350. Beannachtaí na Feile Padraig!

Fad saol agat, gob fliuch, agus bás in Eirinn.
"Long life to you, a wet mouth, and death in Ireland."

Má dhéanann tu séitéireacht,
go ndéana tú séitéireacht ar an mbás,
má ghoideann tú, go ngoide tú croí mná;
má throideann tú, go dtroide tú i leith do bhráthar,
agus má ólann tú, go n-óla tú liom féin.

If you cheat, may you cheat death.
If you steal, may you steal a woman's heart.
If you fight, may you fight for a brother.
And if you drink, may you drink with me.

349. The Royal Houses of Europe

Puffed-up, befeathered and medal-bedecked,
they were an ornithologist's dream, they were such
a glittering gallery of elegant sartorial plumage
that even the great Audubon himself would have sighed
and sucked in his cheeks in a rush to capture them
with delicate brush strokes and quick flicks of colour.
They preferred, themselves, to be painted in heavy oils,
conferring, or so they thought, a sense of proper permanency.
Water colours would have been the proper fleeting milieu,
adept and nervous and skillful, vulnerable, not long lasting,
subtle impermanent shades that were apt to run in the rain.

Along the King's Road or among the street stalls of the Seine
or in the dark little shops of St. Petersburg or the Kaertnergasse,
sometimes in Salzburg or Bratislava or even sleepy Baden-Baden,
we can come across icons from this age, the flotsam and the jetsam
of a forgotten time, sad collections in old cardboard boxes:
faded medals , a concert programmes, a crumbling menu,
dog-eared picture postcards with royal portraits on the stamps.
Then a sigh may pass our lips, a nostalgic indifferent exhalation
much like an after-dinner belch, a sign of passing benediction
for a finished experience: but even the poor must eat tomorrow.

Beneficiaries of privilege had a good run but now the show is over,
their bloodlines a matter for antiquarians, for water-colourists,
for the slightly cracked groups who dream of royal restorations.
I'm not sorry they're gone. We have celebrities and movie stars
who feed the need for mass adoration, icons who fade out quickly,
fizzing up and out, like Roman candles, bright and impermanent.
They may behave badly, spend too much, yet rapidly disappear
without starting wars, without driving generations to genocide
in the name of family honour. So settle down in your graves
you Habsburgs and Romanovs, Hohenzollerns and Saxe-Gothas,
leaving a polite open space for the lingering Hanover/ Windsors.

The Inauguration

This seems to have been a custom among the Celtic tribes until the first few centuries of the modern era. The Doge of Venice "married" the sea by throwing in a ring to the passing waves from his richly-caparisoned gondola. The not-so-ancient Celts seem to have had a more direct approach ....


Conch shells, a blare of trumpets,
a flare of the band of pipes.
My poor old father is dead.
I am the new king.
I plan to get rid of
most of his old advisers.
In the meantime
I have to publicly fuck a horse.

There's no way out of it.
Tradition demands it.
I asked if I could choose a horse I liked
but was told to be patient,
that the priests would arrange it all.
Also, the poor bloody horse
has to show signs of satisfaction.

Dear God!

Here am I with my Latin and Greek,
a student of Heraclitus,
soaring along with Homer
but dependent on the sighs
of a large-arsed animal.
It gives a new meaning to riding.

My people are both fierce and loyal
and we face a bitter war:
strangers have come among us.
They look to me to lead them and I will
but I cannot be their king
until I fuck the horse.

I don't want to fuck a horse.
This is an ancient and stupid custom.
I don't want to shame myself
except with David, whom I love,
and that in private.

I shall have to marry
after the horse, of course,
one of the daughters of the O Cahans,
a sharp-nosed family of usurers
who count their money.

O God, here we go.
This day of dread has arrived.
The clansmen in bright colours and banners
are drunk already; wives and daughters
rush to set-aside tents.

I feel sick.

I am dressed in ancient robes
and dangling, tinkling, medallions.
They lead me out to a stage of new wood
in the centre of a grove of ancient oaks
and I beg my knees to carry me on.

A great cheer and the high-pitched Gaelic cry
thunders as I mount the steps.
I wave with all the enthusiasm
of a man condemned to the gallows
and wait, wait for the horse.

O God, here she comes,
a two-year-old mare from the looks of her,
as they whack and chivvy her up the ramp;
the poor thing looks as nervous as I feel
and I stroke her nose in sympathy.

Hello, darling.

Then there's the mumbling of the priests,
a suspicious breed in any association;
cold hard-eyed men with soft and flabby hands
who murmur in a code of memorized words,
who feed on fear and superstition.

One of these hooded halflings
looses the cords of my trousers
and I stand, ashamed, before my people.
He grins at me, the idiot, and I smack him hard
and a cheer comes up from the multitude.

O yes, we like violence.

Lugh of Light, Mananaan of the Sea,
come down, ye gods, and save me!
But the gods are silent. They are always silent.
I stand there, drooping, I cannot do this,
the innocent horse is also silent.

The whores of the town are sent up to me
to get me going, and a wave of laughter
ripples among the gathered throng;
mothers shade the eyes of their daughters
but laugh along with their husbands.

Do I want to be king?
I must be king: a terrible war, I know, is coming.

The whores do their business, I start to rise,
then mount the ladder behind the horse.
It has to be done.
It has to be done.
What shame.
What barbarism.

It doesn't take long,
I pretend it takes longer.
I raise my fist and scream,
Will you follow me to the death?
Yes, they roar, they will.
Yes, they roar, yes and yes and yes!
This is what I need.

Seanchaí

There are
five trees behind
my grandfather's house
two apple and three pear
and they shake, I swear
at different times

and as a child
I was frightened by them
when I went out
by night to do my business
as we had at the time
no indoor plumbing.

My grandfather had
along with most of rural Ireland
no electricity either
and the old oil lamps
trimmed at the wick
cast a soft and golden glow

and these little warm lights
would call to each other
across ancient fields
across the acres
and the stars would be fiercely burning
above in the inky sky.

Cold and clear
was the tingling water
with a faint little hint of lime
splashing down into sturdy barrels
from the rush of gurgling gutters
draining the rains of the roof

and in the byre there was Bridie
and her calf, I forget her name
then a dozen or more nervous old hens
that had no names at all
under threat from the swift red fox
coming over the fields.

In the harsh cold of winter
the neighbours would come by
and there'd be talk and news
of the children over beyond
in New York and Chicago
and Birmingham

and on the rare occasion
there'd be the quiet honour
of the shanachie's visit
when the word of mouth
would bring, failing death,
all of the neighbours in.

I was small, those times
only a wee little chit of a child
but I was big if I could live and grow
and remember. My grandfather
put his hard old hand upon my head
and squeezed my arm, he knew that

and there was the open fireplace
where sods of turf would be deftly thrown
on the burning red-green-orange flames
and the porter bottles, placed on the stones
would sweat and glisten, begin to expand
until the caps would go with a "pop"

and the men in their old battered hats
weather-beaten, chap-knuckled
would murmur to each other in Irish
while their women, in frocks and lipstick,
exchanged pointed pleasantries
until the shanachie shuffled in.

He was a shabby weedy little chap
until he raised his face and showed his eyes.
This story, he said, speaking in English
happened, it is true, a long time ago
but our people even then in the long-gone times
were the same as you, our people today

and then there was silence, a settling down
and for the next three or maybe seven hours
he carried us far and then further away
to the glow of the world we had come from
back to Niamh and Oisin, to King Niall
to the hall of the Red Branch Knights.

It was the magic of the voice that did it
just from the listening he could make you see
and I had no idea I was listening to stories
that were a thousand years old or more
and there was no single hint of cobwebs
nor of ancient creaking hinges; everything
everything was as fresh as clear as a drop of dew
on a trembling morning leaf.

17 Colville Terrace

Voices voices in the night,
sirens, the swish of passing cars;
drunks spill out from closing bars,
shouts, broken glass, another fight.

I shrug but show no pity
having heard these stories all before;
my thoughts flow to another shore,
distant serendipity.

There is no silence any more,
you cannot see stars from city streets;
syncopation, no pattern to the beats,
an itch, well-scratched, becomes a sore.

Even stark leafless trees look sad,
set out in rows away from fields;
hints of nature act as city shields
to keep things bearable, not so bad.

It's hard not to live where in fact you live,
reluctance surrounds all major change;
lives run in a swift but narrow range,
we yearn to receive but learn to give.

Hotel

I loved her beyond all reason
and then she went and bloody well died on me.
I stroll over to her grave and give it a kick.
Bitch. Some cops with cameras
believe they're hiding behind the headstones
but that's all right. 'Sall all right, orright?
I'll go over to Spain tomorrow
with my red and yellow bandana
and there I'll do what I canna
do here. No more of this useless bleedin shite,
I'll stay off the beer and act polite.
I'll buy ... a hotel. Yeah, what the hell!
Can I show you to your table, Mon Sewer?
Yeah, I'd like that:
a white dinner jacket, a red cummerbund,
a smile with the new white choppers,
a Heckler and Koch in my sock.
I'll need to keep the Brits out, got no clarse,
I'll dump them gobshites on their arse.
Ah, Britain, she's been good to me all the same
since I left burnt-down blasted Croatia
but the face you see is not the face
that smiled up from my mother's knee
when that dirty old brute she called my father,
before he legged it, told me something crystal true:
under the sun, my son, there is nothing new,
kick 'em in the balls before they kick you.
My father, the philosopher:
a litle tear, my dear, runs down my nose,
must be the cocaine, 95% pure,
unlike the crap I sell to the punters,
the ho's and shunters, the human manure.
Voila, Madame! Ho ho, Monsieur!
Is everyssing to your shatisfaction?
Ahem, ahem, more Chateau d'Yquem?
Buzzbuzz, hahaha, humhum.
She's young and flushed, he's old and fat,
an aristocrat: thus the world operates
and circulates, I know that. Watch me, chum.
I could do this job with my eyes closed.

Tongues

Living in a world of two or four languages
affords, for a child, an unplanned blessing;
I find, getting on, I am slowly confessing
to a heart-sore hankering
for childhood's continuous continual murmurs,
for the ould old-fashioned strangeness
of thinking in three parts
as if I had three hearts.

Intertwining interpretations
(lovely words, my dear, but lamentably insipid)
waylay the warp and the woof of childhood days;
even now, brisk and stern, interlocutions
hint at different means and different ways.

What needs a school
who, y' know, don't listen ya?
says my go-ahead sister
in her short tight skirt
and little else:
Needs Analysis, yay, my sister say,
you be so stupid?

Comes easy, sis. No worries.

She wants, she wants,
she wants,
and that sums up
my sibling sister.

America, Hummerrikah,
grotesque, grandiose, insane,
(I love it)
can do a number on your brain.
Very important people
in clomping large black shoes,
expensive teeth and spectacles,
toss Starbucks coffee containers
into government wastebaskets
and make plans for the future
of Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe Iran,
and think nothing of it:
it's all so wistful.

You stand in the streets
of Kandahar, dear old Kandahar,
and the bullets they come whizzing by,
but if they really want to kill you
that's another thing.

I sing,
I chant my Sufi verses
and the guys laugh at me;
of a sudden there comes a jeep
in a whirlygig of dust--
jigga, jig, jig,
snakeyed and slick,
out of here quick, quick, quick.

Yes, I do get sick,
everyone does, even the locals,
stay away from the water,
stay away from the awful food,
expect the next attack,
watch your back;
watch your front and sides, too.

And when you feel blue
as you sometimes do
you can listen to God
or even better, I find, an iPod
and transport your damp
and heaving soul,
the very stitches in your britches,
towards a transitory temporary win,
a shot on the shifting goal.

If they treat you like shit
don't pay for the toilet;
just rely on the stuff you've kept in store
astride the ecstatic gaps of language,
around, beside, behind, before:
serenely wait for more.

O the water drips
into the sink:
plink, plink
plink.

Oui oui, compris,
je m'appelle
c'est Jezebel;
denada, denada,
so how's yer fadda?
Moi, je suis Yarnach
Ola! Chocky ar La
howdeedoo, konnichi wa;
Jai Ram, Jai Ram macushla,
yeh to bahot
BAHOT acchaa!

and ... Happy Birthday to Me!!
November the Ninth

343. School Trip to Okinawa

Double-click on any photo to get a full-screen picture; click the Back button to return to Blog.

1. The Inner Gateway to Shuri Castle

2. The Central Courtyard

3. Battle of Okinawa Memorial Park

4. Memorial Park

5. Memorial Park: strange to see your own surname -- a long-lost cousin?

6. Memorial Park: the Pacific Ocean meets the East China Sea.

7. Memorial Park: some of my homeroom students.

8. Himeyuri: 1000 paper cranes as a memorial to the high school girls forced to become nurses.

9. Himeyuri: entrance to the underground cave hospital.

10. Himeyuri: a rather bitter, disillusioned poem about getting pushed into the final battles.

11. The Chiraumi ("beautiful sea") aquarium

12. Chiraumi

13. Chiraumi

14. Chiraumi

15. Ryukyu Mura (Okinawan Folk Village)

16. Ryukyu Mura

17. R. Mura

18. R. Mura

19. R. Mura: Okinawan traditional dress.


20. R. Mura: water buff in charge of a "farmer".

21. R. Mura: the pottery centre.

22. R. Mura: the girls dress up as Okinawans.

Wikipedia Link to Okinawa

342. Sheldon Slithers into Socialism

Sallow shell-shocked Sheldon
having sold all his seashells
from the salty seashore, set out to sell
salt cellars to the sly but shy bank tellers
that in their lunch hours lounge and loaf
on the busy busy Bahnhofstrasse,
smug in their lives and proud of their wives,
who wheel pretty prams among the trams,
trams that go ringalingaling ... ding-ding
all along the Bahnhofstrasse.

One cannot be too rich in Zurich,
gnot among these gnarly gnomes
who repair, sedately, to stately homes
on the wholly hushed, the manicured hills,
that loom over the low-lit lapping lake.
There was a touch of the obscene in '17
in the amounts of money banks could make,
they could rake it in, inured to the din
of the booming guns across the border.
Switzerland thrives on Europe's disorder.

Unshaven Sheldon, shoes letting in rain,
was attracted to a light and lilting voice
overheard in a tavern, simple and plain,
and shook hands with its owner, James A. Joyce.
JJ was not in the market for seashells,
nor salt cellars, but was generous with his wine,
and frequently invited young Sheldon to dine.
They discussed Hermes Trimegistes
and the likely origin of the Scythians,
the Parthians, Persians, Medes and Midians.

Who is Leopold Bloom? Please tell me, Jim.
Aha, cackled Joyce, you'll hear more of him!
But come here to me, come here a chara,
have you heard of a chap called Tristan Tzara?
O yes, Mr. Joyce (an empty glass, so no longer "Jim")
he's some sort of wild and woolly Rumanian.
Dear God, is that a country or a medical condition?
But he's the artistic equivalent of uranium.
Depart now, said Joyce, you have my permission.

Sheldon had no quarters or even sixteenths,
but slept under an upturned boat on the shore,
there he dined on cabbage and mixed beans
as his salt cellars were not selling well.
Oh, he could feel it in his deep heart's core
that his fortunes were sinking from day to day,
and the prospect of millions seemed far away;
I am not, he was thinking, cut out for trade,
even though my mind is sharp as a blade.

This War is a no-brainer, I need to find
a wife, or a new and exciting theory of life.
A woman, any woman, would be out of her mind
to marry me, so what should I do next?
I must devote my future to words and text!
I need to find a place to stick my pen in,
to bring out hidden hurts, to incite alarm,
honeyed over with words of faithless charm:
I will call on Vladimir Lenin.

----------------------------------------------------
Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara (a founder of the Dada movement which gave rise to surrealism) were all seeking refuge from the First World War in Zurich in 1917. The playwright Tom Stoppard pounced on the possibility of their having known one another.

Conservatives in the Zurich city government tried to close down the Odeon Cafe where the Dada movement began (the rent went up) and only last week the citizens voted them down 2 to 1. Apart from the Chagall windows in one of the old city churches -- totally ethereal -- Zurich, artistically speaking, doesn't have much else.

341. On the Lido

My troubled heart, dear boy, is not your concern
as we progress along these silent polished galleries,
and if I pause for a moment before a painting
to take a moment's breath, it is the appreciation of art,
and not the sharp and sudden shadow of beyond.
O, God, you very young and eager people, lapping
up what you think is knowledge, happy and brown
in the bright Italian sun; a sun, I might add, that shone
upon people I loved in my youth, now long gone,
but lending a shimmer, a penumbra of light, a parting glow
among the fading embers where old age must go.
Ladies in those days were thoughtful in their dress,
with linens and cottons, an instinct for appearance,
and the gentlemen had carefully-knotted heraldic neckties
and summer suits which draped most beautifully,
so beautiful that it was a pleasure to look upon them.
It was a gentle age, an age of wonder, and I was among them.
Now I look at beefy children of all and many ages
striding white-legged across the Piazzas and Platzes of Europe
in voluminous many-pocketed shorts, their upper portions
adorned with stretched but simple short-sleeved garments
advertising the more obscure American seats of learning.
One has doubts concerning these extraordinary establishments
since one can hardly say they know or understand anything,
yet they make a quite flagrant use of the Roman alphabet
in such barking phrases as "Duke Sucks" and "Yadda Yadda Boom".
One harbours the suspicion that they do not really read.
I retrieve the slim leatherbound volume of Keats
from the innermost pocket of my rather well-fashioned suit
which fits as well now as when I was an undergraduate
and note the spidery scrawl of DeVere Hutchinson on the flyleaf,
one of the more roguish dons of unpublished consequence,
and my thoughts, rarely maudlin, go back to Magdalene.

340. The third (corrupt) stage of nationalism

O salacious ungracious paperfalls,
po-faced political policy statements,
raining down, damply drizzling,
plashing among the half and the quarter innocent,
among citizens ill-prepared, all those who go
shuffling off to work in the morning.

Hi-ho, hi-ho ...
Put a D-notice on that man; surround his house.

Yes, well, it's all just background noise,
predictable, so typical: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,
lullabies to lull us all to lovely sleep.
But there are promises we must keep,
agreements, aspirations, things to be done,
lovers to be lied to, contracts to be won;
and the last thing we bloody well need
is another major war. What for?

I mean, huff-puff, it's all very well
to make this life a living hell
for dusky people in a faraway village;
after all, they are used to rape and pillage
and I doubt that they can really care
about the odd atrocity here and there.
Oops, there goes Granny and Papa and Mama,
there go the cousins and fifteen kids:
one well-placed bomb can do it all.

Well, I can't see anything wrong with it,
because, I mean, you'd expect that, wouldn't you,
if you lived in one of those dreadful places?
It's not as though they lived in Pimlico
where the black-lipped ladies come and go
to the Starbucks on the corner
carrying Penguin editions of Proust
or How to Lose Fifteen Pounds of Ugly Fat
in Fifteen Days. Guaranteed.

What I do not need is your noddy-noddies.
No, I don't want to see photos of the victims' faces:
I gave generously at the office, so why can't you
fuck off, please, just leave me alone?
Chase another dog, dig another bone.
I support the King, the President, the Kaiser,
and that's just the way it is.
OK, it's sad; it's sometimes bad,
but what do you expect?

I love my family, pay my taxes,
damn all braces, bless relaxes;
I go to the seaside and play with my kids,
go fishing on the river, drink with old pals,
slap my wife on her ample bottom,
listen gaily to her shrill and outraged giggles,
then bound upstairs for the blessings of marriage.
So tell me, where did I go wrong?

I'm just so tired. Yes, I know.

But sit back, so, and listen.
Dungeon-dim, it's like dark, still with me?
Dungeon-dim desultory desuetude,
deadly decades of dull decrepitude,
have become a cancer of the soul.
We no longer think, but stagger and roll,
balancing our feet on a heaving deck,
grinning inanely, suggesting control:
but the deep ocean, the ocean coils beneath.
And we, from childhood trained to hate the Other,
at length have learned
to hate each other.

--------------------------------------------------------
* in some countries this is described as "patriotism", which rather neatly relegates nationalism, as such, to foreigners.

339. Georgia Gambles ... and Loses!

What follows is the most concise and (comparatively) objective account I have been able to discover after several days of trawling the Net. It comes from ABC (Australia) and the original article can be found here:

The war in the Caucasus: looking underneath the propaganda blanket

By Alexey D Muraviev

Posted Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:06am AEST
Updated Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:39am AEST


On 12 August, President Dmitry Medvedev declared the end to Russian military operations in Georgia on the basis that they have accomplished set tasks: Georgian forces were pushed back from Southern Ossetia and their fighting capability was seriously curtailed. However, the end of the Russian counter-offensive will not halt the information war that carries on.

In his highly emotional article on the ongoing conflict in Southern Ossetia, Mr Grigol Ubiria was quick to identify Russia as the root cause of the problems in the south-eastern Caucasus and the world in general. The conflict over Southern Ossetia is a complex multi-layered phenomenon that requires a balanced analytical approach. To be able to get a comprehensive picture, apart from the viewpoints of the United States and Georgia, Russia's motives and strategic intentions have to be examined also.

Russia's claims about its traditional role in the area are based on the history of its engagement in regional affairs. The nation's influence over the Caucasus was established in the 18th century as a result of the nation's prolonged struggle with the Ottoman Empire. After yet another war with the Ottomans (1768-74), Russia secured the Crimean Peninsula, the Sea of Azov and further south along the Black Sea coast. In 1783, the Russian Empress Catherine II (the Great) and the ruler of two Georgian provinces (Kartly and Kakhetiya) Irakliy II signed the so-called Georgian Treaty, according to which Russia offered Eastern Georgia a status of a protectorate and guaranteed the safety of the local Orthodox Christian population against the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-91, the Russian protectorate was extended to the rest of Georgia.

However, Russia's current hard-line actions in Southern Ossetia are driven not just by the understanding of its historical role in regional politics but primarily by the following considerations.

Immediate response

Russian officials claim that the use of force against Georgia is legitimate and refer to Article 51 (the right of self-defence) of the United Nations charter. These arguments are based on accusations that Georgian military forces attacked Russian peacekeepers (stationed in the area since 1992) as well as Russian citizens living in Southern Ossetia.

Antagonistic relations with the government of Mikhail Saakashvili

Throughout the 1990s the relations between Russia and Georgia remained problematic. Georgian officials (Gamsarkhurdiya and Shevarnadze) continuously accused Russia of intervening in its domestic affairs, while the Russians blamed official Tbilisi in playing the 'Russian neo-imperial' card in an attempt to secure financial and political backing of Western nations. Georgia was accused of harbouring Chechen separatists and Al Qaeda terrorists, particularly in Pankissi Gorge (the deployment of US military forces into Georgia in 2002 was formally motivated by counter-terrorism agenda).

However, after Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in November 2003, bilateral relations seriously deteriorated. By prioritising above all relations with the United States (before the 2005 visit of US President George W Bush to Tbilisi one of the main streets was named after him, an example that says it all) Mr Saakashvili continuously undertook steps that intimidated Moscow, including:

* Active role in forming the pro-US regional security structure GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova), formed in 1997 and aimed at cutting off Russia from south-western Europe, the Caucasus, and Caspian Sea region.
* Persistence in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and an offer to the United States to deploy elements of Anti-Ballistic Missile Defence (ABM) on its territory, both moves viewed by the Russians as threatening their national security.
* Massive defence modernisation program with the fastest growing military budget in Europe (risen by 30 times over the past seven years reaching a figure of $US1 billion in 2007). US active involvement in forces training and upgrades (the total contribution of the United States towards Georgia's rearmament reached $US40 million).
* Non-diplomatic and often offensive anti-Russian rhetoric as part of the regular lexicon of Georgian politicians (on one occasion Mr Saakashvili said that he wanted to learn judo to beat up then Russian president Vladimir Putin).

Growing geopolitical rivalry with the United States

When Mr Bush visited Georgia in May 2005 he described the country as a regional 'beacon of democracy'. However, the US's overwhelming support for Georgia is driven not so much by the global approach of 'exporting democracies' and by particular concerns about the nation's form of governance but by rather clear geopolitical and military-strategic considerations. Continuing to view Russia as one of its principal rivals, the United States uses Georgia to reduce Russia's influence in the Caucasus and to drive it away from the Black Sea region (effectively dismantling the 18th century gains). A friendly Georgia could also be used to put extra political-military pressure on Russia in times of international crisis. The Russians view this in the context of the transforming strategic environment (expanding NATO, deployment of ABM in Europe and the Pacific, US penetration of the former Soviet space).

Another major consideration is the geopolitics of pipelines. Georgia plays a key role as a transit state in the US-led transnational Ceyhan energy project aimed at offering a transport route for Caspian and Central Asia oil that would bypass Russia. Adding to that, Georgian ports are also used for the transit of energy resources. This represents an economic challenge to the Russians who strive to become the energy superpower, by becoming the principal deliverer of energy resources.

In this context, the conflict over Southern Ossetia is not a war between Russia and Georgia (de jure, it cannot be classified as a war as neither side declared war on its opponent). De facto, it is a proxy conflict between Russia and the United States over the strategically important area.

Where from here

The declared ceasefire does not mean the end of hostilities. Russia has shown an intent to keep its military presence in the area and indicated support for backing South Ossetian and Abkhazian claims for independence (on par with other reasons such as pragmatic desire to have friendly buffer zones and weaken hostile Georgia, the Russians will use the Kosovo precedent to justify such an action).

Another difficulty arises from Russia's refusal to deal with Mr Saakashvili. Effectively, Russian officials are incriminating Georgian authorities in state-sanctioned terrorism. Georgia was accused of ethnic cleansing against Ossetians. Adding to that, on August 11, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (counter-intelligence) Aleksandr Bortnikov accused Georgian secret services of planning terrorist attacks in Russia. It is likely that the Russians will continue to insist on Mr Saakashvili's resignation.

While large-scale military operations may be coming to an end, the political war over Georgia is likely to escalate, particularly in the context of the upcoming US presidential elections.

It is clear that Russia has won a military campaign and Mr Saakashvili has suffered a humiliating military and political defeat. After all, if you continuously tease and hurt the bear, he will retreat first, roar loud but eventually counter attack. However, so far it is not winning the information war. Over the past four years the Russians did amazingly well in restoring their national might and international reputation and prestige. Now, they have to engage in aggressive damage control over what seems clear to them was a just war.

Dr Alexey D Muraviev is a strategic affairs analyst and an award-winning lecturer in International Relations and National Security at Curtin University of Technology. He is one of Australia's leading experts on Russia's strategic and defence policy.

Here is an article with some interesting background info from the New York Times.

338. Soon, Not Now

There will be strangers, child,
uneasy-eyed, stubble-jawed men,
unwashed and feral wild,
but that don't mean nothing.
When your Daddy's gone
they will become your silent Daddys
and care for you
protect you
but they will never love you
like I do:
they don't know how.

337. Mr. Drew Wears Armani

At night, barefoot, on the stony tracks
the roots and the rocks would cut your feet
and you'd come home bleeding, angry,
and prepare for the next time. It went
on and on forever, there in the hills,
down by Cuil Aodha and Gougane Barra.
Tell me the names of a thousand stars
and which of the leaves in the forest
can heal which illness, whether boiled or powdered,
placed in a poultice, eaten, or stuck up your arse.
Twenty years they said it would take, each year
the chance of getting thrown out, rejected,
and the weary shame of returning home.

Knowledge they knew was dangerous
and it was doled out in careful stages; nothing
was allowed to be written; pens and parchment
were things we never saw. Memorise all we tell you
or tomorrow we send you home. In the beginning
it was nigh impossible, but then it became easier,
and our eyes began to see brighter colours,
our ears could hear the mice in faraway barns
and the trout singing softly in the lake,
and we were not asleep even when sleeping;
our teachers slowly, gradually, became less stern
and we knew then we would not be sent home
for us there could be no other home, not then.

Two thousand years later, give or take,
I step off the airplane at LA International
and wave my fingers at the Immigration flunkey
who immediately stamps my passport, blinking.
Out in the hot hazy sunlight I glide into a taxi
and I listen to the mangled Spanish of the driver
for a few minutes, then wave him into silence.
In Beverly Hills I ascend to the Penthouse Suite
obtained with a flutter of the fingers, I telephone
the production company shooting my next movie,
then descend, nattily casual, to the cavernous lobby.
I wave my fingers for an exquisite, well-cooked meal
and eye the elegant blonde sitting four tables over.

A charming little smile, another finger movement,
and she rises from her chair and instantly joins me;
having enjoyed the amenities in my palatial quarters,
I present her with three homemade 100 dollar bills,
far far better than the originals, and she kisses my toes
and bows herself backwards from the room. Ho hum.
Time to call the President, tell him what he's doing wrong,
and accept the usual excuses and apologies. Such a bore,
but one's gotta do what one's gotta do. I find that so true,
and one really needs to plan for the next thousand years.
Had I known in my youth things would end up like this
I might have had second thoughts, felt slightly remiss,
but one grows so used to this business with the fingers.

There is a lot to be said for an old-fashioned education.

336. Geoghan's Ghost

I.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis
seruare mentem, non secus in bonis
ab insolenti temperatam
laetitia, moriture Delli,
--- Horace, Odes, Book II, iii.

Geoghan tempers his moods of disquiet
with appeals to ancient personal gods,
pre-Christian, yes, that goes without saying,
but also pre-Celtic: he seems to gallop across
the millennia instead of a few mere centuries,
swearing or perhaps just furiously praying,
as he races to catch the 16A to Beaumont
with shoelaces undone and his long dark coat
wantonly flapping in the wind that whishes
and whooshes, aweela, wet from the slimegreen sea.
Geoghan invokes secret unheard of names and powers
that were hoary with age in the time of Baal
and Amon Ra; where has he learned these fearful
Stone Age imprecations? Surely not at home
with the mammy and daddy and his three sisters,
one of whom plays the harp and the other two
dainty violins, there in the plateglass bungalow
picked out from the All-Ireland Book of Designs
for Virtuously Vulgar Modern Living, garnished
with garden gnomes imported fresh from England,
Happy and Smiley, Doc and Dopey, Harold Wilson.
Geoghan’s oul fella was a turf accountant, as we say,
with our penchant these days for the gombeen genteel,
our building maintenance operators, our facilitators,
our elderly female recluses, kept well away from society
and formerly known as nuns; the priests, heaven help us,
are still in evidence, and you’ll find a fair few number
when fire alarms ring in the jollier parts of the city:
Come out there, Father, amn’t I holdin yer trousers?
Young Geoghan was never much good at manly sports,
at thumping others for the possession of a pig’s bladder
and then kicking it up and away like all our national teams
so that your heart could weep out of sheer frustration:
ah, would you pass or dribble, and not from yer bloody mouth?
But … but he had a steady sort of way about him,
not at all what you’d expect at the Christian Brothers
where they’d be beating away all that shite and nonsense
the minute you’d look up to stare in their dark flushed faces;
the fact is, they could feel something; and they were afraid of him,
not that at first I felt the same myself; no, that was later
when he’d look at me with those strange sea-washed eyes,
grey-green, pebbly, distant, unspeakably cold and old,
and it was then you’d feel the odd involuntary shiver
and would offer a joke or a beer, anything to break the tension.
Well, he died, of course, our poor unknowable friend,
and it is the matter of his end I wish to speak of.

II.

Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum
dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita
cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.
-- Horace, Satires, Book I, i.

It’s only now I’ve decided to break my long silence;
I was afraid, quite frankly, of powers I could not control,
and I didn’t have the protection or belief of poor queer Geoghan.
I was brought up with the mumbo-jumbo of an executed god,
a new departure in religious thinking, when you stop to think,
for here’s a god who becomes the sacrifice, not the demanding recipient,
a god who says turn the other cheek and then does fuckall for you
Geoghan saw through all that. Let me tell you what happened.
He got it in his head, seriously, he could stop the war in Iraq
and so prayed for forty days and nights, each day with two bottles of wine
(red and white) just around the corner from Trinity at the Lincoln Inn,
then, his vigil over, he proceeded, ceremoniously, to forlorn Ballsbridge
and the rounded concrete fortress of the unlovely American Embassy.
There for a while he disappeared, and his nervous band of acolytes
(I was not among them) stubbed endless cigarettes on the grey pavements
and waited and waited and waited for a sign. None, of course, came.
After three days helicopters arose like dragonflies in the clapped-out
dishwatery mauve and filthy pink of a ho-hum Dublin dawn
and shots were fired, we heard them, and the Air Force was called out,
all three of our serviceable planes, they went sqwark … sqwark … sqwark
to each other on the radio, like demented parrots, and we could all hear them
on Radio One; overall, it wasn't a great day for Ireland’s Intrepid Airmen,
with the other two muppets cheering them on from the ground,
their oul’ airplanes wouldn’t kick over when they’d stuck in the keys.

O Kathleen Mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking,
The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill;
The lark from her light wing the bright dew is shaking …

and so we hared over to Howth Head and Killiney, to the high ground,
to the two encircling, ensnaring arms of this fiercely possessive city,
and from there we could see it all, but what we saw can never be agreed.
The Americans … Irish military gunships? …tried to shut down the whole business
with their broken old record, their fee-fi-fo-fum of GWOT and Guantanamo,
but you might as well try to stop the tide as stop the Irish from talking,
although nobody (this happens a lot in Ireland) could quite agree. Only I could see
a strange awkward figure hovering, balancing there in the whooshing air,
his coattails flapping like the dark raven’s wings on Cuchulainn’s shoulder,
his mouth open in an O with a force of words that only I could hear
and yet barely make out, with the rush of the wind and the clatter of the blades,
and yet it sounded like … Hilatoth …Hilagath … Hilga .. Hilgamoth?
the sacred and doubtless secret name of a long-forgotten but unburied god,
and then Geoghan transposed into a flash of light and his form was gone forever.
No body was ever recovered. And the war in Iraq went on and on.

335. Ottoman

The red silken cord, for three long weeks,
lay coiled and hidden in the messenger's pouch.
Having struggled along rain-drenched muddy tracks,
crossed white swollen rivers, climbed over mountains,
he debouched, at last, on the plains of Hungary.
What news from the Light of the World?
croaked the stooping figure of Multan Pasha,
eyes aglitter in a face like mildewed parchment.
Wordlessly the messenger handed him the pouch,
and in silence Multan retired to his chamber
from which he never again would emerge.
-----------------------------------------

European officers facing disgrace and scandal favoured a bottle of whiskey and a loaded pistol; the Sultan simply sent a silken cord to the officials who displeased him.

334. Blog Anniversary - Four Years!

Today is Bloomsday and also the fourth anniversary of this blog, begun on June 16 2004. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, not to mention wars, hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes, death of loved ones, emotional joinings and sunderings. During these four years I’ve posted something like 350 articles, poems, opinion pieces and general silly maunderings (the numbering scheme is close but inaccurate since I never really bothered to actually count from the beginning). There’s been something in the neighbourhood of 35,000 visitors, which works out to about 24 people a day. I’d just like to take the opportunity now to thank each and every one of those 24 people and gently urge them to take a break …

Anyway, it’s been fun and it’s created a public record of sorts (what was on the brain, for example, in January 2006?). And it’s not over, by any means. All that happens, really, is that we move on to the fifth year. Check in from time to time, if ou’re reading this. Failte Romhat, in the Irish – you’re always welcome!

333. stamping grounds

Down Knightsbridge way the other day
in my psychedelic condition
I moseyed slowly along the way
to a philatelic exhibition;
I had my tweezers in my hand
when I had to stop for the band
of the Royal Scots Guards
magnificent six-foot retards
prancing about for the English Queen
a lady I’ve talked to but never seen
when she rang me out of the blue
last Tuesday, I was home with the flu,
and asked was I the chap selling the Corgi
and I said no, that would be Georgie
and she said kaindly put him on the lain
and I said at the moment he’s not so fain
and I’m afraid in fact he’s beastly dead
since the 21 bus ran over his head
on his way home last night from the pub,
such a delightful charming musical Dub
and he in the street singing clear and strong …
Well, the draiver mustn’t have cared for the song
says the Queen, and then, Airish, I take it?
in that clippy little voice, you could not fake it,
and she hangs up on me, the snippy oul bitch,
my first (and last) contact with the rich.
The thing about stamps is
they’re such tidy little creatures,
just tiny little oblongs of gummy paper
that combine all the best features
of the crummy little countries they represent.
I floated along, I made no fuss,
and did not jump on a passing bus
out of respect for dear old Georgie
and the poor wee flattened Corgi.

332. Disneyworld with Joe

(Joseph O'Connor, brother of the singer Sinead, is a well-known journalist and novelist in Ireland. He wrote a running account in the 'Sunday Tribune' newspaper of his misadventures in the USA while accompanying Irish fans to the 1994 World Cup which had the whole country laughing itself silly and became an instant classic. The following is an excerpt from the diary covering the day when Joe and some of the lads took a day off to visit Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida. Being able to guess what 'a ride' means in Irish slang sort of helps things along ....)

Our tour guide Wanda is waiting for us. Wanda is a very nice young woman from Kissimee. "There are some rully good rides here at The Magic Kingdom," she says, to a chorus of snuffles and titters. "We have big rides, small rides, scary rides, happy rides, whatever kind of ride you like you can find here at The Magic Kingdom." One fan is falling about the place now and another -- Crocko by name -- is laughing his bloody dentures out. Wanda must be wondering what it is she is saying that has all these grown men nearly widdling with laughter. But, true professional that she is, she continues.

"Er ... some of the rides have been here for a long time, but other rides are new, and here at Disney we're constantly looking at ways to make rides more exciting." The fans are slapping their thighs and guffawing at this stage. One usually quiet man from Laois is actually honking with laughter, throwing his ponderous head back and honking like a great big white-legged hysterical mallard duck. Honko, I'm going to call him from now on.

"What's so funny?" Wanda says.

"Nothing, Wanda," Honko replies.

"No, c'mon," she says, "Am I like, saying something funny?"

"Not at all, Wanda. You're grand, sweetheart. And c'mere, tellus, do you like the odd ride yourself, Wanda?"

"Oh yes, of course."

"And how many rides would you have a day?"

"Oh, I dunno, three or four I guess. Depends how much spare time I get."

Well, at this stage several of the fans have to go and sit down in the shade, or pour water over themselves, so frantic are their cackles. Some are actually sobbing with laughter. Donald Duck wanders over to one of them and begins gently to peck him on the head with his enormous yellow beak. "Go away ye big feathery fairy," the fan says. A hearty chant soon begins, the scheme of which is based on the considerable rhyming potential of the words Donald Duck. What a talent for poetry the Irish have! Seamus Heaney would have been proud.

Things are about to get even worse, however. An enormous structure depicting Mickey Mouse is pointed out on the horizon. Wanda tells us, her voice fairly brimming over with pride, "and guys, you know what, that's the largest self-supporting Mickey in the whole of the United States."

Well, I don't think I have to describe the communal reaction, really. It is as though the entire party has been blasted with laughing gas. Several of the supporters will need medical attention soon.

"Oh, there are other Mickeys," Wanda sniffs, dismissively, "there's a rully big Mickey in California, of course, and there are some rully large Mickeys in some of the other states, and a big old Mickey over there in Eurodisney. But I gotta tell you, we're real proud of our superb superbig Mickey that we got down here in Florida."

The sun is blazing hot now, and the white stone floor seems to be sucking the heat into itself. Tears of laughter are spilling down the faces of my companions. The seven dwarfs saunter past us, pursued by the mad hatter, the wicked witch of the west, the queen of hearts and various assorted fluffy tigers holding hands. The fans are chanting again now. "You'll never beat the Irish. You'll never beat the Irish." If Wanda smiles any harder, her eyebrows will disappear into her hairline. I close my eyes. I try to imagine just how much money you would have to spend on drugs to achieve this weird a feeling.

331. hometown (line edits)

original version:

I'm looking for a way
on this long and rocky road
between life and love
while the heart she
still stays pure, somewhere
between Inchicore and Terenure;
and I know you well, too well,
you shabby old city on the peatbrown Liffey,
so stony grey and sharp and blind,
and I pretend I do not mind
the apologetic smiling betrayals
that we all grow up with
under the shadow of your mountains
and never overcome.

edited version:

The heart is sound, the thoughts impure,
as I dance along the rocky road
from Inchicore to Terenure;
and I know you well, too well,
you shabby old city on the peatbrown Liffey,
so stony grey and sharp and blind,
and I pretend I do not mind
your apologetic smiling betrayals,
the memories we all grew up with
in the shadow of your mountains
and never overcame.