Ireland is the bloated sow that kills its young. The best little neoliberal country in Europe. From the blood of patriots, alas, a city of tents has bloomed around us.
Strange flowers bloom in our city, folding into doorways at night, spreading through the city and out to the suburbs.
Airy, I suppose, and if you want to look at the stars, you can sleep al fresco in a fashionable street corner on Grafton Street; snug under a sheet of newspaper
Such a fabulous city. The edge to it now. Feral gangs roaming the streets, the glitter of knives after dark, the wretched stench, the rivers of urine. And such sights to behold. A man defecating on the pavement, a girl in her underwear, crazed on drugs, running around O’Connel Street.
Enjoy your trip home from the city, if you have a home. You might not have it for long. A tent awaits you, like some fabulous moth flapping its wings in a cold wind, just for you.
Good thing we got rid of the scourge of England. Our own in charge now: posh, privately educated politicians, owners of multiple properties, unctuously wringing their hands about the crises of homelessness; so hard to maintain all those properties, so very hard.
A nasty little neoliberal country run as a business model. A human being is reduced to an economic unit to be preyed on, exploited, profited from.
Capitalist pathologies have morphed into neoliberalism. With checks, balances, and democratic norms, it’s cyclical nature could have been sustained, but at its best it exploits and appeals to the very worst in our human nature, creating a society of individuals motivated by little other than self-interest and self-advancement, jostling for status, position, power or wealth, enslaving humans by the ego, itself an absurd societal construct .
Everything has shifted to the right, including basic moral parameters. Democracies are failing, the right and the left are configuring.
Here sadism and cruelty have crept out from under the nun’s mantle and into public discourse. Homeless children, like cockroaches, eat their dinner off the pavement.
But the economy is thriving, and there’s full employment…
The slogan “Keep the recovery going” … was as out of touch with reality as any despot surrounded by yes men. It’s a good thing a disenchanted constituency here will be soaked up by Sinn Fein.
But profits blossom, as does the sale of luxury goods. Now we have the rich, the poor, and the working poor, who are little better than slaves.
Vulgar extensions protrude out of gentrified neighbourhoods, gangs in the shadows waiting to smash through them.
History teaches us again and again that the poor man will come to the rich man’s gate, and the barbarians are on the move. Civic virtues mean nothing, the good life or the practice of virtue is sneered at.
The idea of civic-minded citizens leading a virtuous life is not a religious concept, but about creating a society based on shared collective values. There are ways to organise a society for the greatest common good that don’t require a widespread understanding of rocket science, or a Communist regime. It simply involves valuing wider social responsibilities, and relationships over the narrow morality of self-interest and self-advancement.
Empires come and go, and simple spiritual lessons go unheeded. Monotheistic religions are a disaster, and the religious disposition may well be a pathology, but there are great riches in all spiritual traditions, blithely ignored.
Who, once he had truly seen a flower, not just looked at it, would want temporal power or to run an empire, or would trample on someone else? A fool perhaps. Only a fool who cannot see it.
Survival was never about the survival of the fittest. Darwin was referring to the survival of the fittest to adapt. Atomised humans have no sense of being part of a collective species, no shared sense of a future, or of the future of the planet that sustains them.
And when the nuclear cloud has settled, the earthworm will perhaps continue churning joyfully through the charred ruins of the Earth. Perhaps even a flower might poke it’s head above the rubble when the human grub has gone.
Mario Draghi’s ‘technocratic’ government has fallen, or so we’ve heard. Now it feels like we are facing into the most important election in generations.
And as we approach two months of political campaigning in the middle of the busy tourist season (I suspect there are plenty of cancellations in 5 star resorts…) this could be the right time to ask: how are elections won nowadays. Is it only the votes that counts? Or does social media superiority, which is nothing less than the understanding of current communication trends and technology – often with outside interference – actually determining most democracies’ fates?
With these questions in mind it is worthwhile reminding ourselves how we’ve got here.
I can’t recall a time when Italians believed a government would last its full term. Italy’s apparently chaotic political life has become a cliché, like how beautiful everywhere is to visit, but try living there…
Despite these bleak figures Italy’s economic recovery after Covid-19 was promising, but after the fall of the 5 Star and Democratic Party-led government thanks to a typical palace coup – compliments to Mohammed bin Salman best friend, the Saudi-funded, Matteo Renzi – again a capable leader is needed.
At that point, the authority of a brilliant surgeon was called for in a code red emergency to save the country from spiralling doom. Someone who it was claimed saved the Eurozone from the apocalypse with three words. Someone whose position as Prime Minister seemed like a personal sacrifice, almost a burden to endure in the name of patriotism. In an atmosphere like a coronation, Mario Draghi came to power after the most prestigious career one can think of at the highest echelons of world finance and international banking.
In order to avoid early elections, President Sergio Mattarella called “Super Mario” to the rescue, with a mandate to form a broad coalition of national unity. I remember when Draghi first addressed the Senate as Prime Minister: “Today unity is not an option, it is a duty”, he said, as he prepared to lead one of the broadest coalition ever attempted in Italian political history.
He indicated that Italy is doing just fine, will survive the operation, but that a long recovery period lay ahead. We just needed to be reasonable and support a government of “National Unity” where almost all the political forces were expected to support it from both chambers: Almost 90% from the chamber of deputies and 85% from the senate.
Encompassing Matteo Salvini’s Far-Right Lega, Enrico Letta’s center-left Democratic Party, among others, along with a dash of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the Populist 5 Star Movement.
In case you are wondering, there is no definitive consensus as to whether the 5 Stars is left or right wing. This changes depending on where the criticism is coming from.
Its leader, and deposed Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, had to share the cabinet table with Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva – the main instigator in the downfall of the previous government.
What could possibly go wrong?
The only remaining opposition came from a few small parliamentary groups, mainly independents, and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which is now the strongest far right political party. They are not fascist, or so they say, but it isn’t difficult to find nostalgic sympathy for His Excellency Benito, or even Adolfo, among followers, right up to some of the leadership, as was revealed by last year by FanPage, and is well explained by David Drover in the NYT.
Mario Draghi was, and still is, the leader of a party that does not exist yet he retains extensive sway over how Italy is governed. One can almost recognize a cultist aspect projected by his persona, and now by his ‘agenda’, which has filled the void of political vision formerly filled by both left and right factions.
Now a strange mix of old faces ranging from Enrico Letta, to the former leader of the 5 Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio – and even some ex members of Forza Italia – are his disciples available to spread the word.
In very simplistic terms the unified message that triumphed with Draghi’s government is that the country would not survive without a broad, caretaker government, led by who knows, and that the vast majority of civil society has a moral duty to support him, “Whatever it takes”. Says who? Is that NATO on the line?
The current crisis can be traced to what was the largest party in parliament – until its recent split – the 5 Star Movement, simply attempting to present certain amendments to the bill “Aiuti” or “Help”, to the government, that they deemed necessary in areas such as welfare, tax, ecology; as well as attempts to reconsider Italy’s role in the context of the war in Ukraine.
A range of polls since Russia’s invasion reveal that about half of the Italian population does not support weapons being sent to Ukraine. It’s only natural that political factions seek to capitalize on popular opinions, as much as it would be naïve to believe foreign powers, be they Russia, China or NATO, wouldn’t be attempting to exert influence, especially at a point such as this.
This approach by the 5 Star Movement was apparently ignored, leading to the government’s fall, and to the Lega and Forza Italia seized the opportunity to call for an early election.
It begs the question: why shouldn’t the largest party in government demand reforms for which it has a mandate?
This current crisis could actually be a long delayed awakening of a political system which has remained comatose, at least since Berlusconi’s time.
It’s just a shame that an unholy trinity of Berlusconi’s FI, Meloni’s FDL and Salvini’s Lega may have the numbers to become Italy’s next government coalition. This is the equivalent of Le Pen winning in France, and will surely destabilise all of Europe.
He’s Back! Berlusconi alonside Giulio Andreotti in 1984.
By the way, I did say Berlusconi. Guess what? He’s back! With a pledge to plant one million trees, because his party has always been environmentally conscious after all. It’s a bad case of United States of Amnesia that Italian would consider Burlesconi suitable for the presidency of the republic.
Then again, while he was Prime Minister Conte secured an EU Recovery Package worth about €220 billion, which is expected to flood Italy’s economy with money in the coming years. Who else should we trust to manage this if not the same people, or their disciples, over and over again?
At all times, we may safely assume, with the approval, or background manoeuvring, of a foreign actor.
Is that NATO (or the US government) on the line again there?
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Feature Image is a work by Office of U.S. House Speaker from https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1446579056720416773.
In response to allegations made against then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar which appeared in Village Magazine, in March 2022 I submitted a formal statement to the Garda investigative team regarding the Official Secrets Act (hencefore OSA); in particular pertaining to the responsibilities of Martin Fraser, then the most senior civil servant in the country.
I also pointed to an usually-timed departure from precedent in Fraser’s appointment as the next ambassador to London, which is in the gift of Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Certain circumstantial evidence remains pertinent to any interrogation by the Oireachtas into what has occurred, namely:
February 11, 2019: the NAGP union write a threatening letter to Fine Gael HQ warning it would be canvassing against them in upcoming local elections and the forthcoming general election.
April 10, 2019: the confidential GP contract is couriered from the Taoiseach’s Department to then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Baldonnel airport without formal authorisation and with no conditions attached.
April 25, 2019: an official in that Department of Health warns that ‘Unilateral publication of the Agreement, in the absence of confirmation from the IMO that it is satisfied with the final text, would represent a serious breach of trust.’
We still do not know which civil servant authorised that initial leak.
It beggars belief that in the seven months from the time that the revelations appeared in Village Magazine (October 2020), and the case being raised to a criminal investigation (April 2021), that the most senior civil servant in the country – with responsibilities deriving from the OSA including internal breaches – does not appear to have conducted an internal inquiry.
Bear in mind that if a junior official leaks a confidential file it is usually career suicide, and potentially results in criminal charges.
I therefore previously argued that it is reasonable to assume that no junior official leaked the document, and that authorisation came from Fraser himself.
It is important to emphasise that Martin Fraser was one of three Civil Service Commissioners with certain legal powers vested in him that exceed even the Taoiseach of the day.
The logic underpinning such formidable powers is that they are responsible for the preservation of the institutions, statute and assets of the State beyond the life of any government. Hence the concept of a ‘permanent’ government and its daunting power.
With such power arrives commensurate responsibility. It became apparent in my dialogue with members of the Garda investigative team that Martin Fraser had not conducted an internal probe, and his role was never under investigation.
On legal advice I withdrew my statement and was advised that the matter would return to the Oireachtas for clarification and investigation.
The Duties of the Oireachtas
Now that the DPP has ruled that Leo Varadkar has no case to answer the matter comes back to the Oireachtas, which ought to clarify the following points before Martin Fraser departs for London. He should be compelled to explain:
Why he failed to conduct an internal investigation into the leaked and confidential contract, either in the seven months before the Gardai gave it criminal status or since.
If Martin Fraser was indeed responsible for the release of the document, why he didn’t, as cabinet secretary, inform the cabinet. Further to this, it should be asked how and when the cabinet first learned that the contract had been leaked, and was this only through the Village Magazine article.
How it is that a Garda investigation spanning eighteen months seemingly never examined the role of Martin Fraser given the strong likelihood the document was released from his Department.
This affair has set a very damaging precedent whereby the habitual violation of the OSA becomes a risk to the security of the State in the event of future leaks. The DPP decision that Leo Varadkar has no case to answer suggests that sensitive documents may now be casually disseminated.
The Oireachtas needs to determine, once and for all, on whose authority the contract moved from the Department of Health to the Taoiseach’s Department.
Mr Fraser should be directly questioned as to whether he authorised that step, using his higher powers as head of the civil service, and commissioner, to demand the release of the document from the then Secretary General of the Department of Health, Jim Breslin to his own Department of the Taoiseach. Mr Breslin would have been obliged to release the document to his superior in the civil service chain-of-command.
Moreover, the DPP’s decision makes it imperative for the Oireachtas to clarify who is responsible for a breach of the OSA.
Leo may be off the hook, but important issues surrounding the affair remain opaque. The fundamental matter to be addressed is who precisely within the civil service authorised the initial leak of the document to Leo Varadkar.
It is quite simply bizarre that Martin Fraser – without previous diplomatic experience in the Department of Foreign Affairs – was appointed ambassador to our most sensitive and prestigious embassy at a time when a criminal probe into a leaked document remained unconcluded; in a matter over which he held overarching responsibility.
Bernadette Gorman was a civil servant for twenty years and held statutory powers. She worked as an Inspector and a trainer of Inspectors.
Feature Image: (c) Daniele Idini.
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“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.” Saint Teresa of Avila
Can’t blame U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Barrett for being born Amy Coney. Nor would I fault my fellow New Orleans native for having Irish Catholic parents who, like mine, sent her to St. Mary’s Dominican High School. Back then it was cool. We were both in the same boat. And far as I know, we still are, that is if you’re in the habit of comparing educated middle class white females wielding our kinda funny Louisiana convent French accent. Women’s tuition is typically tubular. What I mean is, it’s wampum well spent.
Sod it, hatched on the same patch of swamp, Amy n’ me should be two peas in a pod. However, I’m not ashamed to say gun control and reproductive rights are where we part ways. These were fundamental freedoms guaranteed in the Seventies and Eighties, for girls, rich or poor, growing up in The Big Easy. Matters of… deep breath… life and death.
"A child is a sponge, able to absorb the plethora of Playboy and Cosmopolitan's iconic chronicles accumulating on the coffee table." 'Old School' is Ilsa Monique's hilarious account of growing up in New Orleans..https://t.co/BTUzLHVxbn@IlsaCarter1@BenPantrey @Des_The_Dog
But in order to begin a coherent conversation on either issue, one must comprehend this. Paired like a couple of chromosomes, the right to bear arms or avail of an abortion are inexorably intertwined.
The Honorable Amy once penned a unanimous opinion affirming the summary judgement against a claimant in the case Smith vs. The Illinois Department of Transportation, finding while egregious, it was not racial discrimination when a supervisor dismissed an employee for what was later stipulated “poor performance” as, and I quote, being a “stupid ass nigger.” Because they were both black. Thus, perhaps she’ll pardon my French when, with Malthusian enthusiasm, I need point out that, unlike me, Barrett is a breeder.
The greedy GOP plucked this pro-lifer directly out of her indoctrination by a secretive charismatic Christian cult called People of Praise and would have you, me and Barrett herself believe the proceedings around Roe vs. Wade were about her unqualified opinion. One based on a bizarre Czar-like wish to not squish the least little fish. A sweeping generalization to keep inconsequential caviar in its crevice, no matter how marred things get. So, you see, as women we are now all set. In a bind. Because profoundly blinded by nothing more than good faith, the Sturgeon General’s brand of justice finds it sound.
This is not my first rodeo. I’ve a habit of being in the right place at the wrong time. Managing marketing and advising on regulations in several sovereign nations for a British boss at a bank based in Hong Kong during a currency crisis and the Handover of our S.A.R. to the P. R. C.. Watching an IPO window slam shut on a tech boom not sparing the white knuckles of a thousand plus entrepreneurs, including Connecticut fat cats, four Finns in Malaysia and more than a couple of Kiwis that like a Trojan camel we tried to pass through the eye of a needle. Not tired, I got hired to launch Tokyo ops for one of the U.S. firms which then perished in their entirety when the Twin Towers fell. Sometimes you might as well call it a day.
Only to sit spitting nails, like an old spy in from the cold, wearing a crusty trusty power suit at a hedge fund desk high up in the Empire State Building. Swearing my federal tax dollars were squandered by an incompetent Army Corps of Engineers, while Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath sinks New Orleans’ natural defenses into the drink. Five years on, an unfettered BP blast on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig heaved 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Left every last bivalve bereft.
Thing is, for all the money in a world I can’t unsee as my oyster, I wouldn’t trade this front row seat watching Ireland’s Celtic Tiger tumble, jigging in The George the very night same sex marriage legalized. Seeing medical cannabis and safe abortion made less murky than a transubstantiation of the Magdalene Laundries into this tip top corporate tax haven. And learning how to ask for the Ban Jax.
Where me and homegirl differ, is before we had graduation under our Prince of Wales plaid chastity belts, God didn’t see fit to show Amy how it felt to be raped at gunpoint and escape.
Hence, the power of Christ has yet to compel the now anointed Coney concerning exceptionally unsexy circumstances. Those surrounding the sort of nonconsensual contortions likely to lead to a swelling belly aborted.
Maybe I don’t have a womb with a wide-angle view at high tide, but my bet is Barrett’s not tangled in a “long game” as Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker article subtly suggests. At best she’s a half-baked Trump tumor deposited on the Supreme Court, but what if she’s been groomed Brothers Grimm style? The Manchurian Candidate meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers? She’s one of seven who, come hell or Haitian high water is spawning seven more into a scenario not of her own making. Ingenue actress? Goodbye RBG and Hello All About Eve? Or anchor baby for the alt-right?
What I ask political strategists who bask in what few filthy cards they’ve slipped up their starched sleeve is a burning question. At what point did conservative Christians earn what they’d always yearned for? Carte blanche to pull up to the Republican bumper, and dive in like Flynn to the D.C. dumpster. When did The Religious Right become your Rumpelstiltskin?
Knowing the ropes on the lesser navigated, one could almost say, fallopian-like, canals of Venice, I’ll venture vetting Casanova’s confessions is yet an even better trip. I for one am not impervious to stumbling on stuff our nuns neglected having Amy, blessed vessel that she is, translate directly from the French. Simply for shits n’ giggles mightn’t they have wiggled something cunning like Sade in to Sophomore English Lit? Not the sublime Nigerian-born British chanteuse…but the felonious philosopher of freedom. An equally smooth operator. I’ll explain.
Couple hundred years before we were in high school, if memory serves, the year 1787 saw yes, a libertine, one of Fibonacci proportions, imprisoned in the Bastille. During his two-week incarceration, minus a lick of obscenity, the Marquis de Sade managed to nail a novella he named Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue. Seems his fictitious femme fatale was willing to bend over. Take one for the team. Don’t know about Amy. Wouldn’t blame her for being game, but, as for me, I’m not. Not anymore. Are you?
There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
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In 2010, having advocated for veganism in 2002, George Monbiot wrote: ‘I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly.’
Having just read Simon Faerlie’s book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Monbiot acknowledged serious environmental problems with the prevailing model of cattle production, but complained that pigs ‘have been forbidden in many parts of the rich world from doing what they do best: converting waste into meat.’
Surprisingly perhaps, while rhapsodising on the efficiency of giving ‘sterilised scraps to pigs,’ he expressed no concern for animal welfare in feedlot production.
‘It’s time we got stuck in,’ he concluded, no doubt to the anger of genuine vegans who refrain from consuming animal products for ethical reasons, not simply because laboratory grown meat is more efficient to produce.
By 2016, however, Monbiot had ‘[re-?]converted to veganism to reduce’ his ‘impact on the living world;’ while in 2017he asked: ‘What madness of our times will revolt our descendants?’
‘There are plenty to choose from,’ he opined, but one he believed ‘will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh or eggs or drink their milk.’
Whatever one’s views – vegan or meat-enthusiast – on this issue, it is fair to say that Monbiot has been ethically vacant and that his knowledge of “the science” isn’t always up to speed, even by his own admission.
Corbynista?
Monbiot displayed a similar inconsistency and lack of staying power in his attitude to Jeremy Corbyn. In 2015 he hailed the Islington MP Labour leadership candidate as ‘the curator of the future. His rivals are chasing an impossible dream.’
By the beginning of 2017, however, he was tweeting: ‘I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, but it has been one fiasco after another. I have now lost all faith.’
That was just months before Corbyn’s high water mark: the 2017 General Election when the Conservatives under Theresa May were reduced to a minority administration reliant on the support of the DUP.
At least the surprising result gave Monbiot pause for reflection. He mused later that year on a crushing defeat for the liberal media which had ‘created a hall of mirrors, in which like-minded people reflect and reproduce each other’s opinions.’
He noted that ‘broadcasters echo what the papers say, the papers pick up what the broadcasters say.’ and how a ‘narrow group of favoured pundits appear on the news programmes again and again.’
Covidiocy
Having acknowledged “a hall of mirrors” in the media’s treatment of Jeremy Corbyn it seems surprising he wouldn’t consider that this phenomenon may have operated during the pandemic. Instead, we found full-blooded commitment to lockdowns and all that followed. The nadir arrived with an argument for what amounts to scientific censorship.
On first glance, his proposal for a time delimited ‘outright ban on lies that endanger people’s lives’ might seem proportionate in an emergency period, but this proceeds a passage in which he refers to ‘people such as Allison Pearson, Peter Hitchens and Sunetra Gupta, who have made such public headway with their misleading claims about the pandemic.’
“and Sunetra Gupta”!!!
For anyone who has not heard of her, apart from being a published novelist, Sunetra Gupta is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.
In March 2020, Gupta and her colleagues posted a paper challenging the modelling of Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson which persuaded many Western governments to adopt lockdowns. Gupta’s paper argued that prior coronavirus infections would diminish the spread and posited a far lower infection fatality rate. Its predictions proved optimistic, but Ferguson projected a minimum U.S. death toll of a ‘best case scenario’ of 1.1 million, rising to 2.2 million in a worst case scenario that also proved inaccurate. It is fair to say that epidemiology is not an exact science.
Monbiot’s disturbing article conflated Gupta’s more optimistic assessment – which brought vilification – with denial of human responsibility for climate change and the role of smoking in lung cancer.
He also slipped in an attack on the Great Barrington Declaration that Gupta co-authored, misrepresenting proposals for targeted protection as championing ‘herd immunity through mass infection with the help of discredited claims.’ Presumably Monbiot would have consigned that document to the bonfire too.
Covid Expertise
A new paper in the British Medical Journal by John Ionnidas reflects on the echo chamber – generated by social media in particular – in which Monbiot operates. Ionnidas compared the social media following of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration to its rival John Snow Memorandum that advocated for the opposing view of continuing with lockdowns.
He concluded that both included ‘many stellar scientists’, but that ‘JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.’
This paper is unlikely to inform Monbiot’s understanding of “the science” of COVID-19, which has been reduced to a political ideology. Thus, anyone questioning the wisdom of lockdowns and universal vaccination – with recourse to draconian laws if necessary – is essentially adopting “conspiratorial” “right-wing” ideas.
Rather than dispassionately assess the merits of lockdowns or medications via cost benefit analyses – as a critical journalist or scientist ought to – Monbiot blithely argues that the ‘anti-vaccine movement is a highly effective channel for the penetration of far-right ideas into leftwing countercultures.’
Notably absent is an acknowledgement that he, George Monbiot, could possibly err in his evaluation of scientific or political questions.
Monbiot’s views on COVID-19 are consistent with opinions expressed across most of a liberal media (including the Guardian) which has received hundreds of millions of dollarsin financial support from the Gates Foundation, arguably manufacturing consent for the status quo.
Monbiot is hardly a gun for hire, but operating within the hall of mirrors he previously acknowledged has brought an intellectual meltdown.
His diminished credibility as a commentator, and tendency towards divisive political tribalism, should be of concern to environmentalists; who also ought to be wary of the steady encroachment of philanthrocapitalism.
Feature Image: Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles
I’ve always walked alone in the city after dark. Recently, it’s with my dog, along the banks of the Royal Canal. Of a winter evening, the path is quieter than during the day, when bikes and scooters fly by, and the dog’s senses are lit up by the city wildlife revealed in the still of night.
Last week, as we strolled along a quiet stretch, a man entered the canal path from the road and began walking towards us. Something wasn’t right about him.
For so many women, there is an understanding, so quietly absorbed that we don’t even give it much thought, that there are risks attached to walking alone at night: of physical violence, of sexual violence, of harassment. It’s the water in which women swim. It’s the reason why our male loved ones show concern for us over their male counterparts when out walking alone – because we all know there are greater risks to it by virtue of being a woman.
I saw a post on social media, in the aftermath of the recent shocking murder of Ashling Murphy. It was by a male journalist who decried the blaming by women of men ‘en masse’ for individual atrocities by men against women.
The ‘not all men’ mantra seems to me as dull-minded as it is deflective, for whoever made the claim that it was?
The perpetrator is the person to blame. What is being called to account in women decrying male violence against women is a culture that means all women, including female children, swim in the waters of often unconscious fear when facing the public world of men, from a young age.
In this world, we know what it is to go from feeling safe to on edge in the blink of an eye, from puberty on, if not before – when we flinch in the face of that first catcall, or unsolicited approach on the street. Ani DiFranco sings of it in her resonant song ‘The Story’:
I would’ve returned your greeting
if it weren’t for the way you were looking at me.
Only men can change that.
It doesn’t make all men to blame; but it does make them potential agents of change for the better.
The man who began walking towards me last week was young and, as I said, something wasn’t right about him. His behaviour was heightened, edgy. Maybe he was high. He shouted greetings at the dog, but it didn’t sound friendly. My adrenaline kicked in. I furtively glanced behind to see if I was alone. I was.
I braced myself for his approach. It wasn’t that I thought the worst, it was that I knew that whatever came to pass on this canal path with nowhere to escape to, I was to a fair degree at his mercy. I gripped my key between my fingers – that reflexive move women make even if only to feel safer.
The whole thing probably unfolded in less than thirty seconds but it felt longer. He knew that I was the vulnerable one and I sensed his knowledge as he approached. He came closer than he needed to. ‘How are you, love?’ Spoken loudly, into my face. We both knew it wasn’t a genuine question.
I answered as friendly-casual as I could. Not too nice, not too nonchalant. Definitely no hint of aggression. In my voice I was trying to impart lots of things. I’m relaxed. I don’t see you as a threat. I’m friendly (whatever the nature of your problem is, I don’t judge you). That wasn’t true. I did judge him – for getting his kicks from being able to be scary towards a lone woman just by virtue of being a man. Any soothing note my tone might have imparted was tactical.
After he passed, I slow-counted to twenty. I was afraid to turn around too soon in case it gave him cause to return. I glanced over my shoulder, then exhaled slowly, relieved to see he had continued on this path – and I was nearing the road.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that I don’t think I’d even have committed the incident to memory, let alone mentioned it to anyone, if I hadn’t returned home to the devastating news that a young woman had been murdered while out jogging on a Tullamore canal path. Ashling Murphy was a beautiful, talented, generous spirit, with her life in front of her. But this is the water in which women swim, the air in which we walk, or run – where risks, conscious and unconscious, sometimes, brutally, come to pass.
The particular attributes of her murder – that it took place in broad daylight, that it looks to have been an attack by a stranger– make it ripe for description as a tipping-point event, and the outpouring of grief and anger in its wake suggest this may be so. Time will tell.
For while the cold threat of such an attack may strike the greatest fear into most women, the reality remains that for victims of male violence, the perpetrator is rarely a stranger.
Per the Women’s Aid Annual Impact Report 2020, since 1996, 236 women have died violently in the Republic of Ireland. 61% were killed in their own homes; 55% were killed by a partner or ex (of the resolved cases) and almost nine in ten knew their killer.
And while domestic and gender-based violence prevails across social class, often its victims face higher rates of social inequity, including homelessness – in a European study some 92% of homeless women had experienced violence or abuse throughout their lives.
For society at large, the issue of gender-based violence is one that remains behind closed doors, dealt with within the confines of the private rather than public domain. Charities that support victims of gender-based violence consistently struggle from underfunding, and consecutive governments have treated the issue as one of low priority.
Lockdowns have been shown to create the most serious impacts for the socially disadvantaged, so it is no surprise that the 2020 Women’s Aid report reveals a startling 43% increase in contacts with their services, compared to 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic and its measures have had an ‘unprecedented and exhausting impact’ on victims of abuse. Surely this and other social inequities of lockdowns must be given consideration as Covid-19 policy shapes itself towards the future.
As the government quickens pace to steer through its new strategy on domestic and gender-based violence, due to be published in March – its stated goal being a zero-tolerance approach – time will tell what it delivers on a structural level, and we can only hope that it signals meaningful change.
Whatever comes to pass, it remains the case that on a societal level, all men do have a role in changing the waters within which women swim, along with the air within which we walk, run, and carry out our lives – private and public. And owning that fact may be what separates the men from the boys.
Even if these operations are shocking revelations to those who have a romantic notion of the past then the risk of their disillusionment is worth the price of finally exposing the hypocrisy of those in the establishment who rest self-righteously on the rewards of those who in yesteryear’s freedom struggle made the supreme sacrifice. Sinn Féin Pamphlet, The Good Old IRA, 1985.
It’s fair to say we shouldn’t apply the same judgment to people of the past as we do to our contemporaries. Throughout history, men and women have been conditioned to live and think in ways quite alien to prevailing sensibilities. Looking back into pre-history, we find infanticide commonly practised by hunter-gatherer communities, probably to ensure collective survival.
Many Irish people in the 1930s supported either Fascism in Italy and Germany, or Communist Russia, without being acutely aware of what was happening under those regimes; let alone what would happen during World War II, and beyond.
At that point democracy seemed in global retreat, as a civilisation-defining war loomed between two rival systems, while the surviving democracies contended with a Great Depression that suggested an inherently dysfunctional capitalist system. A person might reasonably be attracted to a radical alternative, however horrifying these totalitarian systems may appear to us now.
Arguably the best did not lose their moral scruples – or democratic values – albeit they may have lost ‘all conviction,’ as Yeats anticipated in ‘The Second Coming’; indeed, he has been described as a fascist ‘fellow-traveller’ himself.
It begs the question: when does the past become a foreign country, where they do things differently? When do we stop judging people by the standards of today? At what point does a new era begin? Can a person even straddle two epochs?
For example, the Sinn Féin party that now stands on the brink of power in Ireland are commonly castigated for the conduct of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yet few, if any, members of that party in Dáil Eireann actively participated in the Provisional IRA.
In contrast, the origin of Fine Gael, which emerged as a combination of Cumann na nGhaedhal, the Irish Centre Party and the National Guard, better known as the Blueshirts, in 1933, tends to be ignored, or even qualified.
O’Duffy leading a salute with the Blueshirts, December 1934.
Thus, Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins defines the Blueshirts as ‘best understood as para-fascists,’ which according to one source is ‘a larger category of regimes that adapted or aped ‘fascist’ formal and organizational features, but did not share the revolutionary ideological vision of genuine fascism.’
Such nuance might have been lost on General Eoin O’Duffy and his more earnest acolytes; albeit my own great-grandfather, John A. Costello – whose commitment to human rights made him an acceptable Taoiseach to former IRA chief of staff and leader of Clann na Poblachta Sean MacBride in the First Interparty Government of 1948 – injudiciously declared in 1934: ‘the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy and … the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as … the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.’
During periods of crisis even decent people can be carried along by waves of hysteria that cause civil liberties and common decency to be cast aside. A famous 2003 documentary ‘The Fog of War’ features former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara attempting to rationalise the U.S. bombing campaign in South-East Asia. Our present era where we witness a Populist clamour for mandatory vaccination may, in time, be viewed as one such illiberal period.
A youth growing up in a Catholic, or Protestant, working class neighbourhood in Belfast during the 1970s might easily, and perhaps reasonably, have become involved in what we now define as terrorist organisations. That individual might even have committed awful terrible crimes in the Fog of War.
It is a very delicate question as to what point we should let bygones be bygones and allow even participants in a sectarian, or post-colonial, struggle to participate in government without being constantly reminded of their past. Fine Gael certainly had no problem going into government with Clann na Poblachta in 1948, despite the latter’s association with the Republican cause.
This process was actively encouraged by successive Irish governments, especially through the mechanism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, culminating in the participation of Sinn Féin in government.
Yet what we hear today in Ireland from the likes of Fintan O’Toole is that Sinn Féin somehow has a flawed pedigree, and must apologise, again and again. Frankly, it’s boring and inconsistent.
There is a larger question around how we represent political violence in an Era of Centenaries. The decision of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to enter into a coalition might be viewed favourably in terms of a definitive end to ‘tribal’ Civil War politics.
But what of the use of historical figures associated with those parties? In particular, is it appropriate for Fine Gael to remind the public of its association with Michael Collins, one of the great exponents of what supporters define as urban guerrilla warfare and detractors terrorism, or at least extra-judicial assassination?
Moreover, Collins participated in the Easter Rising led by Pádraig Pearse who said in 1913: ‘Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and a nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood … There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them.’
The shell of the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street), Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising.
Political violence was intrinsic to Pearse’s, and arguably Collins’s, approach to the birthing of the nation. They were men of their time, but were a faction within a faction that enjoyed less popular support than the Provisional IRA during the Northern Troubles.
Besides, while the British authorities in Ireland prior to independence were hardly a model of good government, they had at least distributed much of the land among peasant proprietors and developed reasonable infrastructure. Home Rule was on the statute book. It might be argued that 1916 made Partitition inevitable.
In contrast, the sectarian Unionist government – ‘a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’ – in Northern Ireland was denying civil rights to Catholics, gerrymandering constituency boundaries and sponsoring the B Specials, a sectarian, quasi-military reserve special constable police force.
The Northern Troubles was a dark period in the history of the island, but to suggest those involved were, and are, inherently evil rather than, in most cases, products of historical forces, is lazy reasoning. Let’s put to bed the idea the Troubles disqualifies Sinn Féin’s participation in government for ever more, and move on to scrutinising the detail of their policies, in particular a failure to adopt a discernible position on the optimum response to COVID-19 in Ireland.
Featured Image: Michael Collins by John Lavery, 1922.
Your antennae are up months before it comes. You’ve gotten to the point where, if Leo Varadkarsays something won’t happen, you brace yourself for its certain announcement, in good time.
When the axe finally falls, you’re on holidays in Donegal in July, and the uncomfortable reality sinks in that the house and the rain-sodden outdoors will have to do you, pubs and restaurants will have to wait. Because you’ve long known that the game that’s made its way onto your table – one of freedom by way of the barcode – is one you won’t play.
There are many quiet tears across the country, many tummies in a familiar pattern of churning, as a new breed faces an uncertain dawn. They’re greeted, at best, with a wall of silence, at worst with opprobrium and unflinchingly entitled judgement.
The air of suspicion they have increasingly felt around them, in a quietly charged atmosphere that has made it harder to be in the thick of things, even among some cherished family and friends, has become solid and tangible.
And yet the day is like any other, the view from the window just the same. Nothing but a simple QR code and a biddable hospitality sector, understandably desperate to re-open its doors, signals the birth of a new Irish underclass.
Research shows that people have many reasons for declining a medical intervention. These are mainly born out of considered thinking: medical history and experience, including vaccine-injury; research and knowledge of what is right for their own body; the practice of natural healing modalities as a first recourse to health.
Gym membership cancellation rates at the recent extension of medical segregation to that sector suggest that those who have a strong investment in their wellbeing through exercise may assess the risk/benefit of Covid-19 vaccination in a different way to those who may be more vulnerable to Covid’s worst effects.
There is no one-size-fits-all. Such is life. If we believe that this turns a vaccine-free person into a walking biohazard, perhaps we have bought into fear over an inspected view.
We are now some twenty-two months into a pandemic that has fundamentally shifted the course of our existence. It is fitting to ask whether, along with a potentially very serious virus, we have also been visited by a kind of collective trauma, stemming from news streams delivering non-stop daily scrutiny of Covid-19, along with rolling curtailments of our lives and those of our children. Never before has an idea of safety been so rigidly attached to a single concept: being Covid-19-free.
I don’t make light of Covid-19. I know what a serious illness it can be, particularly for those who are older or have underlying vulnerabilities. However, in a new world characterized by fear and caution – surrounded by visual reminders that something frightening is in our midst – I believe that something vital to a healthy society is being dangerously side-lined: the checks and balances necessary to healthy democratic governance.
We are in the process of enshrining into law a piece of primary legislation, the Health and Criminal Justice (Covid-19) (Amendment) (No.2), granting the extension of extraordinary emergency powers to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, powers that prior to Covid-19 we never could have countenanced handing over to the State.
These extend the medical segregation that has become normalised in society, where the paradoxically named “immunity certs” – granted after double vaccination to access supposedly inviolable freedoms – are widely seen as a reasonable and proportionate response to pandemic times, rather than a human rights’ issue in urgent need of inspection.
Do we wish to live in a world where a person can be stripped of their basic freedoms because of their private medical status? A world where the unproven threat of asymptomatic transmission is greater than the threat of authoritarian, technocratic rule?
(One where, in perhaps the greatest twist of all, those who have retained their “privileges” are of course no less immune from the Covid transmission chain.)
Do we wish to be part of a society where, for instance, a medically vulnerable person who is not suitable for vaccination is left out in the cold – because GPs currently have no authority to grant meaningful medical exemptions?
Do we want to raise our children in a world where a person who exercises their right to informed consent, as enshrined in every human rights in healthcare covenant since Nuremberg, can be readily pegged as plainly reprehensible?
In Ireland, we are thankfully now alert to the impacts of the sins of the past – where the “othering”, for instance of women and children in mother and baby homes, was an accepted thing – yet are we willing to face uncomfortable truths about our present?
At this moment, we have effectively “othered” a cohort who are subject to a particular kind of derision. Ireland’s vaccine rollout, which sees the highest level of coverage in the EU, has not transpired into the panacea promised. Despite this, we see blame at times verging on incitement to hatred publicly levelled at those who choose not to or cannot, due to medical reasons, avail of this medical intervention. The failure of the medicine is somehow the fault of those who didn’t take it.
Even as reputable medical journals cautionagainst stigmatising the unvaccinated, the vaccine-free are relentlessly pegged as the scapegoat of this difficult episode, where goalposts keep shifting and promised remedies fail to deliver. Those in power conveniently use this to deflect from their own failures.
“Anti-vax”, a dehumanizing, broad brushstroke term, has become common parlance. Nothing short of a creeping obsession has developed towards a group stigmatised with this label, among some of Ireland’s most trusted, supposedly liberal media commentators, and among some of our most powerful political voices.
Terminology that casually stigmatizes people has the twin impacts of eroding human dignity while effectively silencing dissent and debate – two essential tools of a functioning democracy. And if the ensuing social media outcry was anything to go by, many found it chilling to witness Minister Donnelly level this term at a fellow deputy in the Dáil chambers, for presenting peer-reviewed scientific information.
There's strong support among public for mandatory vaccinations, survey finds. For all this and lots more, pick up a copy of Monday's Irish Daily Mail or click on https://t.co/7yQSg4dmA7pic.twitter.com/bILyyJO8mg
While we can casually cast blame, without evidence, upon the cohort who didn’t “take one for the team”, those who should actually be answerable almost two years in operate without meaningful scrutiny from either a critical media or political opposition. And here, I believe, is where we should all be looking to.
We have empowered Minister Donnelly to strip some seven per cent of the Irish population of their basic social and civil rights. If this legislation extends until its “sunset” of June 2022, we will have placed a minority of Irish society at the back of the bus for almost one year. And who knows how much longer they’ll even be allowed to travel on the bus? If past form is anything to go by, we might then expect another piece of similar legislation to follow it.
I struggle to understand how all this is compatible with a liberal democracy. As medical segregation and the removal of human rights flourishes across Europe, and our social credit becomes increasingly tied to barcode-accessed living, at what point do we begin to seriously look at the potential harms of this brave new world, for which we are hard at work laying down the building blocks?
A medical officer having the power of detention over you, in an undefined “designated place”, if you are merely suspected of having Covid-19, is not democracy. Coerced medication is not democracy, and the championing of Covid Certs by Leo Varadkar, on the basis that it drove up vaccination rates, only celebrates this lapse.
Decision-making that impacts everyone in Ireland, taken by a group of eight middle-class, middle-aged white men, who fail to represent the cross-section of Irish society, including those most vulnerable to the effects of lockdown – working-class people, women, and other minority groups – is not democracy.
Almost two years in, it no longer holds for our government to act as if we are in the emergency phase of the pandemic. This ongoing abuse of emergency legislation and power is causing untold damage to the communities trying to stay afloat around it.
There is evidence aplenty now to begin an assessment of the broad impacts of pandemic measures, and this must be done with independent expertise provided by those who have not been at the helm. The bigger picture must now come into view. We need to properly consider the economic, social/cultural and in the context of overall healthcare.
I believe, special attention must be paid to Covid-19 policy impacts on our young people. Strategies need to be rebalanced towards carving out a future that allows us to respond proportionately to the threat of Covid-19, while maintaining people’s human and civil rights, their entitlement to dignity and privacy, and ending a nasty division that has crept in with terrifying stealth, in a time of crisis.
We need solidarity regardless of medical status. Please stand with me to reach out to your political representatives to insist they convey our call to reject segregation and division, and to demand checks and balances from a government that many increasingly see as being power-drunk at Ireland’s wheel.
Ciara Considine is a book publisher, singer-songwriter (Ciara Sidine), civil rights activist and mother of two, living in Dublin.
This article was first published in A Mandate Free Ireland, a weekly campaign newsletter, on 13 December 2021 (Click here to subscribe: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kvmw7).
In the blink of an eye everything can change in the way we live our lives. How do we manage to live, socialise and maintain public health?
A recent article by Jennifer O’Connell ‘We are world experts at anomalies and blind eyes’ led me to recall how turning a blind eye brought incarceration of pregnant women in laundries and to others living out their lives in psychiatric institutions. But also, that the default creative solution taken by those who do not have the luxury of access, or the means, to survive and thrive within rules laid down by those who do, is to selectively blinker themselves to such rules. And how turning a blind eye to such anomalies is a usually unacknowledged aspect of the way a tate functions.
A Belgian psychiatrist, speaking from the floor at one of the meetings called to form the European Association for Psychotherapy, proposed ‘an ability to deal with ambiguity’ as a definition for mental health.
Jagged Lines
In a time of extreme change, such as that witnessed during the pandemic, and which climate change may well produce, we may have to live with increasing contradictions.
I remember attending a talk given by the late Virginia Satir in Dundrum in Dublin. Satir was one of the earliest family therapists in the United States, focussed on bringing about system change through communication.
She drew a jagged trajectory from one straight line to another. The jagged part indicated the chaos experienced as a system, or family, moves from stasis through change.
As I was pregnant with my first child at the time, it was helpful to recall the jagged line as I struggled to change nappies, deal with nappy rash after soaking the cloth ones in buckets and washing them (we aspired to mind the planet in the 1980s too), before surrendering to the absorbent benefits of paper while, getting by on less sleep than I’d ever managed.
“The first weeks of parenthood are chaotic,” a thoughtful friend rang me to say. ”It will be a lot better in six weeks’ time.”
The jagged line has been a handy reminder in later periods of change and adjustment too, not least during lockdowns and when getting used to wearing a mask.
Catch 22
Pain-inducing contradictions can arise. This may lead either to a psychological pathology or, by way of rising above it, creative solutions.
A subject explored in essays by Gregory Bateson in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Paladin, 1973) in which he critiques previous work from his Palo Alto team proposing the Double Bind theory.
The double bind is a situation requiring the subject – in a relationship which cannot be escaped from – to choose between alternatives in which they will be wrong-footed either way. In other words, they experience themselves living in a continuing Catch 22.
Mount Fuji
‘Benefits of Inconvenience’
A recent interview on the Design Talks Plus programme from NNK Japan television offers encouragement. In what may be a turning from the belief that technical progress is always to our advantage, Professor Kawakami Hiroshi of Kyoto University of Advanced Science has spent a decade researching what he calls ‘the benefits of inconvenience’. He argues for less convenience and that the effort required to make sense of the world, while facing challenges, may contribute to a better sense of meaningfulness and wellbeing.
Hiroshi cites a return to the use of rough earth in children’s playgrounds (balance challenging) and finding the way on foot around a city without satnav – ensuring the need to pay attention to surroundings – as examples. To emphasise his point he began by asking: ‘If you were climbing Mt. Fuji would you want an escalator’?
The inconvenience in rising to the challenge of struggling with contradictions in rules for living with Covid 19 (and our recent further re-opening of opportunities to socialise) could be seen as an opportunity.
Maybe the rewards will offset the difficulties. Providing, that is, those struggling are not punished for choices that, either way, will put them in the wrong.
If restrictions spawn imaginative solutions, in line with the spirit of preventing the spread of variants of Covid-19, crucially, formulated in ways appropriate to particular local situations, then the sense of satisfaction might end up enhancing a sense of well-being
Unlikely? Maybe. But maybe not. These regularly madden me but, and as Jennifer O’Connell indicated in her article, they are the kind of ‘Irish solutions’ we might be said to excel at.
Mark Zuckerberg at the Congressional Hearing
Where to Look
I was relieved – hope restored – hearing Roger McNamee, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s early mentors and author of Zucked (UK Harper Collins,2019), on the RTE radio morning news bulletin on October 29th 2021 saying that the Facebooker owner’s launch of Meta, his new holding company, is his way of distracting the world from Frances Haugen’s account. The Facebook whistleblower revealed to the U.S. Congress and a UK Select Committee in the last couple of weeks the ways Zuckerman prioritizes profits over safety. McNamee thought it was also aimed at saving Zuckerman from being held to account.
I forced myself to complete it several days after I had put it to one side. I wanted to be able to respond to it, but also to offer him at least the courtesy of considering what he had to say, especially given he has had to listen to that he clearly has found difficult in the national conversation.
I had no argument with the generally accepted facts outlined. However, his omission of the crucial fact that the Irish health system has been more inclined towards collapse than the other European countries he mentions bothered me. That, alongside his use of adjectives, indicated a bias I saw as otherwise unacknowledged. Although mention of his Brazilian wife did offer clues.
Photo by Daniele Idini.
Catastrophising
What most annoyed me was that Dan O’Brien wrote of Irish ‘catastrophising’ conversations. Longer lockdowns here contrasted with the reactions of Italy or Brazil. His hypothesis is that this might be due to their twentieth century experiences of living with war.
How ought we best manage the fears evoked by a threat? Our bodies are wired for fight or flight. The extreme version of flight is denial, ignoring of facts that we cannot face.
It can allow us to hide from reality or feel unrealistically invincible in our fighting. Maybe that’s what is needed in wars. In contradiction to O’Brien’s argument, the truth generally is that the more traumatised we are the more likely we may be to use these defences.
Of course, we need psychological defences that enable us continue to cope during difficult times. Talking about our difficulties and continuing to take the difficult decisions, to find the least bad solutions that we can manage to act on, is usually considered the healthiest way of managing.
We need to put on blinkers at times and to remain focused on the direction required. But blinding ourselves entirely to the traffic – the many difficulties and demands of the times we live in – can only lead to more of the same.
In Addition
We are drawn to solutions that best serve our own interests. Financial Times journalist, Tim Harmon’s book How to Make the World Add Up (2021) reveals research showing that we are more likely to make decisions based on the attitudes of the groups with which we identify than with scientifically proven facts, and that this has also been shown to be true of scientists themselves.
We want to remain part of our group or tribe. This is research worth taking into account with regard to vaccine take up and hesitancy. Maybe it is important to acknowledge that Dan O’Brien is interested in economics and business and that my background, which also began with a social science perspective, has been a thirty-year career in psychotherapy before I turned to writing. We may have different loyalties affecting our perspectives.
A quick re-read of what Tim Harford had to say about our use of statistics led me to his first rule for evaluating their use: ‘What are you feeling?’
He goes on to suggest that looking at how those feelings might be influencing your use of figures can be the best way to ensure accuracy, and the avoidance of spreading ‘false news’.
I asked myself about the anger fuelling the fingers on my keyboard. I realised it was driven by fear. My own catastrophising of how O’Brien’s article might undermine the national effort. My fear that Covid numbers are rising. I don’t want another lockdown.
However accurate or questionable O’Brien’s hypothesis, he has given me a timely reminder about rushing to the page. Writing can be a way of working things out. Emotion may fuel effort, but it had better be interrogated to discover what it is really saying if the greater truth is to be served.
The need to keep financially afloat and the need to save as many lives as possible can be at odds, nor are they unrelated. Funds are necessary.
Basic services, food and shelter are as essential and contribute as much to public health as other considerations, and have to be paid for. The challenge is to engage with, and work to rise above, fear and strive to find the least damaging solutions. We are left to wonder how we decide what is best amidst the confusion during times of change.
Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Politics of Distraction
What do Trump, Zuckerman and Johnson have in common? They are masters, albeit not alone, in offering distraction, a form of click-bait news that feeds a greed for sensation that briefly satisfy but cannot ultimately sate humanity.
The distraction makes us look away from what is really at hand and makes us focus instead on what we prefer.
‘Get Brexit done’ for Johnson. In Trump’s case, spreading so much false news that there is no longer any focus on the truth, or otherwise, in his own assertions. Listeners are led to believe all news is untrustworthy and that he alone should be listened to and receive votes.
And, then there is the promise of a future, technologically ‘advanced’ virtual world – with new toys – in the case of Mark Zuckerman. This is leads to a temptation to avoid looking too closely at the degree of control he has, and the damage that control has done.
Commentators other than Roger McNamee acknowledge that Zuckerman’s plans for his venture were long in the making, and point to the direction he would like to go in future while trying to re-engage a younger demographic, but the timing of the announcement means that Roges McNamee is making sense.
Eye on the Ball
There will be many anomalies, distractions and frightening challenges to confront as we endeavour to live with the pandemic, while keeping our eyes open to the threat of the Earth becoming uninhabitable, at least for humans.
We’ll need to recall Satir’s jagged line between the two straight ones that each indicated more settled times. Sometimes a withering eye may be needed and sometimes we will need to challenge ourselves to recognise our prejudices and look again, turn ourselves away from simplistic blame and less urgent conflicts, save our energy for the war by being willing to lose relatively insignificant battles.
There will also be occasions when turning a blind eye will be compassionate and politically essential and others again when we just need to manage to turn off the news and blind ourselves to what is going on around us for our own sanity. Hopefully we will also find the fortitude in time to turn again to face what needs to be faced and take the right actions within our ambit of control.
A protest organised by Lasair Dhearg, and involving representatives from People Before Profit and Academics Against Apartheid, gathered on University Road in Belfast on the morning of September 24th, 2021 as Hillary Rodham Clinton posed for journalists and television crews covering her inauguration as the first female Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.
Chants of ‘shame on Queen’s’, and ‘Hillary you should be at the Hague’, rang through the air as Clinton walked the short distance from the campus entrance to nearby Whitla Hall for the inauguration.
The promotion of Clinton to a seat of learning must surely be, at the very least, controversial. In a televised interview Clinton once joked about the brutal murder of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the leader of Libya, saying, “We came, we saw, he died,” before laughing.
Considering her apparent heartless disregard for human life, why would Queen’s University offer Clinton such a prestigious post as Chancellor?
Modern universities are no longer only seats of learning, but are businesses run for profit, with huge salaries for those running the organisations, and significant grants available, especially from technology and pharmaceutical companies.
In order to benefit from research and development grants and encourage greater ties between American corporations and the University, Queen’s seem to be whitewashing Clinton’s record.
Hillary Clinton has history in Ireland. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited Belfast and is seen as a central figure in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
She is now milking this for all it’s worth, portraying herself as a mentor, who still has something to offer the youth of Ireland. Yet she has blood on her hands, and an unhealthy disregard for democracy, human rights and the sanctity of life.
Students across the Western hemisphere are increasingly calling for Justice for Palestine, even as the Israeli lobby works hard to censor and dismiss academics who call Israel an Apartheid state. Indeed, writer Sally Rooney recently declined to have her new novel translated into Hebrew in protest against the conduct of Israel. Queen’s University Belfast now appears to be on the wrong side of history in appointing Hilary Clinton.
Lasair Dhearg’s Pól Torbóid, who helped organise and also spoke at the event, said,
Queen’s University’s complicity in the whitewashing of Hillary Clinton and her war crimes further epitomises the university’s role in an international framework of imperialism that sees it not only glorify warmongers like Clinton, but have immense financial investment in military contracts and companies guilty of immense environmental destruction.
He added:
As US secretary for war, she authorised over 400 drone strikes across multiple nations, which overwhelmingly killed civilians and even children at a proportion of almost 90%.
She labelled black men ‘super-predators’ when she helped lobby for the 1994 US Clinton Crime Bill, which was immensely important in creating the mass incarceration levels that exists today in the US to benefit the prison-industrial complex – which is a system of slavery by new means.
A Zionist, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be an enemy of Palestinian liberation, siding with the oppressor every time it mattered, like during the 2014 Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza. She increased annual US funding to Israel from 2.5billion, to 3.1 billion US dollars whilst she was US Secretary of State, and she stated that countering the BDS movement globally should be a priority for Israel’s defence.
Unfortunately all these arguments are falling on deaf ears as Queen’s University appears to have entered into a Faustian pact with corporate America in appointing Hillary Clinton as Chancellor.
Feature Image: Clinton, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune Spear in the White House Situation Room on May 1, 2011. Everyone in the room is watching a live feed from drones operating over the Osama bin Laden complex.
An earlier version of this article appeared in Al Mayadeen.
