How do people who assemble signatories for public letters choose their guest list? What central principle unites an artist, Bobby Ballagh, a columnist for this newspaper, Fintan O'Toole, and that scrupulous observer of the drink-driving laws, Eamon Dunphy?
Why did the letter-organiser choose four members of the IRA army council - Pat Doherty, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris - arms smuggler Arthur Morgan, and a quartet of professional warblers, Frances Black, Luka Bloom, Christy Moore and Leo Moran?
How did he or she choose a gay rights activist, David Norris, a Colombia Three groupie, Senator Mary White, and two public figures - Trevor Sargent and Mick O'Reilly - who shared a platform at an anti-war rally in Dublin with people supporting the Islamo-fascist terrorist insurgency in Iraq? However it came about, all the above signed a letter last week supporting the Rossport Five.
So, why was I not also asked to put my name to a document which concluded: "We demand the immediate release of Philip McGrath, Brendan Philbin, Vincent McGrath, Willie Corduff and Micheál Ó Seighin from their unjust incarceration"?
Was it possibly because (a) I wouldn't share a lifeboat in shark-infested waters with some of the above; (b) I don't sign political petitions; or (c) I believe in the rule of law? The law: ah yes, that strange concept, the law. So how many people were jailed for their opposition to the Shell pipeline in Mayo? Five? Wrong. The correct answer is none.
Who made release of the Rossport Five possible? The protesters themselves? No. The answer is Shell, which applied in the High Court for the lifting of the temporary injunction restraining the men from interfering with the pipeline.
The Rossport Five were jailed not for their opinions, but because as men of principle they refused to give false undertakings before the court not to interfere with the Shell pipeline passing through their lands. So, contrary to what the letter-writers declared, by very deliberately defying the court, the Rossport Five themselves chose jail; and a court which allows those in contempt of its injunctions to walk free unpunished is as worthless as a bank with no assets.
Moreover, the very name "Shell" seems to cause reason to fly out of the window. Shell corrupts governments all over the world, Shell poisons democracy, Shell buys politicians, and judicially executes those it cannot buy, most famously such as Ken Saro Wiwa - or so Conchaphobes would have you believe. Yet Wiwa was executed not for his opposition to Shell operations in Nigeria, but for his part in the brutal murder of rival Ogoni elders.
And though Shell actually tried to stop the execution, this hasn't prevented Rossport Five supporters from enlisting the support of his brother Owens in their campaign, as if the two sets of events were comparable.
Admittedly the original Government deal with Shell was done by that fragrant creature Raphael Burke, and anything touched by that creature must have the raw tang of rat-manure about it. But the Rossport Five are complaining less about the terms of that contract than the issue of safety; and if the pipeline is not safe, it's not safe, regardless of whether or not Shell pays royalties to the State.
But what is safe? Jerry Cowley TD - one of the signatories to the letter which I was so scandalously not asked to sign - claims that houses within 170 metres of the pipeline are within the kill-zone in the event of an explosion. I don't know where he gets his figures from - but what precisely is the kill-zone for the natural gas pipelines which run under the streets of Cork and Dublin today? What is the kill-zone for gas leaking in a kitchen? Is either an argument against using gas anywhere? If so, it is equally an argument against petrol pumps, power stations, aeroplanes or technology of any kind.
Shell has been sinking wells around the Irish coast for 20 years: none had yielded anything until the Mayo find eight years ago. Four years ago, Shell drilled an exploratory well 125 kilometres off the north-west coast. It was the deepest water-well ever drilled in Europe. Nothing was found, and it was capped and abandoned. Two years ago, Shell sank an even deeper well in Corrib, and then sidetracked it to a total depth of 4,471 metres, which is deeper than Mont Blanc, Europe's tallest mountain, is high.
And without such spectacularly costly operations, "our" gas reserves would remain exactly where they have been for the past 237 million years.
Do you actually think Shell shareholders invest without expectation of return? Being Irish Times readers, you possibly do - unless, that is, you have a pension fund which has invested in Shell.
To be sure, the original deal might stink to high heaven - but it remains a legally binding contract, with no get-out clause for subsequent governments which no longer like Ray Burke. So either the State buys its way out of that contract - including reimbursing Shell for the ten zillion the company has spent drilling holes to nowhere miles beneath the sea - or it enforces the rule of law, both on Shell for any unauthorised pipe-laying, and on landowners through whose ground the gas pipeline must pass.
The central issue in this dispute is not safety nor Burke nor the Rossport Five, but the rule of law and the authority of our courts - something that our letter-writers are apparently not too keen on. And when you consider some of their backgrounds, perhaps that's not so very surprising.