Wednesday 5 October 2011

whack fol de turalura ladie, whack fol de turalureley

You can see Dublin City and the fine groves of Blarney,

The Baun, Boyne, and Liffey, and the lakes of Killarney,
You can ride on the tide o'er the broad Majestic Shannon,
You can sail round Loch Neagh and see storied Dungannon.
Will you come, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?

PfRC will be will be taking a short hiatus, while we take are engaged with adventures in one of our favourite destinations--Ireland.  In the past we have enjoyed exploring the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry, seen the savage beauty of Connemara, and this time we will be traveling to County Cork to visit Bantry Bay and the Ring of Beara on the southernmost peninsula. 
I am very excited--and surely all the while narrate our doings to the tune of the Edmund Fitzgerald or some other forgiving Irish folk song--and be sure to check back with our little travel blog for updates. 

speakeasy or agent 99

Another criticism of the groups gathered in cities across the United States to protest the culture of kleptocracy and loss of meaningful government advocacy is that the 99th percentile is mostly represented by the technocrati, and not the working poor and families overcome by want. I think that is an unfair characterization and implies that computer geeks and more subversive hacktavists have the luxury and leisure to groan about the state of the economy. Despite all the barbs traded over whether or not this rally needs clearer direction and what is glaringly obvious or otherwise, this movement still needed a catalyst and broad support that's not the piggy-backing that will be ultimately levied against the protesters by critics. With the timing of legislation that would aggravate trade-sanctions and diminish US stature further, the protests will be blamed for frustrating the elusive recovery, whose main measure is jobs though productivity is rather lost in credit and liquidity and improved savings--now called hording. The high-visibility media will do all it can to disparage these growing protests as clashes accelerate into theatre and grand-distraction, but beyond awareness, I think these occupations will secure more protections for the average worker, regardless of background, that have gone all out of balance in favour of profit and gain at any other cost.

Tuesday 4 October 2011

hashtags

While I do not believe that the American people are an apathetic lot, I do believe there has been an institutionalization of the mechanisms that rob people's appetite for protest and a general swath of demotivation.

That said, I do not want to lose hope for the sit-ins going on across the country (EN/DE)--although the same dismissive mechanisms are certainly a extinguishing factor. There has been violence, police brutality, kettling, and worse yet either total disregard by the media or a high moralizing tone: most reporting comes through the lens of British journalism whose civil unrest, in the eye of the public, went from student tuition rallies to rioting and destruction--though Britain's protesters are more experienced with kettling and entrapment, and those you do deign to notice these unwashed masses take a paternal tone. Calling the movement unfocussed and without specific demands, some commentators sigh with regret that such behaviour is unbecoming and does not seem like promising deportment for a generation struggling with unemployment and staying the course in higher education. Editors might as well throw in the over-sold dream of home ownership for all and just compound the frustrations of the organizers and occupiers: the problems are so big and systemic that anyone could intuit them, without further explanation. It is ironic that this has become more scolding about responsibility, when the apex of success in money-matters is portrayed by the cavalier day-trader who beats the trends and bets against his better interests and patience. No one is dissecting this short-fused punchline, and the protesters are not drop-outs but are rather trying to make the rules more inclusive.

Monday 3 October 2011

oneness

A year ago, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Reunification of Germany (Tag der Deutsche Einheit, die Wende) local artists installed an exhibition in a nearby community. Unfortunately, we never got around to seeing the display last Autumn, but taking advantage of the empty roads during for what is for most a holiday afternoon, I took a round-about route home and happened on this Blue Gate framing a religious sculpture, the only piece remaining of the art work commissioned to commemorate German unity.
Like a Japanese torii, the blue glass structure is very striking against the field, and I believe symbolizes a passageway through the Wall (die Mauer) and the Bildstock, the religious waypost, inside, I think, represents the historical context of Germany that transcends division. I think it was pretty neat to find this just today, especially after taking time earlier to read up on the events of this day—how opinion was not as homogenous as remembered or portrayed: Britain under Thatcher and France under Mitterrand were opposed to reunification, and demanded at the very least a five year probationary period, the Soviets surprised everyone by allowing Germany to choose its own destiny with minimal interference, and Bush was laudatory (I think that was the only version I was privy to) but with the forceful proviso that Germany remain in NATO, even though an overwhelming majority of Germans saw the reunification as the chance for further demilitarization and to claim neutrality. The course of human events is not usually an affair to be compartmentalized and the spoils of history admit to interpretation, like the art that captures a glimpse of it.

revolution number nine

I suppose an individual's definition of freedom (as in the same insurrectionists being called both rebels and freedom-fighters) can be as varied as one's definition of vanity. Visitor-counters, like philately or Ken Jennings' brilliant Slate article about how Wanderlust and country-collecting have turned into a highly-competitive pastime for those with the means, are rather vain things--since one's sponsors track this data already to a fault--but the service that I adopted before I realized that the same features were already built into Blogger is reliable and endearing, and Flag Counter made me smile yesterday when I saw that our latest, newest visitor was from liberated Libya--represented by the new flag of the caretaker government. Maybe the visit was for something completely random and unhindered image-searches was only among the least of freedoms tenaciously fought for. I am very happy for their achievement, nonetheless, and all the small and grand victories of the Arab Spring--and hope that it's catching. Given the opportunity, I would have visited those countries in person before the revolution but now, with the chance to support the new leadership, one has even more reason to go.

Sunday 2 October 2011

transparez

No place has a monopoly on greed, corruption and bribery, and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has been doing important work to expose the lobbyists in Brussels and how business motives translate to political agendas within the European Union. The organization has compiled an extensive list of the ties that bind, available for downloading on their site, in addition to all the other reporting they do on influence-peddling. Such work is vital, I think, because there is a gentrification and formalization in the culture of corruption and the EU, which further shields those courtiers from the press and public backlash.

wallet inspector or nickel-and-dimed

Rarely I think new policies are introduced without calculated unpopularity, and I think that this is the case with the announcement of one of the biggest banks of America (recursively named) that it will begin charging its customers a nominal monthly convenience fee for using their point of sale debit cards.

All the outrage and resentment that have been generated over this relatively harmless move might be the final straw that causes the public to move their money and quit enabling these too-big-to-fail. If such a mildly unsettling PR failure can bring about revolution, then I am happy for it, but I think the message was instead designed to make the public at large forget about all their past transgressions and focus on this new tangible and across the board policy: never mind all the billions in tax-payer bailout assistance, predatory loans, aggressive and faulty repossessions, casually firing tens of thousands from its own workforce, being generally unrepentant about abetting the whole global financial , and now they have the nerve to nickel-and-dime people for the privilege of using their own money (merchants already pay a premium for renting debt-card machines), which the banks profit from by holding it. I think it will backfire.  One would do better to always use cash: all those electronic trillions in sovereign debt and corporate assets the world around could not fit physically fit into all the bank vaults of the world, if this trend snowballs and that’s quite something for cash-on-hand.

Saturday 1 October 2011

a dinosaur victrola listening to buck owens

I can distinctly recall being informed that all Creedence Clearwater Revival songs were references to the Vietnam War, years and years while listening to Looking Out My Back Door on the radio while visiting some friends in Reardon, Virginia. This already sounds like a bit of dialogue from The Big Lebowski or someone trying to pass an urban legend off as his own. I do not know if that association is the absolute truth but I remember it being quite a revelation to start to peer through the lyrics and suddenly understand that a lot of music is about drugs, protest, Nixon and Watergate-gate. Folk and protest music has sometimes, I think, gone underground, and I never really thought about it beforehand, but I suppose that the rap genre is the legal successor in some ways to the anti-war movement and all the artists who used their talent to weave an allegory that was more subtle. Rap is excused, of course, and can be more direct.
In between-time, there was Don Henley’s (the Eagles--there’s Big Lebowski) All She Wants To Do Is Dance that was apparently in protest to America’s 1984 counter-revolutionary support and occupation of Nicaragua about the hedonists CIA spooks stationed there who could not see the bigger political picture. Maybe that level of allegory and deference was too subtle, too polite, but good music always surpasses its immediate context.