(Cross posted from the European Tribune - where a previous diary - on the results themselves reached 340 comments!)

We're starting to get some slightly harder data on why Ireland voted no in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  A telephone poll of 2000 people taken over the week-end and commissioned by the European Commission in conjunction with the Taoiseach's office has found that:

1. Three quarters of people who voted No in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty believed that the text could be renegotiated later by the Government - but just 40% of yes voters thought the same

2. Three quarters of No voters also believe that rejecting the treaty would have no impact on the Irish economy. Of the YES voters, 55 per cent thought that rejecting the Lisbon treaty would hurt the Irish economy and 67 per cent believed that a no vote would weaken Ireland's influence within the EU

3. 80 per cent of No voters support Irish membership of the EU

An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, became only the fifth person to address both the joint Houses of the British and US Parliaments when he gave his valedictory address to a joint Senate and Congressional session yesterday in one of the final acts prior to his retirement as Irish Prime Minister next week.

As a former (occasional) speech writer myself, I am more than usually interested in the format and content of such events, even if I share the popular cynicism which is de rigueur when discussing political speeches in general.  Sometimes, however, a speech by a political leader can signal an important shift in a nation's self-perception to a wider audience.  Obama's speech on race, for instance, signalled an important determination to move beyond race and racism in the conduct of US politics, both formally, and as part of the unspoken agenda.  So why was Bertie Ahern's speech notable and worthy of at least a little attention by Booman readers interested in EU/US affairs?

In doing some background reading on Restorative Justice, I cam across a chapter in a book by Jim Considine "Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime."  Written in 1999, the chapter is entitled "The Caging of America" and is more horrendous than anything I had imagined possible.

America is home to the largest prison industry in the world, with 2 Million prisoners and another 4 Million on probation or parole. Despite declining crime rates, the prison population has increased 10 fold in the past 30 years.  Moreover the rapidly privatising prison industry has a vested interest in ensuring this "market opportunity" continues to expand as rapidly as possible - and thus engages in almost no rehabilitative work which might allow prisoners to escape the cycle of ever greater incarceration in the "correctional" system.

But it gets worse.  Torture is endemic, 70% of all inmates are illiterate, 10% suffer from serious mental illness, and 70% have a history of serious substance abuse.   Many are juveniles convicted and incarcerated as adults, increasing numbers are women with dependent children, and almost 10% of the entire black community are either in prison, on probation, or on parole.  25% of black males will be in the criminal justice system at some time, and 50% of blacks in Washington DC will be imprisoned at some time before they reach the age of 24.  

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In doing some research on Bertie Ahern I came across an Op ED piece written by Jim Duffy and published in the Irish Times on August 11, 1998.  Jim is chiefly known in Ireland as the researcher whose interview with Brian Lenehan destroyed the latter's Presidential Campaign and enabled the election of Mary Robinson as President of Ireland.

In the article Duffy summarises John Boswell's research into gay Marriage in the Christian tradition and shows that there were formal marriage rites for the consummation of gay marriage that were extant as late as the 17th. Century.  I include the article in full below the fold because it gives the lie to so much "Christian" homophobic blather, but my main purpose in reproducing it here is to ask the question:  Why did homophobia become so prevalent in western societies and why did Christianity appear to take a lead role in that process?

I ask the questions, because I do not know the answer.

An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern (the Irish Prime Minister - 1997-2008)) is to resign on 6th. May after a long running scandal concerning his private finances.  He is the most successful Taoiseach in Ireland's history and was previously Minister for Labour (1987-1991) and Minister for Finance (1991-1994).  The ugly duckling to the right in the group photo is Brian Cowen, Minister for Finance, his most likely successor.

Below the fold - The text of my
Letter to the Editor of the Irish Times (hidden behind a subscription firewall) arguing the larger European case for the Lisbon Treaty.  (Cross-posted from the European Tribune in the hope that some of you guys have time to take an interest in what is going on on the other side of the pond!)

Can Obama win the nomination and re-unite the Democratic party?  Can he regain the support of the white working class and other ethnic minorities put off by the (alleged) rhetorical excesses of Rev. Wright?  Will Hilary continue to damage all she has allegedly stood for all these years?  Will McCain defy age, recession, logic and political gravity and pull off an unlikely Republican win?  Is the Obama movement for change destined to go the way of so many before - Eugene McCarthy, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry - or worse, the way of Martin Luther King, JFK and RFK?  

My wife, Muriel Boothman, died of cancer four years ago today.  I've been asked to do a talk on bereavement by the local hospice foundation who are organising an annual remembrance evening for those who have lost loved ones in the past couple of years.  I'm at the "oh shit, what have I let myself in for?" stage of trying to put thumbs to keyboard.  

Urban myth has it that the first item on the agenda of any Irish organisation is THE SPLIT.  In other words, no sooner have people come together for a common purpose than they disagree, often quite bitterly, about what should be done, how it should be done, and who should do what.  Irish history is redolent with tales of the splits, betrayals and informers who have derailed the noble cause which the Irish "Nation" was supposed to be pursuing at that time.

No one can have lived in Ireland over the past 40 years without having been involved, in an almost personal and tangible way, in the many twists and turns taken by the Northern Irish (or British Irish) conflict, or not been thrilled that at last, some concrete progress is being made towards its resolution.

On a more personal level, I have been involved, in various ways, in trying to resolve significant conflicts or issues in no less than six different voluntary organisations - very much by force of circumstance rather than design.  And this is quite apart from a career in management in a major Global commercial organisation where conflict is endemic, and contrary to popular myth, very much more endemic within management itself rather than just within the more classic management versus trade union model.

So I have come to be fascinated by the processes by which conflicts are contained, managed, channelled, diffused, distorted, perverted, exacerbated and calmed - and sometimes, very rarely, transformed and resolved into very positive outcomes for all concerned.

So as they say in all the best self-help manuals, if you have conflicts you wish to resolve, read on...  PS this Diary is also published on the European Tribune.

I'm no economist, much less a banker, but the sums of money being thrown at the "liquidity crisis" in the banking sector look pretty scary to me.  $200 Billion dollars in one go just recently. That's a lot of liquidity.

Meanwhile Bush says that the housing market meltdown was caused by too many houses being built.  Tell that to the people made homeless by foreclosures on their Mortgages and who are now living in tent cities throughout the land.  Surely the real "liquidity crisis" is with the 99.9% of the population who have seen no real increases in their wages over the past 30 years, and many of whom have seen their real living standards decline?

$200 Billion dollars spread over a million homeless people would buy every one a $200,000 dollar house - support the construction industry and help to create a much more stable housing market.  But somehow it seems to be morally wrong to give money to the poor whilst there is no moral hazard in giving the same money to the rich bankers who helped to impoverish the poor in the first place.

President Bush has made the achievement of a "two state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the key objective of the remainder of his regime.  The two state solution is also the consensus position of most of the international community.  Apparently no one wants to deny Palestinians their place in the sun as a member of the international community of nations, but is that really what is on offer?

I want to present an alternative thesis - one that has gotten me into more trouble as a blogger than any other subject that I have ever commented on.  Perhaps I have gotten this all wrong, but in my view it is far, far, too late for ANY sustainable or viable Palestinian state to be created.  Creating a separate state for Palestinians now would be far more akin to creating a homeland in the old Apartheid state of South Africa - a series of disconnected, disjointed territories, pock marked by Israeli only settlements, criss-crossed by "Israeli secured" roads, surrounded by security walls and fences, with few resources or industries of their own, many essential resources like water controlled by Israel,  and with no hope of any sustainable autonomous economic viability, social harmony, or political stability.  

Worse, the creation of an "independent Palestine" out of the remaining non-Israeli controlled scraps of Palestine, will enable Israel and surrounding states to expel Palestinians out of their refugee camps and societies and dump them in what have already been described as the largest open air prison camps in the world.

So what is the alternative?  Please read on, and please don't shoot the messenger...

[Cross posted from the European Tribune where it was the third in a series on "Who is really going to Win the US Election"]

To a European observer the most striking thing about the US party nominee elections is how volatile they are.  In many European elections a 5% swing is regarded as very significant when it takes place over the course of an entire campaign and opinion polls are often accurate to well within their stated +- 3% points  margin of error.  In the US elections, however, opinion polls published on the same day by different companies can often differ by much more than this.

In the New Hampshire primary the final polls looked like this:
Poll                           Obama         Clinton    Edwards    Richardson

RCP Average                    38.3        30.0        18.3        5.7
Suffolk/WHDH                      39          34          15          4   
American Res Group              40          31          20          4   
ReutersC-Span/Zogby            42         29          17          5   
Rasmussen                           37         30          19          8
CNN/WMUR/UNH                    39         30          16          7   
Marist                                  36         28         22          7   
CBS News                             35         28         19          5   

This is a cross post from ET and may be of interest to Booman readers interested in the development of the EU.  A new EU Reform Treaty has just been been approved by EU leaders in Lisbon and must now be ratified unanimously by all member states in order to come into force.  For constitutional reasons, Ireland is the only EU Member state to put the EU Reform Treaty to popular vote as part of its ratification process.  Given that all the other Member Governments have signed up to the Treaty, one can presume they will proceed to ratify it unless they lose the confidence of their respective Parliaments in the meantime.  

Ireland thus becomes the key focus of the popular debate, and ratification is anything but assured.  According to The Irish Times, TNS mrbi opinion poll. carried out in early November, support for the treaty has halved over the past two years.  Just 25 per cent of people say they will vote Yes to the EU Reform Treaty, while 13 per cent intend to vote No and a massive 62 per cent say they don't know or have no opinion.

In a comparable poll on the EU Constitutional Treaty in March 2005, 46 per cent said they would vote Yes as against 12 per cent who would vote No and 42 per cent who had no opinion. Given that the content of the two treaties is almost identical, the sharp drop in support for the treaty indicates that the referendum result could be very close.

In 2001 Irish voters rejected the Nice Treaty despite the fact that it was supported by all the major political parties.  A second referendum in 2002 reversed that vote after the insertion of a treaty clause underlining Irish neutrality.  However, the real difference between 2001 and 2002 was the turnout which increased from 34% in 2001 to 50% in 2002.  Given that the November opinion poll above showed that only 38% (= 25% for, 13% against) had made up their mind on how to vote, another low turnout is quite likely.

However, the main factor which may result in a low turnout (differentially damaging the yes vote) is the rapid decline in popularity of the Government led by Bertie Ahearn.  The same poll showed that Fianna Fáil (by far the largest Government Party) had suffered a big drop in support since the general election (down nine percentage points to 33 per cent), while Mr Ahern's satisfaction rating had declined by 15 percentage points to 43 per cent.

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