WHAT, ANOTHER YEAR?

I can’t see cleary now

Now nobody at Hot Press Central ever celebrates another person’s misfortune. We have enough troubles of our own, and like all good souls who’ve had the blues, we wouldn’t wish them even on our own worst enemy. Even so...

Father Michael Cleary was cast in an old mould. Said by admirers to be a kindly and considerate pastor to the communities he served, he was also a man who believed that if you couldn’t persuade people to see things your way, then you should frighten them into doing so.

In this spirit he intervened in the divorce and abortion debates. His allegations that the X case had been manufactured to frustrate the democratically expressed wishes of the people was despicable beyond words. One wonders how he would have seen the recent exposures of paedophile priests, and clerical cover-ups. Given the bravado with which he told Hot Press that he could go down Leeson Street any night and pick up a woman if he wanted to, one daren’t imagine.

did the earth move for you?

People who live in Los Angeles make a virtue out of living on the fault line. The very impermanence of the earth’s crust may be seen as the ultimate metaphor for Tinsel Town. Well, very early this year, an earthquake struck. Big enough to shake the shit out of everything that could shake, but not THE Big One that everyone awaits with a mixture of fear and fascination, it introduced a new fault line in the San Fernando valley.

So the threat of annihilation still hangs over, or rather lies in wait under, California. And biggish earthquakes have been increasing in frequency in the last few years.

By the way, don’t let our distance fool you. Our houses may still stand, but believe me, we’ll feel it!! The impact on the global economy will be very significant, and possibly catastrophic, if California slides into the ocean (as the mystics and statistics say it will). Insurance companies will have to cash in vast amounts of stocks and bonds. And interest rates will go through the roof, as punters borrow to rebuild.

But that is in the ha’penny place beside what would happen if Japan were hit by a Big One. As could well happen. Indeed, this year a very large earthquake did strike the ocean bed to the north of the country, setting off a tsunami tidal wave. As it happens, the island which took the brunt of the wave was sparsely populated, so not too many died. But we wouldn’t want to be too complacent..

Indeed, you could say that about the Emerald Isle. In November, an earthquake measuring 2.1 on the Richter Scale occurred on the Inishowen peninsula. As it happens, Ireland is a lot quieter in this regard than Britain. This may not be good news. Some scientists have speculated that there may be a build-up which could lead to a bigger event.

As recently as 5000 years ago, there may have been Big Ones in Ireland measuring up to 7 on the Richter Scale. It is sometimes seen as a danger sign when areas go quiet. “Nowhere is absolutely safe” according to Professor Jacob of the School of Cosmic Physics in Dublin. Given the toxic sludge at the bottom of the Irish Sea, and the horrors that have been buried for future generations in tips and dumps both here and in the UK, we should perhaps take note of the good professor’s timely warning. That would be prudent, wouldn’t it?

Adams’ Apple

The great leap forward which began with the “Hume/Adams talks” and was embedded by the Irish and British Governments in the Downing Street Declaration continued apace. The first big set piece of the year was when Gerry Adams went to New York.

He was feted as a partisan leader, a man of destiny, a fighter come in from the cold. The positive vibes drove unionists and Fine Gael wild. Other observers were on the chilly side, but seemed to understand that America has a pretty simple approach to these matters (okay, who’s the good guy?) and has in fact come a long long way.

As it happened, his hosts also invited the unionists to put their side of the argument, but they rather sniffily declined. This was not smart, but let’s face it, it was the established parties that were asked. Later in the year, first Ken McGuinness and then a group of five from the paramilitary end of loyalism took up the challenge. They were surprised by many things, including the respect with which they were heard. A handshake with Irish President Mary Robinson went down well too. In the intervening period, they have turned out to be a great deal more enlightened than the middle and upper class rulers of yore. Interesting times, these.

the law of the gun

In death as in life. Just as the peace process began to take real shape, Dominic McGlinchey was gunned down in the street. Ye know not the day nor the hour.

He was not a man who had made a lot of friends, but he had certainly left his mark. His comrades (a much more applicable word) were as likely to fall out with one another as with the forces of the Crown.

McGlinchey was a desperado, and the gun was the central motif in his life. All that may or may not have been behind him since his release from prison. There were dark mutterings about a new gang, but nothing was substantiated. The hail of bullets consigned such speculation to the academic dustbin.

Some months later another desperado was coldly despatched in a fusillade. This time it was the alleged Dublin master criminal Martin Cahill. And any initial confusion as to who had murdered him was quickly dispelled. It was a clinical IRA hit. What was less certain was why. The subsequent ceasefire suggested that the IRA were settling old scores before putting the weapons away, but although it was known that Cahill had scant regard for the republicans, nobody advanced a plausible theory as to why they would want to waste him.

It seems likely to remain a mystery, unless some latterday Tom Barry writes his memoirs. Martin Cahill was undoubtedly involved in many unpleasant activities. But he had another side. Those who knew him (in Dublin in particular) spoke of a complex and puckishly humorous man burning with resentment at the injustice of the world and cherishing a deep belief in the importance of family. Nothing is ever simple.

His death grabbed the headlines, but it wasn’t the only time that someone was blasted. One of the more disturbing trends of 1994 was the ease with which criminals took to the gun. What with the General off the scene and heroin making an unwelcome return, chances are that the next few years will see more rather than less shootings. It is not a welcome prospect.

death by misadventure

1994 was an annus horribilis for the establishment across the water. There were further sorry tales of the charmless Royals, not to mention a host of other aristocratic undesirables getting into one unspeakable mess after another. And the Tory Party, not to be outdone, revealed itself to be up to its collective gizzard in sleaze and corruption. If we thought we were bad here...

In the midst of all this there was one genuinely touching event, the pathetic death of Stephen Milligan MP, in his underpants and garters, with a plastic bag over his head, a satsuma in his mouth and a length of flex around his neck.

For once the sleazebag journalists of the tabloids were wrong. No, it wasn’t murder and no, it wasn’t a gay bondage scene that had gone horribly horribly wrong.

Nobody knows for sure, of course, but it seems that he was just having a private pull, and that the bag and flex were to deprive his brain of oxygen, which allegedly heightens sexual pleasure. The satsuma? Keeps the mouth from clamping shut..

But he blew it. As, apparently, do quite a lot of males in the UK. Don’t try this at home kids.

Many thought it was a shame that a pretty harmless bloke died while (allegedly) doing to himself what so many extremely harmful bastards are determined to do to the rest of us, literally and metaphorically. Really, there’s no justice.

cowEn bull

The big sleaze was one of the dominant political stories in the UK in 1994, and with considerable justification. But not here. Mind you, it wasn’t for lack of effort.

I mean, you couldn’t say that Ireland’s political and business class doesn’t deserve investigation. The Beef Tribunal put paid to any notions of complacency on that score. And there were others too. The last to surface was Reynolds loyalist Brian Cowen, who forgot he had shares in a mining company to whom he was giving a licence. Tut tut.

But the best thing about the story was the name Cowengate. The rest was pretty dull. Even Cowen’s stockbroker Shane Ross (a member of the Opposition!) weighed in on his side, and said that his forgetfulness was quite plausible. Moreover, he said so in that scourge of the Coalition, the Sunday Independent. Ah yes, but in the last days of the Reynolds era, the mud stuck!

the unholy land

The Middle East took a number of giant steps this year, but towards what? The peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis moved on a notch, with Palestinian police entering Gaza. But the fundamentalist Hamas movement set about undermining the cosy arrangement.

Suicide missions, bombs on buses, demonstrations, confrontations. There was a lot of smoke and dust.

The cause of peace was not helped by the action of Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 50 praying Palestinians in their mosque. It provoked an interesting debate about terminology: to Israel and America it was a “tragedy” caused by a lone deranged gunman. All these terms isolate the outrage from its cultural and social hinterland, and effectively absolve the state and society.

But to Arabs it was the latest in a long line of terrorist outrages that went back to the Stern Gang and the Irgun and beyond. They pointed out that more Palestinians. The Israelis have died violently since the foundation of Israel in 1948.

It is a sobering thought, as Arafat and Rabin grapple with history instead of each other.

the horror, the horror . . .

One of the abiding fascinations for us media-saturated citizens of the world is the way we hear of disasters and horrors. And inevitably we must wonder are things getting more and more horrific or are we just hearing about them across ever greater distances and ever shorter timespans.

We now get to know of earthquakes in China almost as they happen. We see video shots of war atrocities in Bosnia, Azerbaijan or Rwanda as they happen and side by side with the Minister for Environment opening a new bypass in Swinford. And we see fact and fiction mix inextricably: Geoffrey Dahmer and the Silence of The Lambs.

But maybe there has always been monsters. Maybe those medieval horror stories were allegories of serial murder, cannibalism and child sex abuse. Who knows?

One of 1994’s most gruesome and awful revelations was of the murderous activities of Gloucester builder Frederick West. The police dug pathetic parcel after pathetic parcel out of his concrete floor, and from other long-forgotten burial sites. If memory serves me well, they found and identified eleven, but nobody will ever know the true toll.

Some of the stories were worse than heartbreaking. A young woman last seen waiting for a bus eighteen years ago. A hitch-hiker. A Scottish woman who simply disappeared. His own first wife. His daughter.

Not even the gross humour unleashed (one of his neighbours wanted to print and sell a teeshirt saying “Nightmare On Cromwell Street: Freddy’s Back!”) could alleviate the horror.

And as the year went on, the activities of other serial killers and serial abusers were revealed. Numb and bewildered, we still have to agree that, yes, in the end its better that we know. Because then we might be able to act earlier next time. It’s a forlorn hope, but it’s all we’ve got.

remember john fee

Now that we have a genuine, if still fledgling, peace process, we are inclined to put the past behind us. That’s probably for the best. But it wouldn’t do to get too forgetful.

For example, last Spring, long after the Downing Street Declaration, but well before hopes of a ceasefire were based on anything other than pure optimism, Crossmaglen SDLP councillor John Fee was set upon by a group of masked men outside his house and beaten to a paste.

Mr Fee was a noted critic of the IRA, and (despite protestations by members of Sinn Fein) it appears certain that it was that organisation’s South Armagh unit that was responsible.

In these days of convergence and dialogue and what-have-you, we won’t keep harping on about such unacceptable behaviour. But it won’t do any harm to file them away for future reference.

After all, if the IRA had their way, some of these thugs could be members of a future police force in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. The fact that a certain number of the RUC are also thugs is no justification for acceding to that. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

FARRZA ITALIA

As the old order in Italy collapsed in a welter of corruption and scandal, with the old pillars of the society desperately trying to reinvent themselves in order to hold onto some vestiges of their former powers, a new shining knight emerged. Silvio Berlusconi, multi-millionaire businessman, owner of a media empire and AC Milan, entered politics.

He promised a new dawn. A new politics. Conservative in a capitalist kind of way, he hoped to halt the seemingly unstoppable slide towards the left caused by widespread public contempt for the corrupt buffoons of the Christian Democrat party.

And he succeeded. The money worked, and his Forza Italia, in coalition with a number of other rightist parties, took power. From chieftain of a business empire to chieftain of Italy. Perhaps this is the modern way: boundaries are more blurred than ever. Some companies even have their own police forces. But that’s a story for another day.

Right now, only months later, Italians have recognised their folly, as the spotlight of suspicion gets ever closer to Berlusconi himself. Quite why they fell for him in the first place is a matter of some concern. Still suckers for charismatic charmers, I suppose.

dance away

Unbelievable! There went the Irish, selecting a bittersweet piece of rock’n’roll nostalgia for Eurovision 1994, sung by two downbeat troubadours singing like there was just themselves in the room, the kind of remember-when ballad that doesn’t win these kind of Europop froth-outs, and . . . Just their luck to push the right button once again!!

What do we have to do to lose!??!

Whatever, it couldn’t happen to a more agreeable pair. And it brought a bonus. Riverdance was extraordinary, a mesmeric, swaggering blend of traditional and modern, with music and dance and technique and stagecraft and design and technological brilliance combining to stunning effect. Worth every penny!

A PROPER CHARLO

Distance lends the most wonderful sense of perspective. When it first appeared, Roddy Doyle’s Family caused a sensation. Dublin life in the raw, the series pulled no punches. In Charlo, played with great conviction by Seán McGinley, Doyle created a new demon figure. Touch of the Charlo, people said of good-for-nothing blaggards.

But Charlo wasn’t just some cardboard cut-out baddie. As the tale unfolded it rang truer and truer to the experience of many families living on the margins of Irish society.

This Family weren’t role models for a new society, but in their halting seizure of control over their own lives, they hesitatingly sketched a path for many.

NATURE BITES BACK

The middle of summer saw a number of reports which, taken together, suggest that humanity’s domination of the earth is perhaps less than we might have imagined. In North America, for example, the buffalo have returned to the Great Plains. Thus, one of the Native American prophecies is fulfilled.

But that ain’t all. In August a pure white buffalo calf was born on an obscure farm in the US West. And that’s a prophecy fulfilled as well.

In fact, to native Americans this white buffalo (not an albino, you’ll note) is a kind of messiah. Its birth introduces a new age, they say. And so, pilgrims have been coming from all over America to see it. Folks are searching for something to believe in, I suppose, and after all the dread things we’ve heard about in the last few years, a divinely forecast buffalo is as good a symbol of regeneration as any.

Another, rather less wholesome, sign of natural reclamation is the colonisation by coyotes of the outer limits of Los Angeles.

Apparently these lean, mean and beautiful critters have moved into the suburbs, and have begun to exert canine codes .. like when one man came into his garden where his infant daughter was asleep, to find a glittery-eyed coyote no more than six feet from the cradle ...

Baby Azaria where are you!

AGGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS

The European elections gave the then Government of the Republic the usual mid-term root in the arse. The big winners were the Greens, but not a lot was revealed.

The best fun was internal to two of the smaller parties. The local rivalry between Bernie Malone and Orla Guerin in Labour was shrewishly watchable, but was in the ha’penny place alongside the real scrap in the PeeDees.

You remember the story? When Diz O’Melley resigned as leader of the party, Pat Cox was out of the country. Cox felt that O’Malley had deliberately timed his move so that Mary Harney would have a head start in the leadership race. O’Malley also maintained that he had no further ambitions, such as, ehhhmmmm, Europe.

You could say that Cox paid him back in spades, but I doubt that it would really reflect the depth of feeling involved, heh heh heh.

SOFTLY, SOFTLY . . .

And suddenly, we’ve all gone stark staring information crazy. Those superhighways are the talk of the town. CD-Roms to beat the band. Pal, we’ve gone interactive!

The pace of change in computers is amazing. Which is part of the problem. Buy something this week, it may be obsolete by January.

Now, I know I exaggerate. But you know what I’m at.

I also think we may need to become very selective about the amounts of information we try to use. You can only deal with so much. So, what are you going to do? Get the computer to think for you?

Still, a lot of lonely people out there have discovered a community on-line. And computer technology has allowed for calculations on a scale which shows up very interesting patterns of human organisation and behaviour. Not to mention music and design. And the neat little machine on which this is being drafted.

So, they’re okay. The question is, what are we to use computers for? How will we define our role vis-a-vis this technology?

The is not the first time the Irish have addressed such a question. Let’s take the printing press, as revolutionary in its time as the computer is in ours. You could say that it put a lot of monk illustrators and scriveners out of business. I mean, everyone could buy one of these new-fangled printed bibles in a shop!!

Well, in time we got a handle on it. We didn’t attempt to compete with the hardware manufacturers too much. We concentrated on software production: Sheridan, Stoker, Yeats, Joyce, Shaw. The list goes on. All software producers: poetry and novels and journalism and so on are the software to the printing press’ hardware.

Know what ‘um sayin’?

You need to recognise what you’re good at, and then go and do it. Why mix it with the big hardware crews? That scene updates at a ridiculous rate anyway. And the money is in software as well. Let’s make money!

COOK UP, IT’S . . . AARGH!

Our fragile hold on the planet was underlined during the summer when Comet Shoemaker-Levy gave us what was, in cosmic terms, a very close shave, and pounded into Jupiter.

That was okay. What unnerved a lot of people was the realisation that there’s hundreds, and possibly thousands, of these things out there, and among them are flying rocks the size of small mountains. That’s the sort of projectile that makes a very big crater, and raises very great amounts of dust and smoke into the atmosphere.

Well, they are travelling at over 100,000 kph.

The biggest of them could even knock us off our course. Indeed, most of what we call asteroids may actually be the bits of a small planet that was whacked in just such a fashion. The other bits have been roped into Jupiter’s orbit as moons.

Or not, as the case may be. Perhaps it’s the other way round, and Jupiter’s vast gravity field acts as a kind of shield.

But to get back to the dust. It was just such a collision that did for the dinosaurs. And for all humanity’s self belief, it probably wouldn’t fare a whole lot better.

Cheerful prospect, eh?

THE SQUINTING WINDOWS

It was a sign of the times. There wasn’t much else happening. And the international media are more familiar with Ireland nowadays. All those supermodels, you see.

And the Cranberries? Well, they’re international rock stars, right? To yer average Paparazzo, that’s the same scene. So, when the snappers and hacks heard Dolores O’Riordan was getting married, well . . .

They turned up looking for shots of Naomi and Christy and all the rest of the circus. But of course, it was just a local girl having a local wedding. Admittedly, the dress wasn’t exactly standard issue, but so what?

So nothing, except that big news was a bit thin on the ground, and the local girl’s wedding was splashed all over the world.

And the dress gave rise to a bit of tut-tutting. Pathetic, really. And it was echoed by some of the comments on the radio (especially on Liveline) after the dailies all published photos of Bertie Ahern, just after his election as leader of Fianna Fail, arriving with his “companion” Celia Larkin at the Cairde Fail dinner in Dublin.

The phone-in sounded organised to this listener. It really did. After the third caller, I thought, “These people are all connected”. As though a group like Family Solidarity arranged for members to phone en masse, thereby giving the impression that far more people were offended than actually were.

It made a sad contrast with the sang froid with which the French greeted the news that President Mitterand was the father of a “natural” daughter by his mistress. Now aged 20, the young woman is publicly acknowledged, and accompanies him to many functions. So what, the French asked.

Well, I doubt if it’s of much concern to Bertie Ahern one way or the other, but for what it’s worth, only the far right of the Catholic movement are bothered. And to be honest, they’d be a lot more usefully occupied rooting out the hidden vipers in the Church itself (about whom we have begun to hear the truth) than bothering with those who live openly according to their lights.

TREES’ COMPANY

For the mighty greenwoods, some good news at last. After 18 years of argument, negotiation and community action and fundraising, the great oak forest at Coolattin was saved. Sadly, it is only a fraction of what it once was.

The long story had its twists and turns. And some weird moments too, as when Charles Haughey flew over the area in 1987 . . .

The baron of Kinsealy, well known for his conservationist instincts towards primordial Irish symbols, was refused entry to the wood by the owners. It marked a turning point: orders were immediately issued to prevent further felling. The tide was turned.

Artists, musicians, journalists, politicians and above all ordinary, concerned citizens pitched in. Some saw the oak as an ancient symbol of Ireland. Others saw them as a symbol of the earth under threat from the avaricious intentions of capital. Whatever, a tree is one of the most perfect living things, and an oak is one of the greatest of all trees.

Just think about how closely our human destiny has been intertwined with trees. That, after all, is where we came from. And the vital function they fulfil, of binding the earth and converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, is essential for our very survival. Now, having stopped that depredation, we have another task: let each one of us resolve to plant a tree every year, either directly, or through some form of charitable consortium.

You could call it benign self-interest.

THE STATE OF GOOD HOPE

This was the year in which democracy finally came to South Africa. April 27th was the date for the first ever all-race governmental elections and the day that one of the last stakes was driven into the heart of the institutionalised white supremacy which had held sway for three centuries.

In late 1993, the multi-party talks to hammer out a new constitution were eventually completed. The ANC and the white National Party agreed to share power for five years after the 1994 elections in which all of South Africa’s 22.7 million citizens were entitled to vote. After that, normal democratic rules will apply.

In the run up to polling day, the Inkatha Freedom Party threatened to boycott the elections but, following last minute talks with the ANC, agreed to participate. As April 27th approached, a number of right wing groups tried to intimidate black voters with a series of bomb and gun attacks but were largely unsuccessful. Incidentally, the one-line voting instruction on the ballot paper was written in all of the unprecedented 11 languages, from Xhosa to Tswana, now officially recognised under the new constitution.

A month later, Nelson Mandela accepted his seal of office as President of the new South Africa and proudly led his government (which included among its ranks the former head of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, Kadar Asmal) into the parliament building in Pretoria. Now, the real battle begins – the drive to eradicate the remaining vestiges of white supremacy from the soul of the country, and to finally bring some measure of genuine economic equality to the people of South Africa.

THE HORSE IS BACK IN TOWN

Smack is back. That’s the depressing end-of-year verdict from a number of those working on the ground in Dublin’s inner city. The gardaí made several high profile seizures of large heroin hauls but the drug is now more widely available (and cheaper) on the streets of the capital than ever before.

common censor

1994 was the year of censors working overtime in Ireland. The film censor, Seamus Smith, reminded all of us of the dark, repressive forces that lurk just below the surface of Irish society by using the preposterous powers invested in his office to ban two films. One was Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, the other was UFO starring Roy Chubby Brown. As the year ended, the video censor got in on the act and refused a certificate to the Madonna/Harvey Keitel movie, Dangerous Games. Meanwhile, on TV every night of the week, young impressionable children are continually exposed to the hideous schlock horror of Oireachtas Report.

final credits roll for jarman

The film world is a poorer place this Christmas for the loss of Derek Jarman who died this year from an AIDS-related illness. The work of the director who brought us such movies as Sebastian, Jubilee and Caravaggio was often infuriating, difficult and experimental but was never less than compelling, honest and beautifully shot.

step forward NEWT GINGRICH

In 1994, we also learned to our chagrin that even if the Cold War had ended, it didn’t mean that America had stopped electing outlandish, whacko politicians. Step forward Rep. Newt Gingrich, the first Repubican speaker of the House in 46 years, a man whose many abrasively reactionary policies included reopening orphanages and closing down America’s public broadcasting network.

White males hate feckless unmarried mothers, especially if they’re black, was one message to be gleaned from the US mid-term elections, a political holocaust that devastated President Clinton’s prospects. As this happened, an American sociologist, Charles Murray – incidentally, a friend of Rupert Murdoch – was peddling a book which argued that blacks had lower IQ’s than whites. Racism was back albeit in a new academic disguise.

Many of these frauds called themselves new liberatarians who wanted to cut taxes and hack away at the State and return America to the most vicious Victorian values before the notion of the welfare state was even invented. But, of course, the defence budget would be boosted. Not surprisingly, Gingrich himself epitomized these contradictions. The economy of his own congressional district was totally dependent on defence industries, while this champion of family values had proposed divorce to his first wife while she lay in a hospital bed suffering from cancer.

But then, listening to Rush Limbaugh and all those other poisonous pundits in their syndicated radio squalor was making white males mad as hell. Vengence was loosed on the land; despite or because of Murray’s questionable theories about IQ – similar tests would have found Northern Catholics dumber than their Protestant neighbours – America certainly wasn’t evolving to higher intelligence. Instead it would probably splinter all over the Internet.

ALAS! SMITH AND BLAIR

Britain mourned the death of John Smith, then Labour elected Tony Blair as its new leader, a “revisionist” which, decoded in Irish terms, meant he was slightly to the left of Michael McDowell and probably the best leader Fine Gael never had.

As Labour’s Home Office spokesman, Blair had accquiesced in the draconian Criminal Justice Bill which confiscated the civil rights of travellers, rave fans and indeed anybody who might protest against the latest motorway to be driven through their back garden. The Tories produced poison; Blair sugared the pill. Be sure that if John Major’s government proposed offenders should be consumed in boiling oil, Blair’s only objection would be that they weren’t given the option of being boiled in olive oil of the virgin pressed variety.

And then there was Michael Portillo: words fail us for those who confused his Cambridge veneer of arrogance for intelligence. Britain is up shit creek. The question is: in 1995, will anyone be able to find the paddle?

the european dis-union

That place on the map that we used to call Yugoslavia continued to be the victim of bloody, unsteady turmoil. The Croats now aligned with Bosnian Sarajevo government and the Serbs seemed – and seemed was the operative word – to be divided but in the Balkans, alliances were temporary and who knew if the various factions wouldn’t find new formations with which to continue the slaughter.

Fairweather friends were no help. The UN was paralysed, NATO was divided, the Europeans dithered and the Americans shouted loud and contradictory advice from the sidelines. So the Bosnian Serbs sat it out, doubtless thanking their lucky stars that there was no oil in the former benighted provinces of Yugoslavia.

So as Yugoslavian divisions mirrored European ones, what was most frightening was that the Continent seemed headed back to the squabbling divisions of pre-war diplomacy, when the major European powers each had their own freelance foreign policy and the tyrants exploited the disunity. Satirizing those ’30s divisions, the Czech author, Karel Capek wrote a prophetic novel, The War Of The Newts. It has even one odder echo, today. Yes, even Newt Gingrich has a policy on Bosnia!

Happy Christmas.

park life

The thin line between public and private was breached many times in 1994. And some of the complacency that the media in Ireland over their circumspection regarding that boundary was blown apart when allegations began to surface about a member of the Government having been stopped by the Gardai at a well-known homosexual cruising stretch in the Phoenix Park.

Many threads came into play. Word had it that some of the UK papers that are aggressively promoting themselves in Ireland had the details and weren’t at all squeamish about hauling Irish public life into the gutter, so the Irish media loosened their bowels and let it all out. Gerry Ryan’s outburst “will we nail the bastard” was by no means the most extreme. A miserable, wretched episode.

Emmet Stagg, the minister in question, outed himself after a rather Pilatic admonition from Jim Kemmy. And as the entrails of the tale were picked over, it looked increasingly as though someone in the Gardai had leaked the story. It was even rumoured that a far right Roman Catholic cabal was conspiring to discredit leftist and liberal members of parliament.

A great deal of bitterness surfaced. Pat Cox, then a Progressive Democrat, reacted with typical vigour and unexpected venom, hoping that the Minister would out the Garda who had leaked the story.

In the end all things were possible and none were proven. But a new and evil snake was in the garden. And I’m not talking about sex.

DISCOVERING RWANDA

It seems incredible to contemplate, but at this time last year, most of us knew next-to-nothing about Rwanda. A few may have remembered troubles in the past, and it had also been mentioned in connection with the emergence of AIDS, but for the most part we wouldn’t have known where to find it on a map. That’s all changed now.

For sheer and unmitigated horror, the butchery that occurred in a few months in Rwanda in 1994 dwarfed virtually every other outrage in human history. Observers now reckon that 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed. And that means it outscales even the Holocaust.

Moreover (and this is not in any way to diminish the slaughter of the Jews) almost all were despatched by hand, with machetes. It was not so much mass murder as murder en masse.

It went further than the Nazis, in that very many of the victims were known to their murderers. The killers plotted their actions, indeed trained for them. It was genocide carried out at the personal level.

And nothing we have seen this blood-soaked century – the slaughter of a European generation in World War I, the obliteration of millions of peasant farmers by Stalin, the Holocaust, the atom bomb, the Congo, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia or the Sudan – prepared us.

The only comparison is with Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, and, just as “Great” Powers were willing to work with the butchers of the Khmer Rouge, so too are some prepared to sup with the devils of the Hutu militias.

What we heard of in 1994 was just the latest episode. It’s unlikely that it’s the last.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

Trouble that had been brewing for years beneath the surface of the Irish industrial sector erupted dramatically in 1994.

Global changes in the aviation world, for instance, brought a fleet of problems home to roost in the hangars of Dublin Airport, with the row over TEAM Aer Lingus being the most public of these. Mass redundancies were threatened, Minister Brian Cowen dug his heels in and the protests of the workers intensified. Labour TDs, particularly those from the North County Dublin area, who had made rash promises about the future of TEAM during the last General Election campaign found themselves in a sticky position. After much wrestling of conscience, four Labour TDs eventually took a public stand against the government’s approach but their opposition was largely symbolic. As of now, the TEAM Aer Lingus situation has merely been diverted and is still circling above us somewhere, waiting for a chance to reland.

Similarly, the crisis in Irish Steel may have been temporarily staunched but it is certainly not healed. Sooner or later, Irish governments are going to have to face the fact that many of our most labour intensive industries operate in markets that have been totally transformed by technology during the past decade. We either prepare to bring ourselves up to speed or else we just stand still and watch the ground crumble beneath our feet.

HOLY TERROR

In a year that was a bit short of laughs, the Hog would like to salute a truly hilarious bit of madness. Yes, Liam Fay’s priestly habit certainly got ‘em rolling in the aisles. That photo of himself and Des Hanafin . . . Ah yes.

But I’d say that after the awful revelations of the last couple of weeks, he’d be a bit slower to do it today. And the assistant in the chemist’s shop from whom he bought condoms, well, I’d say she’d have another thought or two as well!?!

Oho now!!

What’s that you say father??

Gwan, I’ll give you condoms...

SUPER SONIA

Once Italy had been dispatched, the World Cup went a bit flat for a lot of people. But the great popular tide of support for De Boys In Green has meant that other Irish athletes and sports stars don’t often get the attention their achievements deserve.

The most obvious case is that of Sonia O’Sullivan, who demonstrated during the summer that she is among the greatest middle distance runners ever.

Moreover, she topped last years silver medal in the World Cup by taking the gold medal in the European Championship.

A mighty feat. And all the more extraordinary for the very solitude of the sport. You are pretty much on your own when the questions are asked. Congratulations are in order.

SMIRNOFF WITH HIS HEAD

Many things have been said of Boris Yeltsin over the years. That he is clairvoyant isn’t one of them. But when his plane touched down at Shannon it was as if he knew that Albert wouldn’t be around for much longer. For reasons which are still unclear, he stayed on the plane, while the massed and serried ranks of Irish worthies cooled their heels, and more besides, on the tarmac outside the plane.

His officials said he was ill. He said he was just asleep. Others whispered dark rumours about his intake of vodka. Who knows. But it certainly made for one of the year’s weirder episodes.

HIERARCHY SINK TO NEW LOW

“It never dawned on anyone that the victim was going to suffer because of sexual abuse.” – Rev. Laurence Ryan, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin.

“Most of it was just uncle stuff.” – Fr. Brendan Smyth (in an interview with RTE’s Joe Duffy)

There are only two ways to look at it. Either the Catholic hierarchy in this country are callous fools who believe that priests who bugger children are doing no real harm. Or else, they are callous conmen who believe that priests who bugger children have to be protected from the law because of the dangers of bad publicity.

In 1994, a dam burst and a flood of allegations of child molestation by clerics poured forth and engulfed almost every institution in the State, up to and including the Government. As the year ends, the credibility of the Irish hierarchy is in tatters after myriad revelations of collusion, cover-up and gross negligence at the highest levels. It has already been dubbed by some within the church as “the worst crisis since the Reformation.”

Topping the list of outrages, of course, was the extraordinary case of Fr. Brendan Smyth, first highlighted on UTV’s Counterpoint. For probably more years than anyone will ever know, this Norbertine priest has been sexually abusing children both in the Republic and in the North. When his clerical colleagues became aware of allegations against him, they did nothing to curtail his behaviour. In fact, in latter years, he was even recommended for a chaplaincy in a Kerry hospital were he would be guaranteed to come into contact with the very young and vulnerable.

This pattern of tacit collaboration by church officials has been repeated in dozens of other cases involving known paedophile priests. Even Cardinal Cahal Daly has admitted that he knew about complaints against Smyth before he was arrested and charged. The commandment is obviously that the abused must turn the other cheek while the Church contents itself with just turning a blind eye.

After the RUC had investigated allegations against Brendan Smyth in their jurisdiction, they sent a request to the office of the Irish Attorney General for the priest’s immediate extradition to the North. For reasons best known to themselves, the AG Harry Whelehan and/or his staff then proceeded to lose/sit on/make paper aeroplanes with this request for over seven months. The delay would have been even longer had Fr. Smyth’s solicitor not persuaded the cleric to surrender himself to the RUC. Smyth is now serving four years in Magilligan prison and is being interviewed on an ongoing basis about other allegations.

By now, you are only too well aware of the political fallout of this scandal and of the slew of resignations it triggered in its wake. In the year and years ahead, however, it will be the Irish Catholic church themselves who are going to have to face up to the most damning implications of this mass slaughter of innocence.

It will, and should, cost them dearly. Consider this: In the U.S., over 500 priests have been convicted of sex attacks on children during the past ten years. So far, the American church has paid out an estimated $500 million in compensation.

Beyond mere financial recompense, however, there will be a much more punitive toll. This will be paid in terms of the respect and influence which the Catholic hierarchy have been slavishly accorded for too long in this country.

Things are never going to be the same again.

THE HEAT IS ON

It appears that the safe sex campaign in San Francisco is bearing fruit. The number of new cases of AIDS has fallen this year.

Also, our wisdom about the disease slowly develops. For example, doctors in the UK have now identified what they believe was the first verifiable case of AIDS there. It was a bloke called David Carr, and he was admitted to Manchester Royal Hospital with a fever on April 8th, 1959. That’s right, seven weeks after Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. Coincidence or what?

But seriously, that date changes a whole lot of things.

For a start, his was the first verifiable case. There may have been others, but nobody knows. He was a very fit bloke, and had never been seriously ill. He was engaged to be married.

The doctors who treated him had never seen anything like the combination of symptoms he exhibited, though they would be familiar nowadays as AIDS. They wrote the case up in The Lancet, but nobody wrote back to comment, which suggests that it was a very rare occurrence.

So, how do they know it was HIV and AIDS? Well, some tissue samples were kept, and when examined with modern techniques it revealed that HIV had arrived in the UK that far back.

But from where? Carr’s former fiancee is still alive, and believes that he never had a homosexual relationship. He was in Britain for most of his national service, only travelling to Gibralter and Tangier.

The doctors have speculated that this might be the link, and that he contracted the disease from a prostitute in the north African city. That could also have been a source for gay infection years later, since Tangier is a pretty racy spot. The problem is that Carr was there in 1957, and that would suggest an incubation period of only 2 years, which seems too short. So, that part is still a mystery. But bit by bit knowledge is deepening. And that might, in the long run, lead us towards a cure. But don’t count on it.

And while we’re on the subject, there are actually far worse fates out there in the woods. As a frightening new book called The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, argues, we’re only 24 hours from anywhere else in the world. A new virus could strike with lightning speed.

And environmental change comes into this too. When it changes, they look for a new host.

He describes the progress of the deadly Ebola virus, named after the Ebola River in Zaire, where it erupted in a microbreak in 1976.

Like AIDS, Ebola can be passed on by a dirty needle, but it can also spread by airborne infection as well as by touching infected blood or vomit. It appears within a week, and the most virulent strain will kill its victims in 10 days or less. And what a death. In the book he describes the progress of the death in a Frenchman who became infected with a variation of the virus known as Marburg, after a visit to Kitum Cave in Kenya, where it is believed the original host of Ebola may reside.

Basically, the bloke melted. He was “possessed by a life form which attempted to convert him (the host) into itself”, but failed. Dreadful stuff, way out there in Star Trek country. Preston also mentions Lyme Disease, which is quite a problem now in the USA and in Scandinavia.

He believes that as the population of the earth expands, we are more likely to have a “crash with a hot virus”, since that’s the earth’s way of controlling population. Nice thought, eh? Save the earth! Save ourselves!

The author argues that the most significant factor in the emergence of these deadly diseases has been our wanton interference in the ecosystems of tropical rainforests and grasslands. Their appearance is “a natural consequence of the ruin of the tropical biosphere. The emerging viruses are surfacing from ecologically damaged parts of the the earth.

THE FORMER 'Clown Prince Of Football', Bruce Grobbelar, was at the centre of perhaps the most widely publicised of the soccer scandals that dotted 1994.

All filling the back pages in quick succession were the emergence of Jack Charlton as an arrogant liar during the Team That Jack Built fiasco, the allegations of financial impropriety surrounding Terry Venables and the confession by Paul Merson that he had made a habit of playing for Arsenal the afternoon after binging on serious quantites of cocaine. And the accusation by The Sun that everyone's favourite Zimbabwean had accepted sizeable sums of money to let in goals – on purpose, for a change – while playing for Southampton, knocked the wind out of millions of fans of the so-called beautiful game.

But as yet, nothing has been even remotely proved, and most commentators are sceptical as to how one goalkeeper, acting all alone, can throw a match, without actually throwing the ball into his own net (an act that would surely attract suspicion). But still, if it's in The Sun, it must be true...

KEEP ON ROLLIN’, diceman

One of the most poignant evenings of the year was definitely the fundraising tribute concert for Thom McGinty, The Diceman, which was staged in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre in November.

Ireland’s most famous street performer and an integral part of Grafton Street life for well over a decade, The Diceman was known to have been seriously ill for some time but it was only towards the end of the year, in an emotional Late Late Show appearance, that he publicly acknowledged that he was living with the AIDS virus. Despite his lower profile, the affection in which this uniquely talented Scottish Irishman is held by his friends and fans remains undiminished. Everyone here at Hot Press certainly wishes him a happy and healthy 1995.

THE PRICE OF BEEF

In August came the long-awaited and sexily-titled Report Of The Tribunal Of Inquiry Into The Beef Processing Industry. After over two years of testimony, deliberation and legal eagle squawking in Dublin Castle, Justice Liam Hamilton finally delivered his voluminous findings which were notable for only two things: their butt-clenching tedium and the strong whiff of whitewash which many detected from between the covers.

On the night the report was received, Albert and a flotilla of spin doctors locked themselves away in Government Buildings and filleted its pages for cutlets of exoneration for Reynolds’ actions when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce during the late ‘80s and responsible for the relationship between the beef industry and the Irish State. After much use of the cleaver and the blade, Al’s pals came up with selective extracts which the Taoiseach claimed “totally vindicated” him. It was only the next day that the Tánaiste Dick Spring was allowed by his alleged “partners” in government to take a first peek at the report of the inquiry that he had been instrumental in initiating.

Gradually, as journalists managed to sift through the flowery and evasive language of the Hamilton opus, it became blatantly apparent that Albert had been anything but “vindicated.” Meanwhile, in the Dáil, Spring lightly scolded Reynolds for his solo run but insisted that trust could be restored between Fianna Fáil and Labour. Outside, a fat, pink pig was spotted flying over the roof of Leinster House.

Every sitting day of the Beef Tribunal cost £31,688. The Tribunal sat for 226 days. That’s a grand total of £7,161,488. Some of the individual fees into which that figure breaks down are instructive. For instance, the State spent £298,0744 in consultants fees to the spin doctoring firm, Carr Communications, and a firm of economic consultants, John Hogan and Associates.

The four Senior Counsel employed by the State were each paid £1,890 per day. They were also paid £1,050 for working days when the Tribunal was not actually sitting. The highest paid lawyer acting for the State, Eoin McGonigal S.C., became a Tribunal millionaire during the two years of the inquiry.

£80,460 was spent on photocopying. £47,350 on post and Telecom charges. And, £456,860 on stenographers’ fees.

After all that, as 1994 comes to a close, the only person facing charges arising out of this costly debacle is journalist Susan O’Keefe who has refused to reveal the identity of sources quoted in her World In Action programme which highlighted many of the abuses, frauds and scams which it is now accepted have been commonplace in the beef processing industry during the 1980s.

So, what the fuck was it all about?