Leaving America? Yeah, right.

A link on this site (www.patobrien.net) directs people to information about how they might apply for and acquire Irish citizenship. Another link contains my email address.

Not surprisingly, given world circumstances, an increasing number of people are sending me inquiries asking how they might leave where they live, mainly the United States, and take up residence here in Ireland.

The rules for that process are not difficult to follow. And discovering whether you’re qualified for automatic Irish — and European Union — citizenship is pretty simple really: In plain terms, if a person has a parent or grandparent who was born on this island, they’re likely to be able to procure an Irish passport and full Irish citizenship.

That’s something I did some years back. Initially, I thought it’d be fun having a second citizenship, something not prohibited under either American or Irish law. But it wasn’t until I saw the pernicious effects of increasing control of all levels of America’s government by fundamentalist Christian crazies that my second passport took on new and more special meaning.

That became even more biting when it began to look like the main political cheerleaders of the extremist American right, the George Bush gang, might gain access to the White House.

At that point I took the leap and emigrated to Ireland, beginning an odyssey that has and continues to prove unpredictable.

There have been many milestones from back ‘home’ in my path while here in Ireland. There was the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, something the Irish considered absurd. ‘He’s just a man. What does anyone expect?’ many critics of that action here asked.

Then there was what smelled much like a coup d’état in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. ‘How can that happen in America?’ I was asked. ‘How can a state where Bush’s brother rules decide W is the new president?’ Damned if I knew the answers to those questions. I still don’t and it continues to look like a stolen election after all these years.

I sat with two mates and watched the horror of 9/11. One the neighbours in my building ran down the hall in his underwear to my door and screamed for me to follow back to his flat where two different televisions carried channels showing the worst carnage to occur in one instance in more than half a century. There were too many questions that day and afterwards to answer. They’ll never be fully explained.

The world watched the Bush gang plunge America toward war in Iraq. Irish people asked me if he was stupid enough to proceed on that ‘foolish’ course. I think I always knew the answer to that and I had a pretty good idea of how it would end up. I recalled the words of friends who were in the Vietnamese city of Hue in 1968 who described the horrors of urban combat. I related my opinion to Irish friends that nationwide city-based military action would result in mayhem beyond anyone’s expectations.

The Irish never condoned the American action in Iraq. They weren’t alone, of course. And they resented terribly the use of Shannon Airport for the transport of war materiel and troops to Middle East battle areas. And they stamped their feet in bitter prolonged frustration when it became known that supposed combatants were also being transported to uncertain fates in rendition planes refueling at Shannon.

Most recently we saw the conclusion of the 2008 presidential election with a Republican defeat pretty much universally applauded by Irish onlookers. The general opinion: enough is enough. The Bush era is about to end and no one here will mourn that change.

Oddly, now that the Bushmen are about to head for wherever those kind of people go after being disenfranchised I’m getting an increased number of questions from people interested in leaving America and living elsewhere. I wonder about the timing of that. Aren’t there better days possibly ahead now? I ask myself.

There are lots of easy answers, I guess, to their simple questions. But the real facts of life for those who would be American expatriates are harder to quantify and much more difficult to to answer. That’s doubly so in a world where economic security has become such a murky issue — another thing that can rightly be blamed on the regime of George Bush.

I suppose interest in life in other countries by Americans is growing, but by relatively miniscule numbers. Still, it’s good thing. It’s time that more from that side of the Atlantic looked beyond their shores and took a bigger interest on how the U.S. affects the world. And how the world reacts to and perceives America.

In the end, though, I have to wonder how transient that interest may turn out to be.

Updated 15.11.08

Election’s fine but who’s gonna pay for the last 8 years?

These are silly times indeed.

I just watched the first of the presidential election debates. Both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama danced around the issues for 90 minutes without saying much we haven’t already heard.

We heard platitudes on the supposed financial crisis spawned by Wall Street and other entities in the U.S. financial system.

The candidates had little really to say other than the financial matter needs to be fixed, supposedly through the doling some $700 billion out to the miscreants who caused the mess in the first place.

Then there was the war or wars discussions. McCain, who loves war and definitely loves the ’surge’ last year did everything but dance around in an American flag as he lauded the accomplishments in Iraq of U.S. troops and their commanding general, David Patreus.

Obama continues to remind he was against the war at the beginning and remains against it now. With that in mind, we shift further eastward, to the simmering mess in Afghanistan. Both of these would-be presidents agree that more needs to be done there. Send more troops, spend more money, escalate the mayhem and hope for the best. Why anyone would believe the lukewarm approach to dealing with those pesky Afghanis will be any more successful than a decade of messing about by a determined Soviet Union beggars the imagination.

Reeling back to the ‘financial crisis’ one really has to sit back and ask questions. What else can we do? Most people can’t make any sense out of how the sophisticated American equities and banking markets could march lemming-like toward disaster for years without anyone doing anything about it until the entire system hovered near implosion.

I suppose there are those who would be asking now why Congress hasn’t just leapt onto the salvation bandwagon and thrown all those troubled millionaires/billionaires a massive life preserver at the expense of taxpayers. I suppose those people would believe just about anything.

But maybe, just maybe, there are some in the U.S. Congress who have some common sense after all. Imagine, these impudent  bastards have actually questioned in some detail why their constituents should fund this massive bailout. Even as he is about to slither off into history, George Bush just can’t get any respect.

For a bit of perspective, the annual budget of the United States usually runs at least a couple of thousand finely typed pages of data and figures. The latest budget bill is on Capitol Hill right now and totals some $635 billion. Yet the Bush gang’s bailout bill for $700 billion plus contained just four pages of … well, pretty much nothing other than a ‘please give out the dough and piss off.’

Why anyone should have any real confidence that good will come of this ‘bailout’ is also a good question. There is nothing new in the mix that should begin rebuilding anyone’s confidence. The same regulatory machine that failed to prevent those in the banking and equities sectors is still in place without any changes having been made or even started to be made.

Neither of the two presidential candidates seem to be promising much change in regulating the greed and corruption that has brought America — and probably the rest of the world — to the brink of another massive depression.

After all, everyone sat by and watched the bankers and share sellers create this mess in the first place. Rather than try to give a damn about why things aren’t getting better, it may still be worth looking at a simplistic model of why things have gotten to this point.

Here’s the recipe for those who have brought us here:

• Borrow money at below-market cost;

• Lend it out as fast as possible to people who have no equity themselves in their real estate purchases (100 percent mortgages in many cases), folks who also have little likelihood of being able to repay their loans;

• Continue financing real estate, mainly home building, at a rate far in excess of what the market could absorb;

• Package up all this toxic debt and sell it as investments all over the planet;

• Grab the loot and run;

• Get out of the way and enjoy the fruits of your scheming as the system collapses.

The failed regulatory system that allowed this financial disaster to occur was the responsibility of the Bush regime. The failure in Afghanistan after nearly eight years is the responsibility of the Bush regime. The failure to deal honestly with the American people and take them into an illegal war in Iraq was a crime by the Bush regime.

The above list could be greatly lengthened. Notice a pattern?

Chinese hosts continue misdeeds at Olympics

As expected, the conduct of Chinese officials during the Olympics was predictable.

They cheated in the presentation of the overall spectacle in shameful manner. A little Chinese girl singing a maudlin song at the onset of the games turned out to be a lip-syncer who the totalitarians decided presented better than the real singer. Why? Because the original signer wasn’t pretty enough.

Part of the stunning fireworks at the opening of the games proved to be a fraud, concocted by software artists and presented as real when it was just a computer-generated illusion.

Meanwhile, in the competitions themselves, it turns out that the eligibility of some Chinese athletes  is questionable. Their ages, and hence, their size, appears to be falsified. This couldn’t be without the complicity of the communist government, which must issue false passports to these ineligible competitors beforehand.

Is this important? Well, yes. Smaller competitors, for one thing, are smaller and can overcome gravity more easily than their larger opponents.

One can only imagine the exploitative regimen necessary to get young children — talented for sure — to competition at the Olympics level.

What have Olympics organizers done to challenge the Chinese bullies in the aftermath just these misdeeds. Zero, as far as anyone can see.

Now, today, we’re watching news of Western journalists not only being denied access to covering Olympics-related activities, but actually being arresed and detained in those efforts.

These reporters and photographers were trying to cover a group of people protesting the Chinese government’s illegal occupation of Tibet. Sure, they were released, dirtied and bruised after their altercation with Chinese police, but the fact that there is no honoring of promises made earlier not to hamper foreign news coverage is a chilling reminder that this is an Olympic games that never should have been allowed to happen in this country.

The Chinese government promised time and again that the foreign media would be allowed to tell the story of the games and life surrounding it in an unfettered and uncensored manner. No one would have believed that fairy tale possible; no one should have. And now it has not happened.

There’s no solving the situation now. It’s just a matter of letting this shebang run on and run down. But there should be a clear warning to the rest of the world that this Chinese regime — no matter how capitalistic (read ravenously greedy) it appears, it’s really just a very ugly and sinister creature wrapped under a smiling mask.

To hell with the Olympics

Just a few days until the beginning of the Olympic Games in Beijing. I wish I could get excited. After all, these are usually happy moments where friends, foes and others around the world gather to supposedly shed their political problems amid the purity of athletic competition.

But that’s just bullshit, of course, and never more so than as the curtain readies to rise within this panorama of totalitarianism and propaganda.

First of all, China made a number of promises in order to be considered and then to be approved to host the games. In essence the country’s tyrannical dictators promised to let up for the duration of the games and at least let a modicum of information flow within and out of the country.

But they’ve done none of that. Quite the contrary. Chinese citizens haven’t a clue about where they are or who they are in the world, what their country is about or how this impending series of international games is just a huge political sham. Journalists visiting the country are finding their efforts throttled wherever and whenever the dictatorial government can figure out a way to impose their malignant will.

Just a couple of examples: Ability to access the Internet, a basic element of communications in this fast-paced era is compromised by a government hell-bent on restricting the flow of information in and out of China. And how about a South Korean journalist’s scoop in filming the audition of the Chinese opening ceremony only to find the totalitarians had intervened and gotten their dirty asses kissed by YouTube and others who withdrew the film from circulation? That’s pure crap.

We can only imagine the doublethink to come and we’ll probably never know how coverage of the games will be portrayed to the Chinese people themselves. Obviously, Chinese athletes will not ‘lose’ in any event; they’ll just compete very successfully. And is it a silly question to ask if Tibet will field a team at all?

While we on the topic of who’s in and who’s out, there is the issue of the Iraq team originally being disqualified. If there ever was a time for exceptions to bureaucratic and arbitrary rulings, this would be it. No one would see Iraq as a contender in anything, but it will be healthy to see divided sides in that mess coming together for a moment of athletic competition. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for their initial decisions on Iraq..

Anyway, for my part, I’m going to impose my own censorship on the whole damned thing. Since we can’t get unbiased coverage out of China I don’t plan to tune in at all. At the end of the day, it’s a joke; it’s like an Olympics being publicized by Disney. Why should anyone really give a damn who supposedly wins or loses any events. It’s all just a fantasy.

Self help for the truly hopeless

A lot of junk comes through the letter box here on a daily basis. Small armies of dark foreign people stuff fliers for pizza places ad other takeaways through the door. There are brochures from electronic equipment shops, dry cleaners, groceries and a constant stream of beggar pleas, some wanting money, others clothes or both, many purporting to send relief to Africa.

And then there’s the actual Irish postal system, which often brings the truly unexpected and often unwelcome material to the door..

Take an 80-page slick booklet, for instance, that came recently, entitled: Preparing for Major Emergencies, An Introduction. Disaster for Idiots.

The book opens with an introduction over the signature and photo of former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. His narrative opens with the note that ‘by sending this handbook to every home in the country, the Government seeks to provide reassurance that there are well thought out plans in place to be used in the event of a major emergency.’

In the pages that follow we’re given tips on what to do when we encounter things like flooding, exploding packages, pandemic influenza and nuclear incidents, among other potentially unhappy occurrences.

Some of the advice is very good as long as you’re not too bright to begin with. For instance, ‘If you find yourself near an explosion, get out of the vicinity as quickly and calmly as possible.’ No argument there. When there’s a flood, ‘remember: safety should always be your first concern.’ No kidding. Thanks a lot for that.

On the other hand, we don’t have to be too concerned with atomic disasters because the wind here predominantly blows eastward, the book notes. Yep, the breeze blows back towards, among other things, the Sellafield reactor 50 miles away in the UK that has one of the nuclear energy industry’s worst safety records. Critics have warned that a Chernobyl-like event at Sellafield could make a good part of Ireland’s east coast uninhabitable for a few thousand years. Blow winds blow!

Pandemic influenzas are a bit more concerning. If one of these intercontinental flus from hell visits here, we’re told to make sure we have enough food and paracetemol on hand. We’re also told to Worth Health Organization. I’ve been waiting for one of those for years already.

I don’t know what the budget was for this book, printed on shiny paper and nicely illustrated, but it certainly makes me all warm and fuzzy to think that someone out there in our government is worried about keeping us breathing when the worst is happening all around us.

And we thought no one cared.

Ah, the days of Spork and roses

When you’ve got it, flaunt it. Even if it’s something that makes a lot of people cringe. In this case, that would be Spam. Now I’m not talking about all that sickening, mailbox-clogging email we all get. This is about that venerable canned meat product, the stuff a lot of us ate when we didn’t have enough money for anything else.

Who’s flaunting it: Hormel, which apparently now owns Spam. And guess what: there’s a Spam museum. Really.

Hormel has the goods on this enterprise up proudly on its web site. And, I suppose, why shouldn’t it. Take a peek at the ‘Spam family of products’: http://www.hormelfoods.com/brands/spam/default.aspx

The real Museum of Spam, apparently complete with a stately building, is hidden away somewhere in Minnesota. but you can experience the true nostalgia that surrounds scrumptious Spam just by visiting its home on the web.

There’s even a digital Spam cookbook with some 20 or so goodies you can prepare at home deep, probably deep in the night. I’m personally gearing up to tuck into the Creamed Spam Plate Special. The recipe writer says it will feed 8, but I bet with a dozen pints or so on board I can eat the whole lot.

While contemplating the significance of discovering the Museum of Spam I recalled another food product of dubious distinction from yesteryear. I don’t know if it’s still around, but a product that came in a red tin the same size and style as a Spam used to be available north of the U.S. border in Canada. It was called Spork. If memory serves me Spork couldn’t be imported into the United States because it contained a hair-raising list of revolting ingredients not welcome down south.

I wonder if somewhere in the windswept Northwest Territories is a Museum of Spork. Food for thought. Sort of.

What I’d give for a tin of Spork right now. And what pig parts went into making Spork? ALL parts, probably.

Thoughts on Claiming Irish Citizenship

Growing numbers of Americans must be getting more uncomfortable with the status quo there these days. At least that may be one reason hits on my web site’s area on the topic of obtaining dual citizenship are rising dramatically in number lately.

I suppose it’s not surprising that interest in Irish citizenship is rising, given the number of Americans (and others) who are eligible. Even the Irish government estimates that between 30 million and 40 million American citizens could claim citizenship here under the so-called ‘granny’ clause.

Under current interpretation of Irish contitutional law anyone who has either a parent or a grandparent who was born on this island is eligible to claim citizenship. In fact, a person who has a parent born anywhere on this island is automatically a citizen in the Republic of Ireland.

And anyone who has or had one grandparent born here can probably claim full Irish (and European Union) citizenship by registering through the Foreign Births Registry.

I’ve covered this topic in some detail in pages on my site (www.patobrien.net), but it appears that a number of ugly worms have crawled into this lovely little apple that’s otherwise practically free for the plucking.

I’m speaking about the growing number of companies … err racketeers … advertising to help people seeking a second passport to achieve their goal. I don’t know how similar processes work with other countries, but in the case of the Irish system very little help from anyone is necessary to complete the process and obtain dual citizenship.

As I have responded in many emails to people who have found my web site through search engines, you don’t need anyone or any business to help you in gaining Irish citizenship — if you meet the basic qualifications outlined above. As long as you’ve got about $200 to spend, you can read and write, and you’ve got the patience to do the necessary and simple one- or two-generation genealogical research you can sail through this process.

Specifically, if you can collect the necessary birth certificates, marriage licenses and, if it’s the case, death certs, you can complete this process and have a nice new red passport delivered to your door. It takes about a year and, by the way, having dual citizenship is perfectly legal for Americans.

So, whatever you do, if this sounds like something you’re interested in doing, don’t pay anyone a retainer or fee to do what any literate person can do on his or her own.

So long, Yankee dollar . . .

Every business day for the past week the American dollar has dipped ever lower in value. This latest steep decline follows many months of continued reduced value in the American currency in markets worldwide.

Who could have imagined a euro whose dollar value is now $1.56?

All numbers and things considered, the buck has plummeted in buying power here in Ireland against the euro by some 65-75 percent since  2002. The dollar has also slumped against a number of other key monetary units, including the yen. Where the buck’s plunge will level off remains unknown.

Great going by the Bush regime. Talk about minding the business of others while things go to hell at home!

Through corruption and lies, they got their war. They also got a recession, a massive mess within the U.S. banking/home-loan system and hugely increased energy and food costs.   

Real stewardship across the board.