Ireland’s Sisyphean Crisis: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

(adapted from Punch Cartoon, March 1844)

The first time a whole nation completely imploded financially as a result of the unbridled speculation on a commodity was in February 1637 in Holland. It must be noted that in 1637 the concept of a ‘Nation’ was a relatively new one but in the Dutch case it concerned an overestimation of the worth of tulips, a flower; in Ireland’s case the bursting ‘bubble’ of 2010 is the result of an almost universal delusional estimation of the value of property and land allied to a fraudulent lack of regulatory control. Both of these bubble bursts came at the end of each country’s so-called Golden Age where the true value of tulips or land became unhinged from their real or logical intrinsic worth.

And now the crisis!

Ireland Inc. to get its house in order, to protect the deposits in national banks of all its taxpayers, has to sacrifice its financial autonomy in order to survive. It is caught between a rock and a hard place. Go with the International Monetary Fund and close the ‘Double Ireland’ taxation-avoidance ploys available to multinational corporations based here or go with the EU Stability Fund and remove the favourable basic corporate taxation rates that attracted those companies to Ireland in the first place. Either way the EU, who suddenly appears reticent to remember its proprietary gloating – and lack of regulatory intercession – over Ireland Inc.’s ‘European’ success during the Golden Age of the 1990s, is now determined to remove the ‘Irish’ virus ( it was a Tulip mosaic virus in the 1630s in Holland which was responsible for creating the most sought-after varieties) from infecting Portugal, Spain and others.

Sisyphus in Greek mythology – like Ireland in our own modern mythology – was considered the craftiest and most devious of men. Punished for his mortal hubris by being forced to push for eternity a boulder from the realm of men to the realm of the Gods he nearly makes it only for the boulder, at the extreme of his ambition, to roll back down again.

Time will tell whether Ireland Inc’s punishment will last as long.

Many mortals will certainly be crushed by the recoiling boulder.

Riot Grrrls, Feminism, and Female Combatants

If, in simplistic terms, it could be argued that first-wave feminism of the early 1900s resulted in enfranchisement of women, and that the second-wave of the 1950-60s resulted in emancipation, then the third-wave movement of the 1990s, as articulated by Riot Grrrl feminist punk bands such as Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, brought about empowerment:

'BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.'

The more mainstream culmination of this empowerment demand for women resulted in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995.

Article 19 of the Beijing Declaration determined that:

'It is essential to design, implement and monitor, with the full participation of women, effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes, including development policies and programmes, at all levels that will foster the empowerment and advancement of women'

Since then the UN, in particular, has been very pro-active in implementing gender-sensitive policies across its entire range of activities but in particular it has concentrated on Peacekeeping (The Windhoek Declaration and Namibia Plan of Action on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations (UN Doc. S/2000/693) ) and the impact of war and armed-conflict on women in particular.

Ten years ago on the 31 October 2000 the Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (UN Doc. S/Res/1325 (2000) ) and called upon:

'all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective, including, inter alia:

(a) The special needs of women and girls during repatriation and resettlement and for rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction;

(b) Measures that support local women’s peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution, and that involve women in all of the implementation mechanisms of the peace agreements;

(c) Measures that ensure the protection of and respect for human rights of women and girls, particularly as they relate to the constitution, the electoral system, the police and the judiciary'

Further Security Council Resolutions (1820,1888, and 1829) were to re-enforce these demands but one of the areas of female empowerment that was perhaps marginalized a bit – as if third wave feminism and its mainstream embodiment could not quite make up its mind as to how to embrace the notion of a ‘violent’ female combatant, irregular or otherwise – was how to deal with the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of female combatants. Resolution 1325 in particular only offered encouragement to the parties involved:

'13. Encourages all those involved in the planning for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration to consider the different needs of female and male ex-combatants and to take into account the needs of their dependants;'

It has been estimated that women ‘combatants’ comprise somewhere between 3-10% of armed groups ‘manpower’ with the higher numbers seen in South and Central American irregular or guerilla forces. As part of the transitional approach to the re-integration of ex-combatants when the period of armed conflict ceases systematic DDR programs are established. Women ex-combatants however do not appear to be helped in equal measure by these programs.

Louisa Maria Deitrich Ortega in a recent article ( Transitional justice and female Ex-combatants: Lessons Learned from International Experience in DISARMING THE PAST, Transitional Justice and Ex-combatants. Edited by ana cutter patel, pablo de greiff & lars waldorf, international center for transitional Justice Social Science Research Council • New York • 2009, pp 158-188) states that:

‘International experience indicates that women combatants’ multiple forms of engagement in armed opposition groups, such as in military intelligence missions, weapons training, and combat, tend to be downplayed and trivialized in both official and popular accounts of war. Consequently, female ex-combatants may be marginalized, stigmatized, and excluded in different ways, not just with respect to their experiences in armed groups, negotiations, and DDR, but also with respect to transitional justice measures.’

Many female ex-combatants it appears drift into the sex industry rather than return to families, clans, or tribes where their ‘military’ experience is a source of suspicion and exclusion. Ortega contends that many DDR programs are culpable in this outcome,

‘DDR processes operate in accordance with structural constraints that often result in disadvantages for women, such as male land tenure, traditional inheritance rights that exclude women, and restrictive traditional roles for women that relegate them to the domestic and reproductive sphere, rather than empower them to engage in the public sphere’

She concludes by stating that,

‘Male ex-combatants may face stigmatization related to the perception that they may be criminals and murderers, and thus may feel a disadvantage in searching for employment and in returning to their former communities. Female ex-combatants, on the other hand, find their very womanhood questioned.’

Not something I expect the Riot Grrrls would approve of!!!

Further Reading:

Secretary General’s Report: Women and Peace and Security (UN Doc.S/2010/498)

http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/documents/gender_directive2006.pdf

United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support: DPKO/DFS GUIDELINES INTEGRATING A GENDER PERSPECTIVE INTO THE WORK OF THE UNITED NATIONS MILITARY IN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS March 2010

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/Beijing%20full%20report%20E.pdf

http://onewarart.org/riot_grrrl_manifesto.htm

Backward Headers and Glances

Perhaps the best of songs heard, or of any and all true love, or life's fairest episodes, or sailors', soldiers' trying scenes on land or sea, is the résumé of them, or any of them, long afterwards, looking at the actualities away back past, with all their practical excitations gone. How the soul loves to float amid such reminiscences!

Walt Whitman – A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads

The woven images of an August evening in Tanzania of more than thirty years ago loom in front of me. I say woven, because sometimes, old memories overlap each other, become a résumé. It is not done to deceive but more to remind, in a tactile sense, of the patterns of effect.

There we were, in a battered Bedford truck, with its recently repaired chassis of reinforced concrete, winding our way back up the escarpment road. Behind us, the red dust spewed, to settle on pointed sisal plants. Behind us also, I hoped, were the night-hunters of the Serengeti, panting for the rains, a quick African sunset...a quick kill.

Our football team, with a conveniently epileptic goalkeeper, and polygamous striker were in great spirits. We – they – had beaten the bullying, braggart, bucks of Babati for the first time in ten years. Nothing in the shared memories of the team could touch the joy they felt at that moment.

Father Louis, the priest and coach, with the jet-black skin of his tribe and the Tipperary accent of the Palatine’s began the chant. It was the primitive sound of the nearby gorges: Oldevai, the birthplace of mankind … and strangely also of Benedictine Rome. Perhaps not so surprising for Fr Louis had spent seven years in the Eternal City infusing doctrine and incantation. But this sound was, more eternal still and I listened to the echo from the truck’s canvas walls and the night outside.

A second voice joined in, deep bass like the thunder that often rolled in the twilight across the plains below. I looked along the line of grinning faces. It was the silent member of our team; never a word out of him! And now his voice! It captured the chant to its loom, like a man’s footprint on the earth. It grew louder and louder before suddenly stopping and then began again. This time softer, anger spent, waiting.

The others then joined in with a melody that silk-spun a pattern between in the weave of chant and bass. By now, the night and the cold air had drawn in and the song’s cloth warmed us before drifting upwards towards the stars and the horizons of their lives.

I listened. I did not understand the individual words, or the imitations of nature that they held within them. But, that did not matter. In the music of the language of the escarpment, I could sense the ideas of joy and celebration and felt warm in the shared nurture and shared experience of our victory.

Two-nil, two-nil, two-nil. Enough said!

Saeculum

Apamea, Syria, Oct 2010

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones

From W B Yeats, The Magi

Rihla (Journey 18): Syria – Sun Dials and Solidarity

Window above main Mihrab, south wall

Great Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This rihla is about Damascus, Syria.

I travelled to Syria recently and while in Damascus went to the National Museum, hoping to see the remnants of one of the earliest polar-axis sundials ever made. This was a marble horizontal sundial constructed about 1350CE by the astronomer Ibn al‐Shāṭir which used to grace a plinth on the northern minaret, the Madhanat al-Arus or Tower of the Bride, of the Great Umayyad Mosque until it was shattered – I think: the guide books are a little vague on this – in the great earthquake that struck the city in 1759.

Central Gnomon of Ibn al‐Shāṭir's sundial

I was informed by my guidebook that the remnants were to be found in the garden of the museum but to my surprise it has been recently reassembled and mounted and is now on display on the second floor of the museum. The picture below shows the sundial and the faded lines of the astronomical projections carved into it by al-Shāṭir.

Ibn al‐Shāṭir's sundial

As an aside it is sometimes quite a sad and depressing experience walking around some of the regional and national museums that I have visited in middle-eastern cities like Damascus, Amman, Sana, Aleppo, Kars, Yerevan, Tabriz and Teheran. From the very fabric of the buildings there is often a sense of apathy or apologetic frustration for the necessity of their very existence. There is an implied apology to the visitor for the paucity of the displays and their contents which despite the millenniums of history and extensive archeological investigation of that history the museums contain only a bare modicum of the treasures that have been unearthed. The best of those finds have been extracted/plundered by the representatives of the colonial ‘Enlightenment’ powers and are now to be found in the museums of England, France, Germany and Russia or, as the result of the purchasing power, in the United States and Japan. You are acutely aware while wandering about that everything that there is to see is already on show. There is nothing in storage and the cupboard of historical record is bare. There is some hope however that in the absence of war any new archeological digs, such as the discovery of the Hittite temple in the citadel of Aleppo, will allow the treasures to remain in the countries of origin. The National Museum in Damascus has made a better attempt than most to make sense of that history.

Courtyard (sahn) looking south-west,

Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria.

In very marked contrast the Great Mosque of the Umayyad Caliphate is a living, breathing, wonder. The site has been a place of human worship since 1000BCE when the semitic Aramaeans had their temple to Haddad, to be replaced later by the temenos of the Roman Temple of Jupiter, the Byzantine Cathedral of St John the Baptist and finally the Great Mosque begun by the Caliph al-Walid in 708CE.

As if I was a Shi’ite pilgrim I first approached the mosque from the east side along al-Qaimariye road. You come to the eastern gate, the Bab Jairun, where Zaynab bint Ali, Hussein ibn Ali’s sister and the Prophet Mohammed’s (PBHN) granddaughter was forced to stand, by the Caliph Yazid I, unveiled, for 72 hours after being brought to the city following the Battle of Kerbala in October 680CE. With her was Ali, Hussein’s son the future Imam Ali Zainul Abideen. Above and slightly to the north of the gate is the Mashad al-Hussein where tradition states Yazid I had Hussein’s decapitated head placed in a niche. Skirting around the southern and western walls I entered the mosque complex through the tourist gate on the north-western corner.

The northern minaret

–Madhanat al-Arus or Tower of the Bride –

of Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria.

After removing my shoes and first visiting the small but beautiful mausoleum of Saladin, I then entered the sahn or mosque courtyard through the Gate of the Confectioners. The impact of the very Byzantine – thought to be modeled on the basilica of St Simeon Stylitis north of Aleppo and built in 480CE – basilica mosque with its glittering external mosaic decoration and enclosure is tremendous. Walking to stand near the canopied ablution fountain I then turned to look back up at the northern minaret, the Madhanat al-Arus or Tower of the Bride. The tower is named as such for a bride of a caliph who as part of a wedding gift donated lead to cover the roof of the minaret. The lower part of this minaret is still in its original form; the middle part was an Ayyubid addition built after the fire of 1174.

It was here that Ibn al‐Shāṭir, the head muwaqqit or religious timekeeper in Damascus had placed his horizontal sundial on a plinth that extended out from the southern face of the minaret. The polar axial orientation of the dial allowed, for the first time, an equal division and accurate indication of hours. The picture above shows the plinth to be still in place but now has a 19th century replica replacement of the earthquake shattered original.

Al-Shatir's projections for the appearances of Mercury

More wonderful yet is that when you focus in on the archways where an observer would stand you can see that the masons have designed and constructed the blockwork to almost imitate Ibn al‐Shāṭir's astronomical projections.

Sundial Plinth of south face of northern minaret,

Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria.

Detail of Arches above Sundial Plinth, North Minaret,

Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria.

The builder-Caliph al-Walid bin Abd al-Malik addressed the citizens of Damascus after the opening of the mosque: 


'Inhabitants of Damascus, four things give you marked superiority over the rest of the world: your climate, your water, your fruits and your baths. To these I wanted to add a fifth: this mosque.'

Damascene

I would add a sixth: surprise.

Syria is full of them. It is a secular society where religions and attitudes mix with respect and co-operation. Where mosques and off-licences co-exist. Where the people are polite, helpful when asked, intelligent and fun-loving. There is very little sense of a military suffocation or of over-bearing policing. In essence it is like Ibn al‐Shāṭir’s sundial, a country – al-Sham – where the axis is, I believe, aligned to a faith in ultimate goodness, a better future, and an equal division of attainment.

Time: http://www.scribd.com/doc/39063418/time

Time Lords and Necromancers

I head for Syria next week and while in Damascus I hope to see in the National Museum the remnants of one of the earliest polar-axis sundials ever made, the marble mid 14th century, horizontal, 2m x 1m sundial that was constructed by Ibn al‐Shāṭir and which used to grace the northern minaret of the Great Mosque. Failing that I hope perhaps to see the 19th century copy that replaced it. Ibn al‐Shāṭir was better known for his instrument making than for his astronomy but his extremely accurate modification of Ptomely’s geocentric planetary model, based on direct observation, was to heavily influence Copernicus’ later revolutionary heliocentric – yet almost identical – planetary model.

Ibn al‐Shāṭir was the head muwaqqit or religious timekeeper in Damascus and somehow this notion of being in charge of time and the connection to religion resonated in my brain.

In Ireland our chief Time Lord or muwaqqit is in law, surprisingly, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, currently Dermot Ahern T.D..

In a whimsical article by Benjamin Franklin to the Journal of Paris in 1784 he proposed moving to a daylight driven economic activity clock, based on the cost of burning candles, and he stated that with the change ‘All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days; after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity; for, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte.’

In 1907 William Willett published a pamphlet The Waste of Daylight proposing an hour shift in the summer and on May 21, 1916 a month after the Easter Rising in Dublin the Summer Time Act became operational in England and this was followed on October 1, 1916 by the provisions of the Time (Ireland) Act of August 23 which permanently linked Irish time to UK or Greenwich Mean Time.

The Irish Free State was established in 1922 and in 1923 the first Summer Time Act was promulgated. It stated that the “The time for general purposes in Saorstát Eireann shall, during the period of summer time, be one hour in advance of West-European time.”

By 1925 the Department of Justice had evolved from the old Department of Home Affairs and the Summer Time Act of that year stated that

“The Minister for Justice may, whenever it appears expedient to him so to do, by order appoint that the period appointed by this Act or by any previous order made under this section to be the period of summer time for the purpose of this Act shall, either generally or in any particular years or year, not be the period of summer time for that purpose, and that, in lieu thereof some other period specified in such order shall, either generally or in such particular years or year (as the case may require), be the period of summer time for the purpose of this Act.”

The Minister had from the ether suddenly become Ireland’s Time Lord!

The ministerial responsibility for “Summer Time” was to continue with Summer Time Orders until, mysteriously, in 1971 when the

STANDARD TIME (AMENDMENT) ACT 1971, AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR A PERIOD WHICH SHALL BE KNOWN AS WINTER TIME AND DURING WHICH THE TIME FOR GENERAL PURPOSES IN THE STATE SHALL BE GREENWICH MEAN TIME, AND TO PROVIDE FOR OTHER MATTERS CONNECTED WITH THE MATTER AFORESAID.

suddenly made the Minister for Justice and Summer Time become the Minister for “Winter Time” instead.

The Minister could do all or any of the following— (a) vary the period of winter time prescribed by subsection (1) (c) of this section, either generally (b) or for a specified year or specified years, (c) prescribe, either generally or for a specified year or specified years but not so as to affect the operation (d) of subsection (1) (b) of this section, that there shall be no period of winter time, (e) amend or revoke any order under this subsection (including this paragraph).

It could only happen in Ireland!

In 2001 the European Union went to a lot of trouble to permanently standardize Summer Time throughout Europe with their directive 2000/84/EC of 19 January 2001 and asked that all countries have legislation in place to accede to this directive by the end of the year. The first three articles of the directive stated:

Article 1

For the purposes of this Directive ‘summer-time period’ shall

mean the period of the year during which clocks are put

forward by 60 minutes compared with the rest of the year.

Article 2

From 2002 onwards, the summer-time period shall begin, in

every Member State, at 1.00 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time, on

the last Sunday in March.

Article 3

From 2002 onwards, the summer-time period shall end, in

every Member State, at 1.00 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time, on

the last Sunday in October.

What does Ireland do?

Ah! Wouldn’t you know? We publish a Winter Time Order instead (S.I. No: 506 Winter Time Order 2001).

"I, John O'Donoghue, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, in exercise of the powers conferred on me by section 1 of the Standard Time (Amendment) Act, 1971 ( No. 17 of 1971 ) (as adapted by the Justice (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order 1997 ( S.I. No. 298 of 1997 )), and for the purpose of giving effect to the European Parliament and Council (Summer Time) Directive No. 2000/84/EC of 19 January 20011 , hereby order as follows:

1. This order may be cited as the Winter Time Order, 2001.

2. (a) The period of winter time which, apart from this Article, would end at two o'clock Greenwich mean time in the morning of the Sunday following the third Saturday of March 2002, is varied so as to end at one o'clock Greenwich mean time in the morning of the last Sunday of March 2002.

(b) For the year 2002 and subsequent years a period of winter time begins at one o'clock Greenwich mean time in the morning of the last Sunday in October in any year and ends at one o'clock Greenwich mean time in the morning of the last Sunday in March in the following year."

Don’t you just love the logic that sometimes exists in the corridors of hubris?

It perhaps is just as well that the same Minister of Justice, Winter Time and Necromancy, who is now forever responsible for “Winter Time” in Ireland, and who in his wisdom also decided to confirm the crime of blasphemous libel in Ireland in the Defamation Bill of 2009, managed to eradicate forever the crime of sedition.

It is either whacky or muwaqqit or what!

[No. 31.] [2009.]

Defamation Act 2009.

PART 5

Criminal Liability

35.—The common law offences of defamatory libel, seditious libel

and obscene libel are abolished.

36.—(1) 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 €25,000.

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters

blasphemous matter if—

(a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive

or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any

religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial

number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the

matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this

section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would

find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value

in the matter to which the offence relates.

(4) In this section “religion” does not include an organisation or

cult—

(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or

(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—

(i) of its followers, or

(ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.

Dermot Ahern T.D.

Perhaps Irish Winter Time is a new religious movement and the legislation drafters of the Department of Justice are performing their equivalent of a necromancer's black mass and reversing everything that the EU demands? Have a close look at the blasphemy legislation. Religions are not fully defined except by the fact that they may not be a money raising outfit or employ psychological manipulation of their followers.

I guess that could exclude nearly every known religious movement established thus far. The promise of hellfire and damnation or paradise are polar opposites on the sun dial of theology yet can still manipulate.

As the song goes : Winter time and the living is … delayed