Rendition Admission

Well, this is brilliant, isn't it? According to the report by the specially-dreamed-up EU commission, most of the EU states were clearly aware of what was going on with the American goons going around abducting suspicious-looking people at random, tying them up, kicking the shit out of them, giving them a free but uncomfortable plane trip to somewhere more exotic but where even less questions are asked than in wealthy, civilised Europe, tortured some more, and finally killed or returned with a muttered apology - depending on whether or not the suspect would be sorely missed or whether the relatives or friends would have the wherewithal to complain about it.

Not only that, but the report also noted a distinct lack of cooperation from all the governments concerned, with the exception of Germany and Spain (who were both, paradoxically, two of Uncle Sam's biggest bitches in Europe, but Germany had one of their citizens abducted and tortured and the Spaniards have swung left and pulled out of the kill-everyone-in-Iraq campaign). Dermot Ahern - our foreign minister - was supposed to be "fuming" and "livid" about the report and he seemed particularly annoyed that the report was made public a couple of days earlier than he expected. I mean, doesn't that fact alone tell you something of the lack of morality under which this government operates? So, it was a few days earlier - that's good to know the facts sooner rather than later, isn't it? After fuming and whingeing, the miffed minister then took to "na-na na-na-na!" schoolyard politics, when he jumped on the fact that one alleged rendition flight landed in Knock. "More apparition than rendition" he peevishly pouted.

Bertie himself played the old "Well now, I'm a straight-talking honest man" card by claiming that he sat facing George Bush in the Oval Office, looked him in the eye and asked "Eehhh... George. You know that thing there where you ehhh... allegedly ehh.... choose people who look like they're going to murder a load of people and then ehh... take them away for questioning... or whatever - none of my business, mind! Well, you know that thing; they're calling it rendition or something...."
"Yup?"
"Well, I don't suppose you ever bring your ehh... guests through Irish airspace ... eh... Shannon airport, for example."
"Hell no!"
"Right. Well, ehh... dat's good enough for me, den. I don't tink we need to go bothering your people by searching the ehh... planes or anyting like dat -"
"Well, I'd sure appreciate if we didn't have to, uh... step down to those levels of mistrust. After all, we're all like family here, what with my great grand-uncle being a fan of John McCormack and all."
"Of course, of course! Ehh... how are the kids?"
"In rehab. But they're fine. You know kids - always manage to land on their feet; just like dogs."
"Yeh. Yeh. Heh-heh!"
"Well, I'd better git back to my schedule. That crazy world ain't gonna run itself, now is it?"
"No, no. Ok, then."
"There wasn't anything else you wanted me to ask, was there?"
"No... no there wasn't. Ehh... fair enough. I'd better go, too. Mustn't keep the Irish public waiting."
"Okay, then. Oh, and would it be too much to ask your people in Shannon to keep those Al-quaida protesters away. That last plane they broke cost us three million dollars."
"Of course. Ehh... no problem. Ehh... goodbye Lord Bush - eh.. I mean, Mister President."
"Bye, bye! Y'all come back now, hear?"

I know this because a diplomat friend of mine smuggled a tape recorder in his pocket when he was in the Oval Office with Bertie and Georgie.

The Americans really have the world in a vice-like grip of terror; work with us or we'll kill you, is the message, it seems. I must go to the jacks now.

Killer Dogs & Politicial Assassins

I was rummaging through the French press in an electronic manner yesterday and came across a few interesting things:

First of all, much as I hate sensationalism - which is particularly prevalent in Ireland at the moment through the "Oirish" publications and supported by swelling masses of the idiot classes - it really is hard to resist a headline that reads "Woman killed by 4 Rottweilers". That's a headline straight out of a Stephen King book, if ever there was one. The unfortunate unnamed 23-year-old met her untimely end when not one, not two, not even three, but actually four - that's FOUR!- hungry Rottweilers took a ravenous liking to her, specifically her left arm and her head. It all happened in Villers-sur-There, near Beauvais (a place familiar to Ryanair travellers for the large shed with the marquee extension that passes for a an airport terminal building - not that there's anything wrong with it, in fact). According the local captain of the Gendarmerie - Michel Le Ray, the fire brigade were called to the courtyard house and had to terminate the lives of the four dogs with extreme prejudice before entering. "These were big bastards!" (I'm translating with liberal usage of poetic licence here) said Le Ray, holding his hands wide and his eyes bulging. "They must have been somewhere between 60 and 80kg". Now an 80kg-dog is a big bastard. I happen to know that I'm about 82kg myself, so in my opinion a mutt that size doesn't really need to live any longer, especially one that's been bred for causing terminal death. The neighbours were of the same opinion. They had already complained about the dogs that seemed to belong to 3 men who lived in the property. The mayor Christian Sadowski confirmed this, saying that only 2 of the dogs were declared to the town hall, accounting for a 50% figure of undeclared man-eating dogs. Dogs killing people is a rarity in France. In fact, there hadn't been any cases of it for ten years until a 17-month-old girl was killed by one of those dirty rotten-looking staffordshire bull terriers in June at Seine-Saint-Denis and an 8-year-old was killed in June also in Seine-Maritime by a bull mastiff.

Whatever about an animal losing the head and attacking, the calculated nature of political assassinations is very depressing. Pierre Gemayel appears to have been murdered by Syrian agents, just like the Prime Minister Hariri was. I heard old Walid Jumblat speaking to Le Monde laying the blame for Gemayel's death firmly at the foot of the Syrian president. Hariri's son saying the same thing. All of this is not good for Lebanese unity. It makes we wonder in whose real interest all of this unrest really lays. I know I'm becoming more rabidly anti-American every day, but this kind of shit does play into their hands and into the hands of the Israelis... Maybe not.

Whatever you do though, don't criticise Vladimir Putin specifically and the Russian government generally. Because if you do, you'll be lucky to suffer no more than international boycott (like they did with the Georgians) and if you're not so lucky, you'll end up shot (like the journalist Anna Politkovskaya) or poisoned, like Alexander Litvinenko. There's no other nation that so brazenly assassinates its personae non grata, is there? The Americans make sure to cover their trail pretty well, the British and the French do it very secretly and, if they're caught red-handed, at least there's a token gesture of embarrassment. But the Russians? All the clues are just dropped in a heap at the scene; a bunch of arrows pointing straight at Putin's rat-like features. And he smirks, shrugs and says (I don't speak Russian very well, so I'm partially making it up) "Did I do that? Ha ha! Prove it if you dare, or else fuck off and don't be annoying me!"

All this talk of Rottweilers and shifty politics brings me back to Brian Cowen - finance minister of the Glorious Peoples Republic of Ireland. It's so boringly undramatic presenting a CD to the media, isn't it? In the good old days, the finance minister had an attache case crammed with papers and the reason it made much more exciting television is that you know that if you could just reach out your hand and grab the attache case and open it, you would have all the papers laid out, which you could read and be party to a great wisdom. It made you drool slightly. Not like the feckin' CD. I mean, what's the point? You'd have to grab it, find a computer, put the disk into it, plug in the computer, switch on the monitor, get a cup of coffee, and you know what? I couldn't be arsed with it - I'm sick of looking at computer screens all day. But the point is that you can't grab a cd and immediately rifle through its contents. That's the crucial and dramatic difference right there. I'm going now, tired as I am of staring at a computer screen, to go and rummage through a desk and then an attache case.

Dopplegangers

There I was last night sitting by the fire with the missus and watching television while simultaneously slurping my glass of wine in a sophisticated manner which I have honed from years of drinking and to which I have become accustomed.

When I engage in this sort of activity of a Friday night, I often end up watching that outrageously useless plank Pat Kenny (who has done something strange to his hair, I couldn't help noticing) on the Late Late Show. If some interesting guest manages to get a decent flow of conversation going despite the persistent interruptory efforts of Gobshite Kenny, then I can end up watching large chunks of the programme. My wife would have similar views on the matter, so she would.

Anyway, Timber-Features Kenny had director John Boorman and his seemingly favourite leading actor Brendan Gleeson. They were talking about the film and Ireland and how there's an underbelly to the shiny side of life here and the idea that the shinier it is on one side, the darker the underbelly is, or appears to be, or... something. The point is, though, that as I was looking at yourman Gleeson talking away, it struck me that his real-life double must be Ben Dunne. See and judge for yourselves. Which one of these 2 is Ben Dunne and which is Brendan Gleeson?Confusing, eh?

But if that wasn't difficult enough for my poor head to wrap itself around, then wasn't I in for an even larger dose of difficulty later on. Staying up even later, as I did, I found myself watching a very good film called "Romuald & Juliette" on TG4 (incredible as it may sound, this was actually released in the US as "Mama, there's a white guy in our bed"). The thing is that there was a character in it who was the managing director's closest confidant who turns out to be porking his wife on the side. This character was played by a Swiss-born actor named Gilles Privat. At least, that's what his biography says. I'm quiet certain, however, that Mr. John Delany, the current Chief Eejit at the Football Association of Ireland, had a previous acting career in France before he became CE of the FAI. See for yourselves:
Privat (if that's his real name) is the one on the left. It's either that or Gilles Privat has been engaged in an elaborate "reality TV" programme where he plays, as well as actually becomes, the head of the soccer crowd in Ireland. Actually, now that I think of it, that second thesis would explain a lot...

Curtin the Cunt

Well, fair play to good old Judge Curtin! And, while I'm in a congratulatory mood, might I offer my heartiest and warmliest of accolades to the legal system of the Irish Republic too!

There he is, after deftly avoiding the wrath of the legal system he thought was his own toy to play with by having his pals organise what is known as a "drive around" (this name was commonly given to the phenomenon which happened a lot in Northern Ireland when an RUC officer needed arresting for some corrupt act or another and the arresting agents would then drive around until the warrant ran out) so that his arrest warrant would run out and therefore rule as inadmissable all the the juicy evidence that he had gathered on his pc for his masturbatory enjoyment. But then, when the move was made to hold a full Oireachtas committee investigation, we all thought that we had the bastard cornered, but we didn't see this simple but fiendishly clever move coming; wait until the 11th hour and 59 minutes and then... just resign! Ha! Wonderful! How clever is that? No committee to face, asking you all sorts of awkward questions like "What the fuck are you doing with all those pornographic images of children?", just a lump sum of €51,000 and a pension of €119,000 per year. Oh, and what about the €500,000 legal bill? No problem; the Republic will pick up the tab there.

It's actually possible that Judge Curtin may be innocent of all the charges made against him. After all, there is no evidence available to support the idea that he used to love buying images of children for him to drool and wank over. But, let's face it, and in the words of a fictional character from "Blackadder goes Forth", he's as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of pooh. Only, for the likes of Curtin, there will be no justice. Knowing the system as well as he does, he has managed to brazenly lead us on a merry dance, much like a fat overgrown nymph with a BabyBel, swinging through the trees above our heads, where he is joined by his legal brethern, who are equally ridiculously attired in their Brit-style wigs and gowns.

If you ever get a chance to attend a public court hearing in Ireland, you will feel a little bewildered as you strain to listen to what the dressed-up tossers up the front are actually saying to one another. Aferwards, while you're still wondering what all that was about, all the solicitors and barristers from all sides are meeting for a slap-up meal to round off a great day's business. To them, it's just a game. It's the way that they make money and that's all there is to it. The idea of justice is a notional one - it doesn't come into the order of things. It doesn't usually interfere with the business of the day.

As a judge, Curtin was a confirmed expert on the lucrativee fun and games that is the legal system. It's the old "us and them" syndrome, I'm afraid. In this case, it's us who are scratching our heads, going "How did he get away with that?" and "Why would he be so callous as to...?", while to them, it's all very logical and very normal; he operated within the law, he worked it to the best of his ability and, all things considered, and despite the personal problems he has faced and will continue to face, he has come out on top alright!

She don't lie

I had another satisfactory dream about beating and then murdering that Padraig Harrington last night. It was a little like this one, only better. It's becoming a bit of a recurring one at this stage; I wonder if I should see psychologist about it or whether, in fact, I should simply go and kill Mr. Boring Harrington myself. For real. In real life. I feel sure that a lot of people would thank me if I did.

Anyway, I'm just a little surprised, worried, shocked, etc. about the level of cocaine availability and usage in this part of the world - a part of the world that was previously completely untouched by the white clouds of confidence-enhancing stuff. I'm talking about West Cork, and specifically about the Glengarriff-Bantry area. I'm past the 18-35 age group now (I weep as the pen bypasses this age bracket and ticks the box for the 36-50 or the 36-dead or whatever it is) but I know a girl of about 25 who says that she knows people of her age group who wouldn't go out of a Friday night to the pub or to "Cargo" (apparently the latest night club in Bantry) without snotting themselves up with some of the "white girl", or whatever the approved slang expression is. Now, called me old-fashioned, naive or just some sort of fuckin eejit, but upon hearing this, my reaction was along the lines of "What the fuck...!?...?.....??", if you see what I mean. I couldn't have been more shocked if I went to the Council offices and walked in on Frank O'Donovan with his pants down around his ankles and his micky stuck in a male badger. In Bantry, there's a whole station full of Gardai. Do they care about this ? Are they concerned about it in any way? I doubt it very much. They allow one of the area's main suppliers to deal away with impunity. He's an English guy in his 50's in Glengarriff.

Hurray for Danny!

Great to see that the Nicaraguans are about to put Daniel Ortega back in power. Always nice to see the Americans get the 2 fingers - or indeed the one finger - from downtrodden Latin American countries that they've been pestering and lording over for decades and decades.

These fuckers waged a war by proxy against the Nicaraguans during the 1980's before Ortega finally managed to defeat them. Even this week, Oliver North is in Managua banging on about how bad things will be for Nicaraguans if they elect Ortega and how much money the Nicaraguans will lose from their Yankee overlords if they elect such "red commie bastard".

Yeah, but now the table is turning, Mr. North, you big-fuckin-eeijit-with-the-big-red-nose, and there's a wave of red that's going to engulf your empire South of the border, you burger-chomping slack-jawed hillbillies fuckwits! First Cuba, then Venezuala, then Bolivia, and now Nicaragua, despite your relentless interference. Once there are enough countries, the money will slosh around the globe in the direction of these guys and you won't be able to do a thing about it, unless of course you use your overpowering military might... I'd forgotten about that. Shit

Trick or Fuckin' Treat

I don't know when this trick-or-treat shit got a firm grip on Irish Juvenile Society but I am disappointed to have children who have got trapped in its adhesive quicksand, so to speak.

From their point of view, I can see how it's virtually impossible to resist - organised begging, wearing scary masks, guaranteed feast of treats. It never ceases to amaze me how addicted children are to sweets and treats of every kind. They're like junkies going around the place, demanding to know when they can get their next fix. e.g. "Can we eat them now?" "Can we eat our sweets before breakfast?" "Can we eat our sweets after breakfast?" "Can we eat our sweets before lunch?" "Can we eat our sweets after lunch?" "If I give you the wagon wheel, can I eat them now?" It's tiresome, so it is. For a bit of diversion, this year someone somewhere in the school or the village organised a children's Fancy Dress Disco. The after-disco analysis, I noted, focused solely on the amount of sweets (or "gear") that the kids could score. Hopefully, it will be replaced by nothing more potent than alcohol when they're older.

This year, I didn't dress up myself and go to the door with them. Instead, I waited patiently in the car with the engine running while they worked the houses. I didn't need to stress the importance of manners too strongly to them; they know that a pleasant smile and a "thank you" will ensure a good supply of goodies next year and will even ensure an increased supply of the real stuff and a reduction in the quantity of fruit in future Halloweens.

Anyway, the whole thing leaves me grumpy as hell. I was tired last night and the last thing I wanted to do was drive around in the cold, avoiding darkly-dressed gangs of children and looking at bags of sweets that I couldn't get my hands on. And another thing... What the hell does this "Trick or Treat" thing mean anyway. I have conducted enquiries on a broad range of children and none of them know. As far as they're concerned, it's just a thing they need to say in order to get sweets. Maybe it's just the American dream coming over to haunt us. The whole Halloween thing is traditionally strong in Ireland, so maybe this is a purposefully perverted version invented by the CIA or some other such shady imperialist organisation. Yes, that's it. They go around inventing ways of tapping into the greed of people around the world so that they will obey and follow the American way, making it virtually impossible for them to ever see America as anything but a benign, friendly nation. So there we are all smiling hypnotically while not noticing that Uncle Sam is behind us giving it to us up the mucky boreen while laughing his head off. Clever.