outsidein »

• In whose name?

  February 24, 2010 @ 3:10 pm | by Bryan

  

  PSNI forensic experts at the scene of Monday night’s car bomb attack outside Newry courthouse in Co Down. Photograph: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton.

  I drove past the odd police checkpoint and had to follow a few diversions as I was going through Newry last night. Having listened to news reports on the bombing, read newspaper articles, seen photographs, and having caught a glimpse of what this sort of attack means for directly affected communities through Pól Ó Muirí’s Daddy, there’s a bomb scare blog post, I’m confused.

  In his Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela is candid about his role in the perpetration of what the apartheid government might have called ‘acts of terror’. In Mandela’s defence, a case can probably be made for attacking the infrastructure of an oppressive regime when such acts are supported by the majority.

  Maybe it’s just ignorance on my part – ignorance of Irish history and Northern politics – but I really don’t understand the justification behind the Newry court bombing. I don’t understand how actions that do not have the support of the majority, that are more likely to lead to political disengagement that engagement, can be cloaked under the banner of republicanism, dissident or otherwise.

  When those who had planted the bomb celebrated their success, I wonder in whose name they thought they were celebrating?

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• 2010 pessimism

  January 4, 2010 @ 9:00 pm | by Bryan

  Regular readers of this blog may find the next statement hard to believe. I am, by nature, an optimist. Really, I am. But over the course of 2009, a cloud of pessimism settled over me. And to be honest, I don’t see it lifting over the course of the coming 12 months.

  Here’s an example of where my negativity stems from. Based on conversations with a mix of people in Belfast, it seems as though one of the largest determinants to peace and stability is economic well-being. Money, or more precisely, the process of pursing ‘the good life’ with a reasonable expectation of one day attaining it, can be positively distracting – in a “an idle mind is the devil’s playground” sense. Granted, an argument could be made for the role of things like intrusive body scanners and remote controlled planes that can bomb whole villages to smithereens. But does anyone really think that airport security, a hypertrophied ‘intelligence community’, or wars in far off places will rid the world of people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, let alone the people who armed and trained him?

  Once upon a time, before that great IMF idea that was economic structural adjustment, Zimbabwe was a relatively prosperous little country. We were wealthier than most of our neighbours, so we did our bit to keep out the poorer Malawians and Mozambicans. Those who got into the country were tolerated, but I’m pretty sure we tried to keep them to a minimum. And then the IMF came along and in a relatively brief period of time, income inequality within the country soared. People who were relatively well off built large walls to keep out their poor fellow citizens. For the most part, the walls served their purpose, but with increasing regularity, some found ways over them. They would then help themselves to things they couldn’t otherwise afford while the owners of the big houses were asleep. There came a point where we wrecked the country. Things got so bad that even those living in big houses behind bigger walls began to struggle. So a lot of Zimbabweans, rich and poor alike, made their way to neighbouring and distant countries, sometimes illegally scaling real and metaphorical walls and fences.

  So why am I pessimistic? Because, it’s easier to build, buy and install body scanners and to blow stuff up than to try to understand the world on the other side of our walls. The world seems destined to imitate the likes of Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, who have found it easier to live with their fear than address the structures that give birth to their underworld. I’m pessimistic because I get the feeling that we’re a year closer to the day parts of the world are relegated to rubbish heap status, while others become fortified cities.

  But I could be wrong.

  Happy 2010.

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• Copenhagen and Dublin

  December 8, 2009 @ 3:29 pm | by Bryan

  

  Members of an environmentalist group pretend to be dead during a protest demanding a real climate deal on the first day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Photograph: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images.

  What do Copenhagen and Dublin have in common? Probably quite a few things. At the moment, the biggest might be that they are both sites of struggle over distribution. In Dublin’s case, what is being distributed are the costs of Ireland’s economic recovery. In the case of Copenhagen, it is the distribution of the benefits of industrialisation and the burden of the planet’s upkeep.

  I don’t often agree with The Economist’s take on things, but their analysis of the situation in Copenhagen is, in my opinion, spot on. In an article titled Stopping climate change, the newspaper writes:

  …The problem is not a lack of low-carbon technologies. Electricity can be generated by nuclear fission, hydropower, biomass, wind and solar energy; and cars and lorries can run on electricity or biofuels. Nor is the problem an economic one. A percentage point of global economic output is affordable for a worthwhile project. Saving the banks has cost around 5% of global output.

  So the problem is both simpler and cheaper to fix than most people think. But mankind has to agree on how to share out the costs, both between and within countries…

  It is only fair to point out that the science of climate change – especially the idea that human activity is responsible – is a contested field. Let’s therefore assume that there is only a strong possibility that our industrial activity currently poses a grave challenge to the future of the planet. Let’s also assume that The Economist is wrong and that correcting for climate change will cost something like 20% of global GDP. Doesn’t the same rationale that leads me to buy insurance still force us to take the potential threat of the ecological disaster seriously enough to fork out that 20%?

  If it does, who should pay? What does ‘global justice’ require? If the current consensus is right, if climate change is man made and disproportionately affects the poorest nations, then as things stand, wealth is unjustly being transferred from the poor to the rich. As things stand, the poor are paying for my lattes, high-speed broadband, and for my relatively cheap fuel by way of the destruction of their natural environment and the problems that creates – food insecurity, political instability, and others.

  And supposing the politicians in Denmark come to the same conclusion, what then? Is it the biggest polluters, or the people who consume their products who have a moral responsibility to pay for the damage they’ve done? Is it possible to separate self-interest and greed from such ethical considerations? Do the delegates have a responsibility to anyone other than the citizens they represent? Should this be an opportunity for the transfer of wealth back to the poor nations?

  If what has come out of Dublin thus far is anything to go by, the outcome will lead to a distribution of wealth along the lines of the current distribution of power. In other words, I don’t think Copenhagen will bring about very much substantial change. Poor people don’t tend to have very much power and the environment is easy to ignore – especially when you don’t live in a drought-prone area.

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• Afghanistan

  December 2, 2009 @ 2:04 pm | by Bryan

  

  I can only imagine what George Orwell would make of difference between America’s response to Afghanistan’s elections, and to those in Iran. The thought brings a smile to my face.

  There is another discrepancy which is much more serious. What George Bush termed the ‘war on terror’ was at heart an ideological matter. The groups that engage in activities like flying hijacked planes into buildings claim their legitimacy and material support primarily on the back of US foreign policy. Military action against these groups inevitably spills over, affecting innocent people. This only serves to bolster the arguments of the likes of the Taliban. No speech, no matter how elegant, is going to mask the fact that the US President is sending a little army to Afghanistan in order to support the dodgy dictator his predecessor installed ‘for the good of the people’. Again, I can only imagine what Orwell would make of it all.

  So what should America do? Not only should they ‘turn the other cheek’, but they should also ‘bless (materially) those who curse’ them. The only way the ‘war on terror’ ends is if the accusations made against the US are disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The way to do that is not with tanks and armed helicopters, but with tangible, material assistance – food, drugs, infrastructure development.

  But, when you have a whole bunch of tanks, helicopters, remote controlled planes which can drop real bombs, and a pile of guns so big you don’t know what to do with it, the Jesus/Gandhi approach doesn’t look very attractive, does it?

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• Irritating, repellent, wounding

  December 1, 2009 @ 3:51 pm | by Bryan

  I have recently found myself exploring Africa’s colonial past and how that has influenced the identity of the various peoples and institutions on the continent. Perhaps the most pleasurable aspect of this research so far has been reading Ngugi wa Thiong’s A Grain of Wheat.

  In that radical piece of literature, Ngugi crushes the view that colonialism was a simple system of external oppression. He very powerfully animates an idea that goes back a long way: oppression can only be sustained by the assent of a significant proportion of members of the oppressed group. In Ngugi’s hands, the only real heroes of the colonial era are mythical figures who are so far removed from the here and now that it is impossible to know whether they ever really existed in anything like the way they are remembered. Those present are tainted, to various degrees, by some collusion with agents of the repressive past.

  Though it’s an incredibly sensitive topic, so sensitive that an outsider might be best advised to leave it alone, I can’t help but wonder whether Ngugi’s observations apply to last week’s revelations. And not just Ngugi, I wonder if there is also room here for Milan Kundera, who in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting suggested that we have a tendency towards rewriting the past in order to escape its ‘irritating, repellent, wounding’ nature.

  My country refused to have a completely honest and transparent look at the past, chosing rather to simplistically cast some as villains, others as heros, and the great majority as the backdrop against which history took place. South Africa followed suit, sweeping most things under the carpet of peace, reconciliation and the idea of a ‘rainbow nation’. Don’t get me wrong, South Africa did much better than most – victims publicly shared what had happened to them. Some perpetrators confessed their wrongs. But there wasn’t very much in the way of the vast majority collectively acknowledging and revealing the ways in which they had colluded with apartheid.

  What if Hobbes was right? What if our nature tends towards a state of “war of all against all”? And if he was right in suggesting that in order to escape that nature, people will even submit to “a common power to keep them all in awe,” even if that power is an abusive institution?

  I often get a sense of déjà vu in Ireland, and the scandal that is the abuse of the Catholic Church, with the complicity of the state, is a case in point. The great majority are simply taken as having been a passive backdrop which played a negligible role in the propping up or bringing down of that old order. I’m not so sure anymore. I can see why we all like the simple ‘hero-villain-passive everyone else’ narrative, but Ngugi’s uglier picture seems much more realistic to me. But that means that oppression isn’t something that is done to us, but a process in which, to varying degrees, we participate. If that really is the case, the Kundera was much more right than I gave him credit:
  We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past. We fight for access to the labs where we can retouch photos and rewrite biographies and histories.

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• The war crimes trial gimmick

  October 27, 2009 @ 12:15 pm | by Bryan

  

  Radovan Karadzic supporters drink and play gusle, a traditional instrument, in a bar in New Belgrade, Serbia, yesterday. Photographs: Amel Emric, Srdjan Ilic/AP.

  Former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, brought proceedings in the Hague to a standstill yesterday. He decided not to attend the opening of his genocide trial, claiming that he was unprepared. Karadzic is representing himself and the trial couldn’t go on without defence counsel. Big anticlimax.

  But maybe that’s the problem. These big war crime trials bear a striking resemblance to what I can only imagine medieval public executions looked like. I’m not sure how much they have to do with justice as opposed to public retribution. It’s as though the ‘international community’ needs to demonstrate, as visually as possible, that ‘international justice’ really exists and really works, and that – to quote a former US president who had a way with words – ‘evildoers’ really get their comeuppance in the end. I’m not sure.

  I don’t like Karadzic and what he represents. I think the people responsible for acts like Srebrenica make an incredibly strong case for capital punishment. At the very least, they should be tried quickly and if found guilty, locked away somewhere for good. But I also think that the likes of Karadzic, Slobodan Miloševic before him, and Saddam Hussein are right when they say that these genocide trials are gimmicky public spectacles rather than genuine attempts at delivering justice. Were justice the real aim, Karadzic apprehension would not have been the result of a political settlement nor would the massacre of thousands be attributed to just a handful of suitable villains. Also, assuming that justice is blind, the criteria for who counts as a war criminal would be less selective and less dependent on political considerations.

  Still, Case No. IT-95-5/18-PT will eventually get underway. If he doesn’t inconveniently die during the process (like Milosevic), Karadzic will almost certainly be found guilty of something serious – crimes against humanity, violations of the laws of war, something. Some will celebrate the decision as a mark of progress. Others will hold their former leader up as a martyr. The news cycle will roll on. But I’m not sure very much substantive justice will have been done.

  Maybe this is why the African Union don’t want the International Criminal Court getting involved with the situation in Sudan or Uganda.

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• Belfast

  October 13, 2009 @ 9:58 am | by Bryan

  

  Last week, I moved to Belfast to study at Queen’s. Before that, my only other experience of the North had been a two day field-trip to Derry (I’m always amused by the politics of that city’s name – Derry or Londonderry depending on one’s political persuasion). To be honest, I was a little apprehensive.

  Let’s face it, the only time Northern Ireland gets any significant airtime or column inches in the Republic’s media is when something bad has happened. Someone has been shot, some group has threatened to take up arms, or some minorities are being abused. I suppose we could also throw in Bertie, or now Brian Cowen going over to meet someone, with that cordial meeting being taken as a sign of progress. But that just adds to the negative stereotype. How bad must a place be if having a cup of tea and a quiet chat with some of its leaders is seen as a sign of significant progress?

  It was with this baggage that I arrived in Belfast, only to be surprised by how normal a place it is. Granted, I spend almost all of my time in and around the university, but still… Belfast comes across as a perfectly normal place. It even seems like a pretty friendly place; much friendlier, in fact, than some parts of the South.

  In the short space of time that I’ve been here, only two things have alluded to its past. The first was an enlightening conversation with a retired PSNI (police) officer. I would share parts of it, but he seemed like the kind of person that could make me disappear, so I won’t. The other was Hillary Clinton’s visit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a concentration of armed people in bullet-proof vests in one place. And other than on TV, I had never seen police-officers on roof-tops monitoring events on the ground below. The atmosphere was festive, and when the US Secretary of State’s motorcade drove past, most people waved and cheered. Still, it wasn’t too hard to imagine a time when that kind of police presence would have been accompanied by a very different mood.

  Hopefully, by the end of my year in Belfast, I’ll understand the significance of statements like ‘The INLA has ended its armed struggle’ (I didn’t realise that there was still an armed struggle on). More fundamentally, since from what I can tell people here don’t discuss their politics or religion publicly, I’m curious about how Protestants and Catholics tell each other apart on the streets. I’d also like to know where the demographic known on official forms here as ‘belonging to neither the Catholic nor Protestant community’ fits in to the general scheme of things.

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• Belfast riots

  July 14, 2009 @ 12:42 pm | by Bryan

  

  A rioter in Ardoyne last night. Photo: Charles McQuillan/Pacemaker.

  When I was growing up in Zimbabwe, Belfast seemed like some virtual war zone where people blew things up over religious differences. It made no sense to me at all. Now that I’m older and have moved to Ireland, I can honestly say that frosty relations in the North still make no sense to me.

  Here are some of the specific things that confound me. First of all, these marches. It’s simplistic, I know, but if after every parade there are going to be some skirmishes, why not just stop having them? I’m serious. If you live in a highly divided society, do you really want to celebrate things that emphasise those divisions or those that point to areas of common ground? Why not replace some of the events celebrated by just one side with new, joint ones?

  Another thing I don’t understand is this phenomenon of young people, teenagers even, who throw petrol bombs and stones at ‘the other side’ and set cars on fire. Are their grievances real, or are they just a cohort of kids who have nothing else to do and have stumbled onto a way to express their disillusionment? I understand why Palestinian teenagers engage in that sort of activity when confronted by Israeli police or soldiers. But I thought Northern Ireland had come to a political agreement that is largely acceptable to both sides.

  What confounds me most though, is how far removed the goings on in the North seem to the day-to-day lives of people in the South. Living in the West of Ireland, I feel closer, or more connected to London than to Belfast or Derry. Apart from the odd Gerry Adams speech with a reference to ‘a united Ireland’, Northern Ireland seems like a completely different entity. Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why it seems as though the North is still, at some level, at war with itself.

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• Alternatives

  June 26, 2009 @ 10:46 am | by Bryan

  Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa blamed capitalism for the global economic mess. No surprise there. Left leaning leaders of Latin American countries have a tendency to say that sort of thing. Capitalism is a problem. White guys with blue eyes created the recession. We’ve heard it all before.

  That said, Correa and some of his colleagues went a step further. According to Reuters,

  “Patching up the Bretton Woods system, which we do not control, makes no sense for (developing) countries,” Correa said in a speech on the second day of the conference.
  Reforming the IMF and World Bank “would be an insufficient stopgap solution,” he said, adding that “we are faced with a crisis unlike those (previously) provoked by capitalism.”
  If the Bretton Woods institutions cannot be abolished, he said, then they should be changed and given less authority over the world’s poor countries. More financial decision-making power, Correa said, should go to the United Nations instead.

  That’s more potent than your run of the mill ‘capitalism is bad’ statement. Yet even this rather more radical stance is not new. From about the 50s onwards, the developing world has been trying to fight the ‘establishment’ view on development, and the rules of global financial and economic governance. There have been a plethora of statements, pledges, plans and even alternative organisations set up to combat the influence of the Western dominated Bretton Woods institutions. But the outcome is always the same.

  Again, according to Reuters,

  The final proposals, watered down from an initial draft that was prepared by [UN General Assembly President and former Nicaragua foreign minister] D’Escoto and rejected by Western powers as too radical, include a call for reforming the IMF.
  But the only specific reform they call for is that the decision-making power of emerging market and developing states be increased in the next IMF quota review by early 2011.

  Sometimes I wonder why the likes of D’Escoto bother. At best, these measures get some lip service while nothing really changes. More often than not, they are just ignored and treated with contempt. Which begs the question, is it possible to offer a development paradigm that is antithetical to that of the IMF and World Bank? What more have it adopted and allowed to succeed?

  Are real alternatives, real departures to the status quo, possible? Or is the best that someone like D’Escoto can hope for a haggling session that ends with a statement of the intent to give up, at some undisclosed occasion in the future, a few crumbs?

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• The former Minister for Integration on ‘resentment’ towards foreign workers

  May 19, 2009 @ 11:30 pm | by Bryan

  Conor Lenihan, the former Minister for Integration, was just on Prime Time. He was insisting that the kind of blatant racism that foreign workers have experienced as the recession has worsened is no great departure from the past. Wow.

  I understand how the politics of the situation work. RTE shows a video clip that humanises a social problem – in tonight’s case, the new challenges faced by foreign workers as the economy has worsened. They then bring on a government representative as well as someone from an appropriate NGO, and encourage a fight. The job of the government representative is to defend the government at all cost. That of NGO representative, to promote their cause as effectively as possible.

  The minister stayed on script and made a claim that lay somewhere between the ‘it’s just a few bad apples’, ‘things have always been like that’, ‘you’re exaggerating the problem’ and ‘problem, what problem?’ arguments. Feigned ignorance with a little aggression and finger pointing is as good a way as any to defend the team from justified criticism. And that is, God willing, as close to a personal attack as I will go.

  In case the minister still follows this blog, having spoken to a couple of candidates for local office from the immigrant community recently, I can assure him that the kind of racist slurs on the program are not that uncommon. I can also assure him that there has been a definite turn for the worse in how immigrants are treated since the magnitude of the recession became apparent. My last bit of assurance for the minister, the signal that most immigrants received from the announced changes to the work permit scheme was that they are no-longer wanted. But I’m sure he knew that already.

  So as to avoid the criticism levelled against Prime Time’s filmmakers by the minister (that they were overly negative), I’ll repeat what I told a couple of friends recently. I love this country. I suspect most immigrants feel the same way, hence the desire to stay. And hence the frustration at the former Minister for Integration’s television performance.

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