Cassandra Voices

Tag: affairs

  • Exit through the Vestry

    Vestry 

    /ˈvɛstri/                                         

    Noun

    • a room or building attached to a church, used as an office and for changing into ceremonial vestments.
    • a real estate investment trust (REIT), incorporated in the Republic of Ireland.

    There comes a moment when you discover a person the trajectory of whose business affairs appears to embody the rotten nature of Irish housing. Such people are often perceived as visionaries of the real estate market, top of their class in producing a return on investment through a system that permits widespread human suffering. One such visionary is Richard Moyles, director and largest shareholder of The Vestry General Partner DAC, one of Ireland’s most powerful landlords. Moyles is also a director of Be Lettings, the letting agent Vestry uses to manage its tenancies and properties. Characters like Moyles are endemic in our communities. We are told that their investments are what make the world spin. Sure, only for them, wouldn’t it all be so much worse? Or, as the American President laughed with the Taoiseach on the subject of the Housing Crisis, “It’s a good problem to have.” In this piece, I push against this narrative – with Richard Moyles as a touchstone, and paint a picture at the iceberg’s tip. This is not, however, Richard’s story. It’s the story of a mother and her young son with nowhere to go; the same story as thousands of other tenants whose lives are determined by the decisions of men and women like him.

    Jen has lived in an apartment in Dublin 1 for a decade, becoming Vestry’s tenant when the group acquired the property in 2021. Her son, Danny (aged 5), has known no other home. Vestry bought the apartment from Grant Thornton for €325,700, after the previous landlord went into receivership and Grant Thornton took control of the property. “The landlords were changing like socks,” Jen told me over the phone. She received a letter through the door, explaining that the property had changed hands, and that she would now be Vestry’s tenant. “No one asked me”, she said, “if they want to sell the apartment, I should be the first person they asked.” Vestry’s control over the property immediately made Jen and Danny’s situation insecure. Under the previous owner, Jen had signed a lease until January 2026. Vestry were under no legal obligation, however, to honour this agreement. “The law is on their side,” Jen said.

    Jen’s case is among the fifteen disputes between Vestry and their tenants that have come before the Residential Tenancy Board over the last six months. Her story is quite typical of many of those before the RTB – the landlord wants to sell, and the tenant, caught in the tempest of the housing crisis, cannot leave. Jen told me that Dublin City Council offered to buy the property under the tenant-in-situ scheme. Vestry, however, declined the offer which would have secured a “market rate” purchase for Vestry and a home for Jen and Danny. A win-win scenario, one would have thought. “My main issue is that there is no transparency between government bodies, landlords, and tenants. I don’t understand why it [the DCC offer] was so secret.” A representative from Be Lettings told Jen that they were looking for between €350,000 and €375,000 for the apartment. When Jen asked the DCC worker charged with acquisitions under the tenant-in-situ scheme what offer was made to Vestry, she was looked at “like (she) had two heads.”

    When I went to visit Jen and Danny, accompanied by members of the Mountjoy-Dorset branch of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), Danny’s energy and curiosity was infectious. Jen and the CATU members decided to knock on every door in the apartment building, with Danny’s exuberant voice echoing through the stairwells as his mother pleaded her case to her neighbours. He showed us his favourite book, Torben Kuhlmann’s Lindbergh – The Tale of the Flying Mouse. The book tells the story of what Danny described as a “genius mouse”, who is forced to flee Germany after the humans create a labyrinth of mouse traps, leaving himself and his friends on the run. The similarity between Danny and the little mouse was, frankly, striking. Surplus to Vestry’s requirements, little Danny and his mother must now make their way in a city filled with the sorrow and stress of displacement.

    One of the CATU members pointed to a leaflet poking out from under the door of one of Jen’s downstairs neighbours. He had left it there a couple of weeks previously. “Well, there’s no one in that house”, the member remarked. How could it be that this woman could be facing homelessness, while a perfectly suitable house seemingly lay vacant, right under where they slept? Such is the effect of a political economy whereby a basic human right, housing, is treated as a speculative asset for men like Moyles to gamble with.

    CATU are currently representing a number of Vestry tenants who are facing eviction by the investment trust. “⁠It’s typical that our members are being put at risk of homelessness due to no fault of their own. It’s also typical that private landlords are prioritising their shareholder profits at the expense of housing insecurity for our members and other tenants,” Lily Palmer, communications officer for CATU Mountjoy-Dorset told me. In response to the evictions, and fearing that Vestry may be carrying out mass, citywide evictions, CATU Mountjoy-Dorset have purchased a dedicated phone for Vestry tenants to contact them, should they want representation from the Tenant’s Union, called the “Vestry Hotline”.

    In 2023, The Ditch reported that Vestry controlled more than 850 homes in the Irish rental market, posting more than €20 million in profit. Company records show that Moyles is the company’s largest single shareholder, through an investment firm wholly owned by him, called Apsone Investments Ltd. Mr Moyles keeps good company with his fellow shareholders, a who’s who of property moguls. Let’s take Silk Shadow Ltd, who control 10% of Vestry. Silk Shadow is owned by property power couple Hilary and Christy Dowling . In 2011, Newlyn Homes Limited, which controls 100% of Silk Shadow had €22 million of its loans transferred to the National Management Asset Agency (NAMA). Christy is also a co-director of Vestry and Beo Ventures Ltd, along with Robert Kehoe and Andrew Gunne. Andrew Gunne, incidentally, was previously a director of Focus Ireland, a charity apparently tasked with alleviating the humanitarian crisis of homelessness. The Vestry group reveals a complex web of companies, all with their fingers in the Irish home market, or indeed, the Irish homeless market.

    Moyles, along with Vestry co-director, Robert Kehoe, are directors of Be Lettings. Be Lettings describe themselves as “a leading residential letting and management business with a nationwide portfolio of houses and apartments”. In at least one case Be Lettings has sold properties to Vestry itself. One effect of such ‘house flipping’ is rampant inflation in the housing market. For example, a 3-bed, 2-bathroom, semi-detached house in Dublin 15 was bought in November 2019 for €287,500.00. In January of 2025, the same property was sold to Moyles’ Vestry by Moyles’ Be Lettings for €400,050.00. Land registry documents show Vestry is this property’s current owner. It was surely no coincidence that Be Lettings facilitated the sale, allowing Moyles to benefit through his shareholdings both from the sale of the property, and from its future tenancies. According to Vestry’s accounts this home, and Jen’s, are listed as a security for a company called Situs Asset Management Limited. This means that should Vestry fall into financial trouble, the home can be seized by Sistus, with little recourse or security from homelessness for whatever tenant may be renting the property.

    Moyles currently has a case before An Bord Pleanála, which was lodged in October of 2024. The case concerns an application for a fire safety certificate for a property he leases at 21 Denmark Street, Dublin 1. The case file reads “for material change of use from flats/bedsits to B&B rooms with other material alterations”. This is precisely what Dublin does not need: more B&Bs at the expense of permanent residences.

    When I visited the property it was clear that work was ongoing in the building. Stacks of rubbish were piled high next to it, and the door was bolted shut with two heavy padlocks. This property – a listed building built in c.1790 – is not owned by Vestry, Moyles, or other associated entities. The building’s Land Registry file shows that it is currently held under a leasehold from a company by the name of Dubres Strategies Limited. This company is not registered in Ireland, but Malta, according to leaked documents found in the Paradise Papers. The Paradise Papers is a global investigation into the offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies, led by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. A man named Rodney Lee Berger is Dubres Strategies Limited’s director. He and Corinne Hilary Berger are directors of Dubres Capital Limited, a company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with an address at 13 North Great George’s Street, a stone’s throw from the property at 21 Denmark Street.

    Vestry’s purchase of Jen’s apartment was not the first time Moyles had cause to deal with Grant Thornton, in their capacity as receivers. In 2011, when Moyles was a director of Shelbourne Development (Europe) Limited, The Bank of Scotland appointed Grant Thornton as receiver. According to the receiver’s abstract submitted to the Companies Registry Office, dated 18/12/2019, Grant Thornton collated receipts of €33,511,913. In 2014, National Asset Loan Management Limited appointed Mazars as receivers to Moyles’ Shelbourne Properties Limited. Remarkably, this is a different entity to Shelbourne Development (Europe) Limited. According to the receiver’s abstract presented by Mazars, they took control of €23,975,661.56 of assets associated with the former company. It’s strange how the same man can be a supporting character in the downfall of one property giant, dust himself off, and appear on the other side of the ledger, purchasing a stressed asset from the very same receiver who had previously confiscated his holdings. As Mac from the 2005 comedy TV series ‘It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia’ put it: “I’m playing both sides, so I always come out on top!”

    Artist’s impression of the ‘Chicago Spire’.

    Moyles shared his directorship in both companies with Garrett Kelleher, who tried to sue NAMA for $1.2billion in a U.S. court, after his Anglo-Irish Bank-funded “Chicago Spire” vanity project failed to get off the ground. In 2009, prior the  resignation of Chris O’Connell as the head of Shelbourne Development (Europe) Ltd, O’Connell told the Irish Times: “In the short term it’s (referring to the establishment of NAMA) going to mean uncertainty for developers, bankers and investors alike, but it’s the key to the resurrection of this market over the next decade and it’s going to generate significant business opportunities at a number of different levels,”. And indeed, the offloading of bad loans from the bankers’ books by NAMA has created significant business opportunities. It could certainly be argued that this mechanism has allowed Moyles, Kelleher, Dowling and the crew to continue their honest work as lowly property moguls.

    “He doesn’t want to leave”, Jen told me, “he has his swimming lessons here, he has his little pals, his little life is going to be disrupted”. We must confront Jen and Danny’s reality, and the reality for some 15,286 people currently in homeless accommodation in this “Republic”, 4,653 of whom are children, with countless more contending with crippling rents, inflated high prices and insecure tenancies. If this is a “good problem to have”, who is it good for? Certainly not those people, and certainly not those paying exorbitant rent for mouldy studios. Is the problem housing supply, that “Ireland is Full”, or something else entirely? When we start asking the right questions we may start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Once we establish, as a basic cultural norm, that little Danny’s right to a roof should take precedence over Moyles’ right to make money from that roof, then, we might start excavating what is rotten about Irish housing. Until then, the carousel of real estate investment will keep turning, and little Danny and his mother will remain on the sidelines, not knowing what comes next.

  • Podcast: Patrick Cockburn on Syria and Ukraine


    Are the Eurocrats and their allies most delusional about the topics they profess to find most urgent? Or are they just setting out to delude the rest of us?

    This was Ursula Von Der Leyen speaking at the 9th Brussels Conference on Syria, on Saint Patrick’s Day last:

    The agreement between the central authorities and the Kurdish SDF… is nothing short of historic. As is the signing of a constitutional declaration by interim President al-Sharaa. On the other hand, the attacks on security forces and the violence against civilians in Syria’s coastal region show that the situation remains fragile…

    The Syrian authorities’ commitment to bring the perpetrators to justice, to protect minorities, and form an inclusive government – all of this is vital for reconciliation.

    As these words were being prepared in the run-up to the conference, informed observers of Syria’s situation could see a different picture: targeted sectarian massacres of Alawites, not just “violence against civilians”, had begun. To precious little outcry in the West, death squads indifferent to calls for restraint from Damascus were fanning out in coastal Latakia. Far from cohering into a place of “inclusive government”, Syria looks more likely to be approaching a condition of volatility and chaos, not a “fragile” democracy with “freedom of opinion, expression, information, publication and press”, as claimed in the text of the interim constitutional document. Quoting an acquaintance living in Maaloula, a Christian town Northeast of Damascus, Patrick Cockburn relates how multiple groups have been plunged into trepidation: “The Christians are frightened, the Alawites are frightened, even the secular Sunnis are frightened…”

    That fear relates not only to who is supposedly in charge in Damascus, but to the extent of their control, if any, over the forces made up of jihadis from around the world who are now the primary wielders of military power across most of the core of the country. The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Council, meanwhile, has actually been outspoken in its criticism of the Islamist-shaded constitution, saying it has “reproduced authoritarianism”.

    Every single premise of Von Der Leyen’s statement as quoted above is questionable.

    Its conclusions are absurd.

    Why do we start by picking out the ancient Christian redoubt of Maaloula? This frame of reference helps to show how far back in time the communities of modern-day “Syria” go, as well as Cockburn’s in-person familiarity with their inheritors’ attempts to survive in the horrible present. Writing back in 2012,  Cockburn concluded a piece for the Independent by observing that “the sufferings of the Christians of Syria are no worse than those of the Muslims, but they feel that whatever the outcome of the Civil War, their future will most likely be worse than their past.”  The omens, he felt were not good. He was right.

    In Syria, they seldom are. This Post-Ottoman, Post-French mandate state goes back to 1945 in its current form. Will it even continue to exist in another few years? The massacres now taking place in Latakia, Cockburn would write a few days after our conversation, are being “ignored”, but “may shape the Middle East”. (iPaper, March 15)

    As the second part of the conversation in this episode outlines, European leaders and their friends are prone to magical thinking in the matter of their proximate crises as well as distant. In recent coverage on Ukraine for the iPaper, Cockburn has argued that “Western governments, media and PR firms” have crafted a depiction of the conflict as a replay of WW2. In this vision, “compromise was ruled out as practical policy, meaning that the war could only end with a Ukrainian victory and Russian capitulation – though nobody seriously believed this was going to happen since… the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.” In an echo of that argument, Cockburn’s contemporary Peter Hitchens stated, in an interview in Slovakia’s Standard magazine:

    “The whole of the Western world has been told things about Ukraine which make it very difficult for a compromised peace.”

    On grave matters of peace and war, European leaders are failing to adopt a realistic vision, concludes Cockburn.

    This is something of an understatement.

    With Europeans apparently determined to tool up for armies that don’t exist (and would be unlikely to have much fighting morale even if they did) and prone to praising the emergence of “progressive” states that have all the long-term prospects of a snowman in the Sinai, we are looking at a new era of wishful, read delusional thinking.

    A final note:

    This conversation with Patrick Cockburn is his second with Cassandra Voices. One year ago, Patrick was our very first guest. Back then we mostly spoke about his father Claud, the subject of a new biography by his Cork-born son. This time, we jump to more familiar terrain: the battlefields of the present day, Ukraine, Syria, and Gaza. Cockburn once praised his late friend Robert Fisk as a “historian of the present”. Like Fisk, Cockburn began in Ireland, then spent decades doing mostly Middle-east-based journalism, mostly in person. This meant cultivating friendships, survival skills and a sense of discernment for the historical roots of ongoing events. More sedentary now than, say, the start of the Syrian Civil War 14 years ago, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (both of which he covered while on the ground), he is better placed than most to share useful perspectives on far-off theaters of fighting. We’re honored to have him back.

  • Podcast: ‘We Urgently Need a Global Vision’

    In a turbulent period in European history, and beyond, we are delighted to draw on the sage input of the former Irish ambassador to Russia, poet Philip McDonagh, who also worked for a long period on the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. He explores the possibilities for a lasting, inclusive peace between Russia and Ukraine. He also laments the expansion in military investment in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, calling for a new global vision to contend with the troubles of our time.

    Philip McDonagh discusses the role of rhetoric in international politics, going all the way back to Aristotle and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. A key concept, in his view, is a right to dissent: he considers this a vital component to democracy that is under threat across the world today. He refers explicitly to the lack of debate around the ‘triple lock’ on the Irish government’s ability to commit Irish troops to peace-keeping operations.

    Philip McDonagh worked extensively on the Good Friday Agreement as political counsellor to the Irish embassy in London, and was subsequently involved in various initiatives to bring lessons from this to other conflict zones, including India-Pakistan, India-Sri Lanka and Korea. The most important lesson he draws from these negotiations is the need to reframe the problem so that ‘all sides can see a better future.’

    He regards ‘small, potted statements on X’ as a huge impediment to diplomacy, considering this part of a wider cultural disaster that we are experiencing with the information environment. He would be delighted to advise Michael Martin before his visit to the White House, referring to the continued relevance of the OSCE, which offers a framework that includes the United States and the Russian Federation for peace-keeping and monitoring.

    As Irish ambassador in Moscow he conducted high level negotiations with Russian officials, and found their diplomatic service to be highly professional. He recalls ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev saying to him that Ireland could reconcile Russia and the United States because of our friendship with the Americans, and what he thought would be our empathy with a Russian perspective.

    He refers to fears on the Russian side of entering negotiations, given the stated objectives of European sanctions has been to collapse the Russian economy. He maintains that they would see a pattern of discrediting or criminalising the Russian leadership precisely in order to prevent negotiations.

    Russia is part of Europe he argues, pointing to the geographic definition of the continent extending to the Urals, and pointing to the great Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pushkin, as well as shared Christian and Muslim traditions. He refers to an unhelpful cancellation of Russian culture in parts of Eastern Europe in particular.

    Philip McDonagh says that the major task of diplomacy is to attempt to reconcile the interests of both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Notably, the potential expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Georgia was a source of serious discontent in Russia prior to the outbreak of the war.

    He takes a global perspective on the need to resolve the European conflict, arguing it is immoral for us to commit to spending huge sums of money on weapons, when so many around the world are starving. We need a methodology or framework to think about the future he argues – new spaces led by civil society. This requires a morally serious form of multilateralism he says, maintaining that to describe this as a planetary emergency is realistic.

    He concludes with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said: ‘we must have the courage to believe in a future that is not visible in the alternatives of the present. That’s the future we have to enable with our political choices.’

  • Make Greenland Great

    In his last great novel The Plot Against America (2004) Philp Roth posited plausible circumstances where President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the great social democrat, could be dislodged by the proto-fascist Charles Lindbergh.

    Sadly, a failure to understand history bedevils our time. We have sleepwalked into a similar scenario after the last U.S. Presidential election. Now I fear it is too late. A fascist leader appears to have been re-elected President.

    In 1935, as much of Europe was succumbing to fascism, Upton Sinclair penned his dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here in which Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip enters the presidential election campaign on a populist platform. He promises to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, offering each citizen $5,000 per year. Portraying himself as a champion of ‘the forgotten man’ and ‘traditional’ American values, Windrip defeats incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination, and then goes on to beat his Republican opponent.

    It can happen here and now. Trump is emblematic of how, worldwide, a new form of corporate fascism, or corporate communism, has become dominant. So let us examine the initial pronouncements.

    Inauguration Day

    What did his flurry of executive orders mean, apart from braggadocio and sabre rattling? This is quite apart from the caveat that executive decrees short-circuiting the legislative process are the hallmarks of fascism, as Carl Schmidt the legendary jurist argued. American democracy appears to be in tatters.

    In an inaugural address that was remarkably coherent and lucid in conceptual terms, Trump invoked President McKinley (1897-1901). The implications are clear. McKinley colonised Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Cuba, and was also hostile to global cooperation.

    So, resignations from the admittedly corrupt WHO and the revocation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement are the first two steps. Now, all directly or indirectly funded citadels of world governance are under siege if they oppose or sanction American interests.

    Danish author Peter Høeg penned a famous bestselling book Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1982) about Greenland and more precisely the Danish government’s treatment of the indigenous Inuit community The engine of the plot is the concealment of a state secret: a lethal meteorite and a parasitic worm that serves as an existential threat. The ruling Danes are not portrayed sympathetically with respect to Greenlanders. Indeed, according to a recent poll Greenlanders aspire for autonomy, but not another external coloniser.

    Yet Donal Trump wants Greenland and seems prepared to invade. Thus, he sent his son to a resort in the island’s most populous town Neuk armed with the slogans about making Greenland great. The thought did occur that Inviting homeless people into a 4-star hotel, albeit accidentally, is a policy he could replicate in his domestic policies, though I doubt he will.  The whole staged visit was of course bellicose posturing, and the shape of things to come.

    Why then the sudden interest? Well, it’s not so sudden frankly, but it’s most revealing. The interest stems from what is apparent in the Trump regime’s agenda: a zero-sum game of competition between nation states, leading to a global competition for diminishing resources. Texan and indeed Arabian oil supply may run dry and is certainly being exhausted at current consumption rates.

    Greenland is terra nullius or virgin territory, unspoiled in one crucial respect. It is among the last outposts where the riches of the earth can be extracted – to enrich the few and destroy the planet. More to the point, it will soon be exploitable given that climate change is overwhelmingly likely to cause the glaciers to melt.

    Black Gold

    Oil! (1927) is the title of Upton Sinclair’s epic novel about American greed, which was adapted into the film There Will Be Blood (2007). Today, American capitalist colonialism wants not just Greenland, but the Northern Territories of Canada. Drill Baby Drill.

    The Northern Territories of Canada are also an Arctic landmass of untapped resources. In his speech, he specifically mentioned tariffs – incidentally also a Mckinley policy – and tariffs were only just averted from coming into force against Canada and Mexico. China was also hit with retaliatory measures. Yet, it is the plain people of America who voted for him who will pay the bill, only after he has fired half the federal government.

    Thus, invocation of McKinley in his speech is also the invocation of a solid hard currency President that is for the few, not the many.

    The concept in international law of domestic jurisdiction is to respect national sovereignty, and only where there have been systematic human rights abuses to interfere in the domain reserve of a state. The justification of a breach of an obligation ergo omnes or a Crime Against Humanity is, ideally, filtered and ratified by the U.N.. This has often occurred in a bogus fashion, such as the dodgy dossier that led to the Bush-Blair war on Iraq. Trump also wants oil, but is going about it in a different way.

    So, he will not accept any international sanction or control, and will move with autocratic impunity. Play ball or we will invade, or refuse to recognise the UN, or perhaps force it to decamp from New York. Should the General Assembly object to any of this it may simply be liquidated. The statement above might seem alarmist but there are few checks and balances left.

    That seems to me to be what is happening is with the division of the world into trading blocs or sectors. Trump does not want to spend hard dollars on wasteful wars in the Ukraine or Gaza but that is not to say he gives a rat’s arse about human rights. Instead, he aims to establish a profit-driven North American confederation, to include Canada and Greenland, and, of course, reclaim the revenue of American businesses.

    Hi ally, or puppet master, Elon Musk, also has limited respect for national sovereignty, but a different mechanism of attack. He destabilizes through funding political actors such as the ADF in Germany and agitates online against the Starmer administration.

    America wants pliant co-operative regimes, with Musk acting as a modern-day Kissinger-without-portfolio. Trump has no doubt suspended the ban on Tik Tok to allow his bestie to buy it up and pollute the minds of an entire generation. This is Freedom of Expression if we will tell you what to say.

    ICE and Department of Homeland Security agents detaining a man.

    Ethnic Cleansing

    We will also see de facto ethnic cleansing, as in his proposal that two million Gazans should vacate their land to make way for a new Riviera. Also, the removal of undesirable aliens, even those for whom America is a birthright, and the development of a Mexican Iron Curtain.

    The new form of cleansing is akin to the McCarthyite Red Scare, given the removal of employment rights of those who are opposed to his interests and thus by definition seditious. Most of this action will be upheld by a compliant and docile judiciary. In short federal employees with even a trace of Red will be summarily dismissed.

    And what of Ireland? The extension of American trade will surely lead to the decamping of multinational corporations. American hedge funds already enjoy a dominant interest in our domestic housing market. Nevertheless, I predict tariffs will be employed against Ireland and Europe if regimes are less than favourable towards the United States.

    Further, the entire liberal WOKE agenda, which in my view has been deeply troublesome and counterproductive, is being dismantled. ‘His Christians’, as he calls them, form the Bible Belt will see a return to very traditional female and male roles. This is of course after his Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. His Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also has very extreme views on homosexuality, so watch this space.

    There were also pardons for far-right protestors after he lost the last election, and a promised investment in more lethal injections and an escalation of the death penalty. The previous few years have seen the US Supreme Court block off appeals for ineffective assistance of Counsel. One senses that his emergency powers remit of executive action will not be confined to the Mexican border, but the legislative remit will be much wider and internal, and will be upheld by SCOTUS.

    It is apparent that the worldwide human rights post-Second World War consensus is over save for a few enclaves. State authoritarianism – with his acolytes in Argentina and Italy present at the inauguration – will now increase at a rapid pace.

    More fundamentally, if American democracy doesn’t survive this then all democracies are threatened. We all contract pneumonia, politically speaking, when they catch a cold.

    Karl Kraus

    The legendary Austrian journalist Karl Kraus died in 1936 after editing Die Fackel for thirty-seven years, shortly after Hitlers ascension to power in Germany. At the height of collapse, and after a self-enforced interregnum of nine months he published one last edition that included the extended essay ‘The Third Walpurgis Night’.

    The essential argument is that with their devotion to palaver and tactics, the Social Democrats facilitated Hitlers rise. He despaired at their belief that ‘they could break [the] magic circle [of Nazism] by means of the Constitutional Court.’ Consequently, the essay supports the Austrian Christian-Democratic Chancellor Dollfuss as anything other than Hitler was needed. Well, the lunacy of liberal political correctness and their failure to focus on real issues facilitated misguided Populism.

    The opening paragraph of the extended essay is devastating in its implications for today:

    As to Hitler, I have nothing to say. I am aware that as the upshot of extended reflection, of repeated efforts to grasp the phenomenon and the forces driving it, this falls far short of expectations. They were, after all, pitched higher than ever before at a polemicist who is popularly—but mistakenly—expected to take a stand; and who, when confronted by any evil that appeals to his temperament, has indeed been prepared to “stick his neck out”. But there are evils which not only make the neck cease to be a metaphor…

    The best reading of Walpurgis Nacht, as Patrick Healy has suggested, is that satire should point not only in the direction of rhetorical agility – use of mockery, insult, indignation etc. – but also to its fusion with the voice of the moralist, employing the skill of a standup comic. The word has also a meaning of stew bringing all ingredients together. However, just as with Hitler, so with Trump, we are now beyond satire. At one level we must remain silent, or use words sparingly.

    Kraus, in his masterly analysis of Goebbels (a precursor to Musk), accepts that so deeply clever and embedded is the propaganda – and the appearance of culture and progress – that we forget that they intend to do what they are going to do.

    The reaction to the camp fascist Nazi salute by Musk is a clear indication that seriously cultivated people should not take these barbarians seriously, but they ought to be taken seriously, as globally, in a state of collective hysteria, people are voting for them into office. So, is it that we, the civilised, are no longer to be taken seriously?

    Watching this shit show unfold is like being the Isherwood figure in the film Cabaret at the German been garden as he hears a version of the Horst Wessel being sung.

    Trump, unlike nativistic Greenlanders, wants ownership of land and people’s minds, but in a very unstable situation there is an alternative. Remember what happened to President Mckinley.

  • Lebanon: 5,000 Kilometres Away

    Beirut, Mar Elias, 26 November, 7pm.

    Despite the cold wave that hit the city this week (8 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 in the Mediterranean), my mother and sister left all the windows and doors open, to prevent the worst. They are – as I type – sitting in my sister’s room in the middle of the apartment. They moved away from the balconies, from the saloon, where chandeliers could fall on their heads. They sat there with a heater and they said they were praying. Praying? I come from a family that does not pray. Well, my sister has started a tradition lately. Transmission in my family is inverted it seems….

    We talked for 15 minutes and then, short of words, I stayed there. I’ve been 45 minutes on the phone, not talking anymore, just in the background, just listening, tele-transporting myself to the house, trying to be present for them, for the neighborhood, for my childhood, for my upbringing, for myself in fact, in silence. A phone call to hear silence, and to witness a bombardment. Waiting with them, for the bombardment. To add some absurdity to the absurdity, I do not want them to wait alone, so I am waiting from afar with them on the phone. Waiting for the sound.

    My mother and sister are also waiting for my other sister, who is blocked in the Hamra traffic. Since the evacuation order was issued an hour ago, people ran off and are acting according to the “safety” measurement. An urban nightmare. My mother and sister are 600 metres away from a location listed as a targeted spot, as part of a list of targeted spots. My mother and sister believe and trust that they are okay and that they will be okay and that everything will be alright.

    They asked me to hang up as my brother needs to talk to mother. I had to hang-up.

    I am 5000 kilometres away, yet I do not feel that I am okay nor do I feel that I am alright. Actually, I do not share their opinion. I am scared, just like last October, when I was scared when the tension started. I am scared like last November, when two monsters were threatening to “Flatten Beirut, like [they] are flattening Gaza”. I am not a geopolitical expert; I have good sensors though. My skin is full of those. I feel events, people and situations (precisely the reason why I am geographically away from Mar Elias at the moment). And what my mother and sister are living now, I also feel it so acutely. My mother’s tone of voice betrays her stoic words. This lady saw it all, she is strong but her voice is shaking. She cannot fake it any longer… I feel ashamed to be away and that she has to see more, more of it, more of the same. Shame. I returned to Beirut in 2018 and had my share until mid-2024. So all I can do is call back and stay on the phone.

    –  Please let me stay with you, do not hang up.

    I am a scared mother, I am scared. I am scared just like we had to hide in the corridor for long nights in 1989 when the “East-West” War was on. When, for some reason, we were stuck in a corridor despite being totally outside the “East-West” logic. I am scared just like in 1990, during the War of Liberation, when we had to run, father and I, from Verdun up-hill home, using walls as our only shelter, moving like lizards, from wall to wall until we reached home, when his forty-five-year-old body was hiding mine of 5 years old. It is striking how I can still remember his body twitching.  I am scared, just like in 2006, when our house was shaking like an autumn leaf because of its proximity to the southern suburb area.

    –   Mama, how do you feel? What did you eat for lunch?
    –   I cooked green beans and rice, and …

    Mother’s voice is cut, muted for a moment; it agonizes for seconds.

    –  Mama! Are you okay?
    –  I am okay. I think something blew off… the floor shook a bit.
    –  Mama, are you okay?
    –  Yes, yes, I am fine… It is done, it’s over. “That was it!”, she adds in a reassuring tone, as if nothing happened, not to scare me. 

    Then I hear the cry she tames. But I hear it. She swallows it, as she is so good at hiding emotions, suffocating them. I learned a bit of that from her. At least, only when it comes to crying… for the rest I am very explicit. I feel the silent water in my eyes, flooding water as silent as hers.

    Silence.

    That was it: the promised, announced, planned and advertised attack on my mother’s area. Not Hezbollah’s area, not a single-one-of-them area – I will forever refuse such a takeover of my area, as it is simply my mother’s area. That swallowing of something in her throat felt like a violent mutilation. I witnessed my mother’s breath cut by the IDF. My mother who had to silently watch the Israeli soldiers hiding in her parking lot, during the civil war when they entered Beirut West, and specifically our neighborhood, and regularly visited Ali Alwan from the Murabitoun – a collaborating spy. 1981. My mother, whose home office got hit by their bombing, when they were looking for Yaser Arafat, who was located a few buildings away. 1982. My mother, who is not knowledgeable of any military artillery, had a Milan (Missile d’Infanterie Léger Antichar) hitting her roof, and therefore she knows all about Milan missiles. Mother is an expert in Milan missiles actually. She recognizes those, as every militia man went up to observe it under her guidance, before collecting it from her place. She dealt, however, with the dusty remains of the aftermath alone.

    Then she remembered I am still here, as I remained silent and was only capable of writing frenetically. She overcame her emotions, with an unusual sharing of details:

    –  Lily, I am glad you are away. The air is polluted, dusty, black powder on all surfaces here. You cannot touch a surface. You cannot breathe well. Every day, I thank God for being alive and for you being away.

    –  Well, mama I know how cumbersome I am to you…

    –  No, you wouldn’t have been able to run. You wouldn’t have taken it.

    –  I cannot run anymore as much as I did since the Explosion, mama. Also, I am not only a runner… it is not the only activity I live for….

    –  Lily, water is scarce and cleaning your 15 meters’ balcony every day and planting bulbs and seeds weekly wouldn’t be easy… you would not have really dealt with the rationing …

    –  You didn’t tell me that last time we spoke.

    –  Do you really need to know everything? You’re tiring, you always want to know everything….

    She has been actually lying, since I left she has been lying. She avoids telling me whatever goes wrong. I always discover the truth later.

    Then she screams: “Nathalie, do not step on the balcony! Stay inside”.

    –  Lily, we need to take a phone call; someone is calling us.

    She hangs up on me for the second time.

     

    Dublin, Portobello, 26 November, 6pm.

    I feel alone and lonely and utterly sad. I am in an early time zone, and I feel left behind, not only in space but also in time. I do not want to be there; she is perfectly right. My nervous system would not be up to it. She knows her kids well, despite the opacity and the thick curtains of hidden emotions we built between each other, her and I. She is tougher and so are my sisters. Maybe because I left at 22. They never left. She never left, she never left Lebanon, never left Mar Elias. It’s her hood, that made it ours, as per our matriarchy.

    I called again in ten minutes. They didn’t even talk to me; they opened the line and continued conversing. Nathalie tells mother: “The ceasefire has been announced”. My sister should be delusional. A ceasefire while we just got “raped”? How is that possible?

    I open my news channels. “Israel approves ceasefire deal with Lebanon, continues to heavily strike Beirut and various areas”, Beirut Today.

    It’s surreal.

    Middle East Eye (MEE) reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said his war cabinet had approved a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon that will pause fighting for 60 days. He promised that Israel’s war on Gaza will continue. US and Arab officials told Middle East Eye that under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon. Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence along the border and move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, the sources said. The Lebanese army is expected to deploy in south Lebanon, with at least 5,000 troops set to patrol the border area along with an existing UN peacekeeping force. An international committee, including the US and France, will be established to supervise the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. Hezbollah is yet to comment on the deal. US President Joe Biden will speak later on Tuesday. A senior US official told MEE that Israel will not be granted the right to attack Lebanon based on any suspicious movements”.

    I have not been sleeping well. I have been sleeping either little or lightly. I’ve also been having nightmares, night sweats and uneasy mornings. Last night, I slept light and little. I was late and have a deadline tonight. David, a recently made friend, texts: “Phibsborough this evening, we can listen to traditional music, do you want to join? “Music? The Irish’s best skill… I have not eaten yet, I had a work meeting. I am hungry, I also need to pee, and work and sleep early if I can, but the silence is heavy. Irish Music. It is like finding evidence of God when one was just doubting the concept. My eyes are itching. I scrub my eyes, bite my nails’ skin, it tastes salty. My eyes should be salty. I want water on my body and water in my eyes.

    I finally stand and walk in circles, something I often do when lost in my own cage of thoughts… I start looking for eye drops. I need eye drops for sensitive eyes and maybe to be around people making music. Because it’s been months of sonic booms, thunder of bombardments, knocks of explosives, bursts of war tokens, and ongoing buzz, yet all I need is music. My ears feel a deep, deep silence though: a silence similar to a soundless bombing. I imagine that I am deaf. What if I became deaf for real? The silent break in my mother’s voice swallowing the attack, absorbing the shock, stayed in a cochlear space in my body, more profound than any sound I have ever heard.

    It is silent peace time, and time for traditional Irish lyre…

    Feature Image: Moment Israeli strike hits building in Beirut’s southern suburbs | AFP

  • Lebanon: Domestic Considerations May Prove Decisive to Hezbollah

    Media coverage of the war currently unfolding in Lebanon describe Hezbollah as an “Iranian-backed” group, and frame the conflict as one between them and Israel. In this reading, little attention is given to Lebanon beyond Hezbollah, nor that Hezbollah, for all its links to Iran, is first and foremost a Lebanese group embedded in Lebanon’s sociopolitical fabric. As Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Centre also points out, while Hezbollah’s military superiority enables it to act unilaterally, and undermine the Lebanese state at any given moment, the armed group must still weigh into consideration its relations with other domestic actors, both allies and adversaries, in order to secure its longer-term presence in Lebanon.

    War with Israel will strain these relations. Israel’s brutal response has already killed over 2,000 people, displaced over a million, and destroyed homes across Lebanon. Israeli atrocities will likely breath fresh life into the Lebanese resistance, birth a new generation of Hezbollah fighters, and contribute to an even greater level of anti-Israel sentiment across Lebanon. But simultaneously, the damage inflicted on Lebanon will make many call into question Hezbollah’s unilateral course of action in launching rockets into Israel since October 7th last year.

    So far, the only material result of these attacks has been to bring harm to Lebanon, with no obvious benefit to the Palestinian cause beyond the symbolic show of solidarity with Hamas. And Lebanon has enough problems as it is. The country continues to suffer in the wake of a gargantuan economic collapse that has hollowed out state institutions, and sent poverty rates spiralling over the past five years.

    Criticism of Hezbollah is valid, but should not be allowed to reinforce Netanyahu’s narrative that Lebanon has been “kidnapped” by Hezbollah, or that if Hezbollah were out of the picture, a process of normalisation could begin between the two countries. While it is true there are some political actors in Lebanon who secretly harbour a desire for normalisation, most notably the Christian far right, it is equally true that Palestinian solidarity, and an appetite for anticolonial resistance against Israel, extends beyond Hezbollah to wider Lebanon.

    The opening years of Lebanon’s Civil War in the mid-1970s showed this. A pro-Palestinian coalition of Lebanese groups led by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt formed an alliance to challenge the Christian far right who were trying to expel the Palestinians from Lebanon. It is also worth noting how today, US-led funding for the Lebanese army is deliberately limited, with no supply of the sort of weaponry that could render them a match for Israel. It may be argued that the non-state position of resistance to Israel is inevitable, given the West’s unconditional support for Israel would never allow the Lebanese army to assume such a position, even if it enjoyed a democratic mandate to do so.

    Domestic criticism of Hezbollah and opposition to Israel are not mutually exclusive. Over the past decade, Hezbollah’s revered status as the resistance to Zionist aggression has depreciated. The group’s stances towards various events in Lebanon and Syria have exposed them as being part of a corrupt political establishment that it so often claimed to stand apart from. Hezbollah’s decision to enter the Syrian Civil War in support of the Assad regime was hugely controversial and pitted it against Sunni Islamist opinion both in Lebanon and regionally. Indeed, news of Hassan Nasrallah’s death prompted scenes of jubilation in Idlib, the last holdout against the Assad regime in post-war Syria.

    Mass Protest Movement

    More recently, in 2019, when a hugely optimistic mass protest movement erupted in Lebanon demanding an end to the country’s corrupt sectarian system, Hezbollah intervened decisively against the protestors, denouncing the movement as a plot by foreign embassies trying to destabilise Lebanon. In late 2019 and into 2020, Hezbollah-affiliated gangs were commonly seen confronting street protestors in Beirut, thuggishly trying to intimidate them off the streets.

    Hezbollah’s thuggery was made visible once more in 2021, when a prominent Hezbollah critic and civil society activist Lokman Slim was found murdered in his car in South Lebanon. The judicial case into the killing failed to make any progress, reflecting a culture of impunity that Hezbollah enjoys in Lebanon.

    Hezbollah impunity was the focus of heated criticism in the aftermath of the massive explosion at the Beirut port in 2020, which came about when thousands of tons of fertiliser exploded in a warehouse, killing over 200 people and causing heavy damage to much of the capital. Many believed that the suspicious presence of such a fertiliser which can been used to make improvised explosives, was somehow linked to Hezbollah operations. The unexplained failure of repeated bureaucratic efforts to remove the dangerous material from the port, hinted at opaque Hezbollah interference, possibly linked to Syria. The group was the first to publicly reject calls for an international investigation into the port explosion, further placing them under suspicion and above the law.

    Because of the port’s location in the city, the explosion did most damage to Christian neighbourhoods in East Beirut. This circumstance helped stir up anti-Hezbollah sentiment among Lebanese Christians. This is significant because one of Hezbollah’s major domestic allies since the mid-2000s, has been a Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). The alliance with the FPM was informally articulated through the Mar Mikhael Agreement, that effectively gave Hezbollah political cover and greater legitimacy for their armed presence in Lebanon.

    The FPM’s longtime leader Michel Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016, further securing Hezbollah’s position. But his presidential term ended in 2022, and he is yet to be replaced as political power brokers, including Hezbollah, fail to agree on a successor. Lebanon’s current presidential vacuum is casting uncertainty toward Hezbollah’s place within domestic politics.

    Meanwhile the FPM have been heavily criticised by other Christian parties including the Lebanese Forces, for aligning themselves with Hezbollah and failing to protect Christian interests, as the devastation from the Beirut explosion served so well to demonstrate. With parliamentary elections scheduled for 2022, the Lebanese Forces sought to capitalize on anti-Hezbollah sentiment and courted Christian voters frustrated with the FPM’s passive collaboration with Hezbollah. This meant adapting a bullish attitude towards Hezbollah, particularly in relation to the Beirut explosion.

    Funeral of the Hezbollah members killed in the clashes.

    The Tayouneh Incident

    Tensions came to a head in October 2021 with the Tayouneh Incident. Hezbollah and its allies organised a protest to the Ministry of Justice in Beirut against the Beirut Port investigation. The protesters consisted of Hezbollah and its allies’ Shia’ supporters from South Beirut, many of whom were armed. When the crowd reached a major junction called Tayouneh, demarcating where Christian East Beirut begins, a segment of the protesters entered adjacent neighbourhoods and were fired on by Christian gunmen positioned in surrounding high rises, most likely affiliated with the Lebanese Forces.

    Street fighting ensued all afternoon, with six Hezbollah-affiliated gunmen killed. The incident put Beirut on a knife edge with many fearing the outbreak of a new civil war. The location of Tayouneh was ominously symbolic. It was here that a Christian militia attack on a busload of Palestinians in 1975 set in motion Lebanon’s fifteen year long civil war.

    The parliamentary elections went ahead in 2022. The FPM lost seats, and the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces made substantial gains, becoming the country’s largest Christian party. This, combined with the presidential vacuum, means the political cover that Hezbollah enjoyed under the Mar Mikhael agreement is no longer in place.

    Fast forward to current events and none of these political considerations seem immediately relevant. Israel has now brought the war to Lebanon and the country for the foreseeable future is locked into Hezbollah’s war of resistance. But Hezbollah has been hit hard. Its’ military strength, carefully accrued over decades, has been severely depleted.

    Some estimate that about half of the Lebanese group’s arsenal of rockets and missiles have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, though it is hard to be sure. Since early summer, a string of senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed by Israel, including the party’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September. To kill Nasrallah, Israel dropped 80 American-made ‘bunker busting’ bombs, weighing 2,000 pounds each, on Hezbollah’s underground command centre in the heart of South Beirut.

    The attack shook the whole capital, levelling six residential buildings and leaving a massive crater of rubble, with Nasrallah and others dead and buried underneath. This devastation came just as Hezbollah was reeling from Israel’s attack on their communication systems, as hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, simultaneously exploded killing approximately 32 people, including children.

    A Rainy Night in Saifi – Luke Sheehan and Nadim Shehadi in conversation

    Infiltration

    Within the space of a few weeks, Israel has shown how devastatingly extensive their infiltration of Hezbollah has been over the past few years. Until now, analysts tended to emphasise how Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War enabled the group to expand and increase its strength. Now commentators are pointing out how the group may be over-extended.

    A recent article in the Financial Times pointed out how the need for more recruits in Syria, collaboration with corrupt Syrian officers, and Russian intelligence likely provided Israel with opportunities to better infiltrate the group. There are also rumours of an Israeli-planted Iranian spy who has gained close access to Hezbollah in recent years and potentially played a role in the killing of Nasrallah. The Israeli attack was based off real-time information regarding the former leader’s whereabouts. The use of AI in satellite and drone footage to detect Hezbollah locations, and of sophisticated surveillance systems like Pegasus have also likely played a part in giving Israel the clear upper hand over their rival.

    While Hezbollah may be weakened, they likely retain significant strength. An Israeli ground invasion will meet dogged guerilla resistance from thousands of determined and well-trained Hezbollah fighters with substantial, albeit depleted, firepower. Hezbollah are well dug in. Bogging down IDF soldiers in endless guerilla warfare will help them change the narrative that so far has gone against them.

    This narrative may play a part in shaping the Hezbollah that emerges out of this conflict. A major question will be Iran’s ability to support Hezbollah’s military recovery. Hezbollah relies on its military superiority within Lebanon to coerce other Lebanese actors into forming political arrangements that favour Hezbollah.

    Events in recent years have, however, destabilized these arrangements and brought Hezbollah and Lebanon to an uncertain political juncture. Now, the war with Israel threatens Hezbollah’s military superiority. Together these developments raise uncertainty as to how Hezbollah will emerge from this conflict and whether they will be able to retain their dominant political position in Lebanon once the dust settles. Such domestic considerations may ultimately prove more decisive to Hezbollah decision-makers than the current confrontation with Israel.

    Feature Image: Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023

  • The Austrian Mind

    There still exists – even today – a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness – or what one might call a ‘cultural European awareness’ – had been on the wane for years ever since the awakening of national identity. You could say that patriotism has killed Europe.
    Joseph Roth, On the End of the World (first published in 1933).

    Late last month 28.9% of Austrians voted for the Freedom Party (FPÖ) led by Herbert Kickl, an avowedly anti-migrant, anti-Islamic party, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis. The governing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) gained 27.5% lost 20 seats, while its coalition partner, the Greens received 8.2%, losing 10 seats. In third place, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) received 21.1%, marking its worst result ever. In fourth place, the liberal NEOS increased its share to 9.1%.

    We can only hope that the conservatives do not enter into a coalition with Kickl’s party as Hindenburg did with Hitler’s Nazi party. Perhaps a Dutch solution will at least dilute the forces of darkness. Kickl was formerly the speech writer of the now-deceased long-time leader of the Freedom Party, Jörg Haider, but Kickl is far less ambiguous in his pronouncements than his former boss.

    What’s clear is that the far right is on the rise across Europe, Ireland and the world. My own childhood in Ireland, as a half-Austrian, not unlike Hugo Hamilton’s experience as recounted in his autobiography The Speckled People, involved casual racism and bullying on account of my background.

    At one level Austria is among the most cultured of nations.  So, I defend it. Ma Vlast as Smetana said about Czech Bohemia, albeit a defensive posture often leads to a failure in understanding. Why Kickl? What is the Austrian Mind that has created this?

    Mozart family, c. 1780 (della Croce); the portrait on the wall is of Mozart’s mother.

    Mozart of Salzburg

    My family, who I am close to, hail from Salzburg, home of the Fespiele. Mozart was, of course, born in Salzburg where a little museum glorifies his brief tenure on Earth. Mozart’s music combines lyricism, frivolity and profundity in equal parts. What it points to in the human condition is not just chocolate-box fripperies, or the texture of lightness that is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, but the darkness therein. Darkness threads through the Austrian mind, juxtaposed with light.

    Thus, Don Giovanni is about the destructive powers of rakish satanism, also evident in Stefan Zweig’s arguably best book beautifully filmed by Max Ophuls’ Letters from an Unknown Women.

    In Mozart also the incomparable Magic Flute splendidly rendered into film by Ingmar Bergman, is in effect about the dubious justification of freemasonry to which Mozart belonged; and also, a cri de coeur, in praise of enlightened and benevolent monarchism against the vectors of state and, in particular, church authoritarianism. This assertion of a wise moderation against extremism resonates today.

    The great enfant terrible of Austrian letters and its greatest post-war writer Thomas Bernhard was gloriously insulting about Austria. His masterpiece Woodcutters (1984) is about a man in a chair at a party sipping Champagne. Letting fly at Austrian bourgeois hypocrisy, he says:

    Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretence, never genuine, never real.

    In his will, Bernhard ordered that none of his works should be performed in Austria. This has been deliberately avoided. All cultures have their tropes.

    The Merry Widow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1GNZCyL64

    Austrian Kitsch

    Culturally, Austrians, along with the Irish and British, have far too close a relationship with kitsch. The Merry Widow light operetta, like a jaded ritual, is still performed in the Lehrer Theatre in Bad Ischl and elsewhere. The Blue Danube is not unlike a classic Britpop song.

    The great Herman Broch was fascinated by kitsch, linking it correctly to a decline in values:

    The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.”

    In some respects, the triumph of kitsch paves the way for Nazism, as Broch and indeed Robert Musil have both argued. Radical evil and bad art is evident in our age too. This is a kind of camp fascism which Susan Sontag also identified.

    Beethoven was of course German, but lived and died in Vienna. His darkness is a counterpart to Mozart’s light. His deafness influences the isolated pessimism of the later atonal dark sonatas, and are close to the finality of expression in musical terms that Beckett created in language.

    His final string quartet is integral to Dr Faustus by Thomas Mann, where the satanic composer, modelled on Heidegger, sells his soul to the devil.

    I have found that it must not be. The good and the noble, what they call the human, even though it is good and noble, what men have fought for, have stormed citadels for, and in their moment of fulfilment, have jubilant proclaimed it is not to be. It is not to be, it will be taken back. I will take it back.

    Mann, the great German conservative, had the moral integrity to decamp to the U.S. and to Switzerland, but a crucial point to appreciate is that conservatism is not all bad if it conserves the good and the ethical too. So, the Christian Democrats in Austria have a stark choice, whether to embrace satanism or not.

    Sleepwalkers

    The rise of Nazism is also anticipated brilliantly in Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, one of the great novels of Austrian heritage. In the character of Hugenau, a man solely motivated by profit – homo economicus to use the term favoured by the nefarious law and economics movement in Chicago – we have a real sense in 1918 of a brutalised generation containing the seeds of fascism. The book culminates in the murder of a journalist and the rape of his wife.

    This is akin to neoliberal Europe today where meaningful journalism has been effectively killed and defiled, as state-sponsored criminals launch hatred at ‘the other.’ Off with their heads, or to Rwanda, or now Albania.

    The legendary Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke in The White Ribbon, based in pre-war Germany at the turn of the twentieth, demonstrated how damage had been done to a whole generation by a cruel form of authoritarianism. Today, social media has augmented the problem of semi-literacy. Strange fruit, as Billie Holiday would say, is ready for demonisation. In Ireland the neoliberal governing parties have generated the social conditions for riots and a new decadence.

    As for Italy, the land of Fellini and Da Vinci, where the far-right mayor of Monfalcone near Joycean Trieste has banned cricket as she does not like Bangladeshi people in her town; they only play cricket she says and contribute nothing. The fact that such football clubs as AC Milan was originally a cricket club seems lost on her. Mayor Anna Maria Casing, elected on an anti-immigration platform is now an MEP. Her far-right colleague, prime minister Meloni prosecuted Roberto Saviano the legendary journalist for calling her a bastard over her immigration policies.

    So, Austria is not alone in its infamy.

    The darkly pessimistic Herman Broch shows how the far right and populism go hand-in-hand with hatred:

    It is always he, unfortunate wretch, who assumes the role of executioner in the process of value-disintegration, and on the day when the trumpets of judgment sound it is the man released from all values who becomes the executioner of a world that has pronounced its own sentence.

    The Rathaus (City Hall), the seat of the local government.

    Golden Age

    The golden age of Vienna ended peremptorily with the dismembering of the Austrian empire, after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo sparked the inferno of World War I, when leaders sleepwalked into war. This is the state of somnambulism that Broch also identified evident in Musil.

    The word Kaakinen is Broch’s playful word for Vienna which, in effectively means shit. Thus, he writes in The Man Without Qualities:

    Stupidity is active in every direction and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

    In Zweig’s retroactive memoir The World of Yesterday there are references to Freud and Herzl (one of the founders of Zionism), among the titanic intellectual figures of pre-war Vienna. These are curiously name-dropped like the celebs of our time, but in a curious state of derealisation of how history is closing in. Freud, who was Austrian, died as an emigre from fascism in the U.K..

    Whether the concept of hysteria is sexual or not, no doubt this is a hysterical age where all sorts of fantasises are being sublimated into nefarious activities and agendas – and indeed where persecution delusions are omnipresent. This leads to the scapegoating of immigrants.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1930.

    The Sound of Silence

    Ludwig Wittgenstein is central to our age of distortion and manipulative language. The fundamental achievement of his Tractatus is a recognition of the limitations of language. It can only show and represent, he argues, and, within limitations, clarify. Thus, language is context-specific, self-limiting and denuded of ethical and moral context.

    Reading Wittgenstein, like reading Hemingway, Camus, and Beckett, clarifies how language should be used clearly, and is most useful for everyday life, but not ethics. The final line of the Tractatus has acquired a mythical status: ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’

    Silence is important, but when we can speak let us speak out ethically. A recent Austrian Nobel laureate is Peter Handke is a great writer, though not in Thomas Bernhard’s league. Handke’s flirtation with the Serbian cause, however well-intentioned and misconstrued, leave a degree of doubt, given the Austrian mindset, but there is a rich warm humanism in his work.

    Handke argues you must create silence or, rather, the effect of silence, through words. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams his recent recollections of his mother’s suicide is jaw-dropping, and among the best books published in the last ten years. So let us create the silence of words, before it is too late.

    Feature Image ‘Avenue in the park of Schloss Kammer’ produced by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in 1912 whilst he was living near the village of Unterach on the southern shore of lake Attersee in Austria.

  • Judge the Strength of a Democracy by its Treatment of Whistleblowers

    In light of recent developments, not least, the announcement of Michael McGrath as the next EU Commissioner, it is timely to look again at the infernal plight of workers of conscience – those noble people who blow the whistle on wrongdoing, and who strive to keep a corroded system from descending further into the abyss.

    Until 2022, Michael McGrath was Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform (referred to henceforth as DPER). Under his Ministry, new EU protected disclosures legislation of 2014 was advancing, and also EU Directive number 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe of 23 October 2019 was set to be transposed into Irish law.

    The provisions of this Directive give significant further protection to persons who expose breaches in EU law as provided for in the Irish Protected Disclosure Amendment Act 2014. The aforementioned EU Directive was only finally transposed into Irish law in January 2023 and the new Act became known as The Protected Disclosure Amendment Act 2022.

    This provision was, however, effectively sabotaged long before it was transposed, and Minister Michael McGrath was central to that. The entire Protected Disclosure Act is under the remit of DPER.

    Cynical Collusion

    The now sinister OPLA – Office of the Parliamentary Legal Advisor was exposed on these pages before in November 2022 and again in March 2023. Its rapid expansion appears to have been in anticipation of the significant effectiveness of this EU Resolution on Protected Disclosures to stem corruption and protect whistleblowers. Two things happened to neutralise and sabotage this EU provision before it was transposed:

    • The vast expansion of OPLA involved OPLA being placed, unconstitutionally, on the statute books in December 2018, just as the Dail was rising for its Christmas recess. It occurred with no committee stages, or debate. This was in defiance of the Dunning Capacity Report, into OPLA which was not sent back to the sub-committee on Dail reform for consideration in December 2016 by the Dail Clerk who received it from Dunning. Thus, Dunning’s report was effectively suppressed. The integration of the OPLA into the Houses of the Oireachtas as rank-and-file civil servants, under the Dail clerk (a civil service appointee) in the Executive Arm of Government, is, as pointed out, a violation of the constitutional Separation of Powers. The discovery that OPLA was secretly involved in the investigation of Protected Disclosures in defiance of the provisions of the Act since 2013, and that it was all set to escalate as per Dunning, exposes a sleight-of-hand to virtually cut the legs out from under whistleblowers, striking a lethal blow at an integral part of democracy. 
    • The unlawful appointment of the Ombudsman by the civil service body – the PAS (Public Appointment Service) – is a violation of the Ombudsman’s Act 1980, and subsequent amending acts. The Ombudsman Act specifically disallows the Ombudsman from being appointed by the civil service. The Ombudsman was also appointed as Commissioner for Protected Disclosures, another canny moved within DPER while Michael McGrath was Minister. The Ombudsman knew full well that the OPLA – since 2018 a civil service body – was already involved in the investigation of Protected Disclosures since 2013, and that this was considered the main area of “growth and challenge for OPLA.”

    I have been in email contact with the CEO of the PAS about this unlawful appointment of the Ombudsman. I accused her of stepping outside of her remit in the appointment of the Ombudsman and pointed out that the Ombudsman’s Act 1980 specifically excluded it as a civil service appointment. To this she replied that it was done by PAS as “sanctioned” by the then Minister, Michael McGrath.

    He has no power to unilaterally alter legislation. The competition for the Ombudsman’s job was held by the PAS in August 2021, when the Dail was in recess and during the holiday season. The only Irish applicant was Ger Deering. On the appointment board was David Moloney, SG in DPER who was central to the entire legislation, as it was progressing at Committee stages in the new Protected Disclosures Act. David Moloney merely continued what Robert Watt, whom he replaced, had commenced.

    Both David Moloney and the Ombudsman appeared before the Finance Committee, which was responsible for the deliberations into the Protected Disclosures legislation, and which met several times in 2021 and 2022 to discuss the enhanced the Protected Disclosure Bill 2014, and the EU Directive about to be transposed.

    David Moloney effectively misled the Finance Committee in failing to inform the Chair and members that the PAS, with the apparent collusion of Minister Michael McGrath, after unlawfully taking over the appointment of the Ombudsman, whom it was also decided would become the new Commissioner for Protected Disclosures.

    Ger Deering’s appointment is a Constitutional one, and it thereby had to be ratified by the Dail before he went to the Aras to get his seal of office from the President. Mr Deering appeared before the Finnance Committee and made a speech on his appointment in December 2021 for the purpose of his appointment being ratified by the Oireachtas.

    I contend that Deering also misled the Committee, whose members and Chairman seemed to have been unaware that the Ombudsman should not have been appointed by the civil service body – the PAS – by law. Deering knew that he would be using the unconstitutional OPLA as new Commissioner for investigating Protected Disclosures, but he never revealed that at the Finance Committee despite the fact that John McGuinness, the Committee’s chairman, discussed the plight of whistleblowers with him fairly extensively and name checked a number of better known ones.

    McGuinness and his committee approved Deering’s appointment on behalf of the Oireachtas and he duly went to the Aras to receive his seal of office from the President.

    Whistleblowers – The Walking Wounded

    The dual strategies of the newly expanded OPLA – an unconstitutional entity since 2018 – and the sabotage implicit in the appointment of the Ombudsman utterly neutralised the provision of the EU Directive on Protected Disclosures, even before the full transposal of the EU Directive in January 2023.

    It was all done by DPER under Michael McGrath as Minister. The senior civil service have dealt a mortal blow to democracy, with full ministerial collusion and, above all, have commenced the ongoing campaign against whistleblowers – the walking wounded in a deeply corrupt system.

    In 2022, at a meeting of the Finance Committee, which McGrath attended with his senior civil servants, including David Moloney, and where a number of whistleblowers were also present, the civil servants backed by McGrath managed to get the provision of the EU Directive on PDs known as ‘The Presumption of Causation’ excluded from the EU Directive as transposed.

    This had provided for the presumption of victimization of a whistleblower, who reports wrongdoing without the whistleblower having to prove victimization is as a result of whistleblowing. This, of itself, was a significant blow to the effectiveness of the EU Directive.

    Democracy Under Threat

    Democracy depends on five major planks:

    • A free, robust and independent press.
    • A free and independent judiciary.
    • A robust and independent police force.
    • Robust whistleblower legislation.
    • A functioning democratic parliament where issue of major public import can be raised under privilege.

    The combined forces of the OPLA and the unlawfully appointed Ombudsman has dealt a direct, mortal blow to at last three of the five planks listed above. OPLA is unlawfully involved in Protected Disclosures and in the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and the Labour Court – both courts are subordinate to the High Court and a significant number of whistleblowers prosecute their claims, or aspect of their claims, in the WRC/Labour Court.

    Above all, OPLA has dealt an absolute mortal blow to the Dail itself. Arguably it has paralysed our parliament: there are numerous examples of OPLA muscling in, in a very heavy handed way on Dail Committee, especially in cases brought under privilege by whistleblowers to the Committees.

    The Committee Chairpersons are gormlessly allowing this, and are being bullied by the Committee Clerks who, in turn, are taking their instructions from the Dail clerk, Peter Finnegan, himself the chief architect of the draconian new OPLA in December 2018.

    In a case I had with the CPPO Committee, the OPLA took over the case from its clerk designate. I pointed out to the head of OPLA that no Standing Order (SO) of the Oireachtas allowed for it and asked what allowed it. I received no reply from Melissa English, the Chief Parliamentary Legal Adviser, whom I have accused of unlawfully and unconstitutionally trespassing into the sacrosanct area of the Oireachtas and the Ceann Comhairle, in a violation of the Separation of Powers, and a blow to the prudent use of Dail privilege.

    Irish Prison Whistleblower Sean O’Brien. Image: Daniele Idini.

    Protected Disclosure Legislation Disabled

    As OPLA operates in secret in addition to its listed function in Dunning’s capacity report of December 2016 as listed below, it may well be involved with the Gardai, and indeed with media enquires as fielded by the more robust elements in the media. I know from personal experience that the Gardai co-operate with the Ombudsman, attempting to sideline one complaint of a criminal nature I made to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman cannot investigate suspected crimes.

    The table below from Dunning’s Capacity Report (Dec 2016) includes all the secret areas OPLA are involved in where they have no jurisdiction:

    OPLA, and indeed its boss, Peter Finnegan (Dail Clerk) have no remit in at least four areas of growth as listed above. OPLA’s remit is ostensibly confined to the tripartite functions of 1) Advices to the houses of the Oireachtas and its staff, 2) Defending the Houses of the Oireachtas in Court and 3) Help with drafting Private Members Bills (PMBs). Enhanced Protected Disclosures legislation and the whistleblowers who rely on it have been taken out with military precision.

    ‘A Whistleblower’s Motive’ by Matthew Butterly. Image: Daniele Idini.

    The Whistleblowing Industry

    I have raised the OPLA and the unlawful Ombudsman appointment with John McGuinness, Chairperson of the Oireachtas Finance Committee unsuccessfully. I have also made a complaint to the Relevant Section in the EU, responsible for the transposal of the EU Directive on Protected Disclosures into Irish law, backed by a number of other whistleblowers. The EU passed the buck back to the Irish courts. As if any whistleblower can afford to go to Court!

    Several whistleblowers (myself included) have appealed to mainstream media outlets to expose the OPLA in its unconstitutional reconfiguration since 2018 and its unlawful involvement in PDs. They have all refused to act.

    Transparency Ireland have become a quangoistic arm of state, which now fully funds the organisation. Dr Lauren Kierans, the Maynooth academic in the area of PDs who wrote the new Protected Disclosures Act for DPER has been informed that her act was sabotaged as outlined above. She passed the buck to Transparency Ireland and is now on maternity leave.

    The retaliation against and destruction of whistleblowers is all set to escalate as OPLA continues to expand. As Transparency Ireland expands too, and academic departments and units on whistleblowing mushroom in Maynooth and Galway Universities, whistleblowing has now become a lucrative industry, where everyone is well-remunerated bar the destroyed whistleblowers themselves – for whose welfare these organisations ostensibly exist.

    Whistleblower, Shane Corr (where OPLA also interfered) was suspended as a Principal Officer by Robert Watt in the Health Department. Watt was himself central to the creation and the funding of the OPLA since 2018 when he was SG in DPER until replaced by David Moloney in 2021. Corr was threatened by Watt with a criminal breach of the Official Secrets Act after OPLA deemed his submissions to the PAC were not covered by privilege.

    Whistleblower and very senior official, John Barrett, the Garda Head of HR according to a Village Magazine article some time ago, was subjected to tyrannous retaliation by Drew Harris for exposing the Templemore Garda slush funds scandal. He is awaiting a hearing in court. This is to name but two of an army of destroyed whistleblowers.

    In a deeply compromised, dysfunctional democracy, everyone will be rewarded bar whistleblowers. The Finance Committee is in a state of paralysis and the Minister who colluded all the way, Michael McGrath becomes an EU Commissioner in circumstances where he actively incapacitated the EU’s own Directive for the protection of whistleblowers.

    The irony of this cannot be overstated. What part the early announcement of his departure has to do with my rigorous challenged to the CEO of the PAS in recent days, Margaret McCabe, is anyone’s guess.

    After all, the vacancy for the EU Commissioner does not arise until October. Meanwhile, whistleblowers will continue to be condemned, vilified and relegated to the ranks of public pariah, while endless amounts of public money will be thrown at the industry and the army of persons who have colluded to destroy them. Foremost among these is OPLA and the Ombudsman. According to the Law Society Gazette in July 2018 OPLA’s Melissa English believes she’s worth it. Our democracy meanwhile, which can always be measured by the treatment of whistleblowers, was never more undermined.

  • The Politics of the Last Announcement

    In December the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) published a comparatively critical review of the government’s Budget 2024. Criticisms of ‘bad budgeting’ arose from the ‘lack of transparency,’ and the use of ‘fiscal gimmickry.’ IFAC defined the latter as ‘creative accounting techniques’ used to make the numbers ‘look more favourable than they are.’

    The Irish Times described this as ‘an extraordinary broadside against the Government’, with RTE referring to IFAC’s assessment as ‘controversial.’ However, as IFAC made clear in February, they were standing firm behind their ‘perfectly valid’ analysis which they stated was backed by ‘substantial evidence and reasoning in support of this conclusion.’

    This episode had me wondering whether similar kinds of “fiscal gimmickry” are at work outside of budget time, specifically when Ministers are out making what are nominally ‘new’ funding announcements. You will of course be familiar with this type of thing.

    It goes something like this: a Minister appears on RTE, or broadcasts via their social media platforms, that they are ‘delighted’ to be announcing x million for some initiative. Now the ordinary person probably never stops to consider whether this is new expenditure for a new program, additional expenditure for an existing program, or simply existing expenditure for an existing program.

    But to be fair to the average voter, there are a few Ministers that probably never to stop to ask this question themselves. What matters to them is that they are out and seen to be doing things – energy in lieu of action. If taking a bit of creative licence results in positive media coverage, then some see that as all well and good.

    I must confess that for some time I’ve been puzzled by how some Ministers seemed to be making ‘new’ multi-million announcements every other week, whilst for others such announcements were few and far between. So, I thought I would investigate the matter. As we’ll see, this is where a kind of “fiscal gimmickry” meets the ‘the politics of the last announcement.’

    In Table 1 we can see the number of funding related announcements made by all our current government ministers (excluding the Taoiseach) in 2023. We have a total of fourteen Ministers spread across seventeen Departments. The median amount (think middle value) of funding announcements made last year was 11.5, so just under one funding announcement per month.

    As we can see, half of our Ministers made less than this, and some significantly less. For instance, Messrs McGrath (6) and Donohue (5), perhaps the two Ministers most associated with the word ‘prudent’, were certainly amongst the most judicious. The same goes for Minister McEntee (4), although she was off on maternity leave for a period.

    Just three Ministers; Harris (32), Martin (30) and Humphreys (21) were significantly higher. But to be fair to Heather Humphreys she is Minister of two departments (Social Protection/Rural and Community Development), so it’s really just Harris and Martin that were so far ahead of the pack.

    What’s the explanation?

    Could it be that they occupy larger spending Departments and hence their respective Ministers need to make more funding related announcements? Considering neither of these Departments is in the top five in terms of expenditure, however, and indeed Martin’s is forth from bottom, that doesn’t seem to account for it.

    The second largest spender is the Department of Health, but Minister Donnelly made one of the fewest amounts of funding announcements (6). In fact, the size of a Department’s expenditure seems to have almost zero relationship with the number of funding announcements that its Minister makes.

    As we can see from Figure 1 there’s no statistically significant relationship between the size of a department’s expenditure and the number of funding announcements its respective Minister makes.

    Minister Department(s) No. funding related announcements (2023) Department(s) Gross Expenditure €000/rank (2023) Comment
    Simon Harris Further and Higher Education, Research and Innovation 32 €4,092,446

    (6th place)
    Catherine Martin Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media 30 €1,165,509

    (13th place)
    Heather Humphreys Social Protection/Rural and Community Development 21 SP – €23,901,145 (1st place)

    RCD – €428,981 (17th place)

    		 Minister for two Departments
    Norma Foley Education 13 €10,025,107

    (3rd place)
    Charlie McConalogue Agriculture, Food and the Marine 12 €2,164,509

    (9th place)
    Roderic O’Gorman Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth 12 €5,931,759

    (5th place)
    Darragh O’Brien Housing, Local Government and Heritage 12 €6,414,089

    (4th place)
    Michael Martin Defence/Foreign Affairs 11 Defence – €1,209,737 (12th place)

    FA – €1,057,144 (15th place)

    		 Minister for two Departments
    Eamon Ryan Transport/Environment, Climate and Communications 10 Transport – €3,516,269 (7th place) Environment – €1,066,060 (14th place) Minister for two Departments
    Simon Coveney Enterprise, Trade and Employment 7 €1,621,413

    (11th place)
    Michael McGrath Finance 6 €600,240

    (16th place)
    Stephen Donnelly Health 6 €21,358,420

    (2nd place)
    Paschal Donohoe Public Expenditure 5 €1,670,513

    (10th place)
    Helen

    McEntee

    		 Justice 4 €3,428,623

    (8th place)

    		 Maternity leave for a period

     

    We’ll zoom in on new Taoiseach Simon Harris for three reasons. First, he’s the most prolific in terms of making funding announcements – averaging almost three a month; secondly, he’s the new Taoiseach so it could provide a window into what his tenure might look like; and thirdly he’s the only Minister I am aware of that has ever been accused of making re-announcements dressed up as new spending measures.

    In January Simon Harris appeared in DCU for a carefully choreographed photo opportunity. This was off the back of a big announcement he made about seeking Cabinet approval for a ‘new’ student housing policy. Note: this policy is almost indistinguishable from its predecessor.

    Off the back of this he appeared in DCU with the big funding announcement that he was there to ‘unveil plans for 500 student accommodation beds,’ something he again alluded to during Fine Gael’s Ard Fheis over the weekend. The glaring problem with this was, of course, that he’d already announced it last year, with an almost identically choreographed photo opportunity.

    The Students Union of DCU had clearly got wind of the Minister trying to pull a stunt and were there to confront him. Soon after the Union of Students Ireland chipped in accusing the Minister of recycling old announcements which amounted to ‘engaging in smoke and mirrors’ in the hopes that ‘no one will look beyond the headlines.’

    So, is this characterisation of Harris fair? Let’s take a look at some of his other creative accounting announcements. In June 2023 he announced: ‘Today I am launching a €9 million fund for higher education institutions to improve access to higher education for students with an intellectual disability.’

    It was in 2022, however, when he first launched what was then a €12 million fund. It was to work as follows; €3 million would be disbursed in 2022, with the remainder disbursed over 2023-25. So, essentially it is €3 million a year over four years. Yet with Harris’ approach €12m can be announced one year, €9 million the next, €6m the year after and then €3 million in the final year!

    If you weren’t following closely, you would be forgiven for thinking this has been a total of €30 million (12 + 9 + 6 + 3) rather than the €12 million that was originally set aside. Now the Minister could surely counter that what he said was technically correct, and he would have a point.

    Such announcements, however, as the USI pointed out, are made on the assumption that most people don’t look beyond the headlines. Or read the Department’s press release which will usually contain explanatory notes.

    In October in the wake of Budget 2023, where the Minister was severely criticised for having produced no new funding for student accommodation, he suddenly appeared to announce that he was ‘Delighted to announce a new €434 million student accommodation partnership, which will help build over 2,000 beds on college campuses across the country.’

    This one seemed to catch everyone off guard, including the universities, his Cabinet colleagues and the opposition. One of the glaring problems with this announcement was there was nothing new in it. Not only can the universities already borrow from the EIB, they already have significant borrowings. Their issue isn’t being able to access borrowing, it’s their ability to repay the money sustainably. Several universities are already grappling with financial deficits this year. Indeed, the entire sector has to deal with a core funding deficit of over €200 million, which is a hangover from the Austerity period – a shortfall he was supposed to address but has now left to his successor to sort out.

    If his past Ministerial performance proves a good indicator of Simon Harris’ future performance as Taoiseach, then we can expect big announcements, and then big announcements with even bigger bells on. But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll probably find some fiscal gimmickry afoot. I just hope that when these big announcements come, they will be met with equivalent levels of scrutiny by our media and state broadcaster.

  • A Rainy Night in Saifi – Luke Sheehan and Nadim Shehadi in conversation

    What is a ‘real country’?

    For the Irish, living as we do on a divided island, the question doesn’t have to be facetious. As a negative example, to try to land on a positive answer, Northern Ireland comes to mind. Wherever that congenitally deformed statelet ends up, its passage through the twentieth century will form a storyline we will never stop arguing about. God bless us.

    Lebanon, where I lived briefly from January 2011, is a mystifying and compelling organism.

    Were it on the seafloor, it would be brightly coloured, shape-shifting and perhaps equipped with a defensive poison. A territory carved out of the Ottoman Empire via the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, it formed with Syria the ‘French mandate’. It has held together against expectations, and enjoyed tangible golden ages through the same century-long lifespan as our post-colonial Ireland.

    At the Beittedine Palace, 2011.

    The local cultures, which still roughly map onto the religious arrangements of the confessional political system, have incredibly deep roots. I say ‘cultures’ and ‘roughly’ because this is a land where people will seriously make the case that they are the direct descendants of the Phoenicians, if not the Canaanites. Some of the ingredients here are antiquated enough to make monotheism look like a recent fad.

    Other claims include references to identifiable cities and mythologized landscapes in ancient history that remain traceable today: the cedar tree that appears on the flag is of the stock used to build the Jewish Temple, and the forests are referred to in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    In cities like Batroun, Saida and Sur, the phantoms and visible stubs of Phoenician harbours can still be observed. Compressed between the plains and deserts leading to Mesopotamia, and the coastal route to the Nile and Egypt, it has produced merchants and travellers over the millennia. The Lebanese diaspora may number seventy million.

    Beirut’s Green Line after the Civil War.

    To live in Beirut at the time I did, was, I now realize, a taste of a brief golden age all on its own. One of the clichés that had to be learned was the fable of the glorious 1950s and 1960s: the period after the Second World War and before the domestic civil war, when the traditional merchant classes were joined by elite émigres from other parts of the defunct empire to create prosperity. They became ‘bankers to the Middle East,’ a role now occupied by Dubai.

    Wealthy post-Ottoman families that retreated there included the Sursocks, who would form a link to Ireland, and Jewish families from Iraq and beyond. Nadim Shehadi, the guest speaker on our latest podcast, is a product of the cosmopolitan confidence of that time.

    Sursock Palace before the explosion of 2020.

    In 2011, the Arab Spring was triggered by events in Tunisia the week I arrived. Through connections, I had the opportunity to meet the renowned journalist Robert Fisk for coffee, and as we sat in a place on Sadat Street, the TV in the corner was flashing images of Mohamed Bouazizi burning. I had been reading about the story, and Fisk hadn’t, so for a few minutes I was the one explaining events to him.

    My journalistic Larp brought me up and down the country. No-one ever called me out on it. I wrote one story for the Daily Star, the Saad Hariri-sponsored newspaper, about a scheme to write essays and theses for brattish students at the American University of Beirut. My real job was writing multiple choice questions for a rich private school and educational company.

    I had a blast. Young and hopeful journalists were everywhere, and the dismal course of that profession, with Facebook annihilating the business side and ISIS looming into view with plans to cast them in their snuff movies, was not yet obvious.

    One young English writer I knew noted that “the next few years are looking pretty good for work.” She might have been right, but that sort of attitude, shared by the foot soldiers of the international NGOs, was already watering seeds of uncommon bitterness among the Lebanese. Their rivers of trouble were sources of fresh water for well-paid and often decadent hordes of expats. One wonders how high the shoots might have grown by now.

    At the moment of the horrific Port explosion of 2020, I was living in Paris. A Lebanese woman I knew there, a filmmaker[1] and activist, called me briefly, with her voice inflamed from sobbing. “Really Luke, what have we done to deserve all this?”

    Sursock Palace after the explosion of 2020.

    Add to this the financial collapse which wiped out savings and plummeted the domestic currency, the Syrian refugee influx which increased the population by at least 30%, the pandemic pains and now a very possible Hezbollah-Israel war, and you might have a country that even her most ardent lovers will leave. Who will stay, and who will join the seventy million-strong diaspora? What cause for hope might persist?

    One of the characters I met during my time there was Nadim, during a dinner at the palace of the Sursocks in Gemmayzeh. With characteristic Lebanese curiosity and openness, he simply stayed in touch with me, a random person who had breezed through then strayed very far from Beirut, like most of our overconfident cohort running around at the time.

    One also wonders, incidentally, whatever happened to all those little girls and boys?

    Feature Image of Beirut: Jo Kassis

    [1] Of course she was, and is. Her first films were beautiful, artful, personal things shot through with a heatwave of avant garde, mostly concerned with her much-traumatized locality of the Shia south. Some recent work is here.