Are you a spy? Do you need a passport?

Are you a spy? Do you need a passport? Are you planning on killing somebody and denying responsibility? Or are you planning on snooping on a country with whom your Government is on allegedly friendly terms?

Well why not come down to Ireland for all your counterfeit travel document needs? That's right, Ireland Inc., located on the corner of Atlantic and Britain, has got a limited, once-in-a-lifetime deal on aliases, cover stories and pseudonyms. Ireland Inc., one of the world's leading sources of deniable passports since the 1980's when we (allegedly) allowed rich Arabs to buy our passports. Ireland Inc., the go-to guys for all of Colonel Oliver North's passport needs (allegedly). Whether you're planning on knocking off an arms-dealer in Dubai, or spying on your old enemies in the West, you can never go wrong with an Irish passport.

Best of all, Irish passport users never need worry about nasty side-effects from the Irish Government: no threats of war, no serious investigations, no counter-espionage, nothing.*

So next time you need to infiltrate a hostile nation, use an Irish passport. When I'm languishing in a Pakistani prison, accused of being a Mossad agent, I'll thank you for it.

*Warning: Over-use of Irish passports may lead to the expulsion of your diplomats. This webpost is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and not be viewed in a serious light, least of all by any lawyers, Colonels, rich Arabs or former Irish Government Ministers, nor by members of Mossad.

The Air Corps and Prickgate

I know that some of you must be shocked that, given my Walter Mitty-esque obsession with all things military, I have failed to comment on so-called "prickgate" - the Court Martialling of an Irish Air Corps officer for referring to his superior as a "prick".

The always-excellent Michael Clifford has a good column on the issue in the Sunday Tribune, and I think he covers a lot of the pertinent topics arising from the fiasco. Whatever way you look at it, this is a disaster for the Air Corps and the Defence Forces in general. For an officer to be essentially made redundant, in civilian terms, over an incident where he called his boss a rude name seems a little excessive, especially given that there were no witnesses to the event.

The severity of the sentence is particularly stark when one considers how essentially civilianised the Air Corps has become, at least in the eyes of fat civvies such as me. In contrast to the generation of men who took part in the "Vampire reunion" this weekend, the modern Air Corps does not even have a notional Air Defence mission (leading some less charitable members of the army and Naval Service to refer to their airborne colleagues as the "Bluffwaffe"). This lack of a combat capability is no bad thing when one considers Ireland's prime geo-strategic position (i.e. safely sanwiched between the US and UK), and it allows the Air Corps to focus on missions that actually matter, like maritime patrol. But it does raise the question as to why we are drumming an officer out of a service which will probably never see combat; surely discipline is not a matter of life and death?

That the officer in question, Commandant Donohoe, could be dismissed for such a small infraction even after saving the Air Corps over €1.5m in fuel-savings, and saving the life of a colleague while on UN duty, raises serious questions about the Air Corps morale, and (in civvy-speak) the management culture of the service. Is it simply that, at a time when budget's are being slashed across the public service in Ireland, the military is not overly-fond of someone who can spot that the Defence Forces might be carrying around a bit of extra fat?

Shades of Grey

A real problem in Irish (and indeed European) commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict is that we exist in a world where things are black and white. There is only good and evil, nice things and bad things. We are cocooned from anything nasty and brutish, and so snuggled are we by the welfare state that we do not understand that much of mankind faces the distinct possibility that life will be cut short.

In some ways, this gulf between us and the truly harsh realities of life allow us, the Irish, to be remarkably generous and sympathetic to those in need, or those who are in a weaker position than we are. The most obvious, and clichéd, examples would be the growth of the charity sector in Ireland, particularly with those charities who work in the Developing World; or how Ireland was one of only 3 EU states to open its doors wide to immigrants from the states of Eastern Europe on their accession in 2005. These issues were relatively black and white: starving Darfurians clearly deserve help, and poor immigrants looking for jobs in wealthier nations obviously struck a chord with the Irish.

But our ability to engage with issues on the international stage is degraded when rights and wrongs are less than clear. Witness the vitriol aimed at Israel over this last week; justified, in so far as storming the ship in question was clearly wrong. Yet while many Irish commentators have much to say on the wrongs of Israel's blockade, and the wrongs of Operation Cast Lead last December, they seem to feel that Hamas firing rockets into Israel, or the threats continuously emanting from Tehran, are not worthy of comment.

Clearly, much of what Israel has done recently is wrong, whether judged from a moral, political or security standpoint, but it can only be prevented from committing these wrongs by improving that state's security situation, something that can only be achieved once the rockets stop falling.

Irish desires to castigate the Israelis do nothing for the greater good of the Middle East; it is purely an exercise in judging the region by the standards we expect of Western Europe, where terrorism is rare, and air raids or rocket attacks rarer still.

It is reminiscent of the disgust and distance with which southerners viewed the Troubles in the North; yes, the violence was appalling, but could our moralising, safe in the 26 counties, really do anything to bring peace between Nationalists and Unionists? Did we not recognise that, if circumstances were a little different, we as individuals could be capable of the hatred and violence we witnessed north of the border?

Until all parties were brought to the table, free from recriminations and arguments about, literally, who started it, nothing was achieved in the North. And if we expect that peace in the Middle East can be achieved by putting pressure on Israel alone, it would appear we have already forgotten the lessons of our own recent history.

That's Right Israel - Both Tanks!

One of the tabloids summed it up best in its headline "You Mossad Be Joking, Biffo." Our Dear Leader, Brian Cowen, known to the faithful and not-so-faithful as "Biffo" (Big Intereseting Fine Fellow from Offally... or maybe the IFF stands for something different?) has decided that enough is enough: if Israel harms Irish citizens on the MV Rachel Corrie, an Irish-owned vessel that is about to breach the Gaza blockade, there will be "serious consequences."

I love my country, and greatly respect our Defence Forces, but "serious consequences" are not really something we specialise in; military might has never been a major priority of the Irish. Even if we compare our naval forces (those of an island nation in the Atlantic) with Israel (not exactly famed for its naval prowess, whatever about its army and air force) we don't exactly meet the mark. Just as an example - number of Israeli submarines: 3, number of Irish submarines: 0.

The question remains, then, as to whether Biffo... I mean the Taoiseach, meant economic sanctions when he spoke darkly of Israel's fate should it dare to oppose our Celtic might. Again, I would expect that the Israelis would probably be more concerned about threats from the EU generally, rather than Ireland in particular, despite the multiple, incredibly valuable, well-known and much vaunted Irelandio - Israelianio trade agreements.

Unless, given the fact that the Irish economy is still tanking, Fianna Fail and our Taoiseach are casting around, desperately, for someone to focus the public's attention on, in case Seoisamh Public notices again that our country is falling apart. You have to hand it to the Israelis - whenever you need a scapegoat, they're right on hand!

The End is Night Part III: The Island of No Jobs

The Live Register jumped a staggering 6,600 in May, making a mockery of the government's claim that we have "turned a corner". Such optimism is at best dangerous, at worst treasonous, in the current economic climate. How can an Irish government be so irresponsible as to actually claim that our economy has bottomed out and will soon start the long haul back to some semblance of real growth when multi-nationals lik HP seem set to cut jobs here? How has our economy turned the corner when we still have more than 300,000 houses unoccupied in this country, 32,300 people in arrears on their mortgage (not including the 15 odd thousand who are paying only with government support), and the prospects of ECB rate rises in at least the next five to ten years? How can our economy be on the rebound when we are borrowing €500 million a week, and as the maestro David McWilliams notes, the global markets may soon cut off our supply of credit?

It is becoming increasingly clear that this government is simply kicking to touch, playing for time and hoping that they can avoid as many cuts as possible before the next General Election in 2012. They can then hand the entire mess over to Fine Gael and Labour, who will be blamed by an amnesiac electorate for having to take truly tough decisions, before Fianna Fail can swan into power again, surfing on a wave of pork-barrell promises.

I do not hate Fianna Fail, the Republican Party, the party of Sean Lemass, the party of the urban worker and the rural labourer. But I hate this government, deeply, totally, instinctively, as they have put the selfish interests of the newly-monied and propertied ahead of the common good. There is nothing more vile or harmful to a society, and especially to a Republic, then "socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor". Sadly, this has now become Ireland's official state ideology.