The Quiet Road

Tonight with Vincent Browne has produced some great moments over the past few weeks. One of which came a couple of nights ago when Vincent had a group of non-aligned candidates on the show to discuss the potential role that Independent TDs might play in the next Dáil. One of these candidates was Nick Crawford, standing in the Dun Laoghaire constituency.

When Browne asked Crawford what he’d bring to parliament, he responded by claiming to have “buckets of business experience, buckets of common sense, I’ve two economics degrees…” At which point Browne interjected with a hint of incredulity, “two economics degrees?” Crawford nodded, “two economics degrees”, he confirmed, “one from UCD, one from DIT”… The camera cut to Vincent Browne who muttered, “my God… that’s quite a disability for starters, isn’t it?”

Yes, this election will see the people place their faith in a party with no ideas led by a man with no vision. But at least we have Vincent Browne to help keep us sane. In such cloudy weather, we must seek silver linings wherever they can be found.

No. Not really. Though he’d certainly do a better job than any of the main party leaders. Plus it’d almost certainly force Enda Kenny to flee the country, so it’d be worth it on that basis alone.

It’s less than week now until Ireland goes to the polls and elects a Fine Gael government to dig the nation further into the hole left to us by Fianna Fáil. It’s a mess of a situation and the only question left to be answered is whether or not Enda Kenny’s visionless crew will secure enough seats to win an absolute majority (heaven help us!) or will need to form a coalition. For most of the election campaign a Fine Gael Labour coalition looked certain, with Labour’s gains being significant enough to give them plenty of influence over policy. As February 25th approaches though, they’ve lost a lot of ground and — if current opinion polls are to be believed — Fine Gael could win a big enough share of the vote to form a majority government with the backing of a handful of independents.

The reason for Fine Gael’s meteoric rise in the polls is difficult to fathom. Or rather, it’s difficult to fathom if you assume an even vaguely sensible electorate. The consensus seems to be that a) Ireland has adopted a two-party mindset… because Fianna Fáil got us into this mess, Fine Gael will get us out, and b) the electorate wants a stable government… the compromise of coalition is undesirable at a time of national crisis such as this.

Of course, even a cursory examination of these two conclusions reveals them to be nonsense of the highest order.

a) Yes, Fianna Fáil got us into this mess. But they did so during a period when there were no significant policy differences between themselves and Fine Gael. In fact, while in opposition, Enda Kenny’s party were complaining that Fianna Fáil’s tax cuts and regulatory light-touch didn’t go far enough. Both parties are essentially centre-right adherents to free-market capitalism. If anything, Fine Gael are slightly further to the right than Fianna Fáil ever were and the criticism they have been levelling at Fianna Fáil during this election campaign should leave any sensible person with a taste of bile in their mouth. Certainly the disastrous government of the last decade and a half merits criticism, but when that criticism comes from a party that would have done exactly the same thing it’s just embarrassing.

b) If people think that what the country needs is a single-party stable majority government, they appear to be forgetting that it was a single-party stable majority government that created this mess in the first place. Well, in all but name. Yes, Fianna Fáil had the Progressive Democrats as junior partners for much of their recent rule. And they had the Greens for the past three years. But the PDs were mostly ex-Fianna Fáil who left the party due to a clash of personalities with a long gone leader. They were Fianna Fáil through-and-through, as demonstrated by Mary Harney’s return to the fold after the death of the PDs. As for the Greens? Well, in the three years they’ve spent at the top table, they failed to influence government policy in any significant way and — in fact — enthusiastically supported Fianna Fáil at pretty much every turn. Even refusing to rock the boat on issues like the Corrib gas field, or the motorway cutting a swathe through the Tara Valley (a project they described as “a monstrous act of cultural vandalism” just a few short months before taking office and supporting the government carrying out that monstrous act).

See, this is the problem. The people voting for Enda Kenny and his empty suits claim to be voting for change. When in fact they are voting for a clear continuation of the dreadful policies of the past 15 years.

My overseas readers may be a little confused by the title of this post. “Who the hell is Vincent Browne?” they wonder. “Is he some far-left politician, perhaps?” No, he’s not. Vincent Browne is the presenter of a nightly political discussion on TV3. I’ve heard him described as “the Irish Jeremy Paxman”, but while I understand the reasons some might say that (his tenacious insistence on getting people to answer the damn question draws the comparison), it’s a rather lazy comparison. I see him as being closer to Peter Falk’s Columbo. The way he paces his questions and the disarming self-deprecation he uses to confound the more combative panel members is straight out of Columbo.

Over the past few weeks, Tonight with Vincent Browne has become essential viewing in the Bliss household. The panel of four or five members is usually made up of a mix of politicians, academics, artists and journalists. The discussion is usually entertaining, occasionally informative but always worth watching. Whether it’s Fianna Fáil junior minister Conor Lenihan completely losing the plot and shouting at Browne to “back off Vincent, or I’ll come at you!” Or the eminently likeable independent candidate, Paul Sommerville, visibly seething while discussing the economic policies of the Fianna Fáil government. Or just the eclectic mix of opinions that he assembles, Browne’s programme is one of the few edifying things about this current election campaign… indeed about Irish politics in general right now.

Would I genuinely want him as Taoiseach? Of course not. Do I agree with everything he says? Not at all. But at a time when Ireland is sinking beneath the weight of bland corporate apologists dressed as representatives of the people, Vincent Browne — for all his faults, and all the controversies — is a beacon of light.

And so the General Election campaign gets into full swing. Lamp posts are festooned with posters of unlikeable and untrustworthy fools demanding the right to speak on my behalf. The news is filled with lies as they tell us how they’ll solve the economic crisis. And the abject farce of the TV debates leaves an all-pervasive stench of bullshit wafting across our political landscape.

Tonight was to be the first of the TV debates and the leaders of the three main parties were invited on to TV3 to discuss their plans for the next five years. Not only were none of the leaders of the smaller parties invited — so that it was to be a debate between three centre-right, pro-corporate parties without an ounce of genuine vision between them — but one of those centrist leaders refused to take part because he didn’t like the man chosen to chair the debate.

Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael and — if the polls are to be believed — our next Taoiseach, denied the Irish people a chance to see him challenged by those who would oppose him in what is one of the most petulant example of political cowardice I’ve ever witnessed. Unable to put aside his personal differences with the questioner for two hours in the name of open debate and transparent democracy, he instead fled to a Fine Gael stronghold where he took tame questions from an audience of his supporters in what was billed as a “Town Hall meeting”. If he honestly thinks it presented an adequate scrutiny of his ideas, then those ideas must be very shallow indeed.

The one moment of interest came when a lone heckler, “Bobby”, spoke truth to power for the only occasion all evening. Bobby told us he was unemployed, with a sick father he was unable to support and a sister emigrating to Hungary to find work. He demanded to know what Kenny would do about his situation… a situation being experienced by an increasingly large Irish underclass; marginalised during the Celtic Tiger and now shafted by politicians who see the forces of capitalism as their true constituency.

Kenny, bizarrely, responded by citing utterly irrelevant statistics as though they actually meant something. Fine Gael would set up 20 thousand internships for graduates who couldn’t find paying work, he told Bobby (who had lost his job as a road-sweeper). The idea that an unemployed road-sweeper, trying and failing to support his ailing father, is going to be helped by a promise of 20,000 unpaid positions for graduates was as clear an example of the deep disconnect between mainstream politicians and the people they claim to represent as you will ever see. 17,000 apprentices who were unable to complete their courses due to the collapse of the construction sector will be provided with the opportunity to finish those apprenticeships. “So at least they’ll have a piece of paper”. He actually said that! “So at least they’ll have a piece of paper”.

Here is an unemployed man, sinking beneath a mess created by the unholy alliance of politicians, bankers and developers who ran this nation into the ground, desperate for some sliver of hope. And Enda Kenny responds with promises of unpaid work for graduates and a piece of paper for out-of-work apprentices. When Bobby, having listened to Kenny’s response with the vain expectation that it might actually contain something relevant to him, responded with perfectly reasonable disgust… “I can smell it from here!” (a line that should become the unofficial motto of these elections), he was booed and shouted down by the vast majority of those present. A demonstration of the pathetically tame nature of Kenny’s audience. Laughingly, Bobby’s question was sandwiched between questions from two Fine Gael councillors.

The safe bubble of sycophancy in which Enda Kenny has sought refuge has clearly insulated him from the realisation that there are a thousand Bobbys out there for every Fine Gael councillor.

That said… the capacity for people to vote against their best interests should never be underestimated, and our politicians are counting on just that. Enda Kenny will be our next Taoiseach because our political system is heavily insured against genuine change. People want change. At least, they say they do. Yet they’ll vote for a party which is, to all intents and purposes, identical to the one that spent the past 12 years in power. The faces will be different, but the policies will remain the same. The pro-capitalist, corporatist agenda that is ripping Ireland to shreds — and indeed the rest of the world — will be maintained whichever of the three main parties gets into power. The obscene transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich and greedy will continue unabated. Hospitals and schools will close, our pension fund and remaining national assets will, along with a hefty chunk of our taxes, be efficiently funnelled into the coffers of private investors and financial institutions who have rigged the system so that any risk associated with the decisions they make will be borne by a public without any say in those decisions.

The gap between the rich and the rest is widening. And the process is being helped along by Enda Kenny and his unsavoury ilk.

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UPDATE: There’s some speculation that “Bobby” may not have been an unemployed street-sweeper, but an actor planted in the audience by a political opponent. Or that he is indeed an unemployed street-sweeper but was invited to the meeting by a political opponent specifically in order to heckle. As discussed in the comments below, I don’t actually think this invalidates the things he said; because there are tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of Irish people in exactly the situation he claimed to be in, and Enda Kenny’s response was frankly embarrassing, and would have remained embarrassing had “Bobby” been genuine. I suspect this fact will now be lost as the media get obsessed with the story of Bobby being a fraud, as opposed to the shameful performance of Kenny. One can only sigh in frustration.

Yesterday an article appeared in The Independent over in the UK with the title, Where’s the rest of the oil? As is the case with so much written in the mainstream media about this subject, it’s yet another piece riddled with misunderstandings, factual errors and untenable conclusions by a business journalist with little or no insight into the oil industry. Not that everything in it is wrong, but there are enough basic mistakes and research failures to cause one to despair that this should have appeared in the “Analysis and Features” section. If this is the best analysis that The Independent can muster, it calls the entire publication into question.

The article begins thus:

When BP first formed an alliance with Rosneft in 1998 to develop the Sakhalin fields in the Pacific Ocean, the UK oil giant estimated Russia’s oil reserves at 56 billion barrels.

When BP agreed its share-swap with the Moscow-based energy group last weekend, the estimate was 75 billion barrels, and development of Rosneft’s licences inside the Arctic Circle could increase production enormously.

Such advances undermine the pessimists’ predictions that the world’s oil will imminently run out. In 1956, when the concept of “peak oil” — the point at which production starts falling — was formulated, US output was expected to fall from the late 1960s. But new discoveries have constantly pushed that date back. BP was estimating world oil reserves at 1 trillion barrels 20 years ago: now, despite record consumption, the estimate is 1.333 trillion.

Richard Northedge | Where’s the rest of the oil?

Three paragraphs in and already three problems; one glaring factual error, one obvious misinterpretation and one example of questionable judgment.

One example of questionable judgment

Firstly there’s the issue of Reserve Growth (first and second paragraphs plus the end of the third). Now, this is something I’ve covered several times before but it’s something that bears repeating as it cuts right to the heart of the oil depletion issue.

Every year BP publish their “Statistical Review of World Energy” (link to 2010 edition). This publication — or collection of publications — tends to get picked up by journalists and economists and taken at face value. This is a terrible mistake on their part and illustrates the “questionable judgment” I mentioned. It reveals a failure to investigate the methodology behind the Statistical Review of World Energy and a blind acceptance of data presumably by virtue of it having a corporate source. One wonders whether these journalists believe everything they see in advertising too… for instance, does Richard Northedge actually think BP have moved “Beyond Petroleum”?

For those who haven’t read my previous stuff on the Statistical Review of World Energy (Energy Review), let me explain why it’s not to be taken at face value. The data within the Energy Review is broken down by country. And it is generated not by some kind of geological analysis but simply by asking the governments of each country to state their oil reserves without any independent audit or verification. This might be an accurate enough method if countries had an incentive to be honest about their reserves, but in fact the opposite is true and the majority of oil producing countries have a massive incentive to inflate their stated reserves. This fact alone should make any journalist hesitate before basing their analysis on the BP Energy Review, even before they take the time to investigate the effect this incentive has had on the reporting of historical reserves.

In the early 1980s OPEC introduced production quotas based upon “proven reserves”. This sounds solid enough until you realise that “proven reserves” actually means “stated reserves” in countries that have not implemented an independent auditing system (i.e. most of them). In effect, the more oil an OPEC member claimed to have, the more it was permitted to sell and consequently the more money it made. If you download the historical reserve data (Excel Workbook) you can clearly see the result this had on the stated reserves of OPEC nations. Check out the page in the workbook entitled “Oil – proved reserves history” and pay particular attention to what happened in the 1980s just after the new quota system was introduced.

Some examples… in 1986 Iran’s reserves jumped from 59 billion barrels (bb) to 93bb. They then remained identical for the next 7 years (implying that Iran somehow managed to discover exactly the same amount of oil per annum as they were producing) before starting to creep up again. A couple of years later, Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves leapt from 170bb to 255bb and has remained pretty much constant ever since. The same pattern can be seen across most OPEC nations. Venezuela doubled its reserves in 1985. Yemen doubled in 1986 and again in 1987. In 1986 UAE trebled their reserve estimates. And in the subsequent 25 years, no OPEC nation has significantly revised their reserves downwards (in fact many of them, as with Iran, simply report identical reserves for years on end).

If you believe that every OPEC nation somehow managed to discover as much new oil as they already possessed in a two year period in the 1980s just at the precise moment they gained a huge financial incentive to overstate their reserves, then may I suggest a certain level of naivety on your part. Particularly as there’s no actual evidence for a massive series of discoveries at the time and no parallel discoveries outside the OPEC nations.

As well as the OPEC nations, in recent years Russia has also found itself with an incentive to overstate reserves in the form of inward investment in oil and gas infrastructure that naturally increases in direct relationship with their claimed reserves. Tellingly, there is also no official independent auditing of Russian reserves.

What this means is that while I cannot say with any certainty that Saudi reserves (for example) are significantly lower than those stated in the BP Energy Review, I can state with confidence that relying on the accuracy the BP Energy Review is a very foolish thing to do. When Richard Northedge says that “BP was estimating world oil reserves at 1 trillion barrels 20 years ago: now, despite record consumption, the estimate is 1.333 trillion” it’s not a revelation of growing reserves but of the complete nonsense of reserve reporting.

An examination of the reporting of those nations with transparent reserve auditing procedures reveals a telling contrast. Norway’s reserves grew gradually in the 1980s, hit a peak in the year 2001 and then entered decline. This completely tallies with what we would expect given a basic understanding of petroleum geology. There are no sudden doublings and treblings of reserves. No decade-long periods of unchanging reserves. Just a gradual rise, a peak and a gradual decline. Only two weeks ago, in fact, Norway announced a further reduction in reserves based upon falls in new discoveries and a downgrading of existing fields. The fact that every nation with transparent reserve accounting demonstrates this behaviour, while nations that lack independent auditing and have financial reasons to lie demonstrate the complete opposite should surely ring alarm bells for any half-decent journalist or analyst.

One obvious misinterpretation

In the third paragraph Richard Northedge writes of “pessimists’ predictions that the world’s oil will imminently run out”. I’d challenge him to provide one example of a serious analyst who makes such a prediction. In reality no such analyst exists. The claim that we are approaching peak oil is not a claim that we are about to run out of oil. The clue is in the name… peak oil. To suggest that those of us who have been banging on about peak oil for the past 14 years are predicting “the world’s oil will imminently run out” is a complete failure to understand what peak oil means.

Peak oil is quite simply the point at which oil production peaks and enters terminal decline (see, I told you the clue was in the name). What’s interesting is that it actually occurs at around the point that half the oil has been extracted from a given well, field, nation or planet. So when I say we have passed the peak of global oil production (which I believe probably happened about 4 years ago), I’m not saying we’ve run out of oil. I’m saying we’ve used up half of our oil.

The reason this is important is because once you reach the halfway point, the flow of oil drops off. This is down to the basic physics of oil reservoirs and there’s just not much that can be done about it. It’s also important because from that point forward, every barrel takes incrementally more energy to produce. This is one of the things that so many people fail to realise about “non-conventional oil sources” such as tar sands, oil shales, deepwater and polar oil reserves… just like crude oil from a post-peak well, they require far more energy to extract than the oil we get from a pre-peak conventional well.

Take, for example, a relatively young field in the Saudi desert. From extraction through to the refinery and beyond, we might get a hundred barrels out for every one barrel (energetically speaking) we put in. In energy terms this is known as EroI (Energy Return on Investment) or sometimes NER (Net Energy Ratio). Clearly as the ERoI of a given energy source falls, the less economically useful that source becomes. So peak oil not only means there is physically less oil available, but that more of the oil that is available is going back into producing oil (as opposed to fueling our cars, our factories and our farms).

Because oil is by far the most economically important fuel available to us (and not just in terms of fuel, but also as a raw material for a vast array of products), a reduction in available oil ultimately translates to a reduction in economic activity*.

Now, in fairness to Northedge he does correct this misinterpretation later in the article when he discusses the idea of peak oil in more depth, but the way he expresses himself in that third paragraph does a massive disservice to the entire debate around this vital issue and is sloppy at best, and at worst is biased. Even the word “pessimist” is value laden and has no real place in this discussion. There are low reserve estimates (usually produced by petroleum geologists) and there are high reserve estimates (usually produced by economists and politicians). To suggest that the low estimates are “pessimistic” is to imply that there isn’t a coherent methodology behind them, and that they are at least partly the result of personal disposition.

This is not the case. Indeed the “coherent methodology” is all but denied by Northedge when he writes: In 1956, when the concept of “peak oil” — the point at which production starts falling — was formulated, US output was expected to fall from the late 1960s. But new discoveries have constantly pushed that date back.

One glaring factual error

The concept of “peak oil” was first proposed by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s. He was a respected petroleum geologist working for Shell Oil in Houston and his position gave him access to US oil reserve data. Hubbert first observed the rate of oil production for a specific oil well and graphed this data. This became known as the Hubbert curve and has been verified as accurate hundreds, if not thousands, of times with respect to individual wells. He then extended this model to a given oil field where it was also verified as accurate. Ultimately, taking the data from every US oil field (excluding Alaska) he extended the model to the entire continental United States. The curve predicted a peak in US oil production “around 1970” (there’s always a small margin for error when dealing with massive amounts of geological data).

What’s remarkable is just how small that margin for error actually was. US oil production in fact peaked in 1971/72 contrary to Northedge’s puzzling claim that “new discoveries have constantly pushed that date back”. That’s just plain wrong and is the sort of thing that any fact-checker should be able to find in a matter of minutes. In fact, US per annum oil production today is roughly half of what it was in 1971 despite the fact that entire new areas have been added (Alaskan and major off-shore fields) which were not part of Hubbert’s original calculation. And the decline has indeed been roughly in line with the Hubbert curve. It’s mind-boggling that a piece of analysis should appear in the business pages of a serious newspaper that contains such a blatant error.

And on it goes

The rest of the article is less contentious, but the tone has already been set. It points out that the current recession has resulted in a significant drop in oil consumption, though fails to acknowledge the high probability that the recession was partially** caused by high oil prices resulting from supply constraints. The article mentions the dramatic increase in reserves during the 80s, though fails to investigate why such a dramatic jump should have happened within OPEC and other nations without transparent reserve auditing, but nowhere else. Right when financial incentives were introduced in those countries to overstate reserves.

The article informs us that “Saudi Arabia has sufficient supplies to meet its needs for 66 years and Iraq has enough for 142 years” without really making it clear that these figures are essentially meaningless given that these nations are responsible for a fairly insignificant proportion of global consumption. In fairness, it does point out that “the US would run out [of oil] by 2018 if it did not import”.

But even that is dreadfully misleading. If the United States ceased importing oil, the economy would collapse immediately, not in 2018. You cannot simply divide reserves by time in this way. That fundamentally misunderstands the nature of oil production, which as I’ve said, occurs at a rate determined by the geological properties of the oil field. It’s not determined by demand. The United States currently consumes about 18 million barrels of oil per day. It produces about 7 million. What precisely would happen if you were to take 11 million barrels of oil per day out of the US economy? Anyone think it would keep ticking over until 2018?

This is why BP’s claim that we have enough oil left for 45 years is a recipe for dangerous complacency. Not only is that estimate based upon unreliable data, but it completely fails to acknowledge the physical constraints involved in oil production.

Then the article highlights recent oil discoveries. Now, there’s no question that 2009 and 2010 have been fantastic years in that regard. But they are anomalies. Spikes on a downward trend. In 2009 we discovered roughly half as much oil as we consumed. And that was the best year in a decade. In 2010, thanks to a major discovery near Brazil, we discovered even more. But it’s vital to get your head around the fact that not only were these bucking a clear trend, but they were largely offshore, deepwater discoveries. The ERoI of deepwater oil is nothing like as high as with the monster fields of the past. And I hope I’ve made it clear that ERoI is just as important as sheer volume.

Based upon these new discoveries, Richard Northedge finishes with the statement that “The day the world’s energy sources run dry is thus being pushed even further away…” It’s a shamelessly misleading conclusion and one that completely ignores the reality of the looming crisis we face as a result of falling oil production. A crisis that the Pentagon (that hotbed of fringe radicalism) suggests will be upon the world within the next 12 to 18 months.

The Irish media is still filled with talk of the IMF, the ECB and the bailout. And the snow of course. It’s remarkable when you think about it; there’s almost nothing the Irish government could have done to distract us from the economy. But a few days of frozen precipitation does the job. Suddenly the news is filled with images of kids on sleds and people standing next to snow-covered cars. I’ve not yet encountered anyone combining the two stories, but it’s surely only a matter of time before columnists start talking about the shroud of snow being “appropriately funereal”, or how a blanket has been drawn over the face of the Irish state.

In the rest of the world however, the fate of Ireland is beginnning to fade a little. And although the IMF thing is still getting the occasional headline, it’s more distant… something in the background. It won’t be so bloody distant if we succeed in bringing down the euro, mind. And if I was a citizen of Portugal I’d be getting a bit concerned right about now. Nor should the people of Italy and Spain be feeling too confident.

As I write, a huge amount of private debt is being shifted onto the Irish public. On top of that, we’re being strip-mined of our remaining assets. Goodbye National Pension Reserve fund, hello Wave of Privatisation. And given how fruitful this asset grab is turning out to be, only a fool would bet on it being the last. The Irish acquiescence, along with the failure of any of our neighbours to demand a halt to this daylight robbery, is actively encouraging the “contagion” that everyone claims to fear. The international markets are instruments of tremendous power, and our political leaders are giving them incentives to topple nations. I’ve gone from wondering whether it’s incompetence or madness driving this policy, to realising it’s both. What ‘The Market’ needs right now is a hefty dose of nationalisations to get it back in line. At the same time our political classes could do with a revolution or two in order to teach them some humility. Preferably dramatic but non-violent revolutions (violence tends to breed chaos and with chaos comes a whole host of unintended consequences, and while only a fool insists violence can never be justified, it should always be considered a last resort).

Isn’t this post supposed to be about Wikileaks, though?

Sorry, got a bit carried away with the intro there. Let’s shift our gaze away from Irish matters and take a glance further afield. Ignoring the snow — which is now news across much of Europe and North America — a look at the internet media suggests much of the world is fixated on the Wikileaks saga. And who can blame them? Suddenly the headline “Website sparks war” doesn’t seem entirely fanciful.

As is so often the case lately, I find myself irritated by the polarisation that has emerged as a result of this issue. Two narratives have emerged which reluctantly I find rather simplistic and lacking nuance. And I say “reluctantly” because many of my friends, plus commentators for whom I have a great deal of respect, are promoting one of those simplistic narratives (the “Julian Assange is a hero and the various charges against him are a big American plot” version). The other narrative — less prevalent amongst those I know, needless to say — being the “Julian Assange is a traitorous rapist who seeks to destabilise democratic governments and should be hunted down and shot like the rabid dog he is” version.

Before I get onto the “hero” narrative, let me say a little something about the “villain” Assange. Now, it goes without saying that I don’t know any more about the rape allegations than anyone else. However, there are two points worth noting that cause me some consternation with respect to them. Firstly, the general murkiness of the allegations and the extreme confusion surrounding them makes them — certainly not unique — but definitely atypical in such cases. The charges were dropped, reactivated, dropped and reactivated again. So the current charges are being handled by the third Swedish prosecutor to get involved in the case. It might be argued that this is a result of the difficulty securing evidence and, hence, convictions in this kind of case. All the same, from what I’ve read it is far from normal for such cases to be passed from prosecutor to prosecutor in this manner. A cynic might suggest that two people looked at the case, concluded it had either no merit or that — rightly or wrongly — it simply could not be successfully prosecuted due to a lack of available evidence, but that a third person took up the case for reasons of political ideology or personal aggrandisement.

I should probably take a moment to state clearly (because unfortunately we live in a world where it cannot be taken as read) that if there really is evidence linking Assange to a rape or sexual assault, he should face trial and suffer the full penalty. It is perfectly possible for a person to behave with honour in one area of his life while being depraved in another and the former simply does not excuse the latter.

Nonetheless, one only has to spend a little time reading about the allegations against Assange before confusion and apparent contradiction arise. This may merely be a result of bad reporting, but given how politically charged this whole situation is, I honestly feel one can be forgiven for raising a sceptical eyebrow while at the same time hoping that justice manages to assert itself (in whatever shape it takes).

The second question that gets raised about the rape allegations is one I first saw enunciated by feminist writer, Naomi Wolf, in her article J’Accuse: Sweden, Britain, and Interpol Insult Rape Victims Worldwide. Wolf, who has campaigned for two decades to raise the profile of — and seek justice for — victims of sexual assault views the treatment meted out to Assange in even more cynical terms than I was prepared to…

… Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned — for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven.
[…]
… the highly unusual reaction of Sweden and Britain to this situation … seems to send the message to women in the UK and Sweden that if you ever want anyone to take sex crime against you seriously, you had better be sure the man you accuse of wrongdoing has also happened to embarrass the most powerful government on earth.

Keep Assange in prison without bail until he is questioned, by all means, if we are suddenly in a real feminist worldwide epiphany about the seriousness of the issue of sex crime: but Interpol, Britain and Sweden must, if they are not to be guilty of hateful manipulation of a serious women’s issue for cynical political purposes, imprison as well — at once — the hundreds of thousands of men in Britain, Sweden and around the world world who are accused in far less ambiguous terms of far graver forms of assault.

Anyone who works in supporting women who have been raped knows from this grossly disproportionate response that Britain and Sweden, surely under pressure from the US, are cynically using the serious issue of rape as a fig leaf to cover the shameful issue of mafioso-like global collusion in silencing dissent. That is not the State embracing feminism. That is the State pimping feminism.

It’s a difficult point to argue against. For no matter what you believe about Assange or the crimes he is accused of, it simply cannot be denied that his treatment is completely inconsistent with that of anyone else in the same circumstances. I honestly believe that the authorities in most nations fail to treat sex crimes as seriously as they should do. However, Assange’s experience doesn’t redress that; it merely highlights it further and illustrates the willingness of the judicial systems of Europe to bend to the political will of the United States when it suits them (on a day when “[t]he United States and European nations said the [Khodorkovsky] verdict raised doubts about the Kremlin’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights” an idiom involving pots and kettles springs to mind).

Nonetheless, while the Swedish allegations carry at the very least a whiff of conspiracy and political opportunism, I can’t help but be cynical about Assange’s decision to become “the face” of Wikileaks. A decision that has allowed his personal behaviour to begin overshadowing the work being carried out by Wikileaks. It seems it would have been perfectly possible for Assange to have pursued a different strategy… a small collective of semi-anonymous people (akin to “The Yes Men” perhaps?) could have become the voice of Wikileaks rather than a single figurehead whose personal behaviour — whatever the truth behind the charges — has at the very least opened him up to attack and risked discrediting Wikileaks in the eyes of many.

The sad thing is that what was once a low profile but nonetheless powerful collaborative tool for exposing government and corporate corruption around the world has become one man’s high profile stick with which to beat America. As such it’s less radical and less generally useful. Most worryingly though, it may be starting to inflict some collateral damage of its own.

Because moving away from Assange and the rape allegations there’s a larger issue at stake here. I still possess the remnants of the anarchist idealism of my youth. But it’s long been tempered by a realisation that while information may want to be free, it’s not always in the best interests of people that it should be.

It’s possible, for instance, that the North Koreans already knew China and the United States had discussed — however informally — the desirability of Korean reunification under a Seoul government. But if this is the first they’re hearing about it, then there’s a real possibility Wikileaks might provoke another ship being sunk, or another artillery barrage. Or worse. The politics of the Korean peninsula are complex to say the least, but I don’t think it can be denied that the latest escalation in tension can be at least partly attributed to the actions of Wikileaks. If the publication of these cables turns out to be a contributory factor in a new Korean War can anyone really say that these leaks were worth the lives of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people? It’d certainly take someone seriously committed to anarchism and freedom of information to consider so much death and suffering to be a price worth paying.

Especially when you consider the practical usefulness of the revelations. I mean, who seriously is shocked or surprised by anything they’ve read in the published cables? Or even in the previously published documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? We learnt that US troops callously killed civilians in both nations. There may have been a handful of people in Iowa still resolutely denying that such things happened until that famous video of the gunship firing upon injured civilians hit the internet, but I suspect 98% of those who saw that footage were merely receiving visual confirmation of something they already knew was going on.

Similarly, the news that China and the US were discussing ways of sidelining North Korea, or that the Saudis were agitating for a US attack on Tehran were probably well known by the various parties involved — as well as by most informed members of the public — so the public confirmation merely serves to heighten tension, rather than genuinely inform. And the notion that it will force the US (or China or Saudi Arabia) to moderate their behaviour in the future is beyond naive. It will simply force them to tighten security while simultaneously seeking ways to crack down on internet and press freedom.

Ultimately I find myself deeply ambivalent about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The man appears to be embracing shallow celebrity with a certain eagerness that undercuts his campaign, while the potential usefulness of the website (and the world is indeed improved by a system that facilitates whistle-blowing) is — I would argue — compromised by becoming so highly politicised. It needs to be more discerning, and dare I say it, more responsible, about what it publishes. What was once a facility that could be used to expose government and corporate wrongdoing, has recently become little more than a political powderkeg, helping ratchet up tensions between nations, providing recruitment videos to militant organisations and placing more importance in the ability to access information than in the actual importance of that information.

Remember the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Remember we were told it wasn’t as bad as “the environmentalists” were making out? And remember we were told that the well had been capped and the problem solved?

Apparently we weren’t told the whole story.

Dr. Tom Termotto is the National Coordinator for the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference. He’s been reading and collating the various studies and reports produced about the BP / Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Last week he released a report that calls into question the notion that this disaster has been successfully contained. Indeed, it appears that even the worst case scenarios being discussed when the disaster was at its most prominent fail to convey the seriousness of the situation.

Now, I’ve just read his report (republished on the Phoenix Rising from the Gulf blog), and have not independently verified any of his facts. I’m stressing this because, while I’ve feared for some time that we are being comprehensively lied to about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (there were numerous discrepancies in the media reporting of the story that rang alarm-bells for anyone with a knowledge of petroleum geology), the conclusions reached by Dr. Termotto are startlingly extreme.

He alleges that large sections of the seabed beneath the Gulf of Mexico have been destabilised by the extensive oil and gas drilling operations taking place there. Furthermore, the Deepwater Horizon explosion created numerous fractures in the already unstable rock strata and now, in his words, “the Gulf of Mexico is slowly but surely filling up with oil and gas”.

On top of that, because of the depth of the oil and gas deposits, they contain high concentrations of radioactive isotopes. To add to the problems, the chemical dispersants — which he claims are still being used underwater near the well head (see image, below) — are making a very serious problem a lot worse. These chemicals are themselves highly toxic, but even worse… they are reducing the oil droplets to a “micronized or nano-sized state”. This significantly increases the likelihood that large quantities of mildly radioactive crude oil is entering the food chain. As Dr. Termotto says, this is turning “an extremely serious regional disaster into an unmitigated global catastrophe”.

And there’s more. The leaking of gas from beneath the seabed is producing large build-ups of methane hydrates on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Given that the area is seismically active, this has the potential to spark a disaster should this build up be dislodged en masse.

The entire Gulf of Mexico has become an environmental timebomb that threatens the health of the world’s oceans. A complete moratorium on drilling in the area is the only sane response to this information, if it is shown to be valid. However I suspect that in the face of peak oil, neither the US government nor the oil companies are interested in examining Dr. Termotto’s findings, let alone acting on them. The rush for short-term profit is killing our world.

All a bit surreal over here at the moment. It’s one of the very rare occasions where rolling news isn’t repetitive… everything’s changing so quickly, almost by the hour. Seems as though Ireland, with 1% of the population has managed to generate over 10% of Europe’s total debt. A little excessive. We’ve got a 4 year plan, a looming budget, and ever more grim prognostications. So the men from the IMF are stalking the halls of power, wielding arched-eyebrows and briefcases. “The Irish need supervision”, is the message. “Someone’s got to put an end to our profligate ways.”

But it’s a false narrative. I’ve already lambasted the Irish property developers, bankers and politicians for their part in our downfall, but it’s worth remembering that they were a symptom of a widespread disease. Ireland’s crime is to have been the most enthusiastic proponent of a global obsession. We embraced the delusion a little tighter than others. But it was a shared delusion, make no mistake, and it certainly didn’t originate here. That debt we’ve run up? It’s in Euros. It’s not like we were printing our own money all this time. The European Central Bank (ECB), along with a couple of UK banks, were funding all this madness. Irish bankers were meeting with their European counterparts and saying things like, “You know how property bubbles usually burst? Well we’ve got one over in Ireland that never ever will. Seriously, it’s going to expand forever.” And their European counterparts would say things like “Finally! We’ve been looking for one of those for ages! Mind if I chuck in a few billion?”

The sudden arrival of these serious looking men from international institutions onto our streets and televisions isn’t because they’re worried Anglo-Irish Bank might go out of business. Or rather, that fact in itself doesn’t worry them. No, it’s the damage they’ll suffer should it occur which has drawn them to our shores. Be under no illusions here, the job of these men — and the Irish government that is aiding and abetting them — is to legally bind Ireland to the debts they incurred. They made a reckless bet on a 100/1 shot, and are now demanding the horse’s owner absorb the losses. It’s a nonsense. But it’s a dangerous nonsense.

We really should have gone the route of Iceland and let the chips fall where they may. We should have defaulted. We should have calmly announced that a bunch of financial instutions making insane bets with one another had bugger all to do with the Irish public. Consequently the Irish public won’t be paying for it, thanks very much.

But we didn’t go down that route. And we didn’t because the people making decisions for us now are the same we people we elected to prevent this happening in the first place. If there’s one job of government more important than almost any other, it’s to ensure the country doesn’t go broke on your watch. Fail at that, and surely you forfeit the right to make further decisions on behalf of the nation. Certainly the moral legitimacy of those decisions must get called into question.

But even if this gross act of piracy wasn’t morally indefensible, I’d question its consitutionality. Not that I’m a constitutional expert, and I suspect my interpretation might be broader than most, but it seems to me that recent government decisions have brought it into conflict with the very first Article of the Consitution…

The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

I love the word “genius” in that sentence (I like to imagine it was a ‘2am decision’ that got it included in the final text).

I think there’s definitely a case to be made that the current Irish government are radically curtailing Ireland’s sovereignty over its economic life. And when the government wants to do something unconstitutional, they need to hold a referendum first. Are there any constitutional experts out there who can tell me whether that’d be the basis of a realistic court challenge?

Don’t get me wrong, we have a large budget deficit and that’s definitely our problem, and we need to deal with it. But it’s far from an insurmountable problem and it certainly doesn’t warrant having the IMF beam in. We have a balance of trade surplus and we are arguably one of the few potentially self-sufficient nations in Europe… we can feed, house and clothe ourselves and still make an income from foreign trade. So the fundamental ability of Ireland to survive isn’t at issue here. What’s at issue, and the only reason the IMF are here, is the bank debt. And that’s their problem. Punishing the Irish workforce, and the hundreds of thousands now out of work, the Irish pensioner, patient and pupil. It’s fundamentally unjust.

And it’s not made any better by a media coverage that constantly uses words like “humiliation” and “shame”. We’re so bloody Catholic, I tell you. The Taoiseach is forever being asked how much “personal shame” he feels over this. It’s important stuff to us here. The names of great Irish heroes of the past have been invoked. Collins, Pearse, Connolly… was it for this they died? And de Valera is surely turning in his grave.

One thing I’ve found fascinating though, from a cultural perspective, is just how much this crisis has highlighted the disgrace into which the Catholic clergy have fallen in this country. If this economic collapse had happened even just 20 years ago, the voice of The Church would be one of the most influential in framing the entire narrative. And with a bitter irony for those of us who condemned the level of Church influence over Irish society, they’d almost certainly have been on the right side of the argument on this particular issue… opposing the stringent cuts to welfare, the minimum wage, health and education that loom large in our future. And they’d have been a powerful voice in favour of raising taxes on the highest earners — quelling some of the opposition that such a move would face.

But today the Church is nowhere to be seen, though our Catholic obsession with shame and guilt remain. The endless panel shows are devoid of men of the cloth.

Perversely, there’s a part of me that thinks this process might be a good thing for the country in the long term. With resource depletion going to hit the global economy like a freight train in a few short years*, it might not be a bad idea to get a bit of a head-start with the powerdown (do our initial stumbling while there’s still a semblance of an international safety net to help us avoid serious injury). It’s hard to know though. Maybe going down first just means the rest will fall on top of us…

So yes, all a bit surreal over here. Just this morning the government collapsed. And that might not be the biggest news story of the day. There’s hours to go yet.

A couple of days ago, over in the UK, there was a large student demonstration against government policy. A group of protesters split from the main march and occupied the Tory Party headquarters in Millbank. There were clashes between this group and the police resulting in some minor injuries and property damage. An estimated 50,000 students took part in the main demonstration and somewhere in the region of 50 of them were arrested for the building occupation. Yet almost without exception, the reports in the media have focussed on those 50 rather than the other 49,950. The actions of 50 people have apparently “overshadowed” the entire event.

One week earlier, a similar protest took place on the streets of Dublin. Somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 (estimates vary wildly as they always do with such things) students took part. Once again the march splintered, and in this case the Department of Finance building on Merrion Row was occupied. As with the subsequent London action, around 50 people were blamed for this occupation. Or, in the words of the Garda (repeated over-and-over in the media coverage), the protest was hijacked by “a hardcore of around 50 protestors intent on trouble“.

In both cases, the respective national student unions loudly condemned the actions of the “hardcore” minority, acknowledging that while they do indeed oppose government policy, they do so only in a “softcore” fashion. Heaven forbid anyone get the impression they took the matter seriously.

Now, I happen to think that the occupation of government buildings is a perfectly proportional response to the policies being implemented on both sides of the Irish Sea — which is not to say I condone every individual act carried out during those occupations; the chucking of a fire-extinguisher off the roof of the Tory headquarters was reckless and counter-productive (in my opinion). But let’s ignore the rights and wrongs of the occupations for now… that’s not the focus of this particular piece.

Instead let’s talk about how the protests have been covered in the media. Because, while the media’s tendency to give massive coverage to confrontation at the expense of covering the actual issues is a well-known phenomenon, I don’t think enough has been said about their complicity in that confrontation.

Let’s examine again how the demonstrations are described by the media. We’re told that the violence “overshadowed” the peaceful march. That a group of 50 people “hijacked” the protest. But let’s not mince words… those are just lies. Shameful lies disseminated by almost every single journalist who covered the events. The Irish protest wasn’t “hijacked”. It went off exactly as planned, with a mass gathering featuring tens of thousands of people who felt they had legitimate grievances that deserved an airing. Large numbers of people voiced their discontent and (though I wasn’t at either of these demos, I’ve been at enough such occasions to say this confidently) speeches were made that articulately dealt with the policy issues at hand. And the people who occupied Tory headquarters didn’t “overshadow” the main march, the media decided that their actions deserved more prominence. So it was the reporting that obscured the main march, not those who occupied the building.

Now, the media’s justification for this is that a few scuffles, some (minor) property damage and a short-lived group-trespass are somehow more worthy of airtime than the main protest. But that’s nonsense of the highest order. Palpable nonsense.

Visit the centre of any city or large town on these islands at pub-kicking-out time on a Saturday night and I guarantee you’ll be in with a decent chance of finding more scuffles and property damage than occurred at both student protests combined. And it’s not national news. A few bruises, one broken nose and a handful of smashed windows is not important in the sense that 50,000 people taking to the streets to condemn the actions of their own government is important. To suggest otherwise is, as I say, a lie.

The truth is, it’s just easier to make the confrontation the main story. The photographs or film footage is more dramatic, and the journalists get to use action verbs like “smashed” and “charged”. It takes a reporter with genuine talent to turn a peaceful mass-opposition to government policy into a good story. They need to do far more research and to genuinely understand the issues involved. Plus they need to be good enough writers to hold a reader’s attention without the use of action verbs and dramatic photographs.

If the media actually covered the protest in terms of what was important about it, rather than in terms of what was easiest; it would be a full page article about government plans to shred the principle of universal access to education. It would cover issues like the subordination of the education system to the profit-motive… like the gutting of the arts and humanities, not because they aren’t important, but because the free-market places less financial value upon them… like the social engineering programme being implemented by capitalist governments to exclude whole classes of people from higher education on the grounds that their parents aren’t wealthy enough.

In that full page article there would be a couple of lines about how roughly one tenth of one per cent of those who demonstrated ended up smashing a few windows.

And what’s worst of all, damn near every person on those marches is smart enough and educated enough to realise that without that one tenth of one per cent, the entire mass demonstration will hardly get mentioned at all. In the eyes of the media, it will be considered largely unimportant. So, Caught-22 as they are, it is almost inevitable that demonstrations now include a confrontational element. The media demand it.