Marriage equality, young Presidents and Taylor Swift

Marriage Equality: Against all odds, rural Ireland votes Yes.

Last year in a blog I wrote on a same-sex marriage referendum being held in Ireland, I said that much, if not most, of rural Ireland would reject it and its passing would be dependent on a strong urban vote, much like the divorce referendum in 1995. Well, I was wrong. Very wrong. 

Though Dublin posted the most impressive numbers, with constituencies like Dublin Central boasting a 72.3% Yes vote, rural Ireland's endorsement of the amendment was what impressed me the most. Some constituencies, like Donegal South-West and Cavan-Monaghan were exceptionally tight, many had a turnout which was below the national average and of course one constituency, Roscommon-South Leitrim, rejected it. But that doesn't matter. What matters is rural Ireland proved it is not the social and cultural backwater it is so often portrayed to be. As Una Mullally succinctly put it, the referendum was ratified from "the cliffs of Donegal, the lakes of Cavan, the farmyards of Kildare, the lanes of Kerry."

Why was this? Two things. One; the young. Rural Ireland, like everywhere else, saw an upsurge in young voters for this referendum and it showed.  Polling station officials remarked on how they had never seen so many young people voting. Two; the apathy of the old. A bit ironic, eh? Us young guns are often portrayed as politically illiterate nogoodniks but, to my mind, it was the middle-aged and the elderly who let the side down this time out. While I haven't got figures to back this rather controversial claim up, I'm merely going by what I heard anecdotally. I heard about plenty of middle aged and older folks who didn't bother voting. What were their reasons? Generally, they said they were failed to be fully convinced by either side. 

Why was this? I think it was because both sides of the debate understandably fought narrow, targeted campaigns. They knew they both had a core base of voters they needed to exploit for this referendum if they wanted to get their preferred result. The Yes side knew if they could get young people engaged for this referendum it would be a cakewalk. The Yes side’s online campaign was excellent. The slogans, the hashtags, the images worked a treat. In urban areas too, they were omnipresent. TDs, musicians, journalists canvassed door-to-door in Dublin while #YesEquality artwork and murals appeared in many cities and towns. 

Their campaign, however, was never as extensive in rural Ireland as it was in the cities. For young rural people this was fine as they were still influenced by and could participate in the online campaign. But for the older rural people, the Yes Equality campaign largely passed them by. There was very little political will to campaign for this referendum among a lot of the rural politicians. As Averil Power remarked in her scathing attack on Fianna Fáil on Monday, the party, whose voting base is largely rural and older, never took a clear position on the referendum and many of their TDs refused to openly endorse it. Many Independent politicians too side-stepped it and, in some cases (Michael Healy-Rae, Mattie McGrath), advocated for its rejection.  

By the same token, the No side’s campaign was fought with their target voter market in mind. If the Yes side needed to get the precocious young voting, the No side needed the concerned middle-aged voting. The bases they were targeting were the rural and the over 40. And so rural Ireland was peppered with their posters and overrun with their leaflets. They used the fate of children to frame their debate and exploited well-worn gender norms to instil a sense of uncertainty. “Two men can’t replace a mother’s love”, they claimed and their insidious Youtube videos had children talk about how much they loved their mommy. But it only partly worked. They were always fighting a losing battle and they never truly captured the imagination of rural voters in the same way the Yes side did with their base. It was a campaign based on misdirection and falsehoods and, in the end, most voters saw through it. 

While the referendum was passed comfortably, I felt if the Yes side extended fully their campaign to rural Ireland and engaged the concerns of undecided voters properly it could have been much more comfortable. You might ask, "Why does this matter?" Well, I think it does. If the noises emanating from the Labour party in recent days are anything to go by we should be facing a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment and legalise abortion, possibly within the next five and almost certainly within the next 10 years. The battle lines for that will be very similar to the ones for same-sex marriage but with one salient difference; it's going to be much closer.

The undecideds are going to play a much bigger role in determining the outcome of that referendum and among them will be many of the voters the Yes side seemed to ignore during this referendum campaign; the middle-aged and the rural. Because both the same-sex marriage referendum and the abortion referendum require quite a leap of faith for many people of a certain age. Growing up in the 60s, 70s or even 80s, an Ireland with legalised same-sex marriage and abortion would be as unthinkable as an Ireland with a tropical climate. It was alien. But those people are not hopeless cases, bound eternally to a patriarchal, Catholic ideology which their children overwhelmingly reject.

If they had been engaged properly by the Government and the Yes side throughout this referendum campaign, many of them might have had their worldview turned on its head. Instead, they were largely ignored by an urban-centric campaign and allowed to have their basest concerns exploited by a lecherous No side. In the end, thankfully, it didn't work but this was more to do with the failings of the No side. We need to learn from this campaign and those of us who want to see Ireland finally, and totally, remove the cloak of a pervasive, theocratic ideology need to, paradoxically some might say, broaden our horizons.

Talkin' Bout My Generation: The rejection of the Presidential age referendum might not mean much but it says a lot about our attitude towards young people and politics.

Like a meeting of the Seanad, the referendum on lowering the age to be president of Ireland to 21 was almost entirely ignored by the general populace. In fact, I can’t think of a plebiscite which has ever gotten less attention in Ireland. It made the Children’s Referendum of 2012 got seem like a World Cup Final. Why was this? Largely because it was a pathetic and haphazard attempt at ‘political reform’, which was very much in vogue when the current Fine Gael-Labour government took office in 2011 but is now forgotten among all the hullaballoo about ‘stability’ and our ‘recovery’. The voter turnout for it was inordinately high, of course, due to it being held on the same day as the same-sex marriage referendum. 

Now, I voted yes out of a sense of duty to my age group but I didn’t give a hoot in hell whether it passed or not. I object to the office of president as a point of principle so Bosco could be president for all I care. But I found the (little) debate surrounding the referendum to be very intriguing and very indicative of the general attitude there is to young people and politics. 

The few opinion pieces and columns that I saw devoted to this referendum were overwhelmingly in favour of rejecting this referendum. They were almost deliriously against the proposal in fact, as if by passing this silly referendum it would be compulsory to have a 21 year old president. Why was this? Because it would be preposterous to have somebody so young be our figurehead, apparently. The president needs to be a nation’s patriarch/matriarch, a paternal figure. What interested me about this line of argument was that it reminded me of much the same logic people use when dismissing young people for other political offices.

There is a near-obsession with age when it comes to holding political office, not just with presidents but with actually important positions. Young people don’t have enough ‘life experience’ to deal with complicated matters which TDs and ministers deal with. Young people aren’t ‘mature’ enough to make political decisions. But this is bollocks. There is no section of society which has been as poorly served by politicians in Ireland in the last decade than young people. Thousands of Ireland’s ‘brightest and best’ have emigrated, thousands more that stayed are stuck in unemployment purgatory, many of them forced into employment programmes like Jobridge which often amount to nothing more than legalised free labour. Those who graduate from college are no longer guaranteed a secure job. The role of a politician is to represent the interests of his/her constituents. For too long the interests of the young in Ireland have been ignored because it’s more politically expedient to prioritise the interests of the old and middle-aged. The so-called ‘grey vote’ strikes fear in the bellies of politicians while young people, by and large, don’t vote so they’re easy targets for cuts and hikes.

But while the political apathy of young people is unfortunate, it’s hardly surprising and partially understandable. Young people don’t see the system as working for them. Their concerns are held to be of lesser importance. We’re often told that for the politics to start working for young people they need to vote. The political engagement among young people for the same-sex marriage referendum was unprecedented and hopefully many who registered to vote especially for it will remain politically active. 

But we need more than that. We need to see more young people being elected and being given a chance in political office; rather than being patronised for their age. Having a 21 year old president would never happen even if the referendum had passed but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we see young people in meaningful positions of power so our voice isn’t lost amid the cacophony of desperate wailing the next time the government’s axe comes swinging.

REVIEW: Taylor Swift's latest track Bad Blood

Begrudgers and naysayers bedamned! The last 12 months has been a great time for fresh, enjoyable pop records. From Uptown Funk to Trouble, from Shake it Off to King, from Problem to Chandelier, there’s been plenty of songs I’ve heard on radio, in nightclubs and in pubs which haven’t made me want to pour acid down my ear canals. And, judging by the regard most people hold for the charts these days, that’s quite the achievement.

The star of the last 12 months has undoubtedly been Taylor Swift. Before, she was known as a cutesie country-cum-pop star who specialised in writing songs about her jilted ex loves. In the last 12 months, however, she’s released a string of hits which have been more daring, more exploratory and, most importantly, more fun. I don’t care who you are or how cynical you are about modern music but I’m willing to bet a substantial sum of money that you found yourself body-popping to Shake it Off at least once over the last year.

Now, with her newest single Bad Blood, Swift is foraying into the strange hybrid world of hip-hop/electropop. Bad Blood is not a hip-hop song nor is it an electropop song but it does feature verses from rapper Kendrick Lamar (his song King Kunta, by the way, is possibly the best song of the last year) and the pounding electro-beat which courses through the song like a particularly funky lightning bolt from start to end. Whatever genre you want to give it, it is certainly a  departure from Swift’s previous releases.

The song originally appeared on Swift’s album 1989 without Lamar’s verses but the addition of his vocals certainly gives the song a new dimension. Kitty Empire in The Guardian likened it to a Charli XCX song which I think is quite an accurate comparison. Intriguingly, Bad Blood is supposedly written about a disagreement she had with a fellow popstar last year who is strongly rumoured to be Katy Perry. 

While I, like many others, enjoyed the song it was the video for it which received the most attention online. A video featuring a smattering of the most famous female musicians and actresses in the world today, including Selena Gomez, Hayley Williams, Cara Delevigne and Ellie Goulding, preparing Swift for war and occasionally beating the living shit out of each other sounds like it would be at least moderately popular and so it turned out.

The video begins with Swift and Gomez fighting a group of faceless henchmen in a London skyscraper together but when the men are finished with, Gomez betrays Swift and kicks her out of the building. Miraculously, she survives the fall and she is then resurrected and her power restored with help of a weird, space-age machine and training from her pals. At the end of the video, Swift and Co. head out to battle Gomez and her henchwomen in a firey blaze of violence as London burns in the background. Why they had export their violence to Britain I'm not really sure. Words don’t really do it justice so you’re just going to have to watch it.

It caused a mini-sensation on social media when it was released last week and it broke the Vevo record for most views in 24 hours with a mind-boggling 20.1m hits in its first day of release. Swift is here to stay and she has become pop's most savvy shapeshifter in the last 12 months. She has a very loyal cabal of online fans who call themselves Swifties and their numbers will be swelling if she keeps releasing exciting pop records like Bad Blood.

Ed Sheeran has ruined the acoustic guitar.

When not ruining acoustic guitars, Ed likes to smear the entrails of Teletubbies on his forearms.

It is peculiar to hate an instrument. But I do. Well, at least a variation of one instrument, a sub-instrument if you will. The acoustic guitar. Like Carrie Bradshaw's laptop, it is an object which is now almost exclusivley used as a tool for faux-profundity and cringey narcissism. 

It wasn't always like this. The acoustic guitar once retained a cool, stripped down, beatnik air to it. It conjured up images of Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake-types tramping from dank basement bar to dank basement bar, scratching a living. Going back even further, it was the instrument of choice for blues artists like Robert Johnson and Lightnin' Hopkins. They made the guitar howl like a wolf as they spilled their weary souls. 

But now that is all changed and most of the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of one man. Ed Sheeran. Before we begin to dissect Sheeran's pernicious influence on the acoustic guitar, it is important to note that the acoustic guitar's coolness, its air of intrigue, has been on the wane since 1995. A year earlier, the acoustic guitar had its last great moment when Nirvana appeared on MTV Unplugged. While I'll admit to not being as enamoured by Nirvana's musical output as others, Kurt Cobain was coolness personified strumming that acoustic axe. But a year later, the acoustic guitar took a near fatal hit.

1995 was the year Oasis released Wonderwall. It's not that Wonderwall was a bad song, it's fine. It's that it was a sort of Helen of Troy moment for the acoustic guitar. If her face launched a thousand ships then Wonderwall launched a thousand dickheads insisting on playing it everywhere from house parties to barbeques. Its appeal lies in its ridiculously simple chord progression and instantly recognisable lyrics. It is said (by me) that at a music festival, you are never more than 10 feet away from a slightly inebriated, fedora-wearing dickhead playing Wonderwall. 

But the acoustic guitar survived. Barely, but it did. Though wounded, it still retained a whiff of the mystique, the allure that had once made it one of the default tools of the tortured artiste. Then along came Ed Sheeran. Again, similar to Nirvana, the quality of Ed Sheeran's musical output is not under analysis here. I'm not a big fan but that is wholly irrelevant. You can enjoy his music and still agree with some of the points I make. He is undoubtedly very talented and that is not under question here. 

Thanks to Eddie's questionable impact, however, I can't take any acoustic guitar player seriously any more. To me, they all appear the same; a mish-mash of wanky angst and infuriating self-obsession with their own perceived talent. I know it's irrational - it truly is - but I'm not claiming these observations are rooted in logic. Ed Sheeran has done this. He's reached that level of superstardom, in Europe anyway, where his music has genuinely instigated a shift in popular culture.

For some musical 'purists', he is the rose among the thorns of mainstream chart music. Popular wisdom dictates that, while the likes of Iggy Azelea and Justin Bieber use drum machines and auto-tune to supplement their questionable talent, Ed is a natural, workmanlike talent who doesn't need expensive frills to shine. It's an image as carefully crafted as any major pop star's but it is especially popular among fledgling musicians as it gives currency to the flimsy notion that all one needs to make it in the music industry is hard work and talent.  

And so, every spotty, checkshirt-wearing, beanie-wearer and their dog want to emulate Ed. Other major artists have benefitted from the gap Ed has created in the mainstream market. While it would be disingenuous and a tad disrespectful to claim people like Tom Odell, Ben Howard, Passenger and now Hudson Taylor wouldn't have found success in the pre-Ed Sheeran music world, they've certainly profited from the shift in popular music culture that Ed Sheeran has initiated in the last three and a half years. Ed Sheeran is The Beatles in the wake of the British Invasion in 1964, while the aforementioned artists are the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Who, tramping along the trail the Beatles laid, if you want to use a music-based analogy.

The victim? The poor acoustic guitar. It has lost its je ne sais quoi. It has been gobbled up by the mainstream machine, chewed and coughed up ignominiously. It is not the first time a once cool cultural artefact has been ruined by over-exposure; the acoustic guitar has joined a sorry club which includes tattoos, snapback caps and t-shirts with Che Guevara's face on them. Can it be reclaimed? Not in the short term. So long as Ed Sheeran's influence keeps his disciples clogging up street corners and bar stages with their soppy brand of melodramatic shite, the acoustic guitar's coolness will continue to suffer. 

Why do terrorist attacks like Charlie Hebdo give rise to Western Exceptionalism?

The west should reflect on how its policies can be a catalyst for terrorist attacks like Charlie Hebdo.

When noncombatants are killed in drone strikes then, it is no more an accident than an inevitable consequence of war, and therefore no less intentional than the murders committed in France earlier this week

- Suhail Patel


The RTE 6-1 News had a very interesting montage to accompany their coverage of the horrific attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday. After they had reported on the day's events in Paris, they went to a background piece to  contextualise the terrorist attack. This is the "latest in a series of attacks in parts of the world where people are used to feeling safe", the reporter opened with. The language used was interesting to say the least.The report then listed five separate terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in the West in the last decade and a half or so from 9/11 to last month's hostage situation in Sydney.

It would have been interesting had RTE decided to produce a similar montage on the destruction visited upon countries in the Middle East by Western countries in the last 15 years. Heck, they could have produced one from the last 5 years and it would have been just as dramatic. They could have featured the Yemeni wedding where 12 civilians were killed by a drone bombing in 2013. They could have featured the 11 children killed in a NATO air strike in Afghanistan in the same year. Or they could have mentioned this year's drone hitlist with at least 82 people killed in Yemen, 114 in Pakistan and 18 in Somalia (these are the most conservative estimates). They could have even branched out to the countless Muslims - many of them guilty of no terrorism charges whatsoever - detained, interrogated and in many cases tortured by the US and some of its allies in the last 10 years. They'd have a lot of material to work with, to say the least.

Ah, but there's a difference. The West doesn't intend to harm civilians (Even though it habitually and consistently does). The West is fighting terrorism. Their terrorism is aimed at threatening our way of life and our much vaunted institutions and social freedoms. They're driven by a mindless, autocratic idelogy while we are the benevolent and reluctant soldiers of democracy and freedom. 

What we in the West lack in the aftermath of incidents such as the Charlie Hebdo massacre is a sense of introspection. We almost instinctively revert to an attitude of moral and cultural superiority which helps us explain the roots of the terror imparted upon us by so-called radical Islamists without inspecting whether our own actions might have had a part to play in sowing the seeds of hate which fuel these attacks. Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush, in a statement to the US Congress, claimed Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked the US because  "they hate our freedom."  This laughably ignorant statement ignored the true roots of the terror attacks on 9/11 which were varied and related mainly to the inflammatory actions of the US in Islamic countries in the preceding half-century. How do we know that? "Because they fucking said it", as David Cross so succinctly pointed out.

We've got a similar situation on our hands with the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The reasons for the Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly embarking on their reign of terror are simplified to their supposed disdain for "our way of life" and "freedom of speech" and because they are grossly offended by publication of images of the prophet Mohammed. We don't pause to consider whether the West's actions in the Middle East have anything to do with it. We don't even pause to listen to what the terrorists say because if we did, we'd have a much better idea of why the Kouachi brothers did attack the offices of Charlie Hebdo and why Coulibaly did kill four hostages in the Kosher supermarket. 

In the aftermath of the killing of Lee Rigby in London in 2013, Glenn Greenwald wrote that, though "Islam plays an important role in making these individuals willing to fight and die for this perceived just cause" that "perpetrators of virtually every recent attempted and successful "terrorist" attack against the west cited as their motive the continuous violence by western states against Muslim civilians."

It was no different this time out. Amedy Coulibaly, in a video hastily recorded shortly after the Kouachi brothers had attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, gives the reasons for attacking "France, Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish Grocery". He argues, "for what you have done to the Caliphate, for what you have done to the Islamic State, we are attacking you. You cannot attack us and expect nothing back in return." He continued, "You kill there regularly, you use your force, you kill our soldiers. Why? Because we live by Sharia. In our state we have decided that is how we live. We will not let you do that. We will fight, if Allah wills it." 

It should come as no surprise then that when Cherif Kouachi, the elder of the two brothers, first became radicalised by the "guru figure" Farid Benyettou in 2004, America and not France was the target of his ire. This was in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq a year earlier and Benyettou and members of his Jihadi group were intent on fighting "holy war in Iraq". France famously declined to support the American invasion of Iraq. 10 years later, however, and France is part of the US-led coalition attacking Isis in the Middle East and still has troops in Mali fighting against the local Al Qaeda faction. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that these actions played a role in driving these three men to do with they did. 

This tragedy has initiated virtually no mainstream debate about the West's continued - and growing - presence in the Middle East. Instead, the onus has been on Muslims to take the blame for the attack. They're not integrating. Multiculturalism is a failed experiment. They're not doing enough as a community to stamp out the extremist elements. I'm not attempting to justify the attack. Nothing can justify such heinous crimes as those which were perpetrated by the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly. I am simply arguing that we must change the dynamics of the debate if we are really serious about combating Islamic terrorism. There is no secret plan to draw Europe into a global Caliphate, as Ian O'Doherty in a moronic piece in last Saturday's Weekend Review in the Irish Indpendent seemed to imply. The good-evil narrative should not wash this time. 

Because this isn't about ethical or moral values. This is actually how we should be going about stopping terrorism. As Chomsky once said, "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." As long as the West continue to kill Muslims in their countries - and I think we're long past the risible notion that we're doing it in the name of "freedom" or "democracy" - extremists will want to kill Westerners in their countries.

Don't be fooled by the West's 'noble' intentions in stopping Isis.

Barack Obama about to talk a heap of shite, presumably.

Last week, Fox News embroiled themselves in yet another scandal caused by a couple of their presenters being idiotic, discriminatory arseholes. Shocker, I know. The two guilty parties were anchors Greg Gutfeld and Eric Bolling from Fox's afternoon show The Five. The pair made a couple of incredibly sexist jokes about a female bomber pilot from the United Arab Emirates who had taken part in a bombing mission on Isis targets in Syria. Anybody even vaguely familiar with the pair will not be shocked by their latent misogyny. Indeed, it was something else said by their co-host Kimerbly Guilfoyle at the beginning of the video that caught my attention. As she heaps praise on the "remarkable" pilot she pointedly adds, "Very exciting, a woman doing this … I hope that hurt extra bad because in some Arab countries women can’t even drive." 

This astounding display of ignorance forcefully hammered home to me the falsity and the dubiousness of Western government and media's protestations against Isis. Because Guilfoyle is half-correct; there are Arab countries that forbid women from driving. Well, there's one country that does. Saudi Arabia. A country which is one of America's allies in the missions against Isis. Saudi Arabia is also one of only four countries in the world to carry out public executions. Like Isis, they too are fond of the odd beheading with Human Rights Watch claiming that the Saudi state decapitated 19 people last month (August 2014), for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to sorcery.

Some may argue, in attempt to legitamise the US's alliance with Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, that to stop a group as obviously barbaric as Isis, you sometimes have to get into bed with the devil. More likely however, is that the US is more concerned with regional hegemony and geopolitical dominance in the Middle East and the countries in this coalition with the US, which also include Qatar and Jordan, are convenient allies and interested parties. It's ludicrous that this even requires repeating. It's ludicrous that Western governments can drop bombs on Middle Eastern countries on the premise of protecting human rights when for the last couple of centuries, successive American and European governments have committed, aided and enabled countless human rights offences in this region. It's ludicrous that the media largely fail to question the motives of the governments, preferring instead to bang the drums of war and spout empty rhetoric about protecting lives and saving cultures. 

These bombing raids are the fourth time in just under 25 years that the US and its allies have attacked Iraq following the Gulf War in 1991, the "Lewinsky Strikes" in 1998 and of course the invasion of Iraq in 2003. An important difference this time that must be noted is that the government of Iraq have given the US and its allies permission to strike against Isis. That however, does not change the overall aim of the bombing raids.

When one is discussing the motives of Western intervention in the Middle East it's easy to stumble into cliche and witless ranting about Exxon Mobil, oil companies and the military-industrial complex. It's a bit more nuanced than all that but the fact remains that the US has sought to control the Middle East since the Second World War due to the enormous significance the oil reserves play in world economics. It's not just about the profits of oil companies. It's about currency as well. Just to give you a quick example; the world's default currency is the dollar and it is the currency oil is bought and sold in. In 1999, Iraq decided to sell its oil in the new euro currency and increased their profits. The US, naturally sensing a rival to the Dollar's dominant position in the world economy, were nonplussed and after the invasion of Iraq, Iraq began selling its oil again in dollars. Mission accomplished. 

I've digressed a small bit from Isis but it's important to discuss the wider context when it comes to the Middle East. Morally, the argument against Western bombing raids against Isis is that these raids, no matter how pin-point or efficient they are, will inevitably result in civilian casualties. In fact, they already have. But, if we're to ignore the moral arguments for a second, and ask whether these raids will achieve their aim - namely to stop the spread of Isis and combat rampant Islamic fundamentalism - is that probable? 

I would argue it is not. Well, let me unpack that. The raids will certainly have a negative effect on Isis's operations. The US have already began striking oil fields Isis controls and operates in southern Syria and northern Iraq which is having a crippling effect on Isis's profits. Isis previously made millions by illegally smuggling oil into Turkey to sell on the black market. They're producing substantially less oil now that the US have begun bombing them. Indeed, the US and its allies may very well succeed in destroying Isis but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Just like it was often said that the British army were the IRA's best recruiting agent, US intervention in the Middle East has similar effect. It can help radicalise people. Isis are a group who came to prominence during the invasion of Iraq. They launched a counter-insurgency against the Americans. While claims that the US "created" Isis are exaggerated, they certainly created the conditions necessary for their birth. 

Let's look at another recent example of US interventionism. Take Yemen. Since the early noughties, the skies of Yemen have been dotted with US drones. They've killed anywhere between 673 and 1022 people. No one knows the exact figure; armies generally aren't the best at counting their victims. These drone strikes target militants but they've also killed anywhere between 88 and 153 civilians in that space of time. Last year, a young Yemeni named Farea al-Muslimi, whose village had been destroyed in a drone strike, appeared before a senate subcommittee on the impact drone strikes have on the general population. Al-Muslimi claimed that Yemenis once had a positive image of America but, since the drone strikes, that perception has altered radically. He commented, "..now, however, when they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time." 

This reaction is fairly typical. While it might be easy for Western politicians to justify collateral damage on the grounds that the overall mission was a success, it's less easy for people who have lost family members, friends or homes to accept. Isis might openly claim that their horrific executions of Western journalists is done to dissuade the US from intervening further in the Arab world but that couldn't be further from the truth. They want the US and its allies to continue with their incendiary policies in the Middle East. That way they can engender more sympathy from the wider Muslim world and recruit more young and disenfranchised Arabs. They want a long, dirty ground war. And the US and its allies just might give it to them. 

Another reason proffered for strikes against Isis is to protect the security of Western countries. David Cameron claims that "Isil pose a direct and deadly threat to Britain." Barack Obama has made similar statements regarding Isis's threat to US security. But this is ráiméis. If Obama and Cameron truly cared about the security of their countries they would terminate their inflammatory policy in the Middle East. Western intervention is an undeniable factor in the radicalisation and indoctrination of young Arabs into poisonous groups like Isis. It gives them a reason for existing and a modus operandi. It alienates young Arabs who rightfully view Western governments as aggressors.

Writing this, I do not aim to downplay the awfulness of Isis. They have committed some truly evil crimes. But it is important to 1) Note the West's role in creating the conditions in which Isis can exist and thrive 2) Note that the West's bombing raids will only create new enemies. When a new conflict emerges in the Middle East, people in the West often shrug their shoulders and make a comment something along the lines of, "Ah, sure they're always at that." But it's important to realise that the West's, and in particular the US's, policy in the Middle East is at least partly to blame for so much of the violence we see. And until the Middle East stops being, as Gordon Merriam of the US State Department said way back in 1945, "a stupendous source of strategic power", we're unlikely to see a meaningful shift in this damaging and dividing strategy.

Will UTV Ireland's arrival mean curtains for TV3?

The vibrant, young face of TV3.

Messi and Ronaldo. Blair and Brown. Kerry and Dublin. Blur and Oasis. People just love rivalries. The bloodier the better. With UTV Ireland set to begin broadcasting next January, there's a new rivalry in town; UTV and TV3. Who will win the coveted prize of being second in the ratings behind RTE? The safe bet seems to be UTV who have money and prestige behind them. So can TV3 survive with a new kid on the block? Let's investigate.

The general consensus, online and among people I've spoken to, is that TV3 faces a grim and uncertain future. Even people in the industry, such as Gay Byrne (who is a totally impartial authority on the matter), have questioned whether TV3 will be able to survive. Quite a few people have speculated on whether they'll even see out the decade.

It's quite a natural conclusion to arrive at when you inspect TV3's programming schedule over the last number of years. They've gorged themselves on a host of shows syndicated from ITV like Coronation Street, Emmerdale, the X Factor and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway for over a decade. That was never going to be a sustainable model and UTV's move into the Republic, which would inevitably result in TV3 losing the rights to many of those shows, was hardly a massive surprise.

Worryingly for TV3, an area in which the station has miserably performed since its inception in 1998 is homegrown productions. The Vincent Browne Show is the only TV3 production I can think of that could be considered a “trademark” show, like The Late Late Show is to RTE. Their other homegrown productions have largely consisted of half-baked imitations of ITV shows (Ireland AM=GMTV, Midday=Loose Women) and half-baked remakes of actual ITV shows (Take Me Out, All Star Family Fortunes).

While RTE may be up there with the rain, Bono and government ministers at the top of the list of “things Irish people love to complain about”, it has an identity (of sorts) and both RTE 1 and RTE 2 have a target audience which they (at least somewhat) know how to cater for. It helps that they pull in the license fee money obviously, but RTE has some low-budget shows, the type TV3 could conceivably create, which have proved very successful such as Reeling in the Years. To TV3's credit, they seem to have identified this as a major problem. Since 2008 they claim to have made a concerted effort to produce more homegrown productions and their director of content Jeff Ford says they aim to be “delivering over 50% home-produced content” in 2015. Now it's just about picking the right ones.

In addition to TV3's problem with homegrown productions, many people have begun to speculate whether the Irish television market is even big enough for RTE, UTV and TV3 to operate in. While RTE will surely remain kingpin, popular thought seems to suggest that UTV Ireland will dislodge TV3 as the nation's second broadcaster. And can TV3 remain functioning and profitable in 3^rd place?

But let's park the bus on that for a minute and see what TV3 can do. It doesn't have to be an inevitability that UTV Ireland will automatically oust TV3 in the ratings. Certainly, with TV3's current schedule, it seems likely but TV3 have released their own contingency plan, in the form of an Autumn Schedule Launch, as a thinly veiled response to UTV Ireland's arrival so let's inspect the viability of that. Let's not all get snooty about this before we begin and lambast TV3's soaps and homegrown productions as low-brow; this isn't about TV3 producing the 21^st century's answer to The Ascent of Man but rather them producing and broadcasting commercially viable shows.

The centre-piece of TV3's Autumn schedule is a soap opera named Red Rock that will be set in a Garda Station in a fictional Dublin harbour town. The show will encompass the wider community and plots and stories will emanate from rather than be based around the Garda station, claims producer John Yorke. It's certainly an ambitious project and, in my opinion, TV3's effort at creating a “trademark” show, one which is an instantly recognisible part of the TV3 brand. First and foremost however, it is a replacement for the ratings-magnets Coronation Street and Emmerdale which are two of the shows they're losing to ITV. People are creatures of habit and don't embrace change very quickly so Red Rock may take time and money before (if it ever) succeeds. The premise is certainly more intriguing than the standard street cobbles and bored housewives schtick we've become accustomed to but this is one TV3 will need to stick with and trust their writers if it's to properly get off the ground.

Other home grown productions include; Jason Byrne's Snaptastic Show (the show will see the comedian interview a series of celebrities on their past while trawling through their family photo albums), The Algorithim (a quiz show of sorts hosted by Ray Foley), A TD in my House (poverty porn where a TD will live with a poor family for a week to see how shit it is to be poor), Blind Date (Another ITV remake hosted by Lucy Kennedy) and Islanders (Documentary on people living on islands off the coast of Ireland). Again, you may be tutting and sticking your nose up at some of these low-brow shows but, I must refrain, it doesn't matter if these shows end up making Tallafornia look like an existentialist exploration of modern capitalist society; all that matters is that people watch them. And they might watch some of them.

Moving away from light entertainment, TV3 are also buffing up their home-produced primetime news shows and documentaries. David McWilliams, Donal McIntyre and Anton Savage have all been given primetime slots and will probably host Prime Time-esque shows, i.e. Serious men talking about serious topics in a serious setting. For me, Savage is the most affable of that lot but which of them will provide Pat Kenny on UTV with the most competition is anyone's guess.

For some peculiar reason, TV3 seem quite proud of their track record on documentaries. Judging by what they say in the press release for their Autumn launch, anyway. After all, who could criticise masterpieces of journalistic endeavour like Garth Brooks: What Went Wrong? and The Town Travellers Took Over? They need to change tack when it comes to documentaries as TV3 have gained a reputation for producing trashy and reactionary documentaries in recent years, my two listed examples as cases in point. Islanders, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph, seems like a good start. TV3's most ambitious project in this field this year, however, is The Guarantee, which is a docu-drama that will chronicle the events of the night the Irish Government decided to guarantee the entire domestic banking system. This is a movie and will be shown in cinemas before it's shown on TV3. It's a really bold move from TV3 and if it works out, it could change the way TV3 productions are perceived.

Finally, we'll focus on sport and this where I feel TV3 have actually done quite well. They've made some really shrewd investments for the next year or two and this will guarantee a core viewership. Firstly, they've retained the right to cover UEFA Champions League matches which is a massive boon. TV3's presenters and pundits may not be as endearing as Dunphy and the lads but people would watch Champions League football if Jimmy Savile rose from the grave and began hosting it.

Secondly, they have exclusive rights to the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Again, this is a guaranteed viewers bonanza. They'll be praying for Ireland to do well because if Ireland reach the latter stages, they'll be looking at some serious viewing figures. TG4 hit a mini jackpot when the women's team beat New Zealand and reached the semi-finals of the World Cup earlier in the summer; imagine if the men did something similar.

Thirdly, they've very shrewdly acquired the rights to broadcast UFC Fight Nights which will be broadcast on 3e. Conor McGregor's fight on 3e last June pulled in a whopping 600,000 viewers and while some of that can be attributed to the popularity of the Dublin native, there is definitely a market for oiled-up, semi-clad men grappling and wrestling in steel cages in Ireland.

There's other, small things that TV3 can do. They should finally start broadcasting in HD. It's been a stated promise for three years now but here we are, still with pathetic standard definition. They've promised it will be rolled out for the Rugby World Cup which is important as sport is really where you notice the difference between HD and standard definition. They could also bundle Alan Hughes into the boot of a Renault Megane and abandon it somewhere in the Wicklow Mountains but that's just a personal suggestion.

In all seriousness, it is a fascinating moment in Irish television history and it is actually quite reminiscent of American TV in the 50s. Back then, NBC and CBS were unquestionably the top dogs while ABC and Dumont were left to fight it out for third place in a crowded market. It was a heated battle between the two stations but by 1956, Dumont had folded and ABC, which has produced shows like Modern Family, Desperate Housewives and Lost, had established itself as one of the Big Three in American TV.

Why did Dumont lose? Because ABC started out as a radio station back when radio was king and had a plethora of radio stars who were familiar to the American public to call in. TV3 and UTV Ireland are in a similar-ish position. UTV have got some storied, well-established shows that are in the can. Shows Irish people already love. The onus is on TV3 to produce something new, something fresh. That's a lot more difficult but if the ideas are there and the faith in homegrown production is there, TV3 don't have to go down the route of Dumont 60 years ago.

Roy Keane is the reincarnation of a World War II General plus World Cup 2014 preview.

"Professional football is something like war. Whoever behaves too properly, is lost."

- Rinus Michels

The parallels between football and war have always been striking. Not in a literal sense, of course, but metaphorically and perhaps spiritually. Among the many cliches in the admittedly limited lexicon of football pundits and commentators are war analogies. A player who dominates the centre of the football pitch is often christened a "midfield general". The captain of a football team is often referred to as the manager's "lieutenant" on the pitch. Even language used to describe warfare is used when describing football; a team attacking a goal is said to be "on the offensive", a team reverting quickly from defence to attack is "counter-attacking" and a team hurrying back to their defensive lines is "on the retreat". Of course, this comparison is not exclusive to football. Other sports too are equated with war. But football, perhaps due to its intimate nature, popularity or arbitrarily drawn lines of attack and defence, not unlike a battlefield, is the one which is most frequently compared to war. 

It's something that's always fascinated me. Many people would argue the analogy is now redundant as it's hardly accurate comparing supposedly pampered and overpaid millionaires who kick a ball around a field with soldiers on a battlefield. But I feel, and I'll use a war-related cliche to prove my point, that in the heat of battle, the emotions exuded by footballers are not too dissimilar to those by soldiers in battle. So I regularly think about this comparison. Like last week. I was watching the movie Patton, an excellent film chronicling the exploits of General George S.Patton, commander of the 3rd and 7th United States Armies during WWII. The film follows Patton from his time battling Rommel's troops in North Africa to invading Sicily to freeing the stricken 101st Airborne Regiment from a German siege in the Belgian city of Bastogne. It's a long movie and as I was watching it, it struck me; fuck me, Patton is Roy Keane. 

Yes, Patton's leadership skills, his stubbornness, his disrespect for authority, his idiosyncrasies, his principled approach to discipline, they all reminded me of Cork's favourite son. The football-war analogy never seemed more alive in my mind. It wouldn't shock me if Keane had watched this movie and taken notes such was the likeness between the two. 

I guess I'll have to explain a bit about Patton before we jump headfirst into this Roy Keane comparison. Patton was a WWII commander unlike any other. Hitler called him "that crazy cowboy general". He demanded total respect and obedience from his troops. I guess in that sense he's more like Alex Ferguson than Roy Keane but there's more. Patton was a ruthless disciplinarian. As he himself said, "You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things". In the movie he forces troops to adhere to a very strict timekeeping policy and took a dim view of any distractions, female or otherwise, that may make the soldiers' minds wander from the battle at hand. Though some of the anecdotes provided in the movie may be apocryphal, Patton's lust for discipline and timekeeping was anything but. His style of leadership was very much hands-on and he liked nothing more than being near the thick of the action and commanding from the front. He pushed his men to the limits and was unsympathetic to those he viewed as weak or "yellow-bellied" as he called it. He had very high expectations of himself and also of his men. And he couldn't understand when a man couldn't reach the same high standards which he set for himself. He liked to be in charge and was not the most respectful of authority.

Sound like anyone you know? Patton, like Keane, had a cult of personality. There were various strands to that personality, many of them conflicting, but it seems that he shares some of the most prominent ones with Keane. Keane also is a ruthless disciplinarian. He is also a sucker for timekeeping. He too has a very direct style of leadership. He too sets high standards for himself and for his men. He too is unsympathetic with men who cannot reach those standards. He too often runs into trouble with those above him. Patton's wife once characterised him as a "tough perfectionist" and I think that is a label that would sit rather easily with Roy Keane. 

I know, I know, this all sounds very good but where's the beef? Where are the examples of these rough and ragged personality traits. Ok, let's delve into that. I'll begin with Patton because the one I'm going to use with Keane is rather predictably the Saipan incident and I'm pretty sure we're all well-versed with that. Patton's "Saipan moment", if you will, came during the Sicily Campaign of 1943 when he slapped and verbally abused two privates recovering from battle fatigue (Today commonly known as PTSD) at an evacuation hospital. Patton did not accept battle fatigue as a real affliction and was horrified these cowardly privates, as he saw it, would be sharing a tent with men wounded in battle. He ordered both of the men back to the front line and also ordered his commanders to punish any men complaining of battle fatigue. 

Word of the slapping incidents soon reached the top  and Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that Patton apologise to the soldiers, the medical personnel who witnessed the incident and all of the divisions under his command. He did so through gritted teeth and later wrote in his private journal, "It is rather a commentary on justice when an Army commander has to soft-soap a skulker to placate the timidity of those above". The incidents eventually leaked to the media and by the end of 1943, a veritable media shitstorm was brewing in the US. Some wanted Patton to be court-martialed. The furore almost cost Patton his dream of commanding an army in the invasion of Europe but he eventually took command of the 3rd Army in France shortly after the D-Day landings. 

Ok, so there are parallels to be drawn between that incident and Saipan though obviously they're not exactly the same. I'm not going to describe Saipan in detail because you all know how that went down. But both incidents share some stark similarities and reveal interesting nuggets about Patton and Keane's respective personalities. In both cases, Patton and Keane were victims of their own high standards. Patton didn't experience battle fatigue so he didn't understand it and viewed it simply as cowardice. Keane was going to the World Cup because he wanted to "win it" and felt the Irish team should have training facilities and the preparation to match this ambition. He was sick of Ireland's lackadaisical approach to preparation which he saw as "happy-camper mode with no real ambition, settling for second best."

Keane's methods and how he expressed this dissatisfaction can best be described as slipshod but his intentions were clear. Similar to Patton though Patton's actions were more reprihensible. In his view, his demands weren't about him but about the whole Irish team and even the structure of Irish professional football. Both of the incidents split opinions, both incidents sparked a media frenzy and both incidents had a man at the centre who was too stubborn to back down from what he saw as what was right. Patton and Keane's single-headed desire for victory seems, to an outside observer, to border on a type of mental illness. 

 As I mentioned above, Patton did command an army in the European Theater, though he did not command the first army nor was he involved in the planning of Operation Overlord as were his ambitions. Those duties werre bestowed upon the sturdy and reliable General Omar Bradley, Patton's junior in rank and experience. Keane's fate was less kind of course and he played no part in Ireland's World Cup campaign. It's ironic that the captaincy of the Ireland team for that World Cup was given to the sturdy and reliable Steve Staunton. Like General Bradley, he was a man who obeyed authority and toed the party line. They were rewarded for their quiescence and loyalty. Keane and Patton were reprimanded for their disobedience. 

There are differences between Patton and Keane, of course. Patton was known to be flashy, flamboyant, a remarkably gifted orator and a devil for a good ol' fashioned soundbite. Keane is more reposed and less theatrical. But both men shared an irresistible thirst for victory, a Champion-level stubbornness and a belief that what they were doing, regardless of how they did it, was right. This belief, though it may have ultimately led to both their downfalls, was vital in their successes. Without it, Keane wouldn't have been half the captain he was and Patton wouldn't have been half the general. 80 years and 5000 miles of sea may have separated them but I can't help but feel that were Patton and Keane to meet, they would enjoy each other's company. Or fucking hate each other's guts, it's hard to know really. Both were men of contradictions. Patton, for instance, was a devout christian but also possessed a strong belief in reincarnation. He believed that he had fought in the Napoleonic Wars in a past life and had defended Carthage from the attacking forces of Rome in another. Maybe we should ask Keane if he has any memory of those battles as it doesn't seem too farfetched to assume that Roy Keane might just be General George S. Patton reincarnated.

World Cup 2014

One things for certain, the birth rate for 9 months time will be incredibly low.

So, the World Cup is upon us once again. It's a month long orgasm for football fans everywhere while for those not too enamoured with the beautiful game, it's a month of moaning, boredom and changing TV schedules. The World Cup in recent years may have descended into a kind of corporate, capitalistic wankfest, replete with "official World Cup beers" and "official World Cup snack providers" and while it may vastly enrich insufferable arseholes such as Sepp Blatter and co, golly gosh we are still so very excited. 

But this is a poignant World Cup for me as I recently realised that this one is the end of an era. This is my last World Cup as a careless, reckless, responsibility-free youth. In four years time I will be 25 and, the Gods of the global economy willing, will have attained some level of paid employment. This means that this is the last World Cup I can conceivably devote the entire month to. This is the last one where I can ignore time zones and stay up till the wee hours watching Japan vs Ivory Coast on a shitty online stream (That, by the way, is something I literally plan on doing this Sunday). I don't feel like I'm "getting old" or anything as unnecessarily melodramatic like that. In four years time I will be 25 and that is still very, very young. It's just, in this modern era of ours, you do basically spend your 20s as a slave to your employers in the hope that you can someday acquire some of kind of financially secure job. And I know that, when the next World Cup rolls around, I won't be able to kindly ask for the afternoon off to watch Spain vs Holland. Which saddens me. 

But anyway, all we can be certain of is the here and now and the here and now is pretty great because THE WORLD CUP is on. Seeing as I am a football fan I may as well shower you with some of my pearls of football wisdom. Ok, here goes; Brazil to win, Belgium to disappoint, England to perform as you'd expect, Messi to outshine Ronaldo, Neymar to outshine Messi, Japan to surprise, Netherlands to surprise and Sepp Blatter to choke to death on caviar. That last one is more in hope than anything really. Truth be told, like everyone else, I have no idea how the World Cup will really pan out. That just seems the most likely scenario in my head. There are too many variables. Heat. Pressure. Injuries. Heat. I do think Brazil will win it but mainly because I know that the players know if they don't win it, they may just incite a civil war that would make Syria look like a playground scrap. Though if you are a betting man, I'm not so I'm willing to share my tips, Spain at 7/1 to retain it is mind-boggingly good value. You heard it here second (I saw it on Twitter).

Enjoy the World Cup™ anyway. It should prove a useful distraction from the painful tedium of our meaningless lives. And if you are one of those people who actually doesn't like the World Cup or football, here's a few pointers; shut up, pass the remote and shut up!