Cassandra Voices

Category: Comment

  • Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders Confront Common Neo-Liberal Frenemies

    The Corbyn phenomenon – and the utter media-class meltdown over it – is weirdly but obviously reminiscent to anyone who witnessed the rise of Bernie Sanders here in the United States. In both cases, the harbingers were clear, both in terms of responding to grim economic data for an indebted younger generation, and arriving in the wake of bona fide progressive movements such as Occupy.

    Clearly, both the U.S. Democratic Party (which has never been a left-wing, working class party) and the British Labour Party (that dumped Clause IV of its constitution calling for common ownership of industry under Tony Blair, before repeating every Clintonian bromide in a posh accent) were not only ill-equipped to address rising inequalities, but ideologically unaligned with the interests of their electoral bases. But more so than Trump, or Boris Johnson, neither Sanders nor Corbyn were supposed to happen as national phenomena.

    Burning Bernie

    In the case of Sanders – who with 51%[i] of his support coming from non-white voters has the most diverse support of any major candidate – the line was that his supporters were a bunch of white male ‘Bernie Bros’, whose ‘leftism’ provided a thin veneer for deep-seated misogyny and wounded racial privilege. A typical litany from The Nation’s Joan Walsh from 2016 read:

    I’m tired of seeing her confronted by entitled men weighing in on her personal honesty and likability, treating the most admired woman in the world like a woman who’s applying to be his secretary. I’m stunned anew by the misogyny behind the attacks on her, and her female supporters, including my daughter. I’m sick of the way so many Sanders supporters, most of them men, feel absolutely no compunction to see things through female Clinton supporters’ eyes, or to worry they might have to court us down the road, take special care not to alienate us lest we sit the race out in November, if our candidate loses.[ii]

    This tack, which conflated scattered outbursts of sexist or racially insensitive statements, generally online, from Sanders supporters, with far more numerous disagreements, sometimes sharp, without discernible sexist or other bigoted undertones, is still a mainstay of coverage in such venues as MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times – whose almost ludicrously biased coverage on Sanders has been ably skewered by Katie Halper.[iii]

    Indeed, when Sanders had the temerity to suggest that Amazon CEO, and all-around Bond villain, Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post has an effect on its coverage of his campaign, the Krakatoa-level eruption of media outrage was something to behold. [iv]

    NPR characterized Sanders’s well-deserved jab as ‘sounding like Trump,’[v] while Aaron Blake in the Post itself sneered at his ‘bogus media beef,’ declaring in what was one step from tone-policing:

    But as Trump has also shown, the gripes can often be badly exaggerated, undermining whatever valid points you might be making. If you’re going to criticize the media for being bad actors — and we’re hardly above criticism — you should choose your words more carefully and make sure you’re not undermining your own credibility in the process.[vi]

    Perhaps the establishment-liberal-objection to Sanders was best (if rather stupidly) summarized by prosecutor-turned-MSNBC commentator Mimi Rocah, who declared, ‘Just as a woman, probably considered a somewhat moderate Democrat … Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl,’[vii] and then predictably, and with no particular evidence, cries ‘Bernie Bro!’ when ratio’ed into oblivion on Twitter for saying something dumb.

    One could go on like this, and many have, and here in the U.S., we have more than a year left of this, at the conclusion of which we will all be worse people than we are now. The point is the attacks on Sanders emanating from the ‘liberal’ media in the U.S., which almost universally loathes him, are cartoonish, poorly reasoned, and often in bad faith. Lurking beneath, however, is that for the first time in a long time, American politics may be reconfiguring on a class axis.

    The End of Socialism

    Which brings us to Corbyn. Back in the latter half of the 1990s, it was a lonely station being a leftist. The standard line, including from supposed left-wing publications, was that, per Francis Fukayama, the big conflicts were over. Socialism, after the fall of the USSR, whether taking its cues from Enver Hoxha, Leon Trotsky, Eduard Bernstein, or Billy Bragg, was as intellectually discredited as phrenology, Lysenkoism, and Ptolemaic astronomy. And that went equally for nationalized industry and tuition-free grad. school.

    Back then the leader of the British Labour Party, Tony Blair, could be heard to boast ‘When businessmen say to me, ‘Tony, I never thought I’d be doing this but here’s a big cheque to help you beat the most dishonest, negative campaign in history,’ I say thank you to them’ – which in retrospect may be the most important line of Blair’s 1996 Blackpool speech.[viii]

    Corbyn was an under-the-radar backbencher who wound up in the running for the Labour leadership in 2015 as a sop to what were widely assumed to be the demoralized remnants of the Labour Left, a footnote to what was expected to be a contest between the competing progeny of New Labour forefathers. Corbyn’s leadership wasn’t supposed to happen.

    As with Sanders, but possibly worse because the British press, improbably, outdoes even its American equivalent in narrow-minded pettiness, blinkered class prejudice, and general unpleasantness, Corbyn has been on the receiving end of every possible calumny.

    When he says he likes the novel Ulysses, the media class reminds us of his modest educational attainments; as if James Joyce wrote that novel to test the erudition of Oxbridge graduates instead of entertain its readers. He has been labelled a Stalinist, a dunce, and a doctrinaire ideologue.

    The Labour Party’s apparatus spent his first year as leader assiduously purging, or attempting to purge, new members for such infractions as publicly stating the desire to vote Green in previous elections, or, in the case of Irish poet Kevin Higgins, writing a satirical poem in support of Corbyn.

    Anti-Semitist Slurs

    The lowest point among the multitude of attacks has been the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn and his allies. Two things are simultaneously true – anti-Semitism is a serious problem in the world, Britain included. Also, the British Labour Party has ninety-nine problems, but systemic anti-Semitism ain’t one. The accusations come from a place of bad faith, and to the extent that they are not merely a case of punching the left, they are mounted in defence of what is a jaw-droppingly racist Israeli state under Benjamin Netanyahu (with an only fractionally less racist internal opposition).

    In terms of political opportunism, the case of Luciana Berger, who exited the Labour Party in 2019 in favour of the entity currently called Change UK (currently polling at 0%) stands out. When members of her local party constituency, where her anti-Corbyn stance had made her deeply unpopular, submitted no-confidence motions, the Blairite wing of the Labour Party went into full smear mode.

    Tom Watson expressed ‘our solidarity, our support, as she battles the bullying and hatred from members of her own local party,’[ix] whose crime was wanting leadership that better represented them. Blair himself got in on the act, and the media soon pivoted from a story of a local Corbynite membership revolting against a Blairite M.P. to one of an anti-Semitic membership against a Jewish M.P., based on isolated incidents, all to bury the rebels’ main point in their main motion, namely: ‘Instead of fighting for a Labour government, our M.P. is continually using the media to criticise the man we all want to be prime minister.’

    That Alex Scott-Samuel, the constituency co-chair at the time, had regularly appeared on an internet show sponsored by conspiracy theorist David Icke was bad optics at the very least,[x] but Scott-Samuel’s membership in the ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ should make one wary of sweeping claims of anti-Semitism.

    If anything, Corbyn has been too accommodating to his critics, with Labour repeatedly suspending his key ally Chris Williamson not for being an anti-Semite, but for questioning the good faith of those who continue to challenge the Labour Party on the issue. Corbyn repeatedly denounces anti-Semitism; the Labour Party has developed an educational program to combat it; and Labour has mounted a series of online videos and pamphlets against anti-Jewish stereotypes and politics. And yet the attacks continue – even as a post-Windrush, Boris Johnson-led Conservative Party takes after Donald Trump and says the formerly quiet, overtly-racist bits increasingly loudly.

    Slow-motion Pub Brawl

    Perhaps as ludicrous, if slightly less fatuous, are those attacks related to the never-ending slow-motion pub brawl that is Brexit. This, too, had its origins in Establishment hubris. It wasn’t supposed to pass. BoJo was supposed to use the opportunity to throw some raw meat into the gaping maws of the slavering rubes while Cameron was supposed to let him have his moment, after which Boris was supposed to shut his goddamn mouth. And yet again, a different wing of the in-crowd underestimated how little the nerds, burnouts, hoods, punks, shitkickers, and other people not seated at the cool kids’ table liked them.

    There are plenty of reasons not to like the E.U.. It is, at its core, a neo-liberal trade pact, and as the Syriza government in Greece discovered, the E.U. would rather see a country pauperized than let it renegotiate a payment schedule with its citizenry in mind. E.U. rules against state aids render the renationalisation of industry that Labour currently advocates not technically, but effectively impossible.

    That is not to say that a no-deal Brexit wouldn’t be catastrophic, or that many of the loudest pro-Brexit arguments aren’t tinged with xenophobia and racism. It is to say, however, that the #FBPE crowd’s almost utopian view on the E.U. is underpinned by a combination of frequent class privilege (‘how will I be able to pop over to the villa in Provence next weekend if Britain leaves the E.U.?’) and disdain for the socialist project.

    Corbyn’s Considerations

    In terms of relations with the E.U., Jeremy Corbyn has consistently attempted to manoeuvre through a deeply complicated series of conflicting demands in a political environment dominated by disinformation and demagogy. As I see it, his main concerns are:

    1. A Labour Party membership deeply divided over Brexit.
    2. Genuine belief that one cannot in good faith override a democratic vote because it did not produce the desired outcome.
    3. Desire to preserve positive aspects of the E.U. (ease of movement within the area, for instance), to blunt the effects of a hard Brexit (e.g. to trade) without glossing over the negative.
    4. Letting the Tory Party, which caused the mess, to bear the political costs.
    5. Keeping the Blairite majority among the party leadership at bay without completely selling out to them.

    The latter two have probably caused Corbyn the most problems. Ex-Labour (and current Lib Dem via Change UK) M.P. Chuka Umunna griped in The Independent: ‘I cannot think of any Labour leader in my lifetime who would not have instinctively said ‘Remain’ but the party has changed irrevocably under the current set up.’[xi]

    Of course Corbyn is not the only one – a number of those from the 2015 intake of MPs who are mooted to succeed him are on record of being even more hostile to the notion of a People’s Vote.’ Umunna was born in 1978, and the Labour Party under Michael Foot (leader 1980-83) favoured leaving the E.E.C., a position reversed by Neil Kinnock, whose main contributions to world history were paving the way for Blair, air-balling what should have been an easy election in 1992, and giving speeches for Joe Biden to plagiarize.

    This may seem an historical quibble, particularly as Corbyn campaigned, albeit unenthusiastically, to remain in an institution unworthy of enthusiasm, but Umunna inadvertently captures the key ideological disconnect.

    Left-no-longer

    For many years socially liberal yuppies like him dominated what, in official circles, constituted the ‘left.’ The socialist project, either isolated in its traditional mass party like Britain or essentially vilified and repressed to the point of near-extinction as in the United States, became a vehicle for free-market and militaristic ideas – but performatively anti-racist, pro-woman, and pro-gay – and a gaping political void emerged.

    With the genuine article re-appearing in the shape of Corby and Sanders, the ‘left’ of the Blair-Clinton era is the left-no-longer. But they like the real estate. Thus come the ludicrous charges.

    As Noam Chomsky noted of Corbyn:

    One must admire the incredible skills the media have in manipulating the population. They’ve managed to convince many that the most passionate anti-racist campaigner of the last 40 years, Jeremy Corbyn, is actually pro-racist and anti-Semitic.[xii]

    Of course Blairites favour, not social equity, but aspirational mobility, treating inequality as isolable matters of exclusion on the basis of race, gender sexuality, and so forth, rather than economic inequality, reflecting exploitation inherent in capitalism.

    There is a block in favour of radical, egalitarian change, and its leaders aren’t named Kamala Harris, Tom Watson, Chuka Umunna, Rachel Maddow, Alyssa Milano, or J.K. Rowling. Or Elizabeth Warren, frankly. Thus the ‘anti-Semitism’ slurs, and the ‘Bernie Bro’ canard.

    Many with leftist sympathies are genuinely bamboozled, given the ubiquity of this garbage. Other claiming these affinities really don’t really like socialism, universal health care, free college, and railroads that aren’t owned by the likes of Richard Branson. And those people should be honest about that, and if they aren’t, it’s okay to own them relentlessly on social media.

    Feature Image by ‘paulnew’ is of Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a leadership election rally to his supporters in August 2016.

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    [i] Untitled, ‘Profiles of supporters of the leading Democratic candidates’, Pew Research Center, August 20th, 2019, https://www.people-press.org/2019/08/16/most-democrats-are-excited-by-several-2020-candidates-not-just-their-top-choice/pp_2019-08-16_2020-democratic-candidates_0-06-2/.

    [ii] Joan Walsh, ‘Why I’m Supporting Hillary Clinton, With Joy and Without Apologies’, January 27th, 2016, The Nation,https://www.thenation.com/article/why-im-supporting-hillary-clinton-with-joy-and-without-apologies/.

    [iii] Katie Harper, ‘MSNBC’s Anti-Sanders Bias Makes It Forget How to Do Math’, July 26th, 2019, FAIR, https://fair.org/home/msnbcs-anti-sanders-bias-makes-it-forget-how-to-do-math/.

    [iv] Chavie Lieber, ‘Bernie Sanders called out Jeff Bezos for poor treatment of Amazon workers. In a rare move, the company fired back.’, August 30th, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/8/30/17797786/amazon-warehouse-conditions-bernie-sanders.

    [v] Domenico Montenaro, ‘Bernie Sanders Again Attacks Amazon — This Time Pulling In ‘The Washington Post’’, NPR, August 13th, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750800062/sanders-again-attacks-amazon-this-time-pulling-in-the-washington-post.

    [vi] Aaron Blake, ‘Bernie Sanders’s bogus media beef’, The Washington Post, August 14th, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/14/bernie-sanderss-bogus-media-beef/.

    [vii] Josh Feldman, ‘MSNBC Panelist: Bernie Sanders ‘Makes My Skin Crawl,’ I Don’t See Him as ‘Pro-Woman Candidate’’, Mediaite, July 21st, 2019, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-panelist-bernie-sanders-makes-my-skin-crawl-i-dont-see-him-as-pro-woman-candidate/.

    [viii] British Political Speeches, Leader’s speech, Blackpool 1996, http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202

    [ix] Untitled, ‘Labour row erupts over no confidence vote in Luciana Berger’, BBC, February 8th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47169929.

    [x] Lee Harpin, ‘University distances itself from academic who promoted Rothschild conspiracies on David Icke show’, THE JC, February 12th, 2019, https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/university-insists-academic-who-promoted-rothschild-conspracies-on-david-icke-1.479941.

    [xi] Chuck Umunna, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is happily helping Britain leave the EU – he is and always was a Brexiteer’, The Independent, March 18th, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-brexit-chuka-umunna-the-independent-group-leave-remain-a8828001.html.

    [xii] Frea Lockley, ‘Here’s how thousands of people are standing up to smears against Jeremy Corbyn’, The Canary, March 26th, 2018, https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/03/26/heres-how-thousands-of-people-are-standing-up-to-smears-against-jeremy-corbyn/.

  • ‘Wooden Legs on Hens’ – The Ongoing Failure of the Restoration of the Irish Language

    Last January, the Minister for Education, Joe McHugh, invited views from the public on the current system of granting exemptions to pupils from the compulsory study of Irish, following debate around the current regime.

    The Irish language organisations want exemptions to be kept to a minimum; they have long complained that these are granted too easily[i], and seem to fear that the public consultation process may lead to a further loosening in the system, rather than the tightening in the grounds they wish to see.

    These Irish-language advocacy organisations, Conradh na Gaeilge and COGG (representing the Gaelscoil movement) perceive an even greater threat to the position of Irish in the schools in certain other refors under consideration by the Department of Education and the NCCA, namely, the possibility of students being able to choose just five subjects (as opposed to the current minimum of six – and with most schools offering eight subjects) from a wider range of Leaving Certificate subjects than are currently on offer.[ii]

    The organisations fear that increased freedom of choice for students, combined with an expanded range of practical or vocational subjects, would lead, inexorably, to Irish becoming a subject of choice in the final school examination.

    The Irish language organisations are therefore pledged to resist the changes now being mooted, knowing that the place of Irish in the education system has to be maintained by compulsion, and that its loss would both reduce the numbers of pupils studying Irish, and diminish the number of teachers of Irish required in the educational system as a whole.

    Yet, already there is an acute shortage of teachers of Irish,[iii] even in its current dumbed-down form. The shortage is even more acute in teachers who can teach other subjects through Irish, and some all-Irish schools are now having to teach subjects such as Science, including Physics, through English.

    The contest between Irish and other subjects in the school curriculum is an ancient one. In 1934, when the government was harnessing the primary schools to the task of reviving Irish, the resulting stresses on teachers led to intense negotiations between the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and the state. These resulted in teachers agreeing to place greater emphasis on Irish in return for the government accepting lower standards in the other subjects.[iv]

    English was then reduced to the old ‘lower course’ in all schools; Mathematics shrank, with Algebra and Geometry becoming optional subjects in one teacher schools, as well as in three-teacher coeducational schools, and in all classes taught by women. ‘Farm Economics & Rural Science’ was abolished altogether, leaving its flasks, pipettes, rubber tubing and Bunsen burners in many a national school cófra to gather dust for ever after.

    There followed the long decades of the Revival when 25% more class time was given to Irish than Arithmetic, twice as much time as to English and five times as much time as to either History or Geography.[v]

    By the 1960’s, 40% of the entire budget for primary and secondary education went on languages, and, of that, 45% went went to Irish, while less than 1% was devoted to German.[vi] The vast expenditure was all, however, to no avail, proving Eoin MacNeill, the first Minister for Education, to be correct in his surmise that ‘You might as well be putting wooden legs on hens as trying to restore Irish through the school system.’[vii]

    But the underlying ideology persists, and still today Conradh na Gaeilge and COGG persist in their determination to resist any weakening of the system of compulsion. It is essential to their mission and, make no mistake, these are doughty fighters who expect to be successful in their campaign.

    Shaping the political narrative is a crucial factor, and these are past masters at harnessing allies to their cause. Irish politicians remain sensitive to any accusation of treachery to the national language. Furthermore, with Irish-language-enthusiast Joe McHugh at the helm, the organisations already have an ally occupying a crucial position in the forthcoming battle over the curriculum.

    They were not to be disappointed. Within days the Minister for Education and Skills publicly asserted that Irish would always remain a compulsory school subject[viii] and Deputy Seán Kyne, Minister for the Gaeltacht went so far as to declare that students who were given exemptions from learning Irish should be blocked from learning other languages.[ix]

    How will it all turn out? As if we didn’t know already; the Irish people will keep speaking English and their English-speaking officials will keep telling them to speak Irish – plus ca change – mar a déarfá. 

    Note: Donal Flynn is the author of a paper ‘The Revival of Irish – Failed Project of a Political Elite’ which can be found on www.sites/google.com/site/failedrevival

    [i] Untitled, ‘É curtha i leith na Roinne Oideachais go bhfuil próiseas comhairliúcháin dhíolúine na Gaeilge ‘réamhshocraithe’’, December 18th, 2017, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/e-curtha-i-leith-na-roinne-oideachais-go-bhfuil-proiseas-comhairliuchain-dhioluine-na-gaeilge-reamhshocraithe/, accessed 25/4/19.

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Amhras mór caite ar stádas na Gaeilge mar ábhar éigeantach i dtuarascáil de chuid an NCCA’, December 17th, 2018, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/amhras-mor-caite-ar-stadas-na-gaeilge-mar-abhar-eigeantach-i-dtuarascail-de-chuid-an-ncca/, accessed, 25/4/19.

    [iii] Untitled, ‘‘Fáilte’ ag an Aire Oideachais roimh mholadh ar bith a leigheasfadh géarchéim na múinteoirí Gaeilge’, February 5th, 2018, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/failte-ag-an-aire-oideachais-roimh-mholadh-ar-bith-a-leigheasfadh-gearcheim-na-muinteoiri-gaeilge/, accessed 25/4/19.

    [iv] Adrian Kelly, Compulsory Irish: Language ad Education in Ireland 1870s to 1970s, ??? p.46

    [v] John Kelly, ‘Education and the Irish State’, Unpublished paper delivered in Saint Patrick’s College Drumcondra, 1969.

    [vi] Dr Edmund Walsh, ‘Education for Europe’, delivered to the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland on May 16th, 1987.

    [vii] J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.133

    [viii] Carl O’Brien, ‘Minister insists Irish will remain compulsory in school’, January 4th, 2019, Irish Times,  https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/minister-insists-irish-will-remain-compulsory-in-school-1.3747161, accessed 24/4/19.

    [ix] Ian O’Doherty, ‘Gaeilgeoir brigades still turning people off learning Irish’, April 24th, 2019, Irish Independent, https://www.independent.ie/opinion/ian-odoherty-gaeilgeoir-brigades-still-turning-people-off-learning-irish-37723097.html, accessed 24/4/19.

  • Is George Orwell’s England Now Home to Fintan O’Toole’s Swivel-Eyed Loons?

    It was flattering to read Fintan O’Toole respond, however oblique, to my criticism of his generally hysterical book on Brexit. In an Irish Times article on February 19th he claims the English eccentricity I praised has morphed into sinister idiosyncrasies, personified by what he impolitely refers to as the ‘swivel-eyed-loon’ Brexiteers. The association of physical disability with an opposing point of view is a low blow indeed in a bigoted article attempting to define apparently timeless national traits.

    As a last throw of the dice O’Toole adduces evidence from George Orwell to the effect that the English have always been, in actual fact, rather a conformist lot, now queuing obediently for the train marked oblivion.[i]

    O’Toole realises you cannot blacken the reputation of all things English, and seemingly as an afterthought, invokes the authority of the English secular saint. Never mind that Orwell actually credited his compatriots with an abiding belief in the Rule of Law and in holding power to account, a trait the once inquisitorial O’Toole seems to have forgotten.

    It is fair to say that Orwell has never been unfashionable, but the spectre of his ideas is much evident in this zeitgeist. Beyond even his novels, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), which define and anticipate the nature of totalitarian rule, Orwell was probably the greatest essayist of all time, foreseeing, like a clairvoyant, so many of the problems we now confront. He still stands for decency and humanism.

    O’Toole, in a spurious impression of radicalism – reminiscent of an intellectual Father Brian Trendy – appeals to the baser instincts towards English-bashing in Ireland; essentially condemning the vainglorious Brexiters for cutting off and undermining our gravy train of inequitable farm subsidies.

    Unlike O’Toole, Orwell respected the common sense of the common man, and never resorted to popular prejudice or vulgar nationalism.

    In ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ (1940) Orwell claimed that English people held a belief in justice, not a fear of power. He further argues, in ‘Inside The Whale’ (1940), that this stemmed from a lack of experience of government repression:

    With all its injustices England is still the land of habeas corpus and the overwhelming majority of English people have no experience of violence and illegality.[ii]

    In ‘Homage to Catalonia’ (1938) he shows how extremism imposed no restraints or boundaries, leading to a descent into lawless banditry. England today is still suffused with moderation, incrementalism, and the population are not generally exposed to licensed thuggery.

    In my experience of living in the country, people commonly still do not understand and do not tolerate the manipulation or abuse of law by Power. In this respect they are increasingly alone in Europe, with Spain mounting show trials against Catalan ‘putschists’ for daring to hold an independence referendum, and fascist taking power in Hungary and Italy.

    O’Toole could profitably read various pieces I have written on the Rule of Law and corruption of state agencies in Ireland.[iii] These are all available for free online – unlike the subscriber-based Irish Times. He should take note of the following points, which might cause indigestion in his pampered readership of retired, or retiring, civil servants.

    1. An Garda Siochana, the Irish police force, has been a criminally-led organisation.
    2. A politically-anointed judiciary have contributed to the undermining of the Rule of Law by supporting this police force, and have failed to build on existing Constitutional rights to alleviate the Housing Crisis.
    3. Government agencies have framed ‘enemies of the people’, who blow the lid on corruption (Orwell in ‘Such Were The Joys’ is remarkably insightful about the manipulation of children, whereas O’Toole, with a unique platform in the Irish media, does nothing to draw attention to ongoing injustices).
    4. Ireland is the perfect neo-liberal shit storm, where high economic growth is an illusion, as evictions continue apace, amid spiralling inequality.

    Without succumbing to timeless stereotypes, I suggest the English still commonly believe, in the confused conversation around our global meltdown, that the underdog should be protected. As a barrister I have found that the obligation to vindicate the Rule of Law against the interests of the powerful, and holding elites to account, is taken seriously. Among the myriad motivations for the Brexit vote was a discomfort among ordinary people with the idea of being undermined by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.

    In contrast Fintan O’Toole’s Irish Times upholds the obligation of the common man to repay his debts to predatory international financial institutions.

    In ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ Orwell also notes how the English instinctively despise miscarriages of justice and hold power to account, believing in the impartial administration of the law by independent magistrates. In contrast, I find little attention being paid to the daily injustices occurring in Ireland in Fintan O’Toole’s current output.

    Orwell is also very attuned to misuse of language. A prevalent theme is how expression should be clear and unequivocal, and in a plain style that emphasising informality and flexibility. He would have no truck with the cheap rhetorical devices O’Toole trades in.

    In ‘The Prevention of Literature’ (1946) Orwell intimates that the enemies of truth and freedom of thought are press lords and bureaucrats. In Ireland today a preening Irish Times sits atop the tree, reassuring all and sundry about what a wonderful creative country this is – and never mind you can’t find somewhere to live.

    O’Toole’s sanctimonious brand of journalism works a treat, offering sufficient distraction to the little people to allow the ‘adults in the room’ to get on with plundering the larder.

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    [i] Fintan O’Toole, ‘The English Love of the Eccentric has Turned Sour’, February 19th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-english-love-of-eccentricity-has-turned-sour-1.3797907, accessed 22/2/19.

    [ii] http://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw, accessed 22/2/19.

    [iii] David Langwallner, ‘The Fragile Rule of Law in Ireland’, 18th of February, 2018, https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2018/02/unruly-2/, accessed 22/2/19.

  • Explaining the Shutdown with Trump’s Magic Eightball

    Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle.
    (‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Karl Marx, 1852)

    One might add a third instance to Hegel’s comment via Marx—a phase where it all devolves into a lesser sequel to Dumb and Dumber. On a fundamental level, the Fox and Friends-fueled ‘crisis’ over what is clearly a profoundly bad and ruinously expensive idea — a massive wall (or steel palisade, or whatever) across a massive and often inhospitable border is gratuitously unnecessary, the product of dimwitted hubris and incipient dementia coupled with an antiquated political system.

    But this is America, and unlike a shitty sequel, we cannot simply decide to give the film a miss and… ride a bike or binge-watch on PornHub or something. Or maybe enjoy that glass of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay in peace without having to wonder how the dolt of a president will force you to pay attention to politics (or even that AOC retweet from one’s Bernie Bro nephew).

    Image (c) Contantino Idini

    Aside from the hardcore Trump supporter, and angry racist Fox News Grandpa, it isn’t as if anyone thought it was a good idea. Okay, by the most generous polls, 43% of the population believe the wall might be a good idea, which is to say that the country may be slightly less racist than one was afraid it was.

    Still, though, this is the opposite of overwhelming support, and while the approval for the shutdown hovered at around 22%, we had a president from the less popular of the two major parties who lost the popular vote causing and overwhelmingly unpopular shutdown over an in-your-face-racist wall that most people don’t want, and he can get away with it due to this country’s antiquated political system — and because while the wall is unpopular, it’s still polling at 87% among Republicans, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t want to get primaried by a more drooling-prone version of himself. And this is democracy. Apparently.

    So how can this kind of situation be avoided? Within the framework of the U.S. Constitution the repeated House votes under Democratic control have about as much effect as all those votes to repeal Obamacare did when Republicans controlled the House and the Democrats held the presidency.

    Grassroots? Again, the population as a whole isn’t the demographic Mitch McConnell (or Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter) serves — it’s the elderly white suburbanites who’ve never actually been on the receiving end of a crime by a person of color, but who saw a meme on Facebook that was really scary, and whose notion of God is, if Protestant, informed by megachurch Prosperity Gospel and if Catholic, same as the Protestants, but with an Ave Maria and child-buggery chucked in.

    A considerable if not commanding majority rightly views such people with suspicion and contempt and tells such members of said demographic who are blood relatives to shut the fuck up when they opine that ‘black people didn’t used to mind being called the n-word’ at the Thanksgiving dinner table. But these people vote, and they are the make-or-break demographic in the Republican primaries.

    Meanwhile, on the ‘left,’ aside from the welcome continued growth of the socialist-and anarchist Real Deal, the #Resistance spent the shutdown tearing itself up over whether it was better for the Women’s March to cheer for Louis Farrakhan or an Israeli strafe run on a Palestinian village, while continuing to take no real steps to open up the movement into something where marchers can do anything other than make up the numbers.

    Cries of ‘Russiarussiarussia’ continue to abound, particularly at those who have the temerity to criticize the media-favored Democratic Party candidate du jour (at the moment of this writing, former prosecutor Kamala Harris, whose website has no policies laid out but does have merch. for sale).

    We’re almost two years away from the 2020 general election, yet the rancor and brain rot of the American presidential campaign season has set in. And being Americans in a neo-liberal hellscape of a job market, the overwhelming majority of federal employees didn’t quit despite not being paid for a month.

    However, the mere threat of airport and airline workers actually walking off the job was what actually broke the shutdown (contra #Resistance Twitter, which has begun to operate on the mistaken assumption that Nancy Pelosi is a brain-genius), indicating that the potential power of the working class in strategic industries shouldn’t be dismissed as something for the second verse of a Pete Seeger song.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for the electoral college to be abolished.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was absolutely right to call for the abolition of the antiquated Electoral College system that keeps giving us presidents who decisively lost the popular vote, but it’s not enough. As a whole mass of American historiography has amply demonstrated, the American Constitutional system was designed to limit the power of what Alexander Hamilton called ‘the great beast,’ by which he meant the voting public.

    Many of the problems in American politics are not reducible to governmental structures — the dictatorship of capital and associated rampant inequality and looming ecological catastrophe have no obvious technocratic solution (sorry, Elizabeth Warren) — but the Constitutional fetishism of both major American parties makes serious discussions about significantly changing an effectively anti-democratic and deliberately unwieldy basic structure of government radically difficult.

    So, apparently, Trump’s magic eight-ball told him to change course, and we’re no longer stuck with the stupid fucking shutdown and uninspected meat and vegetables and vandalism in the national parks, but we still have the MAGA-hatted Republicans and #Resistance Democrats… and more of this. And very little impetus to force our rulers to change the system that makes things like this happen again and again

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  • Who did pay that Restaurant Bill Mr Varadkar?

    Following an account of a New York banquet in a recent biography of Leo Varadkar[i], we submitted a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to the Department of the Taoiseach. We are seriously concerned at the close proximity between the Taoiseach and leading Irish journalists, including one of the authors of Leo: A Very Modern Taoiseach, Phillip Ryan, who is deputy political editor across the titles of the generally pro-government Independent Newspaper group.

    That book revealed that the ‘Taoiseach has made a virtue out of wining and dining journalists who accompany him on international trade missions’, believing, ‘it is important to spend time with them socially’. Perhaps most troubling is that the authors seem entirely unashamed about spilling the beans on one of these junkets.

    On one New York jolly, ‘More than twenty guests, who included journalists from print and broadcast media, joined the Taoiseach and foreign affairs officials for a five-course, three-hour-long meal’. The authors, at least one of whom seems to have been present, recall the guests devouring ‘French onion soup, foie gras, filet mignon and mushroom ravioli dusted with black truffles’, followed by further drinks in Fitzpatrick’s Manhattan Hotel in Midtown.[ii] Yum yum yum.

    Our FOI sought, ‘records of department expenditures from an Taoiseach’s visit to America this year in Boucherie Restaurant and FitzPatrick’s Manhattan Hotel, both in New York on March 16th and 17th, 2018.’ We were intrigued to know who paid the bill in a restaurant where the ‘Butcher’s Block’ of 16oz filet mignon, 16oz, ‘hang steak’ and 16oz ‘bone in New York strip’ costs an eye-watering $205, and that’s leaving aside its environmental impact.[iii]

    According to the officer, the department holds no record of any such expenditures. But it is hard to believe that the Taoiseach stumped up, or that journalists were asked to put their hands in their pockets, a notoriously rare occurrence. We are now flummoxed, and invite any journalist or government official present to let us know who paid the bill by emailing admin@cassandravoices.com.

    ‘Tubs’ entertains Varadkar on the ‘Late Late’

    Fresh from selling as many toys as possible on the Late Late Toy Show, amid paeans ‘to those less fortunate this Christmas’, Ryan Tubridy interviewed Leo Varadkar on the ‘Late Late Show’ on December 11th. At the recent Fine Gael Ardfheis Varadkar pledged to reduce income tax cuts if he is re-elected Taoiseach[iv], which will presumably increase toy sales next Christmas.

    To date, we have enjoyed no success with any of our FOI enquiries into Tubridy’s third party dealings. RTÉ’s solution to the problematic situation of employees and contractors receiving payments from third parties has been to introduce a Catch-22 rule whereby potentially damaging material is withheld if it is commercial sensitive.[v]

    Tubridy previously offered this plug of the Varadkar biography, enthusing that it, ‘offers the reader and voter a fascinating insight into an intriguing and public figure that none of us really know. With incisive background detail coupled with up-to-date analysis, this is a very welcome account of a private man in the most public role in Ireland.’

    On his light entertainment show, Tubridy went through the motions of grilling the Taoiseach, demanding whether the HSE is fit for purpose, to which Varadkar replied: ‘Not as the organisation it is now,’ intimating ‘structural change’, a move to ‘slim down’ the organisation and bring ‘a lot more autonomy’, which sounds suspiciously like an impending privatisation. But it was all soon sweetness and light between RTE’s leading man and the top of the political class,

    In a departure from the Irish Times’s usual Varadkar veneration, especially the use of cutesy images obviously supplied by government press office, Peter Crawley offered this assessment:

    If, like any number of its international guests, you had no idea what kind of a programme The Late Late Show is, last night’s broadcast was as good an introduction as any.

    What kind of talk show, for instance, would interview the leader of the country as its first guest, as a warm-up act for two crooners and a comedian?[vi]

    ‘Murph’ shows up for the team

    Meanwhile, Varadkar’s loyal fixer, and founding member of the legendary Five-A-Side Club of Young Fine Gael Turks, Eoghan Murphy was before the Dáil, opposing the Solidarity-People Before Profit Anti-Eviction Bill, which includes a ban on renovating a property as grounds for ending a lease.

    Murphy maintained that the government is showing a clear commitment to social housing, but his sympathies clearly lie with embattled ‘small’ landlords, bemoaning, ‘We are losing landlords in this country, it is a fact.’

    He cited the statistic that eighty-five percent of landlords own one or two properties, but this tells us nothing about the proportion of the rental sector held in those circumstances. Moreover, a single property could be a four-bedroom house in his Dublin Bay South constituency costing €6,000 per month;[vii] lies, damn lies and statistics, as Mark Twain put it.

    Murphy’s claim that it is ‘wrong to demonise these people because they are providing homes for other people’ is a subtle abuse of the English language. A landlord does not ‘provide’ for a tenant, providing for someone implies generosity, not offering a property in exchange for a rent, which in Dublin, for too long, has been left to ‘market forces’, and the gumption of gouging landlords.

    The rhetoric about protecting the small guy – beloved of neo-liberals the world over – affords protection to owners of multiple properties, who are increasing their assets, as Murphy’s speech concedes. His political colours are revealed in this passage which will anger anyone caught in an impossible rental situation:

    We have to be very careful in interfering more than we are at the moment. We have to make sure that we are not placing extra burdens on these small landlords. And we have to make sure that we are not prohibiting someone from selling a property that they own when they might need to sell that property for perfectly legitimate reasons in their own lives. They may not have the money to re-compensate the person living in the property at that point.[viii]

    God help anyone renting in Dublin at this time, because this government’s sympathies (and Eoghan Murphy’s it would appear) lie with the wealthiest five percent in the country, who own over forty percent of its wealth, with eighty-five per cent of that held in property and land. We suggest a more important priority: to make sure everyone has a roof over their head.  Unfortunately many of the leading journalists in this country, who should be pursuing this injustice, are themselves dining at the top table.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

    [i] Frank Armstrong, ‘Leo-Liberal’, Cassandra Voices, October 5th, 2018.

    [ii] Phillip Ryan and Niall O’Connor, Leo: Leo Varadkar – A Very Modern Taoiseach, London, Biteback Publishing, 2018, p.321-322

    [iii] Boucherie, New York, Menu, http://boucherie.nyc/menu/, accessed 18/12/18.

    [iv] Juno McEnroe, ‘Varadkar pledges income tax cuts if re-elected as Taoiseach’, Irish Examiner, 17th of November, 2018.

    [v] Frank Armstrong, ‘RTÉ Says: ‘Stars’ In Their Own Cars’, Cassandra Voice, July 1st, 2018.

    [vi] Peter Crawley, ‘Leo Varadkar on the Late Late Show: Taoiseach has become ‘CEO’, Ireland ‘the organisation’, Irish Times, 8th of December, 2018.

    [vii] Daft.ie, https://www.daft.ie/dublin/houses-for-rent/ranelagh/dartmouth-road-ranelagh-dublin-1858718/, accessed 18/12/18.

    [viii] ‘Deputy Eoghan Murphy – Private Members’ Business – 12.12.2018’, YouTube,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1RRw0lM9iI, accessed 18/12/18.

  • The Slow Death of White Male Privilege

    The history books are laden with white men changing the world, from Alexander the Great to Churchill. Look at our religions- Jesus and all his disciples are white. Every saint painted on a fresco is white. The great explorers of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were all white. Every astronaut who landed on the moon has been white. Every statue we have from antiquity to the Renaissance is a thing of white marble beauty. Even the most famous wizards of all time–Merlin, Gandalf and Dumbledore–are all white old men. And of course movie stars have been white males from the Silent Era to the present. Finally, who runs and has run the Western governments since time immemorial, only old good ol’ white men.

    This may create a perception that white men are exceptional. Is it any wonder then that people of all races, religions, social status and nationalities look to white people to lead them? It’s the perception of trust that leads to a feeling of entitlement: ‘I can be President. I can be an astronaut.’ And the stereotype has been fed time and again by artists, the media, politicians, universities, military organizations, educational systems and now marketing departments.

    It has been established that people who are more attractive have a better chance of landing a job than those who are not. Given our heritage, what is sexier than a white male fueled by innate self-confidence.

    And what happens when we come across white men in history who may have noble ideals but end up killing millions?  We frame them as tragic figures with flaws that lead to disastrous outcomes (Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Richard Nixon) or misunderstood (Julius Ceasar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lenin) and a warning to other white men not to make the same mistakes. After all it is assumed that white men in power are basically good guys, who will do the right thing.

    Is it any wonder then that we feel secure at a reptilian level when we see a white guy in power? After all, we know the history of white guys and with it the frequent narrative of progress: haven’t they done a good job for the vast majority of humanity? And if they haven’t, who are we to trust? In any case we can always (at least in liberal democracies) get rid of the white guys that are bad apples, and replace them with white guys who will do better.

    Of course this is a very Eurocentric view of the world, but who can argue that our interconnected world is not a product of the Age of Discovery (circa 1500 to 1700), the Enlightenment (c. 1600-1800) and Colonialism (1600-1900), all led by governments, leaders, and thinkers that were white men?

    We can argue about their methods, and whether we would be better off without them, but we cannot argue against the proposition that they have been largely responsible for creating the modern world. The representation of white men from history, from art, to science, to commerce is long and well-rooted, and it is there that we find the root of white male privilege.

    As a white man the odds of you getting the job, education, spouse, bank loan or a role in a major motion picture acting role you aspired to were significantly higher than if you were from any other gender or ethnicity. That is the American Dream we talk about, although what we all know is that it is really the white man’s dream. How can we question whether there exists White Male Privilege then? Indeed, if you are a white male and not in a position of power or wealth, many people will assume there is something wrong with you.

    From this perspective can you see the appeal of Trump? A rich white guy, who promises to change a broken two party system run by white men. A white guy, who promises to come in and throw out the other white guys, who have been corrupted by power and wealth. A white guy, who blames women and minorities and immigrants for the country’s woes. The country was doing dandy under the white guys, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., until that black guy came into office and some white lady became speaker of the House. Conservatives (mostly white folks) want a return to the status quo and can you blame them? America has been great for white people so far.

    If you’ve come this far thinking I am Conservative, or worse, then this next bit is gonna be a let down. I am not. In fact, my argument is that this long history is starting to crack, and indeed will crumble over the next fifty to one hundred years. Our children and grand-children could be in for a real treat, as the world moves in fits and starts out of the Age of the White Man, and into the Age of, well, whatever we call it in two hundred years.

    We have already seen the beginning of this in the twentieth century. With some exceptions, every country in Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania has thrown off the yoke of colonial white masters from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yeah, people of Spanish, English and Chinese heritage control some countries, but they were at least born in those countries and serve the inhabitants instead of a bureaucracy in Peking or London of Madrid. This means that new leaders who aren’t white are getting a chance to change the course of their country’s political history.

    How about Europe, where the leaders of he two biggest economies, U.K. and Germany are women?

    The world’s second and third largest economies? China and Japan (the EU doesn’t count as a country) are run by indigenous Chinese and Japanese.

    African and South American countries are run by local governments, increasingly at liberty to forge regional alliances that do not involve European powers.

    In the US there are black television channels (BET), Hispanic television channels (Univision), movies with all black production units and stars that are no longer on the fringes of society: they are mainstreaming.

    As for university curricula, well you can major in Spanish, Chinese, African, Asian, African American, and Women’s Studies at just about every place of higher learning in the US.

    Artists? Who are the biggest stars on the planet today? Lady Gaga, Dre Dre, Madonna, Taylor Swift, BTS? Who makes the best music? Kendrick Lamar (Pulitzer Prize). White crooners like Elvis, Sinatra, Harry Connick have disappeared, boy bands have crawled back under the rocks from whence they came, even the most popular singer-songwriters all seem to either non-white or female.

    I am not saying that white males don’t have a leg up anymore. But the system has been rigged in their favor for hundreds of years. It is going to take some time for that ebb away. Now that increasingly all kids can look up and see people of their own skin color, sex, sexual orientation, and religion make it, they can have the confidence to do so too. They will work harder knowing it is possible to succeed.

    And we are just starting to see how the crumbling of their privilege is affecting white men. The confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh is a perfect microcosm. Why were Conservatives in such a hurry? After all, there were plenty of conservative white men more qualified than Kavanaugh for the job.

    Midterms are coming up, and to start the confirmation process again risked hitting the speed bump of an altered Senate, where there is no guarantee that white conservative men will control either branch. They had to get this guy and they had to do it now.

    The white male fears run deeper. With a majority of white male conservatives on the Supreme Court, white men think they can now rest more easily, secure in the knowledge they may have one remaining ally in the years to come, when white people will not longer be a majority in the country, and when Blacks and Latinos and LBGTQ and women, and Indians, and Chinese will start to win districts that were were once the preserve white men.

    The Brahmans in Congress know their time is limited, and this was the last major push to keep a hold on a power they have enjoyed since the foundation of the state. So hats off to them, but it it won’t last.

    What we’re seeing now is the last wheezing breath of old white men in power, pathetically clinging to it like an addict who cannot quit, and refuses to die, because their vanity demands they go on using others.

    Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court, but the tide of history is too powerful at this point. Instead of leaving a legacy to be proud of, they will leave a stain we will all wash out eventually, so that instead of being remembered they will be forgotten, once new leaders with vision take over.

    In one hundred years you won’t read about Mitch McConnell or Newt Gingrich or Donald Trump, but about Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, Ruth Badar Ginsberg, Angela Merkel, Serena Williams, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Neil Degrasse Tyson. After all, they are who kids look up to these days, and certainly not George Bush or Donald Trump or Samuel Alito. Wanna know why? Because if you are white, male, grew up in Kentucky, and have an eighth-grade-education, your whiteness won’t get you where you want anymore. Republican policies will ensure you don’t have access to a proper education, healthcare, a healthy environment, or social services. Live in a city however, where you can hustle, make connections, go to college, and kill it in law school, and you will have a pretty good shot at making Partner one day, or even the Supreme Court.

    We will see the fading of trust in white power and a belief in leadership which is colour and gender blind. That is my hope anyway.

  • Ryan Tubridy’s Ethical Flop

    Ryan Tubridy is the highest paid broadcaster in Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ, earning close to half a million euro per annum. He presents an hour long radio show each weekday morning on Radio 1, as well as the station’s flagship Friday-night television show, The Late Late Show.

    To many he is the public face of the broadcaster – although he is a contractor rather than a direct employee for tax purposes – his mug regularly appearing on the cover of the in-house RTÉ Guide, the widest circulating magazine in the country.

    For these reasons, we believe a high ethical bar should be raised on potential conflicts of interest with his commercial and political endorsements. Any appearance of impropriety should be excluded, as others are likely to follow his lead. Alas, what we see is a Tubridy Flop, which like Dick Fobsbury’s legendary technique looks wrong, but does not appear to breach any rules.

    Unfortunately, because RTÉ refuses to disclose details of third party commercial arrangements its leading ‘stars’ enter into, we are compelled to make enquiries where there is a suggestion of inappropriate dealings. This comes, however, with the significant proviso that the officer may deny an application for such information where it is deemed advantageous to competitors, might result in financial loss to contractors, and potentially ‘prejudice RTÉ contractual negotiations in respect of future engagements with independent contractors’.

    Dick Fobsbury, no relation to Ryan Tubridy.

    Our recent enquiries into Ryan Tubridy emanate from his close connections to the motor industry, which we connected to a surprising attack on cyclists, and past receipt of a free car.

    The sight of Ryan Tubridy on the cover of the September edition of the RTÉ Guide sitting atop what is obviously a Vespa motor cycle appeared to be an example of ‘product placement’. As a result we submitted a  Freedom of Information Request to the relevant office in RTÉ was filed, reading as follows:

    I am requesting records (if they exist) of payments or payments in kind from Piaggio (the manufacturer of Vespa) or any of its agents or subsidiaries in Ireland to Ryan Tubridy over the course of 2018. I am making this request in response to photographs and an article that appeared in the September edition of the RTÉ Guide featuring Tubridy on his Vespa with the logo prominently displayed(see attached).

    Further to this I am seeking records (if they exist) of payments or payments in kind from Piaggio (the manufacturer of Vespa) or any of its agents or subsidiaries in Ireland to the RTÉ Guide arising from the same article.

    I believe it is in the public interest for any such inducements to RTÉ employees or contractors, or the in-house publication featuring same to be in the public domain.

    More photos from the shoot.

    The following email was received in reply:

    Dear [Sir],

    Thanks for your email yesterday. I have made inquiries and been advised that the Vespa belongs to a person in HR here in RTÉ. It was parked outside the building and the photographer just asked to use it as a prop for the photoshoot.

    On that basis it seems that your request is unlikely to turn up any records. Do you wish to proceed with your FOI request? It’s not a problem either way – I just wanted to pass on the information I received.

    Kind regards,

    […]

    FOI Officer, RTÉ .

    We chose to persevere with the application. On September .. we received a formal reply stating:

    I have contacted several individuals in RTÉ by email and in person to establish if the records you sought exist. I have been advised that they do not. Mr Tubridy does not have relationship with Piaggio or any of the agents or subsidiaries in Ireland where he receives or received payments or payments in kind.

    I have also been advised that there is no relationship between Piaggio or any of its agents or subsidiaries in Ireland and the RTE Guide.

    …

    As I outlined to you in an email on September 4th I was advised that the Vespa which was used in the photoshoot for the RTE Guide was actually owned by a member of staff in the Human Resources Department. The person was asked if it could be used as a prop and they agreed.

    This communication throws up a few questions. First, how could no one be aware that a commercial brand was so obviously apparent in the photos? Secondly, can the public have confidence in the Freedom of Information process within RTÉ , considering the aforementioned proviso?

    It is notable that when it came to the online version of the article the picture with the Vespa has been doctored to exclude the motor cycle.

    Political Connections

    Ryan Tubridy’s name crops up in another article published in this edition of Cassandra Voices, with his name, along with those of RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan and TV3’s Ursula Hannigan, appearing on the back of the recent publication Leo: Leo Varadkar – A Very Modern Taoiseach by Philip Ryan and Niall O’Connor. The book is by most measures a homage to the leaderships qualities of Taoiseach Varadkar, and published by Bitback Publishing a London-based house, owned by Tory donor Lord Ashcroft.

    Tubridy enthuses that the book:

    offers the reader and voter a fascinating insight into an intriguing and public figure that none of us really know. With incisive background detail coupled with up-to-date analysis, this is a very welcome account of a private man in the most public role in Ireland.

    This does not appear controversial, but we question whether it is appropriate for RTÉ’s leading man (and, arguably, woman) to endorse a book, one of whose authors works for the government; at least in a form that is not part of a serious review.

    It surely involved the publisher contacting Ryan Tubridy, and requesting a few words on the books. It seems fair to ask whether Tubridy received anything in return.

    In the original interview for the RTÉ Guide Tubridy lists Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 as one of his favourite books. A Catch 22 has been defined as a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule. Similarly, RTÉ solution to the problematic situation of employees and contractors receiving payments from third parties is to introduce a rule whereby potentially damaging material is withheld if it is commercial sensitive.

    Until RTÉ offers transparency regarding its code of conduct, and third party financial relationships, these questions will linger. Notwithstanding the Catch 22, if our readers come across further potential conflicts of interests we would invite you to email the relevant officer foi@rte, and send us any response (to admin@cassandravoices.com) you receive.

  • The Audacity of a Third Party Candidate

    The problem with writing about the U.S. Democratic Party, whether analytically, historically, or even as a matter of praxis, is that it has all been said or tried before.

    Want to run party candidates on a left-wing (or progressive, or whatever?) platform? Recall the so-called Alliance Yardstick, when the Farmers’ Alliance in 1890 held Democratic Party candidates it endorsed to its full program, including such items as the nationalization of the railroads, a progressive income tax, and significant monetary reform. They got hundreds of candidates elected — most of whom promptly abandoned the agreement.

    This led to the formation of the People’s Party in 1892, which did well by the standards of a third party, before largely getting gobbled up when the Democrats adopted one of their main planks (free silver) in 1896.

    Or, for that matter, the experiences of the Democratic Socialists of America in the 1970s and 1980s, when formerly third-party socialists led by Mike Harrington surmised that with the conservative white supremacist wing of the Democratic Party leaving in droves, what remained could be turned in a social-democratic direction. Problem was (among many others) the trade-union leaders, whose support the DSA was banking on, failed to lend their support, and aside from Ron Dellums in the Bay Area, the DSA devolved into an organization of long-in-the-tooth ex-New Leftists and left-talking trade-union bureaucrats, until the past few years pushed its membership north of 50,000, and its median age roughly millennial.

    So what does a socialist/leftist of any stripe do about this behemoth of an organization that isn’t leftist in any meaningful sense — even the crappy sort of continuous sell-out leftism of the Irish Labour Party variety — but nevertheless fills that space in a first-past-the-post system that naturally generates two main parties?

    Moreover, what are the chances of doing so in a political landscape that hasn’t seen a new major party emerge since the Republicans first ran John C. Frémont for president in 1856? This gets us to a dilemma facing any practitioner of reform politics in the United States: do you go into one of the old Parties and try to take it over from within, or do you set up a third party to oppose both the Democrats and Republicans?

    There are several advantages, at least perceived, of taking over an established party. In the first place, you already find an infrastructure. There is a central fund, precinct captains, name recognition. Many people vote out of habit, too, so habitual Democrats might well continue voting Democrat in spite of more radical candidates.

    Starting from scratch and taking on deep-seated traditional loyalties, moreover, can be daunting. The two major American political parties, after all, have remained a constant since the Civil War. Taking them on has not proven terribly easy, with the single-best showing for a third-party socialist candidate to date being that of Eugene Debs, who won 900,000 votes in 1912, which sounds impressive until one realizes that was roughly 6% of the total.

    The problems with capturing one of the two major parties for an insurgent political movement, though, flow from this same strength. Though the Democrats and Republicans are, to a certain degree, malleable, they are — and were — nonetheless well-established institutions. Taking them over was easier said than done. If one managed to capture either major party, one would probably not capture it all at the same time. Donations can dry up — or be used to win over politicians to return to the fold.

    Moreover, the considerable bureaucracy of each party can be wielded against internal dissent. Ask Bernie Sanders. Getting one’s own candidates nominated is only part of the battle.

    The creation of a third party has one considerable advantage, notwithstanding the need to create new machinery in the face of deep-seated party loyalties. Importantly, you retains control of your message. The party discipline affecting your elected officials is your own concern. Still, gaining and maintaining ballot access is fiendishly (and deliberately) difficult. When a reform-minded third party does shows up in mainstream debates it is usually as a swear word in the mouth of Democrats, who say you robbed them.

    This outrage, notably directed at Ralph Nader in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016, is contemptible, particularly given the outrage, both muted and open, emanating from the establishment liberal punditocracy at Bernie Sanders running as a Democrat even though he isn’t a real Democrat! (Cue ugly crying, specious accusations of misogyny and racism, and behind-the-scenes machinations with the Clinton campaign.)

    If one works within the Democratic Party, one is engaging in a hostile takeover; if one works outside it, one is a spoiler. The nabobs of liberalism are, naturally, opposed to both because they are opposed to any kind of anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist politics.

    Seth Ackerman, writing in Jacobin, proposed something of a both/and strategy in an article entitled ‘A Blueprint for a New Party’. Noting that the Democrats, and Republicans, unusually for political parties in much of the world, are not really ‘parties’ in the way most people, most places think of such entities. He deserves to be quoted at length:

    Beneath our winner-take-all electoral rules, we also have a unique — and uniquely repressive — legal system governing political parties and the mechanics of elections. This system has nothing to do with the Constitution or the Founding Fathers. Rather, it was established by the major-party leaders, state by state, over a period stretching roughly from 1890 to 1920.

    Before then, the old Jacksonian framework prevailed: there was no secret ballot, and no officially printed ballot. Voters brought their own “tickets” to the polls and deposited them in a ballot box under the watchful eye of party workers and onlookers.

    Meanwhile, the parties — which were then wholly private, unregulated clubs, fueled by patronage — chose their nominees using the “caucus-convention” system: a pyramid of county, state, and national party conventions in which participants at the lower-level meetings chose delegates to attend the higher-level meetings….

    In the 1880s and 1890s, this cozy system was disrupted by a new breed of “hustling candidates,” who actively campaigned for office rather than quietly currying favor with a few key party workers. When informal local caucuses started to become scenes of open competitive campaigning by rival factions, each seeking lucrative patronage jobs, they degenerated into chaos, often violence.

    Worse, candidates who lost the party nomination would try to win the election anyway by employing their own agents to hand out “pasted” or “knifed” party tickets on election day, grafting their names inconspicuously onto the regular party ticket.

    Party leaders were losing control over their traditional means of maintaining a disciplined political army. Their response was a series of state-level legislative reforms that permanently transformed the American political system, creating the electoral machinery we have today.

    Ackerman’s argument is that with the state moving in to take over a key part of internal party life — the selection of candidates — via primaries, getting on the ballot if one is not in one of the major parties can be intensely time-consuming (This, however, depends to a degree on the state — as each one has different electoral laws).

    On the other hand, Ackerman acknowledges that the demands of a major party in regards to quid-pro-quo for any meaningful support can make that approach untenable too. Ackerman’s proposal for a new type of left-wing party also should be quoted at length:

    The following is a proposal for such a model: a national political organization that would have chapters at the state and local levels, a binding program, a leadership accountable to its members, and electoral candidates nominated at all levels throughout the country.

    As a nationwide organization, it would have a national educational apparatus, recognized leaders and spokespeople at the national level, and its candidates and other activities would come under a single, nationally recognized label…. In any given race, the organization could choose to run in major- or minor-party primaries, as nonpartisan independents, or even, theoretically, on the organization’s own ballot line.

    The ballot line would thus be regarded as a secondary issue. The organization would base its legal right to exist not on the repressive ballot laws, but on the fundamental rights of freedom of association.

    This is a deft, if perhaps conjunctural way around the problem — ballot party is explicitly not one’s real party. The challenge, though, is in the implementation.

    The case of DSA member and presumptive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is instructive. After scoring an upset against Queens Democratic Party satrap, and heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi, Joe Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez, an intelligent, charismatic twentysomething who, with the septuagenarian Sanders has become the face of ‘democratic socialism’ in the United States, seems at times unclear as to whether she is in the first place a Democrat or member of the ‘movement’ that propelled her to success.

    Upon being confronted on her entirely decent statement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine this July, she backtracked into wishy-washy and vague formulations like: ‘Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes. Oh I think — what I meant is that the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes…’ and ‘I am not the expert at geopolitics on this issue. I am a firm believer in finding a two-state solution on this issue, and I’m happy to sit down with leaders on both of these — for me, I just look at things through a human-rights lens, and I may not use the right words. I know this is a very intense issue.’

    This is not, as many pundits both rightist and centrist have intimated, a matter of the pretty young lady not knowing what she is talking about. It is a matter of trying not to piss off the AIPAC-aligned majority of the Democratic Party, while not entirely throwing the Palestinians under the treads of a Merkava tank.

    In its own way, just as gratuitous was AOC’s slobbering Tweet when pro-war, corporate greedhead and all-around shitbag John McCain finally slipped this mortal coil. To wit: ‘John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.’ Why don’t you tell us about how Princess Diana is ‘the People’s Princess,’ and a veritable ‘candle in the wind’, while you’re at it?

    The question of orienting towards a party whose leadership views even mild reforms such as single-payer healthcare and maybe taking, you know, a pass on a few of the major imperialist clusterfucks of the past nigh-on two hundred years has been a fraught one for the left for almost as long as there has been an American left.

    The AOC case illustrates that while being a self-described democratic socialist and having a (D) next to your name on television may not be mutually exclusive in an absolute sense, it is in tension. We shall see how she and a handful of other elected DSA members handle this, with some hope, and no small apprehension. It has gone horribly wrong before.

  • RTÉ Says: ‘Stars’ In Their Own Cars

    One trail runs dry, but a scent hangs in the air. Pursuant to Stephen Court’s Drivetime article for Cassandra Voices deconstructing the Irish media’s – including RTÉ ’s – relationship with the motor car sector, I lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the national broadcaster.

    I sought records of payments, or payments-in-kind, from car dealership to leading RTÉ stars, approved by RTÉ ’s management since January 1st, 2017 under the Personal and Public Activities Guidance.

    RTÉ’s FOI officer responded on June 6th to say there was no record of any such payments or payments-in-kind.

    So can we be sure that RTÉ ’s ‘star’ personalities are appropriately objective in their reporting on transport issues?

    Unfortunately not, as an FOI is a request for records containing information, rather than the information itself. According to a recent judgment (quoted by RTÉ’s FOI Officer): ‘If the record does not exist the body concerned is not required to create records to provide the information sought’ (Case 170505, Ms X and Louth County Council).

    In other words, the FOI officer is under no obligation to dig for information on behalf of an applicant if the question posed misses records containing the targeted information; albeit an officer must take reasonable steps to comply with a request, which usually takes thirty days.

    There is ample evidence of a permissive culture among RTÉ management towards employees’ earnings from third party sources. This was revealed in another FOI application I took earlier this year, unrelated to enquiries into the motor sector. But RTÉ’s officer chose to withhold details of who received what from whom – for reasons of commercial sensitivity.

    As long as the national broadcaster does not provide a publicly accessible register of all transactions between employees (including so-called ‘external employees’ who avail of tax breaks available to companies) with third parties, as the BBC does, then suspicion lingers.

    At the very least the national broadcaster should reveal the text of the Personal and Public Activities Guidance, which regulates employee’s third party relationships.

    Any media organisation in receipt of a disproportionate proportion of its advertisement revenue from a particular sector is exposed to a charge of bias, which may operate in subtle ways.

    II – Bring Cyclists to Justice

    A recent example of what appears to be ‘Groupthink’ in the national broadcaster came from the unlikely source of Olivia O’Leary on – you guessed it – her weekly Drivetime column on June 19th.

    Drivetime’s website adopts the incendiary title: ‘Olivia O’Leary on Cyclists: ‘It’s time we called in the law and fought for our footpaths’. It is a case of ‘we’, the ‘normal’ people, presumably motorists, ranged against ‘them’, that strange species of two-wheeled fanatics, invading ‘our’ footpaths. The title invites confrontation beyond legal enforcement.

    The column itself is more balanced than the title suggests, but contains serious lapses of judgment. O’Leary said she was in favour of banning cars from between the canals and acknowledged that ‘cars destroy a city’, but then proceeded to lambaste the behaviour of cyclists in Dublin’s city centre.

    She limits her complaint to a certain type of (male) cyclist on a Dublin bike ‘thundering along’ footpaths, but that nuance is lost in the following statement:

    But, you know, there is one thing that private cars, for all their faults, usually do not do. They do not drive down the middle of the footpath, scattering pedestrians left and right. Cyclists, on the other hand, do this all the time.

    O’Leary also, remarkably, jokes about using an umbrella to unseat any cyclist who engages in ‘Panzer tank stuff’, before adding that she would not actually recommend this. Ha ha ha. Hopefully some hot head has not had ideas put in his head.

    This seems particularly insensitive, to put it kindly, considering how that very week in June ten people including three pedestrians had been killed by motor vehicles. Two were hit-and-runs. Unlike those killers, O’Leary missed the real culprits.

    Moreover, as Cian Ginty points out in a column for Irishcycle.com, a simple Google search yields examples of pedestrians on footpaths being killed by motorists.

    O’Leary is relating her personal experiences as a pedestrian in Dublin, which is fair enough, and of course there are lunatics out there. But what she fails to acknowledge is that friction between pedestrians and cyclists is largely a product of the deficient cycling infrastructure in the capital.

    Mounting the footpath in Dublin’s centre is often a safety measure in a crush of buses, taxis and private cars. Most cyclists will then glide at the pace of the average pram, and give right of way to pedestrians, some of whom, nonetheless, will take the opportunity to scream into the cyclist’s ear.

    O’Leary should have known better than to target cyclists for long failures in urban planning. She also ought to be pissed off with how the Drivetime producers have distorted her column.

    III – Motor Mouths

    Transparency in terms of external payments and gifts is especially important where, as Stephen Court’s article illustrates, there is a record of high profile figures – including Ryan Tubridy and others – apparently receiving free cars from dealerships, and also where numerous programmes from Drivetime to Liveline are sponsored by car companies, who also dominate commercial breaks.

    If a presenter’s salary is linked to the advertising revenue his or her programme attracts this could be seen as an indirect payment, which might inhibit the expression of views unsympathetic to the sponsor. At the very least large scale advertising by any sector creates an objective bias, i.e. an appearance of bias, even without direct evidence.

    No doubt these are existential questions for a state broadcaster, whose business model relies on advertising revenues of €151.5 last year, along with TV €186.1 million in licence fees.

    One of the reasons I say that we have to have our numbers up [is] because it only works when the numbers are up.
    Joe Duffy, Irish Times, Saturday, December 9th, 2017.

    Is a widespread devotion to ratings really a pursuit of advertising revenue? With RTÉ consistently losing money (€5.6 million last year), it is time to cut its cloth, and focus on its primary public service: the delivery of news and current affairs at a remove from vested interests.

    This should involve an end to exorbitant salaries. The country is awash with aspiring journalists, most of whom would happily work on an average RTÉ salary of €70,000 per annum.

    The BBC manages to perform this role satisfactorily in the UK, while allowing commerical competitors. The population might be more willingly pay their TV licenses if the broadcaster delivered a better service. The country has among the highest evasion rates in Europe.

    It is time to kill the radio star on the national broadcaster.

    IV – A Broader Malaise

    The extent of payments from external sources to RTÉ’s household names was revealed in another FOI application I took earlier this year. But the officer refused to divulge precise details, claiming this could be advantageous to competitors, might result in financial loss to contractors, and potentially ‘prejudice RTÉ ’s contractual negotiations in respect of future engagements with independent contractors’.

    I saw details of payments by third parties to Ryan Tubridy, Ray D’Arcy, Miriam O’Callaghan, Damien O’Reilly, Marty Morrissey, Claire Byrne, Bryan Dobson, Sean O’Rourke, Joe Duffy, Philip Boucher-Hayes, Joe Duffy, Kathryn Thomas, Mary Wilson and Marian Finucane

    The officer responded that for 2017, ‘the total number of requests to engage in external ventures that RTÉ received was 122. Of that number, 114 were approved and 8 were refused. Of those granted, 97 were independent contractor requests and 1 was a RTÉ employee request. Of those refused, 7 were independent contractor requests and 17 were RTÉ employee requests.’

    That the vast majority of requests were approved in 2017, particularly to independent contractors, shows the organisation takes a liberal view on potential conflicts of interest. Indeed, it is a matter of public record that management approved a payment by Origin Green/Bord Bia to Damien O’Reilly last year despite an obvious conflict of interest.

    RTÉ’s Damien O’Reilly.

    RTÉ claimed the majority of payments were for ‘non-commercial events, and mostly in support of charitable or other not-for-profit organisations’. In the absence of further details, however, it is impossible to verify this claim. It begs the question: if the work is harmless, or even benign, why did they withhold the information? Bord Bia is a not-for-profit semi-state body, but there was still a conflict of interest for RTÉ’s main agricultural correspondent to be receiving money from that organisation.

    We cannot now tell whether any of the third parties have connections to the motor car industry in Ireland. And even if an organisation is charitable, or not-for-profit, this does not imply neutrality on contentious issue.

    The claim that divulging information would “prejudice RTÉ ’s contractual negotiations” suggests the likes of Ryan Tubridy – who has been outspoken in his criticism of cyclists –  could be lost to commercial competitors if damaging information enters the public domain.

    That contention may be questioned, in the case of Tubridy at least. After moonlighting with the BBC in 2016 Tubridy admitted he found connecting with UK listeners difficult, while leaving for Newstalk or TV3 would represent a career regression.

    Most of RTÉ ’s household names found fame, and fortune, through extended exposure on RTÉ. The failure of Pat Kenny to draw a substantial number of his former listeners away from the station, when he departed for Newstalk, indicates most people are in the habit of tuning into the state broadcaster, rather than the radio ‘star’.

    V – A Tool of the Sector

    The state broadcaster is certainly not alone in the Irish media in its reliance on advertising from the motor car industry, and the objective bias this brings. Our ‘paper of record’, the Irish Times, seems to do little investigative work into subject-matters impinging on its leading advertisers; and while generally virtue-signalling in its approval of cycling, has also contributed to negative stereotyping.

    One such portrayal came from Fintan O’Toole in 2013. O’Toole, whose father was a bus driver, as he has reminded his readers, does not drive. But seemingly that does not extend to sympathy for cycling. During National Bike Week in 2013 he wrote, tongue-in-cheek, that cyclists were the ‘spawn of the devil’, no doubt to the guffaws of his colleagues on the editorial floor.

    But the article was actually a genuine indictment of the behaviour of cyclists, who are portrayed as casually mounting footpath and endangering pedestrians, even where they have been provided with their own lanes.

    As with Olivia O’Leary, O’Toole posited a false dichotomy between pedestrians and cyclists, ‘us’ and  ‘them’, which ignores how the problem is not with either form of locomotion, but the utter dominance of the motor car in Ireland’s urban areas.

    Many of Dublin’s cycle lanes are defective: the track might be potholed, or simply a part of the road that is coloured red, a simulacrum of a real cycle lane without a protective curb, where parking is often permitted outside rush hour.

    O’Toole recently wrote an article criticising plans to remove motorized traffic from College Green, a measure which would also be advantageous to cyclists. O’Toole’s argument was that this would work to the detriment of mostly working class bus passengers. Cycling is not mentioned once in the article.

    College Green c.1890.

    The implication is that cycling is not a realistic mode of transport for the working class, but instead the preserve of middle class, lycra-clad, fitness enthusiasts, which is certainly not the case in cities where the bike is king. O’Toole is right insofar as he draws attention to the poor provision of public transport in Dublin, and to emphasise the continued importance of the bus.

    But rather than abandoning plans for a plan that would make the centre of the city more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, a better outcome would be investment in quality bus corridors and the introduction of radial routes.

    *******

    With a climate comparable to Copenhagen’s and Amsterdam’s, Dublin is regarded as the Great Bike Hope of Emerging Bicycle Cities. But the media, from state broadcaster to the national ‘paper of record’ have failed to drive home that message, and few politicians, beyond the Green Party, have consistently campaigned on behalf of cycling, which should be a viable and healthy alternative for most healthy urbans residents.

    A deficient cycling infrastructure is another blot on the copy book of a country ranked second worst in Europe for tackling Climate Change, and which confronts an obesity pandemic.

    The national broadcaster might insulate itself from claims of objective bias by not treating news and current affairs as cash cows. Then we might be offered better reporting on important issues, such as reforming a sclerotic transport infrastructure. And if RTÉ’s ‘stars’ reckon they are not being paid well enough, they should be told to get on their bikes.

  • Leopold Bloom and the Art of Loafing

    What does it mean to be a loafer? Loafing as an activity has always existed. It has been carried out, witnessed, imagined and sung since the dawn of human time; from the ancient Aborigines on their walkabout, to the modern idling of the nineteenth and twentieth century dandies. Today, loafing as a mode of existence, may well be one of the last subversive acts and means of combating and living affirmatively amidst the information and technological age.

    The loafer is more than just a flâneur, epitomised by a Baudelaire or Wilde; he or she can be bucolic or urbane, a scientist or poetic seeker – anyone from Einstein to Yeats. And far from lazy in the vulgar sense, on the contrary, the loafer is never really at rest, but attuned to the present, and observing from various perspectives at the same time.

    A loafer is not bored; boredom comes from a forgetfulness of the power of the imagination; boredom is the great trick of marketers who vomit out messages demanding we purchase our entertainment, and sell us things we don’t need. Most of us live in a world where the power of advertising effectively distracts us from the impact of what we are consuming, and implicitly accepting.

    A loafer can enjoy waiting and musing; a loafer does not become irritated that he or she has to wait an extra minute for change at the supermarket, or partake in beeping and cursing obscenities to others while stuck in traffic, when they are part of the traffic; a loafer does not do a mountain or a country, but rather ascends a mountain and wanders a country. To paraphrase the Irish philosopher John Moriarty, the geography of the loafer’s mind becomes the geography of the landscape he or she travels in.

    As an example, James Joyce’s novel Ulysses emphasises loafing in at least two major ways. Firstly, in its conception, Joyce – as external and internal itinerant – creates a work that is an alternative journey or odyssey on the periphery of war-torn Europe.

    This is a difficult work that unfolds before the reader’s eyes with Joyce making his way as he writes, a book that becomes ever more sprawling as the episodes proceed. It defies schematic dogmatism, but simultaneously the work – merging chaos and cosmos expressed in Joyce’s words ‘chaosmos’ and ‘thisorder’– is contained within strict boundaries. Out of difficulty, arrives a wealth of possibility.

    Hardly any aspect of Western culture is left out in that account of a single day in Dublin on June 16th 1904, the day in which Joyce went on his first official date with Nora Barnacle who would become his muse, lover, wife, mother of his children, and companion throughout his entire adult itinerant life. Thus, the day marks a day of love and affirmation as well as being a universal modern bible of homelessness and homecoming.

    Secondly, there is the main character of Leopold Bloom – the majestic loafer – at once sad-eyed and sharp as a hawk in his observations. If the scientist seeks to understand reality and the mystic seeks to experience it directly, then Bloom, as loafer, does both.

    Statue of James Joyce in Trieste, where he lived on and off between 1904 and 1920.

    Real time is that of the observer. Many Westerners have lost the secrets derived from mystical sources, but these are only other aspects of a wider reality in less alienated societies. Thus deprived, many seek for this connection in exotic realms which are removed from their society and detached from their own suffering. It is often easier to access the magic in strange, unfamiliar landscapes than in one’s own seemingly all too familiar, cynical and faithless culture.

    Throughout the course of our lives, like Leopold Bloom, many of us will be confronted by tragedy at some point or enter dark places from which we find it difficult to escape. And each one of us is going to experience an apocalypse – our own particular death. As established religions have declined, a spiritual void has emerged in many people’s lives. But perhaps our own poetic traditions can offer the solace that many people seek, offering answers to which we are culturally attuned.

    The secrets and the answers are right here in front of us in slowness, in loafing, in singing. Yes, because music too can lift the spirit, as both Joyce and Leopold Bloom attest. As the Irish writer Sean O’Faolain (although himself a chief critic of Finnegans Wake) put it: ‘In the presence of great music we have no alternative but to live nobly’.

    As Joyce famously said himself of Finnegans Wake, if you cannot understand the text – then simply read it aloud and hear the music of it. The same goes for Ulysses. Walter Pater’s line is the key to Joyce’s experimental writing of the challenging music episode of Ulysses when Bloom wanders into the side room of Dublin’s national concert hall in the afternoon: ‘All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music’.

    Loafers have sung eloquently throughout history, from the first Provençal troubadours who invented our modern idea of Romantic love, down to some of our finest popular late twentieth century musicians from the Brazilian Bossanova and Tropicalia movements, to the Celtic Soul fusion of Van Morrison.

    Our contemporary society prizes speed, efficiency and growth and looks askance at activities deemed unproductive. In particular the loafer is anathema to a culture which has absorbed a work ethic equating time with money.

    Yet perhaps the greatest achievements occur when the mind is at rest and seemingly unproductive. Peripheral vision allows us to look beyond conventional ideas and draw inspiration. One has only to think of Einstein discovering the theory of relativity while daydreaming in a patent’s office, or of Newton grasping a theory of gravity while dawdling under a tree. It is often as the poet, the philosopher or the scientist roam the busy city streets, or rolling hills, that the real work is done.

    By embracing loafing now and then, we remove ourselves from the maelstrom of a contemporary culture where slowness and alternative ideas are devalued. The world is motored by rampant consumerism despite our knowledge that it creates great anxiety and is rapidly destroying and usurping much of the landscape for other animal and plant species to continue to exist.

    Only by taking time out for undistracted reflection can we think about what is really happening and what we really need for our wellbeing. Crucially, the loafer Leopold Bloom’s first conversation is not with a human being but with a cat, and he treats the animal equally and with humor and tenderness, and it is from there that Bloom begins his odyssey through Dublin – observing, walking, feeling, ogling, helping, dreaming and loving for the world, rather than merely being in the world.

    Loafing might thus be seen as a revolutionary act, which, if taken seriously, has the capacity to bring meaningful benefit and transformation to individuals and society at large. Our world which, to quote Joyce, is ‘ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void”. This expression, buried deep in the penultimate episode of this colossal book of loafing, may well be the definition of art, beauty, Ulysses and existence itself.

    Bartholomew Ryan is a philosophy research coordinator at the New University of Lisbon (http://www.ifilnova.pt/pages/bartholomew-ryan) and leader of the international band The Loafing Heroes (https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com/)