? Who are those woolly grazers oblivious to the world? Then an outrageous thought beset me .We are the sheep gently poised on the side of the cliff moments before the waves of the world financial crisis wash us away. We are the lost sheep of Europe, a bloated ovine carcass rotting upon the shores of the western Atlantic. There’s a thought to be going on with!
When I went home that night, I reflected again on the idea of the Irish landscape and the ovine hypothesis. As we all know, sheep are rather gregarious creatures; when one of them leaves the flock the others tend to follow. But how could one tell this particularly Irish fairytale? Once upon a time we (the sheep) were ruled by the British, let’s call them the dogs.(no offence intended!) Now the sheep didn’t really like being ruled by dogs but they did what they were told. Then one day, a few brave lambs decided they’d had enough and so they started a revolution. At first the rest of the flock almost choked on their cud. They repeated what their masters told them and called the revolutionaries a pack of black sheep. But when they saw the terror of the dogs they rapidly sheared their wool and disguised themselves as wolf-hounds. The dogs panicked and left but were soon replaced by a pack of real wolf-hounds, the Church. The sheep capitulated. As luck would have it, the sheep eventually realised that the wolf-hounds couldn’t really bite and so they happily returned to their old pastures. But grass was scarce and some had to leave the country. Thousands followed. Then one sunny day, a strange creature with stripped skin arrived on the island. Let’s call him the Celtic Tiger or neo-liberal economics. The tiger inspired shock and awe among the flock. He was wild, exotic, exiting and seemed to have magical qualities. Some distrusted him but the tiger was very cleaver. He said. “Hey, you too can acquire stripped skin and large teeth if you do as I say, and if you follow me you will run just as fast as I! So let me by your guide and guardian.” The sheep followed. Now the problem with tigers is that they need jungles in order to survive and sheep are not too comfortable in jungles! The tiger decided to create an artificial jungle by taking the sheep’s wool. It was proof of his magical powers. The sheep thought it was a great idea and happily donated. However, as the jungle got bigger it became more and more difficult to find the tiger. Some began to doubt if he really even existed. Then one day, a storm blew the woolly jungle away and the poor sheared flock was left bleating upon the Atlantic shore. The tiger had abandoned them in search of new flocks. The end.

Gaudeloupe: the wraith and wrath of France's past

When Barack Obama was elected American president over a month ago, the French satirical journal ‘Le Canard enchaîné ’ published a picture of the new president with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy. The famous slogan of the latter ‘ yes we can’ was mordantly juxtaposed with Sarkozy’s rhyming imitation, “Yes je crâne ! ”-yes I boast! The accession of the first black president in US history sparked off a series of lively debates in the French media on the question of racial and cultural diversity. Could France follow the American example and elect a black president? What measures are needed to address the question of race and socio-economic equality? France’s historical cubard contains many restless squelletons most notably the legacy of its African and Oceanic colonies. Serious discussion of French atrocities in the Algerian war of independence remains, according to many polemicists, quite mute. However, just as this debate was taking place in the cosmopolitan salons of Paris, workers in the French Carribean island of Gaudeloupe were taking to the streets en masse. In spite of the fact that the general strike has paralysed the French island for over a month, reporting on the Gaudeloupean crisis has been surprisingly scanty until now. Yet the signals were given to Elysée Palace as early as December 8th 2008 that workers had had enough of exorbitant prices and meagre wages. Paris ignored the warnings. On the 20th of January the Committee against extreme exploitation (LPK) launched a general strike crippling the island’s economy. Yet, it took the French government 10 days before asking the Secretary of State for overseas territories Yves Jégo to visit the island in an effort to resolve the crisis. Since then, the situation on the island has intensified with riots and larceny on the increase. On February 18th a syndicalist was shot dead after leaving a meeting. According to reports, a gang of youths mistook him for a police officer. The procrastination of the French government coupled with the incendiary comment by the president that the behaviour of the rioters, whom he described as hooligans and delinquents, proves that the conflict can no longer be considered social, have radicalised the animosity of many Gaudeloupeans. The protesters are demanding a significant increase in their salaries. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has proposed an increase of 200 euro per month. It remains to be seen whether this measure will suffice to quell the flames of discontent that have gripped the island in the past few months.
The Guadeloupean crisis raises serious problems for France and indeed Europe. As a department of France, it is also part of the European Union. However, along with its neighbouring island of Martinique and the South American country of French Guyana, it forms part of the only EU region inextricably linked to the history of slavery. Conquered by France in 1635, it has remained in French possession ever since. To finance their sugar and cane industries, the French imported slaves from Africa to work in the new colony. Slavery was temporarily abolished in 1794, only to be re-introduced under the dictatorship of Napoléon in 1802. Slavery was finally abolished in 1848. However, after the abolition the French government continued to maintain the sugar and cane industries, the only difference for the slaves being that they were now free to earn a meagre wage with which to buy their own food at high prices. In 1971 the Martinique poet and French deputy declared that the new capitalist system was even more colonial than the old. Much of the old slave businesses stayed in the possession of white colonial families whose descendants still have a monopoly on the island’s industries today. In spite of their traumatic past, Gaudeloupeans are proud of their French identity. Unlike their neighbours in Haiti who secured independence in 1804, Gaudeloupe sought equality at the heart of the French Republic, creating a concept of identity which transcended geographical and racial boundaries. They represent in this sense the essence of French republicanism, yet the historical wounds of institutionalised racism have been re-opened by what many perceive as the blind indifference of the French government to France’s most impoverished region.

On Seán Eoghain O Tuathalán or John Toland: The Oracle Of The Anti-Christians

In the windswept peninsula of Inisowen in County Donegal in the year 1670, a child was conceived whose perception of the world would change the course of European history. His name was Seán Eoghain Ó Tuathalán or Janus Junius Eoganensius or Joannes Tolandus Hibernicus or as he is commonly known today John Toland. We don’t know much about his early life. Some biographies relate that he was the son of a Catholic priest and a prostitute, a not uncommon phenomenon at the time.

However, the Scholars in the Irish college in Prague where Toland studied for a while, wrote him a testament in Latin claiming he came from a noble Gaelic family. At the age of 16 Toland converted to Protestantism. He received a thorough grounding in Theology, Greek and Latin in Londonderry before departing for university studies in Glasgow and Edinburgh, where he received a Master of Arts in 1690.

Toland continued his studies in Holland at Leiden University, at the time, a bastion of liberal thinking founded by William of Orange. In Holland, O Tuathaláin frequented the coffee-houses and taverns meeting all the greatest minds of his day. It was here that he came across the works of the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, whose radical ideas were to have a profound effect on his subsequent writing.

Having imbibed the liberal intellectual spirit of Holland, Toland went to Oxford where he read the philosophy of John Locke. Locke had argued that there was no contradiction between reason and religious faith. Toland decided to test this idea through a thorough examination of the Bible. The result was a book that would send shock-waves throughout Europe. 'Christianity Not Mysterious; or, A treatise Shewing That There Is Nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, nor above It, and That No Christian Doctrine Can Be Properly Call'd a Mystery'.

Toland’s book asserted that Christianity did not contain any mysteries. These so –called mysteries, he argued, had been invented by priests to frighten and hoodwink the ignorant. Christianity Not Mysterious proved to be a best-seller throughout Europe. Its radicalism was such that it provoked over 50 separate publications attempting to refute its ideas.

The Irish parliament immediately ordered Toland's book to be burned and sent out a warrant for the author’s arrest. Toland fled to Oxford, where he would remain for a number of years. But it wasn’t long before the Gaelic philosopher would be the source of controversy yet again. In 1698 he published his monumental biography of the poet John Milton, where certain passages casting doubt about the authenticity of the New Testament caused outrage. However, his work Anglia Libera, which argued in favour of the Hanover succession, won him favour among the British authorities. He was employed by the British government as a foreign diplomat, frequenting the Court of Prussia, where he greatly impressed the Princess Sophia.

Toland also corresponded with the German philosopher Gotfried Leibniz, whose letters reveal a deep admiration for Toland’s genius mixed with a degree of reservation concerning his radical anti-religious views. Toland’s conversations with Princess Sophia resulted in a book entitled ‘Letters to Serena’ where he argued that motion was an intrinsic quality of matter, thus refuting the Cartesian conception of the world.
Toland’s writings are said to be in the range of 30 to 100 books and pamphlets. He was the first thinker to argue for the naturalisation of the Jews in Europe. During the course of his career Toland became increasingly atheistic. His opposition to established religion was argued in his book 'On Christianity, Judaism and Islam', three religions which he described as the three 'great frauds of humanity'. However, his magnum opus is generally considered to be his book written in Latin entitled Pantheisticon. Combining many ideas from Ancient Greek and Roman authors, this work proposed the concept of pantheism, which means that God and nature are one, and that the study of nature is the only true knowledge.

Toland’s works so obsessed the French philosopher Le Baron D’Holbach, the first confessed atheist, that his friend Denis Diderot, described its reception among the French intelligentsia as being like a bomb! D’Holbach immediately undertook the translation of some of Toland’s works into French. The French philospher's library contained all of Toland's published works. Diderot and Voltaire read the Irish philosopher with devotion. Toland also undertook a number of significant translations, the most important of which were works from the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno.

Later in Life, Toland, who spoke over 10 languages, turned again to his native Irish. He studied documents pertaining to the Celtic languages in Oxford and tried to show that the Ancient Order of the Druids represented a more primitive form of his own thinking. He is also said to have translated part of the Gaelic historian Seathrún Céitinn’s Foras Feasa ar Éireann.
Described by eighteenth century Irish philosopher George Berkeley as the 'first free thinker', and by Johnathon Swift as the ‘oracle of the anti-Christians’, this Gaelic, British, European, republican, cosmopolitan genius has, with the exception of a few scholars, has been hitherto ignored by the Irish intellectual establishment. However, new editions of his works have recently appeared in France, where he has even been compared to Nietszche and Marx, while Italian scholars have been studying his works for over fifty years with many scholarly tomes emphasising the influence of Tolandian ideas on European thought.

Seán Ó Tuathaláin is arguably one of the greatest geniuses Ireland has ever produced. His overwhelming erudition and the radicalism of his ideas make him a man centuries ahead of his time and as the French scholar Albert Lontoine has noted, 'dangerous for his epoch'. But how could a philosopher of such importance still remain unknown in Ireland? That is perhaps a question best asked of the Catholic Church, who controlled our philosophy departments for decades since Irish independence, stifling intellectual debate with obsequious Thomism and pious medievalism, the kind of 'priestcraft' Toland spent much of his life denouncing.

De non existensia Dei. Poland's intellectual slumber

The snow fell interminably as I took a bus for Auschwitz. It was early January 2005, 60 years after the liberation of the concentration camps. All I can remember of the journey was the pale, grey empty sky covering a vast expanse of forest. I looked attentively through the windows of our shabby bus for signs of life amid the winter desert. Nothing. Auschwitz is perhaps the only place of pilgrimage worth visiting in Europe. Unlike religious places of pilgrimage dedicated to the infusion of superstition and lies, Auscchwitz confronts us with pure mortality, that to which we are all heading and from which none of us can escape. This is not a holy pilgrimage, it is a hollow one. Going to Auschwitz is like drinking a cold stiff coffee. It is deeply unpalatable but it wakes you from your slumber. Yet, strangely, slumber is one of the first words that occured to me when I visited Krakow that January. Krakow is a fine cultured city yet plagued by unemployment and deep-rooted religiosity. If you go to Krakow on a Saturday night or Sunday morning you will see throngs of young people huddling into the local churches to worship. It is not uncommon to see young men and women attired in full ecclesiastical garb traversing the public squares. For a country with a highly educated population like Poland, it is surprising if not paradoxical that so many should practice religion. Coming back to my hostel from my trip to Auschwitz, I did a search on the internet for Polish philosophers. I wanted to see if this intellectual obsequiousness had always been a feature of Polish life. Could Auschwitz be the reason for the return to religion? Yet, how could they not realise the intrinsic connection between fascism and Christianity? How could modern Poland not see that the only reason their beloved church didn’t murder the same amount of people so quickly was because they didn’t possess the same technology during the 500 years of the infamous Inquisition?
For the most part, my googling left me disappointed. That is until I made a happy discovery. I stumbled upon the name Kasimierz Lyzcynsinski. According to Wikepedia, Liszinski was a ‘Polish noble, landowner, philosopher, and soldier in the ranks of the Sapheia family, who was accused, tried and executed for atheism in 1689.’ As a landowner, Liszinski also functioned as a podsedek, a Polish term for a magistrate dealing with land ownership issues. Liszinskis’s downfall came when he got into dispute with a the nuncio of Brest in Lithuania ( then part of the Polish kingdom), by the name of Jan Kazimierz Bzroska, who owed Liszinski a considerable sum of money. At the time, Liszinski had been reading a book by the theologian Henry Alsted called Theologica Naturalis, who had attempted to prove the existence of God. Unimpressed by Alsted’s thesis, Liszinski wrote in the margins ‘ ergo non est Deus’, therefore God does not exist. When he discovered this, Bzroska quickly informed the local clergy, who immediately ordered an investigation into Liszinski’s writings. It wasn’t long before they discovered the philosopher’s magnum opus boldly entitled ‘ De non existensia Dei, on the non-existence of God. Liszinski was tried and sentenced to death. Among the extracts remaining from this important book are the following.
“that Man is a creator of God, and God is a concept and creation of Man. Hence the people are architects and engineers of God and God is not a true being, but a being existing only within mind, being chimeric by its nature, because a God and a chimera are the same’
Liszinski goes on to proclaim
‘Religion was constituted by people without religion, so they could be worshipped although the God is not existent. Piety was introduced by the impious. The fear of God was spread by the unafraid so that the people were afraid of them in the end. Devotion named godly is a design of Man. Doctrine, be it logical or philosophical, bragging to be teaching the truth of God, is false, and on the contrary, the one condemned as false, is the very true one’
Liszinski also claimed that when intellectuals would try to explain to ordinary people how they were been duped by the church, they in their ignorance would attack those who were trying to free them. For his good sense Liszinski’s tongue was cut out by burning iron and his hands were burned over a slow fire before his head was chopped off. I guess it was the Catholic Church’s way of proving to him the reality of hell! What a pity Liszinski has been forgotten in modern Poland! On the Liszinski Wikipedia page you will find a link to a society dedicated to the promotion of reason in Polish society called racjonalista. Though hopelessly outnumbered by a population slumbering in religion, these intellectuals are nevertheless a ray of hope in a country suffering from the post-traumatic disorder of history.

El ultimo brigadista Irlandes

Bob Doyle (1916-2009) Commemoration(The last Irish Brigadista)O'Connell Street, DublinOil on canvas / Ola ar chanbhás50cm x 60cm / 19.7 in x 23.6

On the 22 of January this year, one of Ireland’s last true communists died. Bob Doyle was born in Dublin in 1916 to a poor working class family. Bob had a difficult childhood.While his father was away at sea, his mother was interned in a mental asylum. Bob was sent to a convent to be educated. In his memoires, he recalled the peculiar mixture of nationalism and anti-semitism inculcated by the nuns. Bob, like so many of his generation, was brought up to be an obsequious Catholic. Yet ironically, it was the Catholic Church which inspired his conversion to communism. On the 27th of March 1933 in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, Bob listened to a sermon by a Jesuit priest condemning all forms of socialists whom he described as ‘vile creatures’. After the service, a mob of up to a thousand parishioners marched to Connolly House, the meeting place of Irish socialists, and set fire to the building. This virulent mixture of racism and anti-communism was propagated by a newspaper called Catholic Mind. In may 1934, an article appeared claiming that ‘ the founders of communism were all Jews’. The article goes on to name Marx, Engels, Lenin and a host of others in an evil Jewish conspiracy to take over the world! Ireland’s love-affair with fascism was eloquently expressed by the Fine Gael leader John Aloysius Costello, who wrote in the same year ‘The Blackshirts have been victorious in Italy; and Hitler’s brownshirts were victorious in Germany, as, assuredly, the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish> Free State.’In his book ‘An Irishman’s Fight Against Fascism’, Bob recalled his shame at having been among the Catholic mob> that attacked Connolly House. However, soon thereafter, he met Kit Conway who explained socialist theory to him. Bob soon became a committed communist vehemently opposing the rise of the staunchly Catholic blue-shirt fascists lead by Eoin O Duffy. In 1936, when the shadow of fascism was spreading throughout Europe, he enlisted with Frank Ryan, Micheal O Riordan and others as a brigadista of the 15th> International Brigade in the Spanish civil war to fight for the republicans. The trauma of Spains’s fascist past is still being felt today. Since the election of Zapatero in 2004- whose form of Neo-republicanism has been largely influenced by the Irish philosopher Philip Petit-the legacy of the Spanish Civil War is being discussed more openly. The divisions remain, with Aznar’s right-wing Parti Popular and the Catholic Church eager to promote historical amnesia, so that their support for Franco’s brutal dictatorship may be forgotten. One wonders how far the Catholic Church will go in their attempt to re-write history. Following the example of the previous Pope, Benedict XVI has recently attempted to cover up the crimes of his church by beatifying Pope Pius XII, a Nazi sympathiser. The Pontiff, himself a former member of the Hitler Youth, has recently re-instated Bishop Williamson, who denies that the Holocaust ever took place. None of this is surprising, as the evidence of history proves the ideological link between fascism and the Catholic Church. What is surprising, however, is that extreme> right-wing ideology has not yet been fully eradicated from mainstream European societies, and that there is a dangerous apathy shown by many to confront it. Responding to the financial crisis shortly before he died, Bob Doyle regretted that capitalism continues to oppress the> workers of the world. When the racist Eoin O Duffy died in 1944, he was given a state funeral. The Irish state, yet again, paid its respects to a Nazi sympathiser. There was no such funeral for Bob Doyle, a true republican with the courage to take up arms in the fight for social justice. The fact that the Labour Party would ally itself in the last general election with a party historically linked to fascism, shows the absurdity of the Irish democratic system, which consists principally of the right-wing Fianna Fáil and their opponents, the even more right-wing Fine Gael! I was amused by former TD Noel Tracey’s statemention November 7th last year accusing RTE of being ‘left-wing’. Needless to say, I am looking forward to ‘Red’ Telifís na h’ Éireann’s documentary on the history of Irish communism!

An labhróidh Washington le Tehran? An labhróidh Tehran le Tel Aviv?

An labhróidh Washington le Tehran? An labhróidh Tehran le Tel Aviv?

Ní chloistear mórán faoi choimhlint i bPailistín faoi láthair. Tá an olltoghchán Iosraelach faoi lánseol, ach cé go mba sin ceann de na cúiseanna chun an cogadh a fhearadh, ní dhealraíonn sé anois go raibh an beartas sin rathúil. Sular sheol siad na trúpaí chun Gaza, dúirt rialtas na hIosraele go raibh sé mar aihm acu, Hamas a scriosadh agus a chur as feidhm. Ach tar éis níos mó na 1330 daoine maraithe agus 5450 gortaithe, tá Hamas fós ann agus, de réir cosúlachta, ag bailiú nirt.
Tá muintir an domhain ag feidheamh le ráiteas Obama faoin gcogadh sa Mheán Oirthear. Shílfeá go mbeadh dearacadh agus straitéis eile aige chun dul i ngleic le coimhlint den chineál sin. Go deimhin, ba chomhartha maith é cinneadh Obama George Mitchel a sheoladh don réigiún. Ar a laghad, tá taithí chuimsitheach faighte aige ón gcloimhlint i d’Tuisceart na hÉireann. Tá sé tharr am anois don Teach Bán ról níos pragmataí a ghlacadh sa Mheán Oirthear. Anois agus na Stáit Aontaithe ag ullmhú a dtrupaí a tharraingt as an Iaráic, tá comharthaí ann go bhfuil an cúlra geopholaitiúil ag athrú sa réigiún. Tá an Iaráin ag oscailt an dorais do dhioscúrsa leis na Stáit Aonaithe , comhartha eile go bhfuil teacht i láthair Obama ag spreagadh athrú intinne sa Phoblacht Ioslamach. Má labhraíonn Washington le Tehran, d’fhéadfadh sé an seanchaidhreamh a bhí idir an dá tir roimh an réabhlóid ioslamach i 1979 a athbunú.
O bunaíodh Poblacht Ioslamach na Iaráine i 1979, bhí drogall ar rialtais na Stát Aontaithe taidhleoireacht shaoithínteach a chur i bhfeidhm le rialtas na hIaráine. Ach nuair a tháinig an Ayatollah Khoméini i gcumhacht san Iaráin i 1979, bhí sé brea sásta dul i ndáil chomhairle le hIosrael. Bhí gá do Therhan margadh a dhéanamh le hIosrael chun gunnaí a cheannach. Bhí a fhios ag Iaráin go mbeadh sé usáideach dóibh a bheith cairdiúil le Iosrael dá bharr. Ach céard faoi ráiteas d’Athmadinijad cúplá bliain ó shin go raibh sé ar intinn aige Iosrael a scriosadh? Chuala mé taidhleoir Iaráineach sa Radio na Fraince an tseachtain seo caite agus é a ag maíomh nár aistríodh na focail an uachtaráin go ceart. Bhí sé a rá, dar leis, go mba choir go scriosfaí an sionachas. Bheul, b’fheidir go raibh mícheart againne. Ach ta rud amháin soléir anois: má fheicfimid rapprochement idir na Stáit Aontaithe agus an Iaráin, ta sé dealraitheach go laghdóidh sé sin an brú faoi Iosrael deireadh a chur ar a dhaorsmacht faoi mhuintir na Pailistíne. I ndeireadh an lae, is muintir bhocht iad na Pailistínigh agus is beag an meas atá ag na rialtais arabacha eile sa réigúin ar chearta daonna a gcomharsana

Sarko's sober sermon

On Thursday January 5th the French president Nicolas Sarkozy participated in a televised debate to discuss his new rescue package for the French economy. The financial plan comprising 1.4 billion euro will be used to re-finance the banks. The president also intends to invest in infrastructure and social projects. In order to save France’s disappearing automobile industry, professional tax will be cut from 2010. Since the financial crisis struck last year, France’s chief car manufacturers have hit an all-time production slump, with Renault, Citroen and Peugeot all closing factories. Outsourcing of manufacture to poorer countries such as Roumania and the Czech Republic has led to a serious rise in French unemployment. Sarkozy hopes that the removal of corporation tax will remedy this problem. Watching the debate, one got the impression that this was a man feeling the pressure. 

In spite of the democratic appearance of such a public debate with the president, his interrogation by three regular French news readers was far from rigorous. The general strike which has brought Guadaloupe to a standstill over the past few weeks was not even broached, and what about his famous ‘plan banlieu’, the ambitious development plan for France’s troubled suburbs? Nothing.
The only independent journalist who was allowed to question Sarkozy was the conservative Alain Duhamel, who has recently written a book called La Marche Consulaire ( The Consular March) comparing Sarkozy to Napoleon and the current financial crisis to the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo! The president managed to evade the vexed question of French purchasing power, which is considerably weaker than that of Germany. French teachers are among the lowest paid in the Euro Zone.
When it came to the question of Europe, Sarkozy referred to Ireland twice. However, this time there was no mention of the no- vote on The Lisbon Treaty. Instead, Ireland was mentioned as one of the worst cases of the financial capitalist catastrophe! Needless to say, the United Kingdom was also criticised for its role in the sub-prime mortgage scandal. It would be easy to forget, considering the ebullience of Sarkozy’s recent anti-capitalist rhetoric that this was the man who proposed to introduce the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model into French society during his 2007 election campaign. His slogan then was ‘travailler plus pour gagner plus’ - ‘ work more to earn more’. The thirty-five hour limit on the working week was to be reformed so that people could be encouraged to work themselves to death! Mr Sarkozy also expresses a considerable antipathy for rogue traders, in spite of the fact that one of his many recent constitutional reforms proposed the suspension of custodial sentences for financial misdemeanours.

 The French president has a rather idiosyncratic way of speaking. He frequently follows a statement with the question ‘pourquoi’-why, before proceeding to hammer home the answer. He also makes extensive use of repetition.  According to a recent survey, only 37 percent of the French population are happy with the performance of the French president, with over 60 percent expressing serious discontent. Nicolas Sarkozy showed remarkable dexterity in answering a range of highly predictable questions with platitudes and rhetorical flourishes. But, the real debate is heating up outside the Elysée Palace, and as the general strike on the 29th of January showed, French workers are becoming increasingly hostile to a Sarkozy’s relaunch of a bankrupt system.

On the importance of Scythian discourse.

From his home in near the Black Sea, a young man named Anacharsis made his way to Athens in the early 6th century BCE. At that time Athens was the centre of the civilised world, a metropolis teeming with innovative politicians, philosophers, poets and artists. Anacharsis was a Scythian, a culture which most Athenians would have considered to be the epitome of barbarity. The ancient historian Herodotus, for example, describes their dipsomania, and how they rode horses bare-back and apparently smoked a form of marijuana! For the Greeks, the Scythians were decidedly inferior. Incidently, various accounts of Ancient Ireland derive the Latin word for Irish scottus from Scythia, claiming that this Indo-European tribe came to Ireland via Egypt, Spain and finally the Atlantic coast. This mytho-historical origin from such reputed barbarians was used by the English renaissance poet Edmund Spenser , who lived in Cork, to justify English rule in Ireland.

In spite of the fact that his mother was Greek and he was raised bilingual, Anacharsis was not readily accepted in his new land. When he arrived in Greece he is said to have visited the home of the illustrious Solon the archon, or ruler. Solon was also a philosopher and renowned poet and it is probably for this reason that the intellectual Anacharsis decided to make his acquaintance. When he arrived at the home of the Greek archon , Solon asked him the purpose of his visit. Anacharsis replied “ I have travelled here from afar to make you my friend”. Solon was not interested and retorted “ it is better to make friends at home”. Anacharsis’s riposte was pungent “ Therefore it is necessary for you, being at home, to make friends with me”. Solon was deeply impressed by the sagacity and wit of his interlocutor and decided to offer him the traditional Greek hospitality. The idea of hospitality plays a central role in Ancient Greek culture. They called it xenophilia, literally love of the stranger. This was also a feature of Gaelic culture. The brú or hostel provided food and raiment for the passing traveller and was a common feature of the ancient Irish countryside.

Anacharsis’ was noted for the frankness of his speech. This irreverent directness became known as Scythian discourse. His outspokenness and love of knowledge made him popular among the Greeks. He was the first metoi or foreigner to be made a Greek citizen and the first foreigner to be inititiated into the Eleusianian mysteries, the equivalent of becoming a member of Aos Dána in Ireland or the Academie Francaise in France, I suppose. He is said to have written a book comparing the laws of the Greeks to those of the Scythians. His comparison of laws to spiders’ webs, which catch the little flies but let wasps and hornets escape has not lost its relevance today. The Scythian sage exhorted moderation in all things. Coming from a binge drinking culture, he had seen the effects of over-indulgent bibulosity. He couldn’t quite understand why the Greeks starting their drinking sessions with small jars and when they were drunk, finished them with big ones! He described the vine as containing three clusters of grapes: the first pleasure, the second drunkenness and the third disgust! When he was asked to describe the safest ship, he replied “ the one brought into harbour”. He was once reproached for his Scythian origins and his reply is one which any foreigner whose nationality is criticised should remember. He said “well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country!”

Anacharsis represents for me the model foreigner. He came to Greece to learn from them yet, on the contrary, he was not averse to teaching the Greeks a lesson or two. What he perceived as progressive in Greek culture, he attempted to introduce in his own country, though this eventually cost him his life! Nevertheless, the very phrase Scythian speech is what the encounter with other cultures is all about. He openly expressed what he felt about his new adopted country. Perhaps in this sense Scythian discourse is what Meto Eireann tries to promote. In providing a forum for the immigrant, the outsider, the foreigner to openly express their views on Ireland, we are followers of Anacharsis or proverbially Scythian Speakers.