the dubliners

In anticipation of Saint Patrick’s Day, Kuriositas treats us to a fine whistle-stop tour through Dublin to visit the statues and public monuments that people the capital. As fond and committed city commissioners are for honouring local sons and daughters, residents are just as keen to bestow affectionate monikers on these silent neighbours. Read more about the “Tart with the Cart” or the “Hags with Bags” and other choice nicknames for the street urchins of Dublin and sight-see during your next visit with native knowledge.

steeple bumpstead and chignal smeally

The always marvellous Nag on the Lake poses the question why many British toponyms are so odd, eliciting sniggering or a blush but also some really fascinating history of occupation, migration and conquest.
A Sunday drive through the Midlands connecting Wednesbury, Newton Burgoland and Ashby-de-la-Zouch also conveys one through ages from the Celts, the Romans, the arrival of the Scandinavians, through to Norman times. Despite all the diverse influences and upheavals, these place names are retain a certain Englishness whether or not original rooted in that language, which is just as adaptive and with the same pedigree. Many others, of course, are later Anglicisations of places on the peripheries of the isle. I recall when we were travelling in County Cork passing through a fine and picturesque village called in Irish Béal Átha Leice (meaning the flat stone at the mouth of the bay) which was unfortunately transliterated as Ballylickey on the road signs. There is also a fun, interactive map that gives select etymologies of England’s town and villages.

eye in the sky or death by powerpoint

Earlier in the week, a somewhat silent moment of panic circulated through the general tensions and fears but was quickly subsumed with more pressing business of the day when the pilot of a maverick airliner had to concede that he’d been temporarily blinded by the dazzle of one of those laser-pointers—the kind which might enthrall cats or manage the boredom of an audience girded for a rather long presentation. Through the aircraft was forced to divert to another airport, the only casualty was inconvenience, this single incident—duly but forthcoming about report—highlights that this was not a unique near-miss and there have been some six thousand such occurrences world-wide in the past six years.
The annoyance is a prickly subject since we are not fans of the posture of a nannying-state but such intensity laser beams for public-consumption seem to serve no further purpose than that of blinding of airplane pilots. Given the penchant of the West for air-warfare for combatting Vanilla-ISIS, one wonders why they just can’t invest in a high-powered disco-ball like we have to lay low all their opposition. If one has the technical capacity to make a laser that’s above the requirements of the classroom, then go ahead and terrorise all of us. There’s the chirping of crickets in the auditorium now—as most of our sleeper-cells or time-travellers we’ve sent back have started that conversation with “well, you have an internal-combustion engine” or “you take a drone” and the conversation ends there—with the temporal-tourists burned as witches and the terrorists dismissed as not having the acumen alone for malice. An old and burdened argument holds that no nation in the Middle East held the manufacturing capacity to make its own weapons of destruction, but the same probably holds for the post-industrial West. Why re-invent the wheel? There is an age of majority for operating a car and such and one wonders if one ought not have at least a rudimentary understanding of the workings behind such conveniences in order to use them—for everyone’s benefit.

mmxv: annus horribilis

These end-of-year annuals have become somewhat of a tradition here (here, here, here, and here too) at PfRC but never before in these annuls of time has one period been so stand-out negative and gloomy.  We tried to accentuate the positive but that was yeoman’s task, so this year-in-review is coming out a few days early in hopes that the holidays will be a time of lasting good cheer to cleanse the palette and that some last minute joys might befall us all.  There were a few bright points which mostly involved accomplishments in space exploration, but on balance, we are happy to be saying good riddance to bad rubbish.

january: Unpegging the Swiss franc from the euro unleashes more turmoil on financial markets and oversees the gradient of reserve currencies levelled out. With the situation in Ukraine still very tense, the Eurasian Economic Union comes into being. In Nigeria, Boko Haram’s brutality goes unrestrained. Elements of the Cosplay Caliphate in Paris assassinate cartoonists and satirists.

february: Faced with its own deck of sanctions, Russia drafts and submits to the United Nations for passage Resolution 2199 that provided for asset-freezing and curtailing financial resources for the Cosplay Caliphate, strongly condemning as well the group’s destruction of ancient archaeological sites in Syria. The Egyptian armed forces retaliate for the beheading of Copts in Libya by the Caliphate—with more atrocities broadcasted. Sadly, Leonard Nimoy passes away.

march: A space probe visits the Dwarf Planet Ceres. An unholy alliance forms between terror groups as al Qaeda tries to distance itself from these extremists. A suicidal pilot deliberately crashes an airplane full of passengers in the French Alps.

april: A massive earthquake causes destruction across south-east Asia.  Writer Günter Grass and performer Percy Sledge passed.

may: Ireland, by popular-vote, legalises same-sex marriage. Truer to the original, audiences began getting hints of the continuation of the Stars Wars saga to be screened later in the year.  We had to bid farewell to musician B. B. King.

june: Fédération Internationale de Football Association chief resigns pending an on-going criminal probe into corruption allegations championed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. A real estate magnate and beauty pageant judge announced his candidacy for president of the US.  The Caliphate perpetrates several horrific attacks during Ramadan. Actor Christopher Lee died.

july: Greece becomes the first country to miss a payment to the International Monetary Fund and political revolt is unable to extricate them from this web of debt. New Horizons visits the dwarf planet Pluto. Cuba and the USA normalise diplomatic relations after half a century of hostilities. Video game godfather Satoru Iwata passed away.

august: The march of refugees from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Europe via the Balkans in unending.  We had to say goodbye to philosopher Oliver Sacks.

september: Liquid water is confirmed on Mars. A major German automaker was found to have doctored the cleanliness of their fleet of vehicles. The proxy war continues in Syria, with Russia launching air-strikes and powers are at odds with which party to back. Personality Jackie Collins died.

october: The Caliphate sabotages a jetliner of holiday-goers in the Sinai Peninsula. Maureen O’Hara departed.

november: Turkey destroys Russian fighter jets for violating a tip of its airspace, possibly setting off World War III. The Caliphate again attacks Paris with horrific and terrifying efficiency. Weeks later, the UN holds its climate change conference in the same venue. Former Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt passes away.

december: Tragically, yet another mass shooting takes place in California, inspired by religious fanaticism. A wayward Japanese space probe that over-shot its mark five years ago gets a second chance to rendezvous with Venus. Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland passed away.  Recognising what the world needs now, Pope Francis threw open the Mercy Gate at the Vatican.

instant karma or everything zen

I was really kind of baffled to learn that the Laughing Buddha, a traditional fixture of Asian take-away, is in fact not the sage Gautama Buddha or an avatar thereof—like thin Elvis versus fat Elvis, but a completely different character called Bùdài.
This friendly monk represents contentment and enlightenment as well but his following developed at a time when Buddhism was taking root in a unified, ancient China and the two were conflated. I suppose the distinction is always just out of grasp for someone not intimately familiar with Eastern thought, but maybe the Buddha is the Bùdài as the Dionysian force is to Dionysis (Bacchus, the god of wine). The Buddhism that was taking root across China was also a significant departure in terms of practise from the original foundations. Thanks are owed to the bureaucratic harmonisations underlying the teachings of Confucius and his disciples, that instilled a sense of place and hierarchy that in some senses enabled disparate kingdoms and people to come under one mantle, but the revival of Buddhist thought needed some adjustments to fit to the present and enduring societal framework. As paralleled by the independent stance that monastic Ireland took towards a centralised Church authority in Rome, Buddhism as first envisioned was also meant to be a retiring one—cloistered from the illusionary, impermanent world-at-large. It surprised me even more to learn that the concept of Zen (Chàn), with a somewhat divergent but very well attested history and scholarship, was incorporated into Chinese outlook in order that each could mediate in his or her own manner and discover Buddha’s teachings—know that enlightenment is attainable in the everyday—without cossetting oneself in an abbey.  While I am not sure it was exactly planned by the state (nor less authentic for it) to promote civility, there are certainly practical reasons behind it as well, since a coherent community could not very well have all its eligible men skivving off their responsibilities to hearth and home by becoming monks.  There is a delicate balance, I think, between not selfishness but rather self-interestedness, that is concern for one’s salvation in private, and the civic-mindedness of seeking the same while a part of the society around one. 

local colour or instaham

The ever excellent Quartz magazine has an interesting piece of reporting for holiday-goers, that has some destinations affecting an accent and cultivating a culture in order to deliver to tourists the experience that they are expecting. Notwithstanding Bavarian taxi cab drivers and waiters really hamming it up, it seems to me that this programme is more than a marketing campaign and could transform into something positive.
Instead of souvenirs and native crafts that are really only sustained by visiting throngs—though one cannot generalise any experience or attraction whether established or on the rise—a step towards insincerity leads maybe to a stronger hold in the long run on genuine customs and outlooks that were suppressed to extinction either by the forces of hegemony or the encroachment of domineering globalisation. I know I am forever the guilty anthropologists for wanting to hear sheep-counting in Gaeltacht, but maybe that is not wholly condemning.  Maybe the sightseer, even for the expectations of cliché, have help to revive a moribund language—which I think is certainly worth a dose of dissimulation. What do you think? Are these enclaves and tours on offer a charade or a chance for visitor and local alike to discover something new on journey’s end?

five-by-five

píratar: Iceland’s dominant Pirate Party may extend shelter and citizenship to the Fugitive

kinematografii: a collection of vintage Czechoslovakian film posters

3 quarks for muster mark: some of the invented words of author James Joyce

birds’ eye: an eagle presents Dubai as he descends to his trainer below

be mine: camera embedded in a ring box captures marriage proposals from a face-forward perspective

unionists and publicans

Writing for the Spectator, columnist Mary Dejevsky has found a more apt, although much more uncomfortable, analogy for the tension and territorial integrity that’s no rarified metaphor or theoretical matter triangulated among Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula.
Rather than resorting to popular but inhibiting comparisons to Nazi aggression or Czarist Russia, Dejevsky suggests a more contemporary parallel to another triad composed of Ireland and Britain and the creation of Northern Ireland. The correlation is of course not a perfect fit either, history being untidy, but I believe that by avoiding abstractions that strip away civility and humanity and making matters more personal (the UK certainly would not have tolerated any meddling in these internal affairs), one is better outfitted with the vocabulary to talk about matters, even if the received-language is already chilling enough in one direction.

gregorian mission or lex luther

Having enjoyed a tenuous overlordship on the island to begin with and with the Romano-Britons driven across the Channel by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, there was essentially no writing in England until after the year six-hundred. The Germans chieftains did not speak Latin, having had little exposure to it previously, which already had a true alphabet. The Germanic tribes had runes, which were primarily used for inscriptions and charms and not an effective way of imparting lore or commerce—although surviving evidence of personal amulets suggest that the illiterate peoples were already enchanted by the written word: one of the more prevalent words found on these charms was garlic (spear-leek, ᚷᛚ), attesting to the Germanic custom (as was the fashion at the time) of wearing a garlic clove around one’s neck to ward off evil eventually being replaced by the non-perishable glyph for the same Kryptonite, imbued with the same mystical powers.  Irish monks to the north and west were scholars of Greek and Roman—inventing lower case Greek, among other things to make texts easier to copy, and the Goths on continental Europe had published a version of the Bible in their native language—but neither of these achievements was transmitted to England.

Instead, literacy only got traction thanks to Church administrators. A young monk from a Roman patrician family named Gregory was credentialed as apocrisiarius (papal ambassador to Constantinople) and plead with the emperor of the East to send in the legions to protect the Eternal City from barbarian raids. Though unsuccessful with this mission, Gregory did become extremely popular in aristocratic circles of the capital, especially with the wives of prominent officials and academics. This influence made his elevation, though unbidden, to Pope (discourses and chants but not the calendar Gregory) himself seem natural. While the anecdote of Gregory smitten by the sight of youths from England being sold at a slave market in Rome (Non Angli, sed angeli—But they are not Angles, rather they are angels) is said to have been what inspired the Pope to send Augustine and an army of missionaries to England, beginning with the Kingdom of Kent, to convert the pagan population, it probably also had to do with Church politics and cohesion, as those monastic communities in Ireland were not under the authority of the Holy See and had some pretty radical and potentially dangerous ideas—doctrinally and regarding decentralised governance. Augustine was welcomed by the king and queen of Kent, who were already members of the flock, but fearing what might happen after the current regime was replaced and wanting the Church of Rome to be fully cemented in England, the future archbishop of Canterbury directed throngs of monks to compose the most enduring and compelling reasons that he could summon up, aside from the Church itself: legislation and punishment. Perhaps Augustine thought that such threats were the only thing that these pagan brutes would understand, and he knew that none of them would care a jot about a bunch of rules in Latin. Therefore, scribes adapted the Latin alphabet to Old English and wrote out eighty-five laws, mainly dealing with consequences for damaging Church property or the clergy, in the native language of the population--making it not only the first document written in English but also one of the first vernacular codices in Europe since the beginning of the Republic.

immrama or beyond the beyond

Though the Turkish president is facing some unfair ridicule for claiming that the relationship between the Islamic world and Latin America is a far more ancient one, Ireland stakes an even older title with the legendary voyages of Saint Brendan of Tralee.
Though the saint never stated that America was the Earthly Paradise (another candidate is La Palma in the Canaries), the Isles of the Blessed he was charged with finding by an angel for having been skeptical about an account of miracles and strange beings, Brendan does have a dedicated society of believer advocating his discovery preceded even that of Leif Erickson and the Vikings. Having embarked on this immram (the Irish word for a seafaring odyssey), the abbot assembled a cast of fellow monks (plus a few naysayers for good measure) may not have reached the Americas—though that is a matter of debate and faith—but came across many other curious places along the way. It is told that the adventures camped one evening on the back of a slumbering sea-monster, the aspidochelone, having mistook it for an island, make landfall on the island of the Birds of Paradise that sing like a choir of angels, encounter other monastic communities—including a hermit who has lived in the elements for sixty years draped only in his own hair and taken care of by an otter, a fiery land of blacksmiths that cast molten slag at the visitors (possibly a reference to volcanic Iceland) and crystal pillars in the sea (maybe icebergs) and the lonely skerry where Judas gets his respite from Hell on Sundays and holidays.

croatia week: outstanding universal value or spaghetti western

We visited some of Croatia's amazing and varied natural landscapes, including the cascading and constantly changing lakes of the Plitvice national parks (Nacionalni park Plitvička jezer) whose unique character is due to the malleable tufa that dams up the rough and eternal karst foundation of the Kvarner Gulf.
This lime- stone funda- ment is reminiscent of County Connemara in Ireland, whose sweeping plains are rivulets of the jagged rock face—with little top-soil but still managing to hold fast an ecosystem that supports everything from mosses up to cows—and people, rising also to form pseudo-fjords in parts.
The pools and lakes here and waterfalls are created by sediment that transforms into basically a chalky, soft substance that is much less permanent than what lies beneath and has given rise to wonderland, which was already duly recognised as one of the world's treasures by UNESCO in 1979 as one of the first natural places on the register.
Tourists can visit the park by sticking to these wooden gangways that look like the walkways from the Ewok village on the Moon of Endor. The wildlife here includes wolves, bears, otters, owls, vultures and lynxes but most shy away from the visiting crowds and the trails close promptly at sundown. A bit further south, past the Velebit mountain range, was the nature reserve of Paklenica canyon, and we hiked the trails there as well. It was easy to conjure up any number of adventures transpiring here.
Not too far away are much more arid climes, baked by the Adriatic sun and unrelenting Bora winds (a gust characteristic of the area that barrels downhill and snowballs once it reaches the lowlands), like these desert hills of the Isle of Pag—whose moonscape made me think of Tatooine. They were filming something there, but we suspect it was a car commercial, to appeal to customers' off-road fantasies even though it's doubtful they'll ever be realised.
It turns out that these natural backdrops were indeed made famous on celluloid in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the cinematic adaptations of German adventure-writer Karl May's novels of the Wild West, whose success spurred on other franchises like the Lone Ranger and Zorro.
May came to claim his cowboy-and-Indian stories with such iconic characters as the wise Winnetou, chief of the Apaches, and Old Shatterhand, his white blood-brother and the author's vicarious alter-ego, but May never saw these exotic places for himself—though compensating well with his imagination. It seems appropriate that the wilds of Yugoslavia (at the time) could be a fitting understudy and perhaps more authentic and awe-inspiring than those locations never visited.

abc's and 123's

Slate has an excerpt from Daniel Tammet's new book on thinking in numbers, in which the author experiences the cultural nuance, chiefly while visiting Iceland, where amounts are treated as something qualitative as well as quantitative and not something separate and abstract.
For the numbers one through five, there are different forms for years, sheep (it reminds me of the shepherd’s rhyme and special number system for counting sheep and stitches for knitting—Yan Tan Tethera, and probably also useful for sending someone off to slumber-land), people, naming trains and highways and houses—reflecting declination and something categorical that has no equivalent English despite the occasional encounter with twain, deuce, score and murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, etc. The fourth sheep is called something like “Sheep Number Four,” as if it were a city-bus—preserving a sense of cardinal bias, something not strictly ordinal, since four follows three only by the reckoning of the counter, unlike the passage of time. Bigger numbers are not elaborated in the same kind of way. I would like to read this book and find out how ways of counting influence the cognitive process and possible assumptions made about the significance upon encountering the unusual.

who moved my cheese?

Doubtless the governments of Cyprus, Portugal and Spain will accept the extra funds and for the latter the extended repayment periods offered coming out of the summit in Dublin, but in a rare moment of clarity—though mostly ignored I think as disingenuous, there was a lament by the recipients that more money is not what the beneficiaries need in this crisis. It is possible to throw good money after bad, but no one is going to turn down generosities, even when they might lead to greater sorrows later. The plaintive alternative requested was instead for more administrative flexibilities in managing the assets they have, reforming leadership, regulation and enforcement with but not around those initial life-lines before being presented with overtures of more—with new terms and conditions.

This preposterous suggestion, dismissed, made me think of this scholarly interview from Der Spiegel’s International desk examining the rise of anti-German sentiment across Europe over the euro and re-packaged austerity. It is a difficult and probing question, but I think, from these latest rounds of renegotiation, the public protests are a reflection in part at least of frustration that little flexibility—the structural might that Germany appears to have and seems to influence the body politic, that’s not accorded to the people equitably. Unfortunately, more credit does not equal a measure of determined reform, despite similarly deferred wishes for greater alignment.

découpage

achterbahn

Lending tacit support to the infusion of credit to Spanish banks by way of a demurring and quiet concession towards the pooling of debt, Germany bore some chinks in its armour of resistance to the notion of sharing responsibility for broader financial stability. Signaling (again so lightly as to miss this cue) that the machinery of the European Union might be willing to admit a bit of the chaos of democracy (wherein people might not be obliged to choose wisely), Germany advocated a stronger political union for governance of monetary issues, ceding control of budgetary competence to the EU board.

Necessarily such a decision could not be unilateral and only up to the will of EU functionaries but must be submitted to a vote, since radical changes in national sovereignty require amending individual constitutions and a new legal framework. Now, even as the soothing effects of the cash for Spain is evaporating and raising the ire of the public and other earlier aid recipients that are being made to feel categorically different, irresponsible and blameworthy, which I do not think was the reason behind the German compromise but rather fear that became face-saving for Spain’s banks, Germany has shown a willingness to entertain the democratic process before the voting public has wearied of the issue and the ideals behind the EU are sunk. Instead of inheriting a failed coalition, Germany hopes to install a carefully crafted framework that honours Teutonic stoicism and fiscal responsiveness. Agreeing to share the burden of new debt incurred (and no country in the soi-disant core of the EU can manage right now without taking on new debt) comes also at the exclusion of existing obligations, which I fear might make the union, after negotiations that delimit one’s jurisdiction, even harder to leave, should things take a turn for the worse.

ex ante or porto portugal you are permanently punished

This week’s vote in Ireland whether to accept or reject the conditions of the European Union Fiscal Compact, a treaty meant to promote financial stability and responsibility through punitive measures and supranational controls, was a stirring of an issue that goes dormant as member states shuttle in queue and declare what they expect their prerogatives to be.

All countries, with the exception of the UK and the Czech Republic, have now assented and one can expect the process to lurch quietly towards enforcement next year. Ireland, uniquely contrary and potentially ruinous, had a pivotal decision, not so much for deigning to participate, but for letting the voters of Ireland make that mandate—being the only EU member to put the Fiscal Compact up to a plebiscite. Public engagement results in education and a better understanding of the expectations and consequences. The Irish constitution has to now be amended in order to conform to the terms of the compact, which demands that signatories stay just under budget or face fines and surrender trade and tariff matters to the EU government. States still retain control over tax regimes and public projects but it is a legitimate question how meaningful that exercise of prerogative and priorities are still when tethered within the latitude of treaty rules and whether the conditions of this pact are going beyond the reserved rights of individual sovereignty as put out in the language of the Lisbon Treaty (Vertrag von Lissabon). Rejection would mean that Ireland or any other dissenter would be ineligible to receive emergency aid and rescue funds. The EU has the bully pulpit, along with the deportment of its top performers, but also has a sloshing budget of billions with only nominal and ethereal accountability and negatively reinforced, and it seems to me that this poses more of a danger than a deterrent, like keeping a standing army in times of peace.

pyrrhic victory or yes, we have no bleeding turnips

“Another such victory and I am undone.”

The ethos of the battlefield has, for the most part, been relegated to the invisible and agnostic sphere of finance, which has created an aversion to bloodshed and protracted war-making, since that is not a good climate for business—most business, likely there’s a calculus for acceptable loss and trigger for cutting-off the profits for the infernal machines, but it also tends to overshadow the “retrograde” and black market skirmishes that still go on and the people who take part in these sorties and surprises. The majority of what passes as an economic victory (although industry innovation and what’s now called a come-back or revival, like with Ireland or Iceland and what will happen for the Greek people, is not being entertained with this category of robber-baron success) is little cause for celebration (DE/EN), priced in terms of bankruptcy for the competition, the bleeding dry of stake-holders (shareholders and debtors), loss of jobs and living-standards, and trend-setting easily overturned that’s mere redistribution among the oligarchs. What are deemed key institutions are even sustained after being vanquished at the expense of public treasure. Those who would like to see struggling members of the European currency union quickly dispatched and dismissed unwillingly, rather than risk a sort of economic cold war, are rushing away from triumph. The EU’s proponents and founders could not have anticipated the spread of the economic collapse and that such a crisis would force a sober discussion of policy (how taxation and budgets are drafted) integration and is not using the plight of some members to justify the hegemony of others—rather this experiment in amalgamation, an imperfect union, shows how diminished the whole would be without its constituent parts and that the abridgement of differences is no basis for abandonment or ejection. Though the belligerents of politics and finance are intertwined, there’s principle enough, I hope, within the governments (at the behest of the people and not business or self-interest alone) to make the right decisions and have cause to celebrate.

kαταναλωτισμός or conspicuous consumption

While it is premature and insulting to suggest that Greece, failing to form a definitive coalition government after its legislative elections that were themselves held in the framework of a caretaker government ingratiated as a condition of the first bailout package, will flagrantly choose to not uphold its obligations—attracting no clear majority though like-mindedness abounds—it does beg the question at what cost default. Greece is already in hock for the better part of a generation just keeping current on payments to service its rescue packages, with acutely less to show for it in the end: the dictates of creditors and angel-investors are superseding public services and the cultivation of a jobs market. Prophets of doom are probably not exaggerating when the say that Greece will suffer an extended period of massive poverty if they are forced to default (there is not much choice left in the matter) and quit the euro, but such consequences are temporary, surely less than the terms of the loan, and the Greeks could begin clawing their way back right away. Such a precedent, though, would be dread to see, dread to hear for other countries on the economic ledge and the minders of the EU—a cue for Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Belgium and Italy, another nation imposed with a caretaker government, to consider doing the same.

I venture that the biggest fear behind the potential for contagion and strict monitoring of Greek conduct lies in not the potential for poverty but rather that it is a renegade category of poverty. Consumption continues at a pace, regardless of financial standing, so long as there is credit and interminable refinancing. Trade partners can still sell their exports and settle payments with a common currency in understood and agreeable terms, but once those conditions disappear and a country is unable to afford imports, established trade routes break down and there’s a turning inward and countries become more self-sufficient, relying on native products and developing local manufacturing (even if not as immediately efficient and technically advanced), perhaps even getting accustomed to getting by with less. Stronger economies would not be sustained without broader markets for the export of their expertise, and their sterling credit.

herab heraus or power of the purse

While still caught in either mid-yawn or mid-reel from the repercussions of the downgrade (Herabstufung-- Herabstufung is an upgrade or a promotion) of nine states of the European Union by one member of the creditworthiness brat-pack, the agency then proceeded to cast a pall of doubt on the EU’s financial crisis-management plan, the European Financial Stability Facility (gekürtz als EFSF oder bail-out pie), making the mechanisms of recovery potentially more costly, paying a dearer premium on the assurance of their efforts.

 I suppose it is logical that plans and pacts would also be targeted for assessment, but given that the EU was not simply downgraded en mass but rather parsed and excised instead of indirectly attacking their credibility through their good neighbor programme and that I cannot recall the agencies being very vocal (for or against) during the early phases of the US economic recession with trillions from treasury coffers dispersed to salvage over-exposed financial institutions, the gaming of the EFSF seems to me more like the bookmakers’ culture of Briton, wagering on an outcome and any interest-grabbing probability with the intent of skimming a little off the top. Germany and other EU leaders have dismissed the notion, at least not publically addressing or entertaining the idea, that the activity of the rating agencies is vindictive or something of a conspiracy--though there is more money to be made raising the stakes. Banks, in collusion with the rating agencies, are bringing down Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal whose baited lend-lease ventures shoved these countries over the ledge by obscuring their real levels of indebtedness and still foisting more easy credit on them, past the EU statutory limits. It is simply false to attribute the whole crisis to bad governance, greed, or laziness without factoring in the temptation and terrorism visited by this conspiracy. Once the crisis was forced, the same predatory gang called in their debts and are now profiting off the chaos and desperation as well.  Hopefully, national responses to this sort of gamble are measured and in proportion.

hungry hill

There was a sort of inaccessible quality of tragic beauty to western County Cork, which became, like other places we have visited in Ireland, more defined with study and background. Adrigole, though, at the foot of the Healy Pass and the summits of Sugar Loaf and Hungry Hill (made famous by the Daphne du Maurier novel, who also penned what became Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds), had an especially poignant—but not unique sadly as we had also stayed in Leenane, County Galway, where The Field was set—history that we got to know that added to the experience of visiting. Adrigole (Irish, Eadargóil) stretched out over ten kilometres, hugging the distinctive coastline of the Beara Peninsula, and is a peaceful and serene place, though it was once a boom town, before being decimated by the Famine (Hungersnot), immigration and the copper mining industry going bust and the robber-barons leaving the area.

There was evidence of this livlier past, and also of more ancient oppressions, like the ruins of Catholic churches that were hidden in the mountains when worship was persecuted by the Church of England. The place was warm and inviting, and certainly did not feel empty or like a ghost town, but knowing this history enhanced our time there.