A politically correct holiday season greeting!

Got this from an Aussie friend....

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all ...

And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Australia great, (not to imply that Australia is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AUSTRALIA" in the southern hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

- DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTABILITY -

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for him/her or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. 

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher :).

Banging about in Bangkok

I am in Bangkok for a few days and I must say, the place's certainly grown on me and has definitely caught the imagination. Even though it is my first time in this part of the world, I have felt  much closer to 'home' (Africa) than at any time spent that I have spent living and travelling extensively in Europe. Perhaps, it is the lovely and welcoming Thai people that I have met or maybe the blast of heat in my face when I step out the doors of the hotel (quite a pleasant contrast from the freezing cold I left behind in Dublin) or the food. Perhaps it's the teeming hustle and bustle of life in this vast city that brings life to even the most staid and boring individual, but dodging tuk tuks, scooters and bright pink cabs certainly has its exhilarations. It is certainly more than enough to make one to momentarily forget the dreary weather, depressing politics and economic malaise back in Dublin.

Breaking News: Ethiopia to hold charity concerts for Ireland

Vladimir Putin recently hosted a summit where a gradually dwindling number of countries where tigers are still to be found discussed a plan to save the endangered species from extinction.

Well, Mr Putin is several weeks, or some would say, a couple of years too late to save at least one erstwhile prominent Tiger – that of the Celtic variety.

I am no economist (Ireland’s new ‘celebrities’) and I wont even attempt to chronicle how Ireland’s previously much touted ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom years (aka property bubble) have dissipated to the extent that the country is at the mercy of the dreaded IMF and EU technocrats. I would leave that to this almost concise summary of how Ireland came to be where it finds itself now.

This spectacular fall of a country that only up until two years ago was held up as poster boy of free market neo-liberalism is manifesting itself in many ways – record unemployment levels, increase in mortgage defaults and home repossessions, drastic cuts in public and social spending, the dreaded return of mass emigration and as yet an unleashed fury at the political and the banking elites.

However, as someone who grow up in a developing country and worked as a journalist and saw first hand real poverty, despair and hopelessness, some sense of perspective is certainly needed right now.

There comes a time when all the hand wringing in the world will only result in painfully dislocated wrists and nothing else.

Indeed, it is absolutely disheartening and heartbreaking to see families lose their homes, see bright young graduates and the economically active being forced to emigrate or poverty levels rising.

However, this could be the chance for Ireland to reform its shambolic political system, clean up its financial regulation systems and perhaps even recover some of that community camaraderie that pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland was better known for and emerge with a more equal society.

I would like to think that we are not yet at that stage where Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke will feel obliged, after seeing harrowing images from Ireland, to arrange a series of charity concerts in Addis Ababa.

Although judging by the headlines, you would be forgiven for thinking that Mulatu is, as I write, currently rounding up Africa’s A-list musicians to produce a charity single, Éire Aid just in time for Christmas. 

The 'Third World' does not need you, Minister

So when I read this morning that the current Minister for Justice and Law Reform, who presides over amongst other things, the immigration system, announced that he is quitting politics and that he would be ‘extremely interested in doing some work in or associated with the third world in the future’ I just laughed out loud!

Yes LOL!

I mean this is the same Minister whose officials have previously deported a mother back to Nigeria without her baby (child remained in Ireland and was placed in care – thankfully that child only just recently reunited with his mother).

The same minister who is currently trying to rush through an immigration bill that would allow for summary deportations, would stop foreigners marrying EU citizens because they might ‘use marriage to circumvent the immigration system’ and is refusing to acknowledge in that same bill that vulnerable children who are come to Ireland seeking protection should be given extra protection as accorded to them by international conventions. Really, the list goes on.

Basically, here is a minister whose Department’s unwritten rule is basically ‘Keep as Many of Them Out As Possible’. And I don’t need to tell you who ‘Them’ are! Yet it is the same ‘Them’ that he is extremely interested in working with in the future.

Yes, you could argue that this is par for the course for any immigration minister especially in Fortress Europe, but this particular one has shown a particularly mean streak which in turn has been reciprocated by his subordinates who carry out his edicts.

After one particularly robust exchange at a parliamentary committee stage hearing of the aforementioned bill, which I attended, one opposition (TD) member of parliament whose very reasonable proposed amendments had been routinely ignored, remarked that the minister could start an argument (I would even suggest a brawl) in a convent full of nuns.

So you can understand why I laughed out loud at the brilliant irony of it all!

I suppose the more charitable amongst us could give him the benefit of doubt and proclaim he is embarking on his Damascus conversion, à la Saul, but this to me is akin to sending King Herod to run a Montessori creche!

Race revisited

After reading that George W Bush considered the lowest point in his presidency to be when rapper Kanye West accused him of racism during Hurricane Katrina, I found myself revisiting the touchy subject (see previous blogs) of race/racism or more specifically the public discourse of.

It is pretty remarkable that after 8 years of what even his most ardent supporters would admit was a disastrous presidency, Dubya still manages to overlook major historical failures (starting two wars; turning a budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton into a massive deficit; presiding over the genesis of the global financial and economic crisis, election shenanigans in Florida; Katrina; Abu Ghraib; the list goes on) and state in his memoirs, that the worst moment during his administration was being accused of racism by a black rapper.

In fact, Kanye West did not actually call George W Bush a racist. What he actually said was "America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible … George Bush doesn't care about black people." Being accused of not caring about a particular segment of society is not the same as being accused of discrimination or racism.

I find it quite exasperating that Bush was more aggrieved about what he (wrongly) perceived to be an accusation of racism rather than the undeniable reality that an unnecessarily high number of black people had died in the world’s richest nation and sole superpower.

Kanye was spot on – the Bush administration simply did not care enough. I am convinced that if Katrina had devastated the Hamptons or Palm Springs, the response would have been first world class.

All this is just a microcosm of where we are in this whole debate about race. We find ourselves in times when real or perceived accusations of racism, bigotry or discrimination have now become more egregious than actual racist acts themselves.

I find that infuriating.