The front-page headline from the Daily Telegraph screamed at me as I bought my milk and apple juice just now,

Hanging Crowd Bays for Blood as Blair Faces his Inquisitors

I mean, for fuck’s sake, Telegraph, at least pretend to be objective.

As much as this is a great sentence – try saying it in a fearsome, guttural voice, like this – it really leaves the reader in absolutely no doubt what side the article takes.

Besides, it’s hardly true. The crowd, which isn’t hanging (yes, I know what they meant, but they’re not, en masse, calling for his hanging either), is not baying for blood, and the use of the term inquisitors is obviously psychologically linked to the inquisition more than it is to the Iraq inquiry.

And let’s be fair. Blair lied, it would seem knowingly, in order to lead his country to an unjust, unnecessary and illegal war, which has further destabilised the middle-east and given countless muslims cause to fight what they see as an attempt at imperial rule from the west. He should be brought to justice for this, but he won’t. The Iraq inquiry, founded and staffed by the Labour party, is not a trial, and will not resolve any of the important issues.

Digging a little further into the article, we find:

A man grabbed a megaphone, with a let’s-get- down-to-business manner. “Tony Blair …” he shouted. The crowd answered, like the response in a Pentecostalist church. “War criminal!”

See? Those people protesting Blair have a religious fervour. They’re calling for blood, in the face of all rationality. They have “the same sense of seething resentment, and the hunger for justice – or revenge – that one sees at crown courts as child murderers are whisked past in prison vans, their heads covered in blankets.”

And how is Blair taking all this anarchic yelling? In a “narcoleptic” hearing room, after being treated to a description of his attire (“a blue suit, white shirt and red tie”) we find that “his expression [is] grave, with a flicker of apprehension.” Later, on facing a difficult question, he “assumed the bashful look of a schoolboy caught with his hand in the sweet jar.” The article comments later that this questioner is the only one who is not “polite, even courtly,” but cheerfully drops in the adjective “beady” to describe him.

Throughout this article, this simpering (I’m not writing a newspaper article – I’m allowed be biased), pity-Blair tone is adopted, often explicitly but sometimes subtly. The last couple of sentences, though, really do take the cake.

“And is there anything you’d like to add?” Mr Blair looked at him, as if to say, “Are you kidding?” “No”, he said. He walked quickly from the room. There was a smattering of boos from the audience, then shockingly, a shout, “You are a liar.” And another. “And a murderer.”

Outside the baying intensified – less a hanging crowd, it seemed, than a lynch mob. But the pontiff manqué had left by a side entrance. They hadn’t landed a glove on him.

So, after another attempt to vilify the protesters (poor Tony!), we even have this “journalist” putting words in Blair’s mouth. Lucky thing, too. If it weren’t for writing of this calibre, the Telegraph’s audience wouldn’t know what to think.

Oh man, I’m almost afraid to say this.

Ok, here we go.

*deep breath*

I am…in agreement…with the Republicans…on Barack Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

*shudder*

Sorry.

But really, it does seem a little premature. So far, aside from the achievement of restoring international respect to the office of US President, Obama has done very little to aid or to damage world peace. The only examples on either side of the fence I can think of are the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

His greatest contribution to getting the prize seems to be not being George W. Bush (a tweet is going around at the moment that reads “All of the world’s population to be rewarded with Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 because we’re not George W Bush either.” (via @loveandgarbage), and it should be remembered that Bush had started a war by this stage of his first term.

It’s true, as the awarding committee has said, that he possesses a “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons,” which is both noteworthy and good, and that

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts

but this was largely true in the pre-Bush era as well.

I don’t really think that a strong case can be made for Barack Obama deserving a Nobel Peace Prize. At least not yet. I think that his ideals are certainly inclined in the direction of world peace, and he clearly has made diplomacy the most important cause of his international relations, but – aside from talk about it – he hasn’t really done anything yet. He’s only been in office for nine months.

I think he should turn the prize down at this juncture. Perhaps he will receive it again at a more deserving future juncture.

Perhaps also, the Nobel committee are merely trying to avoid another incident like Jimmy Carter’s award, which he received decades after he earned it, or merely demonstrate that the international community cannot afford another Bush-esque catastrophe, no matter how much the Palinites want one.

[I originally wrote this blog on Tuesday the 29th of September, but for some reason couldn't get it to post.]

This advertisement appeared in today’s Irish Times, and presumably in the other national papers as well.

I’ll be voting yes to the treaty. That doesn’t change the fact that I think Michael O’Leary, the head of Ryanair, is a despicable human being. As with so much of what he says, this ad will only have the effect of making the people who already agree with him laugh.

A friend, who is supporting the no side of the campaign, responded to my posting this picture on Twitter by remarking that a yes vote will have the effect of endorsing by proxy those who support it, including our present incompetent government and O’Leary. Though this makes little sense – we can (and, as usual, probably won’t) express our dissatisfaction in the next general election – even if it were true then the same could be said of the no side. As much of the no side is currently made up of one almost-equally-obnoxious businessman (Declan Ganley) with strong anti-European sentiments, a far-right Christian “values” group called Cóir and a political party (Sinn Féin) which until recently supported terrorism and had its own private army, I think I’d rather throw my lot in with the yes side, even before it comes to reasons for actually supporting the treaty.

As to why I support the treaty, much of its work is in sorting out legislative processes which are messy or don’t adequately do the job any more. This is valuable, but there are three important points which would have won me to it easily.

The first is that it contains a provision for dealing with global warming. It’s obvious to anyone who’s looked at the data that climate change is one of the most important, if not the most important, issues facing the world at the moment. While I’m aware that resolutions are one thing while action is another, a resolution is still better than none. I think that the governments of the world are finally starting to react to what scientists have been telling them for decades, and I would very much like for Europe to be a leader in dealing with the problem. (Admittedly, our overall record is still pretty good compared with places like the US and China, but urgent action is nonetheless required.)

The second is the aim to reduce poverty, with the lofty (and sadly probably inachievable) goal attached of eradicating it entirely. The treaty provides legal groundwork for humanitarian aid outside the EU.

Lastly, the Citizen’s Initiative is a beautiful aspect of the treaty, which allows the citizens of Europe to bring matters directly to the table of the European Commission (the body which proposes legislation), if they can provide a petition with a million signatures from across the Union – a small figure given the overall population. While the EU’s power to influence laws is limited by each of the countries within it, this should give a much stronger voice to minorities all across Europe.

I’m also vaguely curious as to why I’ve heard so little about the Irish commissioner this time around. Last time we voted on this treaty, one of the major (and few factual) bones of contention for the no side was that Ireland wouldn’t be represented in the European Commission 100% of the time. The treaty has now been modified so that the Commission will be represented by all member states all of the time. But where the no side – last year alive with the chant of “keep our commissioner!” has unterstandably shut the hell up about it, I’m more than a little surprised that the yes side hasn’t taken up the same rallying call.

Oh well. The referendum is tomorrow We shall see how things progress.