Cassandra Voices

Category: Comment

  • Is This Where We Are Heading?

    As a journalist, I receive a variety of emails, Facebook messages and text messages almost every day alerting me to this problem, that conspiracy, or whatever the government is doing. Many ask me to report on, or at least take notice of, what they see as important. While I would like to investigate everything, the truth is that I would need a team of researchers to get through these requests.

    With that said, I was really struck by a piece written by Lithuanian citizen-journalist Gluboco Lietuva and decided to look more deeply into what initially seemed over the top claims about the Lithuanian government seriously infringing the human rights of individuals choosing not to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

    To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement. What is happening there is a stark warning of how much control a government is prepared to exert over the lives of an individual declining to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

    It should be noted that this article is not concerned with of the jab itself, but with how an EU government has withdrawn civil rights and forced businesses to choose between profit and a citizen’s right to privacy and bodily integrity, enshrined under Article 8 of the European Charter on Fundamental Rights.

    Gluboco reported that the Lithuanian Pass system prevents him and his family from entering shopping centres to purchase food, banks, clothes shops, or to conduct business in government buildings; or enter book stores, second-hand shops, hairdressers, barber shops, phone repair shops, or even art supply shops. Nor can an unvaccinated person visit a relative or loved one in a hospital or nursing home.

    In promulgating this law it seems the Lithuanian government is pitting one group of people against another after a recent surge in cases. The worry is that such a draconian measure won’t be confined to Lithuania either, as we can see from what is happening in Italy and France.

    The ‘Opportunity Pass’

    According to Gluboco in Lithuania the Covid Pass is called the ’Opportunity Pass’, as it offers the ‘opportunity’ to participate in society. The ’Opportunity Pass’ or Freedom ID is available to Lithuanians who are able to present a vaccination certificate, a recent negative PCR test, or proof of COVID-19 immunity (after having recovered). However, the government is considering excluding people with a negative test.

    Without this Pass rights are seriously restricted. Gluboco went on to say: “My wife and I don’t have the Covid Pass. We refuse to accept authoritarianism and control of the new regime. So, we’ve lost our jobs and been banished from most of society. It’s been six weeks so far.”

    He revealed, furthermore, that there is no end date planned for the new regime. With no Pass, he may only enter small shops with street entrances that mainly sell essential goods: food, pharmaceuticals, optics, or farm/pet supplies. Every other store must, by law, ban people without the Pass.

    In Lithuanian, the Pass is referred to as the Galimybių pasas, abbreviated as “GP”. By law, GP signs must be displayed at the entrance to stores and public buildings to signal compliance with government policy. You must also provide photo ID to prove that the “Opportunity Pass” is your own.

    As an example of the level of control that the state exerts, a construction worker went into a small supermarket to buy breakfast before his morning shift. After using his boss’s QR code he was reported to the police by a staff member and fined €5,000.

    Gluboco went on to say that Lithuania’s Covid Pass started in May as a temporary measure, the goal being to facilitate economic activity. In August, the temporary measure, justified in order to restore the economy, became a permanent law, all but banishing certain people from participation in society.

    Lithuania’s Covid Pass law does not ban specific activities. Instead, it prohibits people without an Opportunity Pass from all services and economic activities involving human contact, apart from limited rights, such as purchasing food in small shops.

    This represents an inversion of traditional rights. In a free society, within reason, you can expect to do whatever you want, unless a law specifically forbids it. Under Lithuania’s new Covid Pass regime, however, the presumption is reversed to the extent that you can’t perform normal activities unless the state allows it.

    In an EU member state, almost every business is forced to comply with the Opportunity Pass and enforcement seems to be strict. Gluboco indicates that many of those who initially opposed the Pass now acquiesce. People grow accustomed to coercion it seems.

    Further to this, he goes on to say: “In just 6 weeks, the Covid Pass has transformed my country into a regime of totalitarianism, control and segregation. This is the new society created in Lithuania, the nation furthest along the path towards authoritarianism confronting all countries which have imposed a Covid Pass regime.”

    “I hope they will die out on their own.”

    What is happening in Lithuania is a warning to those who choose not to take the jab no matter what country you live in. It begs question: could we see this level of coercion, human rights infringement and control introduced into the Ireland and the rest of Europe eventually? The aim appears to be to punish people economically and socially for non-compliance.

    There are also questions in regard to the use of data collected through the Covid-19 digital passes, held jointly by private companies and the relevant EU state which are supposed to abide by GDPR legislation. A citizen’s private data is kept on file by the state and could form the basis of a national identity card.

    I leave you with the chilling words of ex-Lithuanian parliamentarian and now TV host Arúnas Valinskas who said: “There are people who deliberately take sides with the enemy… In times of war, such people were shot. But there is no need to shoot the anti-vaxxers, I hope, they will die out on their own.”

    Featured Image: Lithuanian Army soldiers marching with their dress uniforms in Vilnius (2012).

  • Watering Down the Vodka

    In response to COVID-19: how are we to explain people drawing starkly differing conclusions from the same data? To understand this requires a search for context and motivation.

    In the second series of the Duffer Brothers Stranger Things, set not uncoincidentally in 1984, there is a critical scene in which the story reaches its conclusion. Murray Bauman, the experienced investigator and sceptic is confronted by Nancy and Jonathan, two of the series’ teenage characters. They present him with conclusive proof of events and happenings, apparently shattering all the certainties he had operated with until that point.

    Pouring a large measure of vodka to steady himself, Murray contemplates what he has just heard before explaining to Nancy: “I believe you, but that’s not the problem… you need them to believe you… your priests, your postman, your teachers, the world at large. They won’t believe any of this.” He then clasps his drink close to his chest as if it’s a lifeline.

    “You heard the tape,” Nancy insists, clearly frustrated.

    “That doesn’t matter”, snaps back Bauman as he waves the glass in the air. People want to be comfortable, and this truth is uncomfortable. He takes another gulp of Vodka and grimaces. But it gives him an idea.

    “The story,” he says. “We moderate it, just like this drink here, we water down the vodka … We make it more tolerable.”

    The events that have unfolded since March 2020, when the pandemic began in Europe and the U.S., have been extraordinary by any standards.

    After over seventy years of peace in the West, during which wars were fought on foreign lands, and apart from the occasional lurch to the left or right there has been political stability, democratic norms, a generally fair justice system and continuous growth in prosperity and education.

    Moreover, infectious diseases have been all but conquered with new drugs and treatments. Combined with improvements in public health and nutrition we have seen life expectancy grow year on year in what appears a steady pattern. We have grown accustomed to continuous improvement in the standard of living and security. After seventy years of improvement, we have come to expect this to continue.

    After such a prolonged period of peace even the idea of warfare – or it not being safe to walk the streets – is almost beyond our comprehension. Never before has humanity in the West been so removed from the terrors of war, the tyranny of oppressive regimes and the ravages of natural disasters or famine.

    We get up each day expecting it to be exactly like the last and for tomorrow to be the same. We cannot contemplate a world that is not exactly like that of today.

    Yes, we will have technological changes and workplaces will change, but fundamentally we expect everything to remain the same. Footballers will be paid too much money; screen stars will fall in and out of love with each other; war will break out in some far-flung land and a natural disaster will occur somewhere only to be forgotten and replaced in our consciousness by another somewhere else. Meanwhile, what really concerns us is reaching the gym on time after work, getting the kids to school and catching up on the latest Netflix mini-series.

    So, what happened when we woke up one morning to a potentially fatal virus that was not happening on the other side of the world? By early March we had watched with indifference what was happening in China, but now it was here in our community.

    Cases, first slowly but then steadily, began rising until on the March 11th 2020 we had our first death. Now it was for real; now for the first time in seventy years there was an immediate threat to our health and even our way of life.

    We approached the pandemic within the paradigm of our world of seventy years of increasing prosperity and health. We believed we were invincible, that our medical community would protect us and that all lives were saveable.

    For any illness there must be a drug. If we don’t have it today, we will have it tomorrow. We just need sufficient money and political will and it will be discovered. So, we laid down the challenge to the pharmaceutical industry to produce a vaccine, and all we needed to do was give them enough time to develop it, locking down hard until then.

    In so doing, we revealed an aversion to risk and a failure to critically analyse the extreme, and erroneous, warnings on fatalities that were issued by politicians and scientists; strangely our media and politicians accepted the doomsayers and ignored optimistic assessments.

    The WHO definition of health, as not just the absence of disease, but the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the individual, was ditched. We would get back to that once we found the vaccine and the virus was eliminated. The pharma industry took up the challenge and we sat at home watching Netflix until they told us they were ready.

    Alternative approaches that involved natural immunity, and isolating the vulnerable as the Great Barrington Declaration advised, or applying early treatment with a range of therapeutic drugs were dismissed in a concerted attack by public health officials, doctors, universities, politicians, the media and in particular social media.

    There was to be one response and no challenge would be allowed. Civil rights to freedom of movement and to bodily integrity were trampled on with barely a whimper in the mainstream media.

    Emergency powers not contemplated since World War II were ushered through by the government without so much as a peep from the opposition or the media. Lockdowns were for the greater good; while the fear and panic that had been sowed ensured almost complete compliance and a demonisation of dissenting voices.

    Compelling stories from reliable sources tell us of the more than reasonable possibility of the virus originating in the lab in Wuhan, but we don’t want to know. Valid alternative early-stage treatments, such as Ivermectin, shown to work in other parts of the world are not merely dismissed, but actively smeared.

    Early stage VAERS data on vaccine safety, particularly in young males, is ignored based on thresholds that would have previously stopped approval of a vaccine. The fact that the vaccines have not passed long term safety trials is conveniently ignored.

    Questions about how wide a spectrum of immunity is covered and the length of time immunity lasts is also overlooked. Boosters are unquestioningly accepted and used off-label, although no research exists on the possible impact to both short and long term health, and overall immunity. Public health concerns about the impacts of lockdown on society and other illnesses are forgotten. There is only one train leaving town and you are either in the vaccine carriage, or you are on your own.

    So why did all this happen; why have we thrown away hard won civil rights; why have we allowed ourselves to be coerced into taking drugs, without what would normally be considered informed consent?

    Why aren’t we desperately trying to investigate the origins of the disease? Why have we dismissed any and all alternative treatments? Why was the Swedish approach derided, and now treated as if it did not happen?

    I guess it’s a case of too much, too soon. We craved the comfort of our old world so much that we accepted without question the solution offered; we were told this was simply “following the science”, as if “the science” was settled.

    Once embarked on that path there could be no turning back. There could be no dissenting voices. There could be no alternative science. Voices straying from the perordained plan must be crushed at whatever cost.

    So here we are now nineteen months later and it still not politically correct to say that perhaps we got it wrong. Most people are so desperate to return to our safe world, that to believe that, would be to recognise that we have been misled and badly informed throughout that time.

    It would mean that doctors, much of the scientific community, public health officials, universities and the media have been participants or active orchestrators of the worst medical and public health mismanagement in modern history. That’s too much to take on board, the brain can’t compute, it overheats, dismisses, and attacks those who even suggest it.

    So how will the story unfold? There is surely no question, but that the truth will out. As time passes we will acknowledge the errors. Then we will rue how it was ever possible for such catastrophic mistakes to occur.

    I suspect posterity will not look kindly in particular on a medical community who, with a few honourable exceptions, sat back and watched the policies unfold. Who kept their head down and took the easy road.

    As a society we invest in doctors, educating them and offering them considerable rewards. In return we expect them to look after our interests. We expect them to speak out on our behalf when they see injustice. After after what has just happened it may be difficult to regain that trust.

    I wonder when will the serious post-mortem begin? When will data, evidence and outcomes start driving policies; when will marketing mantras and outright propaganda be left behind?

    Will the story need to be watered down to become more tolerable? How much water do we need to add to the vodka?

  • Palestine: What happens when the violence ends?

    Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky. It’s up to you however you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza.

    I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel. Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.

    The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 led to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Since then areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement, which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.

    If you take nothing else from this article please remember the Occupation is illegal under international law, therefore every decision taken by the Occupation army, the illegal settlers. Yet the Apartheid Israeli judiciary routinely sends Palestinian including young children to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat.

    In some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand, and are told these are official release forms. The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, these are confessions that will condemn them to jail.

    Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial, and we have the flawed corrupt Apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.

    As a result many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state. This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently Apartheid.

    Israelis protest against Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem on 30 July 2020.

    Corruption Charges

    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the Occupied West Bank, and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al-Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

    Is seems conceivable that the leader of the seventh largest military force on Earth would engineer a state of conflict between Israel and a people without an army, air force or navy, to protect themselves. All they have is local militias, composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community.

    But if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.

    The Dust Settles

    So, where are we now and who won and who lost?

    As the bloodletting ends, as it must, the dead are buried and the dust settles over the destroyed building, like a shroud over Gaza.

    The reality is, everything will be the same and yet everything has changed utterly.

    I have always been sceptical when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.

    I genuinely thought it was just bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?

    The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. Twenty-five miles by six miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, with the equivalent of the entire two million population of Northern Ireland squeezed into it.

    Thus far, the destruction in Gaza is an incredible scale.

    The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.

    The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime. The wanton destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are too.

    The Resistance has Won

    The latest Blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten. Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza. It cites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.

    Under international law, however, with Israel illegally occupying the West Bank and enjoying control air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have a right to resist the Occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance.

    Then this David versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian David with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, which uses gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb and murder Gazans at will, and without any recourse to the rules of war.

    The reality is that Israel will only end the bloodshed once it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France  Britain and the EU.

    Yet Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the Occupation. It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.

    The resistance groups retain both the ability, and the will, to continue to resist the illegal Occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.

    The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message from Israel. Indeed, Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes, while their military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.

    I know, it’s hard to believe, but the resistance has won! Gaza may have been levelled: the suffering of the dead, the injured and the dying is unfathomable.

    But while Gaza has been destroyed, the spirit of resistance embodied in the people has survived. This provides the impetus to continue demands for equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives, not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al-Aqsa and across historic Palestine, which Zionists call Israel.

    Netanyahu has only succeeded in uniting Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al-Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born, united and unified from the river to the sea.

    Did Netanyahu help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable? Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply a political gambit aimed at a domestic audience?

    Is it a case of: he or she who kills the most Palestinians getting the most votes?

    Alas, history certainly bears that perspective out to be true.

    Moving Forward

    What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.

    What it will get is another 50,000 or more refugees, many of whom were previously refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.

    This further degrades Palestinian civil society’s ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy.

    Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine. The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace

    Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of Occupation.

    And yet the spirit of Resistance has prevailed once again. But the price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is a continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.

    The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the loss of innocence in the young, their hopes dashed for the future, and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies. This is a psychological trauma seemingly without end.

    When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West. Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur?

    Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.

    What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the Middle East and West Asia? It is in your hands

    Feature Image: Destroyed house in Gaza City, December 2012.

  • Al-Quds: the Red Line

    Al-Quds (‘the holy sanctuary’), Jerusalem is the red line for the Palestinian people, the wider diaspora and the Arab collective. It is the capital of Palestine and home to the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site for sixteen to seventeen months after his migration to Mecca. So how did we get to this current impasse?

    Jerusalem is in flames. Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age. Israeli Zionists and illegal settlers are attacking Palestinian business, homes, and people in the streets, at their residences and places of worship. Palestinians are defending themselves by any means necessary.

    Palestine: To Exist is to Resist

    I won’t give a historical lecture, just some pertinent facts. The First Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel Switzerland. It was decided then that European antisemitism needed to be challenged and that a new state for the Jewish people, free from European antisemitism was to be created. Several places were considered including Madagascar, Uganda and some Latin American countries.

    Finally, it was decided Palestine would become the new Israel. From 1901 onwards the Jewish National Fund began buying land in Palestine. Palestine at that time was part of the Ottoman empire. The land was bought from absentee Turkish landowners, the Palestinians put off the land and Jewish only migrants employed.

    This continued up until World War I. The British formed regiments of Palestinian and Arab troops promising them freedom from Ottoman occupation if they fought for Britain. When the war ended the troops dispersed and Britain and France carved up the Middle East as a prize for both their colonial empires.

    All manifestations of violence today in the Middle East stem from the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and subsequent redrawing of the old Ottoman Empire into a new white European colonial construct. All those who fought for Britain and for the freedom of small nations were abandoned. They were simply cannon fodder to save British lives by using expendable Arab lives.


    History’s Dead Hand on the Middle East
    (Image: Kevin Fox, all rights reserved)

    The Jewish National Fund continued to buy up land and displace the indigenous population. As the 1920s progressed we witnessed clashes between the European colonists and the indigenous population with riots in Jerusalem during this decade.

    With the outbreak of World War II Zionist designs on fully colonising Palestine were set in motion. After 1945 further ethnic clashes occurred. The Zionists were fully armed and trained and the Palestinians had no army, just bands of neighbours and villagers trying to defend their homes and families.

    The Stern Gangs, the Hagana and the Irgun began a campaign to terrorise, murder and displace the indigenous population. They succeeded with the help of Britain and America at the UN and the state of Palestine under the British Mandate was partitioned and the new state of Israel born at the point of terrorist guns. 750,000 Palestinians were forced into exile into the surrounding Arab countries and the systematic erasure of the Palestine footprint in the new state began. Villages were destroyed so their inhabitants could not return. Businesses taken over by Jewish Zionist families, homes sequestered and the land stolen.

    This happened again in 1967 during the Six-Day War with the occupation of the West Bank. This continued Occupation and the siege on Gaza from 2007 are a continuation of the policy of the theft of homes, theft of land, theft of resources and the displacement of the indigenous population.

    From the Wild West to the Middle East, the European white colonial settlement of North America and Canada became the blueprint for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. We can see the house evictions in Sheikh Jarrah East Jerusalem for what they really are: a continuation of the Zionist-Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is a microcosm of everyday reality and life under Occupation.

    These house possessions by Zionists are just the latest step in the long path to the total Judification of Palestine. West Jerusalem is already nearly 100% Zionist.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing criminal corruption charges and is hanging on to power as leader of an extremist Zionist political party Likud by the skin of his teeth. During the Holy Muslim Festival of Ramadan up to 100,000 Palestinians gather for prayer and worship daily at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem known in Arabic as Al Quds

    Now if you remember, the Israeli military Occupation is illegal under international law. The Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.

    Every day Palestinians watch their homes land and businesses confiscated by the Israeli occupation. These daily injustices lead to a growing sense of frustration, anger and discontent.

    The Israeli illegal occupation forces then attacked the peaceful worshippers in the compound adjacent to the Al-Aqsa mosque. They attacked people through dispersal squads who use sound bombs, chemical canisters, arrests and assaults to clear any groups who might congregate.

    This means family, friends, neighbours and communities cannot gather in conversation in the community and in peace at the end of the day attending or leaving prayer.

    The scenes witnessed all over the Arab, Persian and Muslim world of peaceful worshippers, many of them women, being attacked inside the mosque at prayer, has led to the resistance groups in Gaza launching primitive rockets at Israel in retaliation.

    Israel’s disproportionate response by launching military sorties from land, sea and air has destroyed buildings and killed scores of men, women and children.

    While Israelis cower in their bomb shelters from the falling debris of Palestinian rockets with a payload similar to an enormous firework, the Gazan’s have no bomb shelters, no air force, no navy and no land army. They have a few rockets, machine guns, mortars and rifles to defend themselves against one the best-equipped armies in the world today.

    While yet another pro-Zionist American President Biden phones Netanyahu to give his support to the ‘Israel must have the right to defend itself ‘mantra, all we will see and hear from Western media propagandists are further Zionist cries of victimhood.

    I visited Gaza on a medical aid convoy in 2010. I walked the streets the Zionists are turning to rubble. They intend to bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age.

    Electricity only runs for a few hours a day. Fresh drinking water is nearly unheard of and bottled water and fuel for generators is sold to Gaza by Israel

    With a total land, sea and air blockade, the Gazan population has an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. They watch on each day as a bombing campaign destroys one building, one house, one business, one apartment block, and one family at a time. The fear the people, and especially the children, must be living under is unimaginable..

    Occupied Territories Bill: Government Defies Dáil Majority Leaving the Jaber Family to their Fate

    What can we do?

    Support the right of Palestinians as enshrined in International Law to free themselves from Occupation by any means necessary.

    Go on a protest.

    Support BDS and boycott Israel goods and companies.

    Demand your government divests from the political and financial support of Israel.

    Once the killings and bombings stop all the people you see protesting will go home and the Palestinians and the Yemenis and the Syrians will be forgotten. Please remember it’s not just Palestine the Zionists want to destroy. They want total hegemonic control over the entire region. That means destroying any country and its peoples that it cannot control. Look at Iraq and Libya, see Syria and Yemen watch them threaten Lebanon and Iran.

    Netanyahu’s Likud government has made Israel a cancer on the body politic of the region. Like cancer, it must respond to treatment or the host and the body die.

    There will soon be one million Zionist Jewish settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They are all illegally there. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying force suhc as Israel from settling its civilian population in occupied territory.

    UN Resolution 194 states that Palestinians exiled from their homes, land and property have the Right of Return.

    Israel has never let the Palestinians return. It continues to usurp their rights and ethnically cleanse the West Bank of its indigenous population through dispersal and dispossession.

    In 1901 European Jews had a dream of a land free from hatred, from discrimination, from racial and religious prejudice. Far from creating this land, they created a state based on hatred, discrimination, and racial and religious prejudice. To many onlookers, Israel and its settlers have recreated that which they set out to escape.

    Featured Image of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Frank Armstrong (2003).

  • Old Headscarf

    At thirty-two, after decades of sporting a headscarf, I abandoned the practice and exposed my bad hair days. There was a short-lived, still humongous, stir. At home, there was one overriding fear: “And what will people say?”

    I had long interpreted the headscarf as a politico-cultural expression of Islamic modesty; for years though, I never risked taking it off. The spectre of community disapproval deterred me, but then, so did the thought of selling out. That I could enact the archetype of Muslim woman unshackling her chains, could endorse the cardboard tropes, bothered me. When I finally stopped caring and took the plunge, my entire conception of reality shifted.

    Four years on and my experience equips me with insight. A hijabi when headlines hyped the War on Terror, I already know that all are prey to mainstream conditioning; that IQ, educational, or professional qualifications are not automatic safeguards against ignorance. In my life as it unfolds post-headscarf, the comic sea-change in strangers’ attitudes towards me, I can vouch that opting out of norms incurs social penalties. I have witnessed polarities in treatment, know a hunger for acceptance, and appreciate anyone’s pressure to conform to the crowd.

    By interrogating the headscarf as immutable religious law, I am reminded that beliefs and identities are products of historical, political, and cultural forces, configured by upbringing and environmental backdrop. I observe that too many of us outsource our critical faculties in blind deference to expert authorities, subscribing to the fallacy that appointed ‘philosopher-kings’ must comprehend something we can’t, that the structural asymmetry of information serves anything other than vested interests. Hence, if Imperial College London plots a graph about it, or a man in spectacles rattles off numbers, or a stack of death certificates signed by frontline heroes just says so, we’ll dig no deeper; we’ll admire the emperor’s new threads as he stands naked in plain sight.

    So now as I stride into shops, into salons; down hospital corridors; onto Dublin’s public transport, my face unmasked, not even pretending to be sorry, the waves of hostility, the missiles of verbal abuse, are (stifle yawn) old headscarf to me.

    I can hush attacks with official paperwork—I’ve secured a medical exemption. What’s troubling is the visceral nature of the onslaught. Where dishonouring the dead and the vulnerable enters the equation, I see how my behaviour signifies a disregard for the common good. The shock value speaks more to the success of the global fear campaign than to an informed understanding. I don’t blame anyone for adhering to public health guidance, but when inquiry into its validity is cast in tin foil hat terms, when scrutiny of the doublespeak and the doublethink provokes outrage, when repurposing masks as an instrument of control is the step too far; then even the most credulous need to wonder. When a conscientious refusal to play along counts for little more than petulance, an attention-seeking stunt at best, and those, masked up, cruising solo in their cars, represent virtue, then the time for reflection is long overdue.

    The transition from denial to acceptance is a scary leap: shaking off the programming, rearranging beliefs, remodelling the systems on which we have staked our lives, our livelihoods, our selves, is a terrifying task. Or is it because the conspiracy realm is traditionally populated by weirdos that it’s easy to dismiss the evidence? That Bill Gates is up to nothing other than philanthropy is the comfort of faith. Klaus Schwab will spell out The Great Reset in a how-to guide, but the idea of a technocratic agenda still sounds like hogwash. PCR is not fit for purpose, but we accept the reported case numbers. An mRNA vaccine, rushed, and proudly ‘experimental’ may be a gamble, but we’ll roll up our sleeves, we’ll take a jab —make that two—for  the team. Big Pharma, absolved of liability, is fattening that bottom line, but call it old -fashioned opportunism if you must, not an orchestrated end.

    The Orwellian echoes lend an aura of irony to the occasion, more than mobilise action it seems; and so, is the question that nobody sees it, or really that they’d just rather not? A recent encounter gives me heart: Lolloping down a supermarket aisle, shoppers lunging out of my path, I near collided into a fellow unmasked objector. We shared a moment, grinning at one another; armed with the knowledge, that acquiescence, is always a choice.

    Editor’s Note: A report of the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: Using face masks in the community: first update – Effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19 published in February 2021 concluded:

    The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty.

    Additional high-quality studies are needed to assess the relevance of the use of medical face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Featured Image: Anna Shvets Photography

  • Mandatory Hotel Quarantine Alienates Immigrant Communities

    Never before have I felt so far from my country of origin as when I heard that Italy would be added to the list of countries from which arrivals are mandated to enter a hotel quarantine for twelve days on arrival in Ireland. Now any trip to my family will cost almost two grand, and that’s before accounting for the flights and numerous tests.

    That’s quite a spike in price compared to the few hundred euro I needed prior to April 15th. In pure economic terms, it further diminishes the purchasing power of a particular section of immigrants, as well as Irish citizens living abroad; even if only for a particular item, such as the opportunity to visit loved ones occasionally, and to return for a short stay in case of an emergency.

    For many of us, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, the inflated price of the hotel stay is a serious impediment to reaching one’s country of origin; and that’s without considering the dread we feel about spending almost two weeks under hotel arrest, without even access to a kitchen. I wonder how healthy it is to eat takeaway food for twelve days in a row?

    One may argue that the measure is a proportionate response to a public health emergency and that the right to travel abroad does not come before the right of a country to remain Covid free. But this ignores whether we test negative on arrival and show no symptoms and, more broadly, the rights of European citizens living in another member state.

    Under Article 45 of the charter of the fundamental rights of the European Union, as citizens we enjoy a right to freedom of movement. Every citizen of the Union has the right to move and reside freely within each member states’ territory. There has to be a very compelling (and proportionate) reason for this right to be withdrawn.

    The time for extreme restrictions on the right to travel was March 2020, when some member states including Denmark and Poland temporarily closed their borders. But at this stage any restrictions surely should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and not applied indiscriminately. Ireland isn’t exactly Covid-free New Zealand at this stage, and the Irish government is not aiming for a Covid-free status. What’s more the number of exceptions – including for politicians, and elite athletes in all likelihood – demonstrates the law is being applied unfairly.

    As for the variants of concern, well 90% of experts say that Covid-19 will become endemic, and so we will never be able to travel freely again if that argument is applied to international travel.

    I wonder if this is another aspect of our pre-Covid life that we have to reluctantly accept has disappeared – in order to protect the weak and vulnerable? Or so it is argued. Even if that means uselessly undermining the rights of immigrants living in Ireland now confronted with draconian barriers to movement.

    One can understand – confronting the pressure the pandemic has put on healthcare capacity all over the world – why authorities might consider any means possible to stop the spread. But even working from that assumption, it is really difficult to find justification for mandatory hotel quarantine if an individual tests negative on departure and after five days on arrival, for example.

    In any case, regardless of its arguable necessity, this measure’s immediate effect is to further alienate foreign communities living in Ireland and, I suspect, Irish ex-pats abroad, even though the data shows that foreign travel has had a miniscule effect – just one percent of cases according to Leo Varadkar in January – on the spread of the disease.

    Regarding the Irish media’s coverage of this issue, it is disturbing that sympathy seems to be reserved for Irish citizens returning home to loved ones, but silence on how this will affect other EU citizens, and non-EU nationals. It sends out a clear message about how much the political and media establishment value foreign workers living in this country who cannot vote in national elections.

    The effect is to place a prohibitive price tag on returning to countries of origin for communities that are already massively economically disadvantaged by the pandemic; not to mention the housing crisis, and more generally, a widening inequality that too many in the political establishment of this country seem to accept as “the way things are.”

    Now this political establishment has no shame in implementing Populist measures, which seem aimed at gathering political support from a terrorized audience that dreams of a ZeroCovid approach, after being treated to a partially informed debate for months.

    It is a curious paradox that the internationalist establishment left in Ireland has no objection to sealed borders, and the effect this will have on immigrant minorities, many of whom are living on the margins of society.

    Often, the most useless measures to tackle a problem reveal where the real problem lies. In this instance, the cynical alienation shown by NPHET and politicians in proposing and implementing such policies that have major impacts on communities with whom they normally have no contact, apart from well-orchestrated photo ops with appropriately smiling immigrants.

    The question now becomes: for how long will this policy of internment last?

  • A Few Good Men and Women

    In the wake of the murder by a police officer of the unfortunate Sarah Everard, and the ensuing justified anger, many media people were calling for “good” men to act more visibly in opposing violence against women. While I back 100% the calls made for “good” men to speak up, I am also concerned that the more general ideas of social equality are fast becoming reduced to a gender-specific proposition, having the potential knock-on effect of splitting the Left.

    This is not to diminish the seriousness of violence against women, but only to attempt to bring to light how the focus on gender equality may be impacting our perception of more general inequality, and how this apparent narrowing of focus risks being manipulated by those whose interests are not necessarily best served by social equality.

    While many women are exploited by many men, in the wider culture there are those still looking to keep wages low; rents and the cost of living high, while reneging on any social housing provision, who will look to spin the fact of female exploitation in order to capture the female vote to the service of their own particular brand of social exploitation.

    Spin

    In a recent tweet, Una Mullally, responding to Josepha Madigan’s dig at the Kerryman newspaper, suggesting the paper be renamed the Kerryperson, called this out for the cynical political ploy it was. Referencing her own Irish Times article of March 8th which predicted this type of play, Mullally described Madigan’s move as an awkward Fine Gael grab for the female vote, which, as things stand, may decide the next government, as it decided the referendum in 2015.

    But the main talking point in the past week has not been Fine Gael attempts to capture the female vote, but the more immediate mystery as to why “good” men don’t speak out against violence against women.

    Fintan O’Toole, writing in the Irish Times on March 16th said that in order for men to make a more overt stand against violence against women they must first learn to be shocked by that violence. At the moment, he argues, such violence all seems routine to most men. I wonder about that, since it seems to suggest that silence equals complacency equals broad approval.

    When you remove the particular instance O’Toole is referring to, that is, the emotive and highly charged question of violence against women, and replace it with say, general social inequality; you immediately already have an answer as to why “good” men appear to do nothing in the face of violence against women. The truth is, the majority of good men, and good women too, tend to remain strategically schtum on a wide range of problematical social issues until they see which way the political winds are blowing.

    Good Men

    Edmund Burke is reputed to have said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.‘

    Burke wrote the line in a letter in 1770, which is more than a little while ago. The point being, the good men idea is far from being new. In fact, Burke’s quote needs updating, since at the time of his writing the realization of women’s suffrage was a long way in the future. An updated version would read: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and good women to do nothing.‘’

    So instead of posing the question, Why do good men do nothing, in such a way as to refer to a specific issue – in this case male violence against women – it is perhaps clearer to ask why do good people, regardless of gender, not raise their voices in say, situations where right-wing policy creates homelessness and subsequent deaths from exposure; or privatisation results in poor services and deaths due to cut corners and profit-conscious oversights? Why do good people not raise their voices en masse on these issues too?

    By the strict criteria of the “good” men concept as framed by Edmund Burke and others, we are all responsible, good men and good women alike, for homeless deaths, for direct provision deaths, for deaths caused as a result of medical privatisation, for domestic violence in all its guises and so on. Since this is a democracy, we all, strictly speaking, bear equal responsibility for the failings of democracy to deliver equal treatment to all. But these are difficult questions when applied to the real world.

    For instance, if you were an arts practitioner cosying up to Josepha Madigan when she was Minister for Arts, with a view to gaining favour and financial support for some project you had planned, are you complicit in Madigan’s rallying support to oppose Traveller accommodation? Or are the two issues compartmentalised? One being her political position and the other being her apparent social and class intolerance. Do you sacrifice your project to make a point, or do you compromise?

    Herds

    Along with such moral quandaries you also have the problem of the behaviour of crowds, which tend to behave like herds. Even politicians don’t really lead, they too follow the herd in the form of the public mood glimpsed in polls. Most people are spectators, going with the flow of the herd. We stand and watch the game until some critical mass is reached and then we raise our voices in support of whatever new majority appears to be on the rise. This works for every growing gang, from commies to fascists. A critical mass is reached and the herd follows. History shows that the herd will follow any old idea once this critical mass is achieved.

    Søren Kierkegaard, writing on this phenomenon, noted that an individual is worth more than a crowd of individuals, because an individual has personal agency, whereas a crowd tends to go with the flow of the herd. As a result, Kierkegaard comes to the conclusion that truth always belongs to the minority, since the majority tend towards unthinking obedience to the movement of the herd.

    It could be that now is the time where the issue of violence against women is to be embraced by the herd as an issue whose time has come. An issue for which good men are expected to speak up. But the point is, that apart from the particular issue, the question as to why do good people do nothing might be more properly considered in relation to a wider sense of social equality, encompassing all issues of social inequality.

    This applies equally to the politician allowing the market to decide the fates of those seeking housing, as it does to the person turning a blind eye to white collar corruption, or a man turning a blind eye to violence against women.

    Good Men and Good Women

    In this regard, for Fintan O’Toole to suggest that the evil of violence against women is exacerbated by good men doing nothing, is disingenuous at best, or is simply more political gamesmanship.

    Because the Irish Times also plays politics with notions of equality, quietly supporting right-wing Fine Gael policy through the manner in which it shapes and pitches stories, while always being first up with the property supplements when the market shifts, eager supporters of the housing Ponzi scheme, where the wealthy business class figuratively eat our young by selling them over-priced houses, while their political cronies refuse to enter into any believable form of social housing policy.

    Which begs the question, that when Fintan O’Toole is calling on “good” men to be more vociferous in condemning violence against women, is he referring to the same “good” men who remain silent in the face of social inequality on a more general level, keeping strategically schtum on a range of social equality issues, in order to ensure the perpetuation of a neoliberal status quo that is giving rise to social inequality in the first place?

    Conclusion

    All of this is not to suggest that the call for “good” men to raise their voices on the subject of violence against women is a wasted exercise; but only to point out that such a call to “good” men is not new; and furthermore, that by repackaging that call as an issue-specific moral imperative, while ignoring the same demand across a more general range of social equality issues, is to have the effect, whether knowingly or not, of splitting the Left by narrowing the imperative of social equality to a divisive gender issue, in such a way as to assist the project of the establishment parties and the elite they appear to represent.

    This will doubtless remain the situation until such time as good men and good women of all classes speak out against social inequality in all its guises.

  • Policing Must Return to First Principles

    The Garda Síochána will succeed, not by force of arms or numbers, but by their moral authority as servants of the people.
    Michael Joseph Staines, First Garda Commissioner (1885-1955)

    The above statement is, in my opinion, a good founding principle for any Police Service in a free democracy. What is meant by “moral authority”? Merriam Webster defines this as   ‘trustworthiness to make decisions that are right and good.’ This is authority based on principles – norms which are independent of written, or positive, laws.

    Under its current leadership, An Garda Síochána has become increasingly politicised by this government and its predecessor. This undermines the moral authority which Michael Staines rightly recognised as being so vital to its success as a Police Service. The Gardaí should indeed be servants of the people, not private political and ideological enforcers. Unfortunately, we are seeing policing in Ireland increasingly take its cue from the double standards of its hypocritical political masters.

    Last April, Gardaí broke up a demonstration by ordinary citizens protesting the loss of their jobs at Debenhams. Ironically, in light of recent events, the Debenhams protests were endorsed by prominent voices from the Irish Left.

    However, in June 2020  a five thousand-strong Black Lives Matters protest paraded through Dublin with hardly a Garda in sight. This demonstration, supposedly in the middle of a deadly pandemic, drew no condemnation from the political establishment – quite the contrary, in fact. There was no rush to social media to raise any public health concerns, nor to condemn the protest as an affront to the “people who have sacrificed so much”, “frontline workers”, and “those who have died.”

    Last December, there was a media blackout and no arrests made after BLM violence in Blanchardstown. This is in stark contrast to the political, media, and Garda reaction to an anti-lockdown demonstration last Saturday 27th February in Dublin where peaceful protestors were met by a phalanx of Gardaí (both mounted and on foot) who were suited and booted with dogs and batons at the ready, long before the lobbing of a firework by one individual set off a media storm of condemnations.

    There have also been political, media, and enforcement double standards in relation to funerals under government restrictions, as well as other incidents, notably parties.

    The behaviour of Gardaí at evictions has also been called into question. The role of An Garda Síochána at an eviction is quite clear: they are there to prevent a breach of the peace and to ensure the safety of all concerned. If they witness a breach of the peace or any other offence, then they are duty-bound to act. It really is that simple. With respect to the assertion in an Irish Independent article that ‘An Garda Síochána is a learning organisation’ and the request for an urgent external report so that the organisation can ‘learn lessons’ –  isn’t that exactly the purpose of  the expensive two-year training course which Garda recruits undergo?

    There have been other incidences of the organisation and its members acting inappropriately and outside of its remit in furtherance of various agendas unrelated to policing, such as participation by a Garda in the “Yes” equality campaign, and the organisation’s promotion of vaccines on social media.

    Then there’s the TikTok dancing, supposedly to “Lift the Nation’s Spirits”. The participation of An Garda Síochána in an inane (but undoubtedly very expensive) dance production at a time when livelihoods, and perhaps lives, are being lost as a result of the government restrictions which they are enforcing was completely inappropriate. At best, it was in bad taste. It was unnerving and slightly sinister, like a bully wanting to be your friend. Notably, the Defence Forces and The Coast Guard wisely chose not to follow their example.

    There is no doubt that the relationship between a politicised Garda Síochána and the ordinary citizen is changing – particularly under the current government restrictions – and not for the better. Policing by consent is being replaced by coercion. The image of a gaggle of dancing Gardaí does not juxtapose well with the image of a cohort of Gardaí detailed to arrest and remove a woman from her place of business for exercising a constitutional right to earn a living and provide for her family. Ordinary people are being criminalised for just trying to live their lives.

    In a force (and An Garda Síochána can certainly be described once more as a force) comprising in excess of fourteen and a half thousand members, it is not unreasonable to believe that there are many who have their doubts about the direction policing has taken both generally, and specifically in relation to current government restrictions. They can see the damage being wrought by these restrictions on the people they are supposed to serve. Many undoubtedly have families themselves who are also suffering and they must look their children in the eye each morning. So where are the Garda whistleblowers now?

    All members have made a ‘Solemn Declaration’ (albeit watered down from the original Sworn Oath)  to uphold the Constitution – which is superior to all positive law – and hence to defend the rights and freedoms of all citizens which Bunreacht na hÉireann asserts and guarantees. Is there really nobody prepared to raise their head above the parapet? Remember, five thousand members found it within themselves to take (forbidden) action over their pay in 1998 via the “Blue Flu”.

    Meanwhile on Merseyside in the UK, there was a scene somewhat reminiscent of a relatively recent Garda photoshoot, but far less subtle: four officers from Merseyside Police – one wielding a large stick – posing in front of an advertising van bedecked with a rainbow-coloured billboard bearing the large slogan “BEING OFFENSIVE IS AN OFFENCE”. The ill-advised stunt proved to be a goose-step too far, however, and the resultant public backlash forced Merseyside Police into an embarrassing apology, a Superintendent being required to clarify that “being offensive” is, of course, not in itself an offence.

    Although having occurred in a neighbouring jurisdiction, such “woke” (and legally incorrect) virtue-signalling should also ring alarm bells here, particularly in the context of the impending enactment of  identity politics-based “Hate Crime” legislation.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “Identity Politics” as “Politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group”.

    Identity politics is by definition inherently divisive and inequitable. Legislation (and obviously enforcement) based upon it is not a good fit for a Republic that purports to assert the equality of all citizens before the law.

    The drive to enact such legislation, supposedly in the midst of a deadly pandemic, is pure opportunism, an effort to make ideological hay while the political skies are clear. In truth, one would now be hard-pressed to separate the government parties ideologically, and the oxymoronic “Opposition” lie even further to a version of the left that emphasises these identity politics over socio-economic questions.

    The Covid-19 narrative continues to provide fruitful opportunities for the government parties to achieve long-held political and ideological aims. Many of those who have championed this legislation, and who seek desperately to discover a fascist bogeyman to help justify it, are the same people who have spent the last eleven months steadily eroding the fundamental rights and freedoms of Irish citizens. The irony appears lost on them, but the fact remains that these are the people dictating the policing agenda.

    An Garda Síochána must return to the first principles advocated by Michael Staines. They must repudiate the service of political agendas and reprise their role as servants of the people. Politicisation and poor leadership is undermining the moral authority of An Garda Síochána. Care should be taken to ensure that it is not lost, or the loss of the support, trust, and consent of the people would surely follow.

    Cassandra Voices is a home for independent voices to inspire new thinking that publishes a wide variety of viewpoints, check out our submissions guidelines and drop us a line: admin@cassandravoices.com.

    All Images: Daniele Idini

  • Is there a Doctor in the House?

    Imagine if you will, a government that nobody actually voted for. A government with no opposition that legislates at the behest of a committee of unelected civil servants. A government that took over from a “caretaker” administration that had been voted out of office nearly five months previously, yet still held full executive powers and introduced legislation resulting in civil restrictions unprecedented in the history of the State.

    How did we get here?  Well, if it were not already apparent, the last twelve months have certainly served to expose the shocking state of ill-health of Irish democracy. In addition to the scenario referenced in the first paragraph, there exists a web of inherently unhealthy relationships, both familial and commercial, spanning the entire Irish political class, a tamed, nodding media, and the pharmacological and technological industries. This political and financial incest between those who introduce legislation, those who control and disseminate information, and those hawking their wares is evidently self-serving, but most certainly does not serve the public interest, and represents an existential threat to genuine, transparent democracy.

    Sandwiched somewhere in the middle is a Police Force. Once upon a time it had designs on being a Police Service, but over the past twelve months it has most definitely reverted to being a Police Force; one whose members appear unable or unwilling to question the legality – or at the very least the morality – of their orders from their political masters, preferring instead to seek the comfort of overtime and the surreality of TikTok dance challenges.

    A pliant citizenry have, of course, played their own role, and the ease with which the majority have demonstrated their willingness to surrender unquestioningly their most fundamental rights and freedoms has been truly shocking. It would almost lead one to believe that the people no longer wish to bear the onerous burden of personal responsibility, instead wishing to cede responsibility for living their own lives to the State. Everything has its price, of course. Perhaps public acquiescence is not so surprising after all, considering that for some time now indoctrination has been masquerading more and more as education.

    Stateism may very well turn out to be the life choice of a generation reared on an intellectual diet of The X-Factor, but it will be a shocking legacy to leave to their children, who didn’t sign up for it.

    Evidently, the political situation in Ireland mirrors a broader trend towards “Super-Stateism” and the erosion of democracy and its associated freedoms in the Western world generally, and – more pertinently in Ireland’s case – the European Union.

    Bleating about European militarism from some of the usual suspects on the Irish Left ring hollow. They signed up for this, one and all. The days of Ireland opting out of aspects of the European Project that it finds unpalatable are long gone. The cent began to drop in Brussels and Berlin the day the Irish people acceded to having a second EU referendum force-fed to them after returning the wrong answer first time around.

    The cent dropped all the way when the political class volunteered Ireland to be Europe’s fall guy for the economic crash of 2008 and the people went along with it. It’s all or nothing with the EU now, comrades. Are these people really so naïve that they don’t realise that once political and monetary union have been achieved, then military union must necessarily follow? Perhaps those who resolved to vote for them in the last election can answer the question for them in the next one.

    Looking at the current lie of the Irish political landscape, it is honestly hard at the moment to see from where meaningful change will come. Despite their virtue-signalling, hand-wringing (and hand-sanitising), from a political point of view there is actually very little to dislike about the current situation for those on the red and green wavelengths of the political spectrum.

    The long-term prognosis for the return of healthy democracy does not appear to be great. However, the Covid-19 narrative that has been created now seems to have almost taken on a life of its own. Trial balloons are being floated up on an almost daily basis in order to gauge the receptiveness of a fearful, weary public to absolutely ridiculous, dystopian nonsense. The political class and their allies have created a monster, but they would do well to remember that artificial monsters, having once gained self-awareness, do have a habit of eventually seeking out their creators and… well, let’s say, coming home to roost.

    The Irish body politic needs a prescription for a Great Reset, alright – just not the type of Great Reset that the self-serving elitists who are currently pulling the strings are working towards.

    Cassandra Voices is a home for independent voices to inspire new thinking that publishes a wide variety of viewpoints, find our submissions guidelines here.

  • Vaccination: A Matter of Trust, with Caveats

    The palpable relief being felt by many over the accelerating approvals of apparently safe and efficient Covid-19 vaccines is hardly surprising. But away from triumphalist headlines, partially satiric messages have circulated widely on social media essentially stating: “I can’t wait for a new vaccine to come out so I can refuse it.”

    These are easy to dismiss as frivolous, or the ravings of an unhinged libertarian fringe, but such statements also evoke a frequent paradox in Western societies; namely calls for scientific breakthroughs to benefit the health of all, while maintaining a scepticism about public health measures enacted by governments and reliant on a mercantilist pharmaceutical industry. And more ominously, concerns over anti-vaccination lobbying distract from life and death issues surrounding equitable vaccine access for a large portion of humanity.

    Edward Jenner 1749-1823.

    Pitfalls of the Public Good

    Heralded as a milestone among Enlightenment advances, Edward Jenner’s late 18th century inoculation of his gardener’s son with cowpox is a path well-trodden by medical historians. In attempting to provoke an immune reaction to the far more dangerous smallpox virus, this precursor to modern vaccination built on centuries of traditional practices, notably in Africa, the Middle East and East Asia.

    By subsequently infecting his test subject with live variolous matter to prove his point, Jenner likewise carried on a long tradition of dubious experimentation. Despite minimal understanding of disease transmission – let along virology – vaccine development has consistently provoked opposition, whether political, philosophical, spiritual, or from scientists themselves.

    A significant factor in the dramatic European demographic expansion over the course of the 19th century was the spread of smallpox vaccination. There is a reasonable corollary between the broadening of States’ responsibilities over health matters and the emergence of openly anti-vaccine movements. Both processes accelerated during the Pasteur-Koch era even as the array of infectious diseases that were understood and potentially preventable expanded.

    Uncertainty and disbelief shifted to the questioning of the basic premise of vaccination, manufacturing conditions, and even the means of prescription to a population. More familiar incarnations include arguments over the presence of aluminium adjuvants; discredited studies pointing to the occurrence of autistic disorders; the possible corruption of decision-makers for the benefit of laboratories; or a broader discordance between the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and those of public health.

    A succession of scandals led Ben Goldacre in Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients (Fourth Estate, London, 2012) to write: “I think it’s fair to say that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are a kind of poetic response to the obvious regulatory failure in medicine and in the pharmaceutical industry. People know that there is something a little bit wrong here.”

    Far from being solely a European issue, health coercion, including the authoritarian imposition of mass vaccination, has unsurprisingly manifested itself in colonial history. A highly toxic plague vaccine developed in India was tested on prisoners (along with the microbiologist responsible for its discovery), before being made obligatory for Chinese residents of San Francisco during an outbreak of Bubonic plague in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.

    An 1886 advertisement for ‘Magic Washer’ detergent: ‘The Chinese Must Go’.

    Attempts to tackle African sleeping sickness are similarly striking. The example of pentamidine in the 1940s, an antibiotic which was believed to treat sleeping sickness (ten million preventive injections would prove as useless as they were dangerous), highlighted not only the irrationality of colonial policies in place at the time, but also a blind faith in scientific progress. Public health policies could indeed seem far removed from what was being referred to as the common good.

    Past failings and Understandable Reservations

    Vaccines have since become a highly symbolic element of the State’s power over the human body, with objections today frequently based on claims of infringement on individual liberties. But while the dismissal of scientific evidence is disturbing in and of itself a far more sinister side exists, the assassination of health workers administering polio vaccines in Pakistan being an obvious example.

    As opposed to a demonstration in national power it is rather a question of a State failing in its responsibilities, be it through limited health infrastructure or outright negligence. And the CIA’s fake Hepatitis B vaccination campaign used to determine the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in 2011 has hardly reassured those living in areas beyond the government’s remit. Rather, long-standing doubts about the motives behind mass vaccinations have been reinforced.

    Delta Force GIs disguised as Afghan civilians, while they searched for bin Laden in November 2001

    A comparable incredulity can be observed at present in Europe, where compliance with health measures taken by various States to fight the Covid-19 pandemic remains closely linked to the trust of populations in their respective governments – a trust that has unfortunately long since been waning in many societies. Hopes in scientific research for the health of the greatest number of people is confronted with the reality of a mercantilist pharmaceutical industry, or even the possible instrumentalization of public health by certain opportunistic governments to suppress pre-existing social discontent. All amidst a backdrop of wider deteriorating democratic norms and respect for basic human rights.

    Debate, or Lack Thereof

    While it is undeniable that an army of researchers was required to secure a Covid-19 vaccine, a cynic would question the speed with which pharmaceutical companies have developed a serum for a large and clearly solvent market, while many diseases remain outside the agendas of these laboratories. The legitimacy of a vaccine passport can also be challenged, not only because its medical effectiveness is still questioned by many, but also because it could prove a powerful deterrent to migratory phenomena and the right to asylum. The well-intentioned rush to digital health could unfortunately prove to be an additional obstacle for many countries for which access to Covid-19 vaccination may be late or even logistically impossible in view of refrigeration requirements.

    If there is one matter on which there should be a consensus among populations, it is that of equitable access to these new therapies, especially given the infusion of public funds to finance the research. In particular, the terms of agreements between laboratories on the operation and licensing of Covid-19 vaccines should be made public and openly debated.

    Whether or not one is convinced of the merits of vaccinating at this time against this particular virus; whether or not one questions the way this pandemic has been managed by our respective governments; and whether or not one criticises the manufacturing conditions of the serums, it would seem deeply naive to leave in the hands of competing economic powers one of the essential pillars of any society: the possibility of preserving the health of the greatest number of people. The history of vaccination, despite all the missteps and at times understandable reservations, provides an apt demonstration of this goal.

    Featured Image: World Health Organization photo by D. Henrioud preparing for production of measles vaccine.

    The authors are researchers with the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices, Médecins Sans Frontières – Switzerland. The views expressed in this article are theirs and in no way represent the organization to which they belong.