Cassandra Voices

Category: Current Affairs

  • Covid-19: A View from Sweden

    Editor’s Note: In avoiding a lockdown, and allowing most schools, restaurants and other businesses to remain open for the duration, the Swedish government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has diverged sharply from those pursued by most other European governments – although neighbouring Norway also avoided a mandatory lockdown, confining people to their homes.

    With an estimated 213 deaths per million [i] Sweden’s mortality rate, half of which emanate from elderly care homes,[ii] compares unfavourably with other Scandinavian countries such as Norway (37 per million), Denmark (70 per million) and Finland (32 per million), but is comparable to Ireland’s (205 per million),  the Netherland’s (250 per million), and far better than Belgium’s (597 per million) or the U.K.’s (287 per million – a figure which is believed to underestimate considerably the true toll[iii]) among other northern European countries. This occurred despite Sweden having the second lowest number of critical beds in Europe, after Portugal, prior to the crisis, with only 5 for every 100,000 inhabitants.[iv]

    The implication of Sweden’s relative success in averting a catastrophe, led one French journalist to opine: ‘it’s almost as if we want Sweden to fail because then we would know it is you and not us that there is something wrong with.’[v] In this article a long-term foreign resident in Sweden explores an overlooked dimension to what is informing Swedish policy.

    Covid-19: A View from Sweden

    A long history of social democracy in Sweden has created safety nets that you don’t find in other countries. I am still waiting to see a homeless person here.

    Anyone who claims Swedes do ‘not care about each other’, is incorrect, and this reaches to the core of the problem. Swedes might give that impression, but once you go beyond the surface you find people, if anything, are more humane than elsewhere.

    Utilitarianism

    The Swedish approach to the Covid-19 pandemic is a sign of underlying differences in how they understand morality in the public sphere, and how they relate with each other: this comes from a more utilitarian perspective.

    Utilitarianism has earned a bad reputations as it has been incorrectly conflated with crude capitalism, when it is really about taking peoples’ wellbeing seriously, or ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ As Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills understood it, utilitarianism is extremely equalitarian .

    Notably, the Swedish government has taken the advice of moral philosophers who come from a moral utilitarian perspective. The core difference between their approach and what we are seeing for the most part elsewhere is they attempt to avoid an understandable reaction to save lives immediately. They put aside an emotional response and consider the future consequences.

    Priority Setting

    Thus, the National Board of Health and Welfare, one of Sweden’s main agencies for handling the COVID-19 pandemic, brought in philosophers to design guidelines for priority-setting in medical care. The work was led by philosopher Lars Sandman, director of the Centre for Healthcare Priority Setting and a professor of healthcare ethics at Linköping University.

    Sandman said:

    In Sweden we are not allowed to take chronological age into account, but biological age—so the main thrust of the guidelines are how to interpret biological age in this situation—and we interpret it as covering both probability to survive the treatment and life-expectancy in terms of years. Hence, we propose that if doctors and other healthcare providers have to choose between helping patients with the same probability to survive but different life-expectancies, they should choose to help the patient with more years left. In relation to the ethical principles in the platform this is a somewhat new interpretation or clarification that has never been explicitly done before.

    There are situations where savings lives in the short term can bring more deaths further down the line. This way of thinking underlies a long social democratic tradition, where no one is really left behind, and, indeed, where environmental responsibility is taken more seriously than other countries. Thus Sweden is ranked number four in the global climate change performance index.[vi] Perhaps it is no coincidence that Greta Thunberg is Swedish.

    And then we have trust. Swedes trust their government and institutions, which didn’t come about by accident. If your institutions take care of you and take your interests seriously then you are more likely to trust them. And that is an extra benefit in a situation like this. There are few outright prohibitions here, because there is little need for them. Decades of social welfare has brought this level of trust.

    Pragmatism

    I find the Social Democrats here the least ‘ideological’, or tribal left party I have ever encountered. I know a lot of left-wing people in Europe who are highly doctrinaire, and refuse to consider solutions outside of their traditional tool box. Swedish Social Democrats are far more pragmatic, which makes them adopt policies beyond familiar left-wing ones, while remaining loyal to core values of equality and vindicating basic socio-economic rights such as housing.

    One example of this pragmatism is the connection between university research and business. Here it is much easier than in other countries I have worked in to open a business out of university research. They will tax you heavily once you become profitable, but while you are in a development phase you will be given plenty of support, including tax breaks and being allowed to fire employees if necessary. Some of these policies would not be considered by left-wing parties in other European countries.

    In my experience Swedes do not respond automatically in an emotional manner. This can be seen in their response to Covid-19. They stop and think seriously about the consequences of any proposal for everyone’s wellbeing, regardless of whether the idea comes from socialism or liberalism.

    Good Standard of Living

    Sweden’s Social Democrats are a true pragmatic left. Sometimes you feel like you live in the Soviet Union, with controls on the property market, alcohol sales, unemployment benefits and child care, while at other times you feel like you are living in California, with a great connection between university research and entrepreneurship.

    In my view, Sweden’s success in maintaining a good standard of living for vast majority of its inhabitants,[vii] over a long time period, lies in striking this balance between commercial pragmatism and ensuring equality.

    It is widely recognised among Social Democrats that the Swedish welfare system would not survive without a vibrant business culture. The response to Covid-19 is also guided by recognition that if all economic activity grinds to a halt indefinitely it will have serious implications for the wellbeing, and health, of the population.

    [i] Figures as of April 25th, 2020, from Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

    [ii] Holly Ellyatt, ‘Sweden resisted a lockdown, and its capital Stockholm is expected to reach ‘herd immunity’ in weeks’, April 22nd, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html

    [iii] Chris Giles, ‘Deaths from coronavirus far higher in England than first reported’, Financial Times, April 7th, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/c07e267b-7bca-418f-ad9e-8631a29854cb

    [iv] A. Rhodes, P. Ferdinande, H. Flaatten, B. Guidet, P. G. Metnitz & R. P. Moreno, ‘The variability of critical care bed numbers in Europe’, Intensive Care Medicine volume 38, pages1647–1653(2012), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-012-2627-8

    [v] ‘The Swedish Experiment Looks like it’s paying off’ The Spectator April 20th, 2020, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off?fbclid=IwAR2YBQ1lAk4MGQ-M3QBe787DaGxmuuWyQhTMLk2r6aVMbCZbzJNQ_827caw

    [vi] Climate Change Performance Index https://www.climate-change-performance-index.org/

    [vii] See OECD Better Life Index: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/

  • The Final Frontier: Post-Capitalism and the Economics of the Future

    I have always loved Star Trek. The utopian future was at odds with most other fictional visions of the times ahead. It’s easy to paint a world where nothing works, it’s much harder to paint one where everything does and still make it compelling. Plus, there were space ships!

    One of the franchise’s great heroes was one Captain Jean Luc Picard, of the star ship Enterprise (of all names). Picard would make regular speeches to some newly discovered civilisation, who were maybe behind the times by fictional 24th century Earth standards on some issue. They may read as follows:

    Alien: “What do you mean there is no money in your world?”

    Picard: “We have grown out of our infancy. We no longer value the gathering of material wealth. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. War and poverty have disappeared.”

    That may sound a little close to Communism for comfort, but as it was portrayed on screen, it came across as something different. That was the magic trick I suppose, they never really delved into how it all works in the United Federation of Planets; we just accepted it and moved along with the story.

    In the Trek-verse, World War III was the full stop to capitalism. Humanity was brought to its knees and forced to put aside its petty differences and work together to pull itself from the ashes.

    Thankfully, this is not a nuclear war, but it is a global pandemic that carries with it certain similarities to a world war. Regular life and commerce have come screeching to a halt. The comfort of the circular flow model, wherein money flows from producers to workers as wages and flows back to producers as payment for products, has been somewhat derailed.

    The tightrope we were walking was but a fragile, impermanent thread. More frayed than we had dared to realise.

    GDP and the changing of the guard

    Gross Domestic Product (GDP), described as the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a country during a specific period, has been the common tongue among news reporters and politicians for decades when viewing the course of global economics. How strong is a country? The GDP will let you know. Donald Trump has built his presidency around it. Something he can point to and say, “Look, I’m doing great.”

    However, there have been voices of dissent growing for the past few years, pointing to new models of viewing how we are doing as individuals, countries and a global community.

    Diane Coyle, of Cambridge University, points out that GDP is an outdated measure for a production economy as now we have an economy that’s 80% services. The metric of GDP ignores this and things like, the now unignorable, climate impact also.

    The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) are not without their critics but at the very least show further indication of the incomplete nature of GDP.

    Now, this pandemic has brought America’s economy to a stand-still, and a more humanist approach to leadership is required. Trump can no longer hide behind the straw-man of GDP to indicate how the people are doing (nor any other world leader), and he’s drowning. You can see it in his eyes and in that mega-cringe self-sizzle reel he played at a recent briefing, claiming how ahead of the curve he has been.

    The Scarcity Myth

    Capitalism operates on a system of “artificial scarcity.” This refers to a scarcity of items, despite the technology and means for production and sharing existing. Meaning there should be a greater or, theoretically, even limitless quantity of production, i.e. we may not have the luxury of Star Trek’s “replicator” devices, that can conjure most items out of thin air but there’s enough to go around, lads.

    Take this current crisis wherein an emergency social welfare payment of €350 was, rightly, put in place by our government. The jobseeker allowance pre-crisis was €203. How long have nurses been asking for a pay increase? Where was this money sitting before, or if the money wasn’t “there”, where was the willingness to borrow, which is effectively what our government is doing? All over the world, governments have thrown the fiscal probity rulebook out the window.

    Of course, there are deeper financial implications for every cent of government spending and it would take a book to go there, but people see now, it’s there, or at least available. It has always been there, floating through the computers and calculators of world banks and governments.

    As French economist and Trekkie, Manu Saadi espouses in his work Trekonomics, warp-drive may not be possible but a post-scarcity society is.

    Automation: Resistance is futile

    As technology advances, automation has become a growing concern long before this global lockdown. If robots can do the job, what will all of those people do?

    Well, here we are faced with an, albeit twisted, preview. Humanity has been given a time-out. So many brains and bodies given a chance to look at where their lives have been heading and perhaps reassess what is important to them and what they want to spend their fleeting time on this Earth doing.

    Diane Coyle calls this the “shadow price of time.” How do we use our time and how much benefit do we get from the activities we undertake? Another shortcoming of the GDP metric, Coyle claims.

    We live, broadly speaking, in a privileged era. By that I mean, compared to 100, 400, 3000, years ago (a blip in the grand scale of time). We don’t have to hunt for our meals, or work in the coal mines or build pharaoh’s pyramids.

    Instead of pharaoh’s chains, will we now break the chains of doomed capitalism and put greater emphasis on our own shadow price of time? This doesn’t mean sitting around, not contributing, of course.

    As Capt. Jean Luc Picard may put it, it’s time to start working to better ourselves and humanity. There is enough. We can see it now. I don’t think capitalism at its core was evil, not in its intent. It’s just how things went. The loudest voice in the room at the time. Now the chinks in its armour have widened and the starlight is shining through.

    It’s life Jim, but not as we know it…

    If economics, as we know it, can stop in its tracks, will people accept business as usual after this virus is a memory? Unfortunately, unlike Gene Roddenberry, the visionary creator of Star Trek way back in the 1960’s, I can see the future no more than Trump could see covid-19 a few months ago.

    Perhaps this is just pie in the sky (very far up in the sky) stuff and we’ll likely all get back to Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts and daily checks on booking.com for the best deals in Lanzarote once this ends, but it’s a nice thought for now. The thought that instead of backwards, we are boldly going where no one has gone before.

  • Do Not Resuscitate

    Holy Gawd, we’re back to Charles Darwin and his  interpreters.

    In the mid-19th century Darwin was recognised as a superb recorder of natural history and the inventor of evolutionary theory. He pointed to adaptation as a species’ key to survival. If an animal couldn’t adapt to new circumstances it faced extinction – like the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago, or the elderly to-day.

    Unfortunately Darwin’s innocent findings on adaptation were used to rationalise the superiority of young, thrusting people (early entrepreneurs), and the inferiority of lazy people (the old, the sick, the unemployed and immigrants). Opportunists were bright enough to see gaps in the market and could exploit such arbitrary classification.

    However, Darwin  wasn’t an entirely objective scientist: he thought Tasmanian natives were inferior humans, that is to say, not useful, who could, justifiably, be annihilated. It was, after all, the culmination of the Age of Enlightenment and the Tasmanians were untutored in the philosophies of Smith, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza et alia; nor had the natives the ability to defend themselves.

    The fact that neither they nor the vast majority of European working class and peasants had familiarised themselves with Enlightenment ideas was insignificant. Their ignorance was noticed by the Imperial mindset and  the Tasmanians were duly culled, wiped out. Closer to home that mindset facilitated the Irish famine. The poor, the old, the weak, the lame were a drag on the fast moving herd bosses.

    In these tortured times the same insight is best represented by President Trump’s sociopathology. He illustrates the simple logic of big business: if you can’t adapt to our commercial imperatives (Big Pharma, for instance), you go out of business, i.e you die.

    Thus, if you cannot get on your bike, have not realised there is no such thing as society, not become an entrepreneur, not risen early in the morning, you are disposable.

    The crude American and U.K. analogies of a ‘war’ against the present disease have also proved subliminally useful. Idealistic youth was once considered ‘collateral damage’ in our just wars, million-fold sacrifices to preserve freedom and the status quo, including ours.

    Now apply the concept of a war to the present pandemic. In every conflict, certain leaders weigh the collateral damage against potential victory. How many body bags as against how much ground gained? In this case, political ground. It is a suitable coincidence that anyone over 65 is ‘non-productive’ and less to be cherished. Are they not a proper sacrifice in the ‘war’ against Coronavirus?

    I am biased, an 84-year-old artist, outrageously healthy and still productive but, by actuarial estimates, superfluous. So, with clichéd thoughts and prayers, dispose of  me. Do not resuscitate. All is well and all manner of things will be well. Darwinism rules.

  • China Under Lockdown: Another Cultural Revolution?

    Editor’s Note: A long-term Western resident in China responds to conspiracy theories about the country benefitting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of what is being spread is untrue he says, but he does worry that the country is on the brink of another, dystopian Cultural Revolution.

    I have been living here for almost a decade. While there are many amazing things here, it is about the last place on earth I would advise anyone to move to.

    The vast majority of people I have met are generous and warm-hearted, and will go out of their way to help you out. The government on the other hand is an authoritarian regime that treats its people as a commodity, and at times like animals to be snuffed out without a second’s thought.

    People are imprisoned without trial and their families subjected to cruel social exclusion and house arrest for years as ‘enemies of the state’; entire ethnic groups are herded into camps for ‘re-education’.

    I have every reason to hold up ‘China’ in a bad light, but in fairness you cannot bundle the people and the government into one group. This is an idea fostered by the authorities, who say the country, the people and the government are one and the same. Insulting any of these entities is treated as an attack on all three.

    I feel it necessary to respond to conspiracy theories suggesting China developed Covid-19 as a biological weapon, which was unleashed on the world to increase its own economic power. It has been claimed that China’s main cities of Beijing and Shanghai are unaffected – that it is business-as-usual. I can tell you what is really happening.

    https://www.facebook.com/DigitalPhabletOfficial/videos/772502103277436/

    Beijing

    After Christmas I returned to China through Beijing where we intended to spend time before returning to the city I now live in. On the flight we arrived in on everyone was fully masked. Beijing was in lockdown – NO-ONE was out on the streets.

    I had booked a hotel – but ended up alongside five families living in a large apartment for seven days. Only two of us were allowed outside to buy food – everyone else had to stay inside. Before leaving we were covered head-to-toe, in gloves, face masks and head coverings. On our return we went through elaborate cleaning procedures before re-entering the apartment. We had to remove our ‘outside’ clothing and spray everything with 75% alcohol.

    No cars with registrations from outside the capital city were allowed in. The schools were on holiday and due to return the first week in March but are still closed all over China. Only students doing important exams at the end of term will be allowed to return initially, which hasn’t happened yet.

    Leaving Beijing, I returned to my home city of ****. You are supposed to scan your phone so they can track potential carriers arriving into the city – which I hadn’t, having used a private firm for the airport collection. This meant my car registration didn’t show up on the cameras. So the next day the authorities were in touch to find out how I made it back from the airport.

    Business-as-usual?

    People here can now move around with less restrictions, but are still obliged to wear face masks. If you want to enter any premises you have to show a ‘health pass’ on your smart phone. It is generated by the local government who have – as it is the same all over China – complete control over every business (according to Chinese law).

    I was in compulsory lockdown, graded a higher risk having spent time in Beijing, and had to stay indoors for two weeks. Only then could I apply for a health pass, which I duly received.

    They can now monitor my movements – the pass tells a business that I have not been to a particular area, shop, or been in the company of a person who has the virus; or someone who has been in contact with someone who has the virus. I cannot enter any shop without this.

    Businesses are taking extreme precautions. If someone gets the virus their movements can be tracked and anyone who might have been in that shop is deemed a potential carrier.

    Lots of people are still working from home. All non-essential businesses, including restaurants, are closed. In my city you can only find fresh fruit and vegetables from the local area.

    Cinemas, KTV (a chain of Karaoke bars very popular here) and other entertainment centres (concert halls, stadia etc.) are still closed. One lot of KTV personnel I am aware of were jailed last week for breaking the restrictions.

    Closed Cities

    Only one plane per week from each foreign company is allowed to fly in or out of my city, which has over five million inhabitants. I know this because we sent masks to my home country, along with legal documents. It took DHL a week to get this onto a cargo plane out of here, before proceeding to Shanghai. Once it had left Shanghai it went through Seoul in Korea, and from there took about fourteen hours to arrive in Europe.

    If you do arrive in China – you can’t land in Beijing – your plane is diverted to one of twelve regional airports. You will then be placed in compulsory isolation for fourteen days in a hotel at your own cost. If you take a train to or from Beijing without your health pass, your temperature will be taken on arrival.

    I have a friend who comes from a northern province close to Russia where there has been a surge in cases from Chinese returning from Russia. You cannot now enter my province from there. Cars from other cities aren’t allowed in either.

    Media Blackout

    We didn’t see a live report or recent photo of the big boss or any of his minions for about three weeks. All media is strictly controlled. The government controls the narrative.

    In all my time here I have never seen a live interview with a Chinese politician. Even those conducted abroad, when the President travels, are closely monitored.

    ‘Offensive’ online content is taken down by algorithms. I remember one time a friend sending me material via WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp/Facebook equivalent) and when I went to look for it again the following day it had been deleted – and not by either of us. So bad news is not broadcast.

    There is no way any of the leadership would admit if they contracted the virus, as they would be losing ‘face.’ It would suggest they were not up to their jobs, and couldn’t even protect themselves.

    Economy

    The Chinese stock market lost just over 8% of its value at the height of the crisis, which is considerably less than the global average, but the vast majority of the large companies are under state control, which gives them control over strategy.

    The government has also pumped over $256 billion into the economy. Because of its ability to lockdown very rapidly – though not as early as they should have done – the government was able to halt the spread more easily than any Western country could.

    I have friends in the army who were pleading with the public to donate PPE, as they were in real danger.

    The local government officials in Wuhan severely chastised medics for alerting their colleagues about the virus – they were called traitors. There are banners on the streets here – ‘beware of traitors and foreign spies’ – I kid you not.

    All training schools (including extra English classes after school) are also closed, with teaching moving online. University lecturers are also working from home.

    Another Cultural Revolution?

    Quite a few of my Chinese friends are convinced there is another Cultural Revolution in the offing – even worse than Mao’s original.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJyoX_vrlns

    Universities and primary and secondary schools are strictly controlled. Teaching materials come from an ideological standpoint. History is bent to suit the narrative. There is now social engineering in motion.

    Every piece of information on social media can be commented on by text or emoji. You ‘gain’ points by liking anything the government says or does. If you criticise (which only an idiot would) you will receive a phone call to attend your local cop shop to receive a warning.

    If you don’t make a comment or just give a thumbs up you get left behind in the points race. You will then be at the back of the queue when it comes to purchasing train tickets, plane tickets or concert tickets; ANYTHING you might like to see or partake in which is up for grabs.

    They also marshal a non-uniformed thuggery unit to surround reporters from foreign countries who want to interview independent candidates, which literally stops them from moving.

    I saw a BBC unit’s video of an attempt to interview a woman who was running for local government. Her husband had been arrested as an enemy of the state. He had been trying to defend a house owner who was having his property stolen from him by unscrupulous developers in league with the local police.

    A group of fifty or sixty agents squeezed up against the interview team, without using their hands, and prevented them from getting to the woman’s door.

    It’s like the mafia but on a grand scale – everybody is on the take and you all have to send ‘gifts’ upstream.

    Government Takeovers

    You now can’t get money out of the country – or at least not much. If you want to emigrate, give up your passport etc., and liquidate your assets you still can’t get more than approximately $50,000 out per year. They have you bound up and stitched tight.

    Most of the large companies have now been taken over by government. Jack Ma was forced to give up Ali Baba; the owner of Hainan Airlines Wang Jian refused and met death in mysterious circumstances while on holiday in France. The owner of JD Liu Qiangdong, their best and most trusted shop portal, was forced out as well. These are just the ones we know about.

    The law states that if the government needs your company’s co-operation for ‘security reasons’, which they define, you must comply. This is why Huawei’s position as a provider of 5G gear is being resisted in some quarters as the Chinese Govt could have access to anything they like through those servers, routers etc.

    Australia has been fighting Chinese interference in its political arena for over a decade.

    Consensus Demanded

    Chinese students may disrupt a classroom if they meet any fact that diverges from the official line.  I once had a student threaten to fight me because I was bringing his attention to established historical facts contradicting what he was being taught in school.

    Older students are encouraged by cyber units to put malware on public computers that foreigners use so as to eventually gain access to their private computers. I had to give up using a USB and the school’s hardware. I now use my own laptop and only send files to students or teachers as an attachment to a message via the in-house intranet and the school passes that on.

    I have two phones – a Chinese one with a Chinese SIM for public use – and the other one for Facebook/WhatsApp etc. with a VPN to let me access the outside world.

    The Falun Gong hate the government. They had a huge following in China. Unfortunately their rule book more or less stated that the government should be overthrown. So they were purged from top to bottom in the most merciless way. The nation has been poisoned against them.

    I once saw an older Chinese tourist being given a Falun Gong leaflet while in London. When she worked out what was in her hands she looked like she was about to have a heart attack, and looked around furtively to be sure no one had seen her accepting it.

    I am really looking forward to getting back to the ‘real’ world – but when exactly that is I don’t know.

  • Covid-19: What Twitter is Saying

    Despite a mortality rate not far off Ireland’s (107 v 150 per million), Sweden has come in for a lot of criticism over its response to Covid-19 of leaving responsibility in the hands of civic society, with little acknowledgement of potential health benefits of not imposing one.

    Interestingly, nor did neighbouring Norway impose a full lockdown of confining people to their homes, as in most European countries, although schools were closed, along with pubs and restaurants.

    The first Norwegian case was discovered on February 26th, with physical distancing measures introduced on March 12th when the first death was recorded. Most of these cases were traced to holiday-makers returning from ski trips in Austria and Italy. On March 16th non-residents were banned from entering Norway. As of April 17th 2020, Norway has performed 13,6236 tests, reported 6937 confirmed cases and 161 deaths (30 per million).

    Norwegian-based doctor, and occasional Cassandra Voices contributor, Samuel MacManus provided a Twitter thread on Euresilience which offers an interesting explanation for why the country, which like Sweden has a long tradition of social democratic government, has endured the outbreak without great difficulty.

    First he acknowledged that ‘Norway has had some natural advantages, and some less tangible ones,’ in what is not only a health crisis but a societal challenge: ‘The low density of population in Norway has helped. Viruses love crowded cities.’

    About a thousand cases arrived at once from northern Italy, but these were mostly youngish fit skiers, who ‘had the best chance of survival, but more importantly were rapidly identified, contact traced and isolated.’

    But there are ‘less identifiable factors at play,’ he said. ‘Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society … In Norway society is everything & everywhere. ‘Dugnad’ in Norwegian means a collective voluntary effort; It’s a word used all the time here. For covid a National dugnad was declared.’

    He reveals how: ‘people see the institutions of the state not as some kind of foe, but as an expression of themselves.’

    He also alludes to how in ‘the mission statement of the Norwegian education system it states that their aim is to produce not improved individuals, but citizens.

    Moreover ,‘The government and health institutions have been transparent and open on the hows and whys of what they were doing.’

    Also, importantly, ‘The public received their info through the same, reliable channels. 9 out of 10 Norwegians listen to or watch the national broadcaster #nrk each day.’

    The economic measures have been all encompassing he said: ‘A patient told me today that non-national sex workers in Norway had a special government fund so they could be paid while business was bad … THAT is enlightened policy.’

    New Economic Thinking

    Elsewhere economic anthropologist Jason Hickel brings attention to 5-point manifesto signed by 170 Dutch academics in response to the crisis that builds on ‘degrowth’ principles, and which has gone viral in the Netherlands. Hickel summarises the points in English.

    1. Shift from an economy focused on aggregate GDP growth to differentiate among sectors that can grow and need investment (critical public sectors, and clean energy, education, health) and sectors that need to radically degrow (oil, gas, mining, advertising, etc).

    2. Build an economic framework focused on redistribution, which establishes a universal basic income, a universal social policy system, a strong progressive taxation of income, profits and wealth, reduced working hours and job sharing, and recognizes care work.

    3. Transform farming towards regenerative agriculture based on biodiversity conservation, sustainable and mostly local and vegetarian food production, as well as fair agricultural employment conditions and wages.

    4. Reduce consumption and travel, with a drastic shift from luxury and wasteful consumption and travel to basic, necessary, sustainable and satisfying consumption and travel.

    5 Debt cancellation, especially for workers and small business owners and for countries in the global south (both from richer countries and international financial institutions).

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  • Covid-19: E.U. Teeters on the Brink

    The five hundred billion euro rescue package agreed by E.U. Finance Minister, subject to approval from their national governments, has received a lukewarm reception.

    The compromise was forged in typical EU fashion at the third attempt after the Dutch Finance Minister led stiff resistance to a push from France, Spain, Greece and Italy for a ‘corona bond’, programme involving direct grants to those countries hardest hit by the pandemic.

    The package is mainly made up of an emergency credit line worth 240 billion euros along with a 100 billion euro work subsidy plan. There are plenty of loose ends to be tied up – not least precisely how the rescue fund will be paid for.

    North v South

    The deal comes amid signs that the Union could itself be coming apart at the seams, with growing popular disillusionment with the project in southern Europe.

    The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, did not pull his punches when he warned his EU colleagues recently : ‘Either we respond with unwavering solidarity, or our Union fails.’

    Of the large European states, Spain has suffered more deaths than any other on a per capita basis, though the horrors visited on northern Italy – the powerhouse of the Italian economy – stand out as a warning to us all.

    Southern Europe is also heavily exposed economically. All the Mediterranean countries depend on tourism. The evisceration of the travel trade will hit them particularly hard. Coming into this crisis, Italy was particularly exposed, with a stagnant economy and a national debt of around 135 per cent of gross national product.

    The Covid-19 crisis has brought back to the surface many of the intra national tensions that blighted relationships within the EU during the long sovereign debt crisis.

    Once again, the so called thrifty northern member states led by Germany and Holland, with Finland and Austria in the background, find themselves facing down the group of southern European states including Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. A decade ago, they fell along with Ireland into a club of financially stressed states known as the PIGS.

    French Switch

    The Irish Government – steered by the caretaker Finance Minister, Paschal Donohue, has quietly been making common cause with the southern European group on the core issue of fiscal solidarity. However, the big switch of sides has involved France. That country – mighty in EU terms – adopted a hard line stance back in 2010 towards Ireland, acting in concert with the German Government.

    With backing from the then Central Bank Governor, Jean Claude Trichet, the Irish Government was forced to sign on to a bailout where enormous bank debts were taken onto the books by the sovereign.

    These days, France is far less well placed. The pandemic has hit home with savage effect. Its banking system is exposed to that in Italy.

    It is now counting on a degree of solidarity at the heart of the Union which would have been unthinkable a decade ago when President Sarkozy worked side by side with Chancellor Merkel – a rare survivor from that period.

    Post-Brexit U.K.

    So how should one rate the response of European institutions and Governments to the Covid-19 crisis since it erupted on the Continent more than two months ago? It may be worth looking at how the U.K. has engaged with the economic threats posed.

    In public health terms, the London Government failed to grasp the scale of the crisis and it has been playing catch up ever since. But one bright spot to date has been the decisive approach since mid-March of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.

    When he unveiled his Budget, his initial measures did not capture the full scale of the looming tsunami in human and financial terms. However, he has proved himself to be pretty adaptable. Sunak committed to pumping in thirty billion euros in his March Budget, soon following this up with a £30bn ‘furlough’ scheme to compensate employers who hold on to their employees in the crisis.

    Recently, the Chancellor went further, effectively strong-arming the Bank of England into making an announcement that it would directly finance the operations of the British Treasury. While the Bank has insisted that the expansion in its balance sheet will not be permanent, the move is regarded as historic.

    It is a move that would be considered as unthinkable by most officials in the German Bundesbank.

    Since then, he has thrown the kitchen sink in an effort to staunch the flow of blood out of the economy. Economists have calculated that the package of tax reliefs, grants and business loans amount to £350 billion.

    Perilous Period

    Across Europe, national Governments have moved to tackle the crisis by propping up incomes. Northern European states tend to have efficient bureaucracies and reasonable resilient national balance sheets. But even in places such as prosperous Denmark, there are concerns that many businesses will not reopen after what is increasingly looking like a long shut down.

    The picture in Southern Europe is as mentioned much more bleak. In Italy and Spain, there is a real sense of let down amid the crisis, though better off nations like Germany have latterly moved to show solidarity by sending supplies and flying some patients from Eastern France and northern Italy to their hospitals for treatment.

    The recently appointed President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde caused consternation when she suggested that the Bank would not bail out any Eurozone member state running up a large deficit. These were remarks her predecessor, the sure-footed Italian central banker, Mario Draghi, would never have uttered.

    Lagarde was backed up at the time, by the Bundesbank head, Jens Weidmann, although she reversed her position, soon after.

    Since then, the Bank has unveiled a series of measures aimed at propping up demand and supporting the countries hardest hit in the crisis, but Lagarde’s misstep will not have been forgotten.

    The Commission

    The European Commission under its new President, Ursula van der Leyen, has appeared to grasp the scale of the crisis, acting quickly to suspend the normal state aid procedures and relaxing the rules on national government deficits. It has deployed much of its budgetary resources, but its fire power is limited as Ms Van der Leyen has made clear.

    Mario Draghi has entered the debate with a call for a ‘huge stimulus’ aimed at preventing a depression: ‘Countries risk permanently lower employment and capacity unless they flood their economies with liquidity using bond markets, banks, even post offices.’

    He warns that sharply higher levels of public debt will become a ‘permanent feature of our economies.’

    Banks must rapidly lend funds at zero cost to companies prepared to save jobs. Given that the banks would be acting as vehicles of public policy, the Government should guarantee all additional overdrafts or loans that they make.

    The ECB has taken action by launching a €750 billion bond buying programme.

    Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, describes this move as ‘impressive’, but cautions that such action will not suffice by itself. ‘The EU needs to take on a role in fiscal policy.’

    Many have joined calls for the launch of a so called ‘Corona bond’.  The Irish academic, Brigid Laffan Director of the European University institute in Florence, argues that what is required is ‘the largest deployment of public finance and public power in peacetime in Europe.’

    Domino Effect

    The response to date from E.U. Governments – where effective decision-making is concentrated – has been less than inspiring. The Dutch Finance Minister Hoekstra caused particular annoyance in Madrid, Rome and Paris over his rather brutal dismissal of the ‘Corona bond’ proposal.

    Matters were not helped by a headline in a leading Dutch tabloid following the conclusion of the ‘rescue’ deal: ‘The Netherlands wins European battle’ crowed the newspaper.

    The splits go right to the top. The E.U. Commissioners, Thierry Breton and Paulo Gentiloni, have called for the creation of an Economic Recovery Fund, pointing out that ‘no European state has its own means enabling it to deal with the shock alone.

    While E.U. governments have put in place contingency plans aimed at meeting the short-term cash flow needs of businesses, the scale of the crisis is only now being appreciated.

    The French economist, Jean Pisani Ferry, has warned that the fall in economic activity as a result of Covid-19 could approach fifty per cent, with any recovery from a relaxation in the confinement likely to be both gradual, and subject to big interruptions.

    The Belgian economist, Paul de Grauwe, warns that without coordinated action, we could be about to witness a domino effect, as the financial virus spreads from the corporate into the banking sector, and on to the sovereigns.

    In his view the only solution is for E.U. Governments and institutions to think outside the box. The ECB, he argues, must follow the Bank of England in indicating a preparedness to buy Government bonds in primary markets, effectively issuing money to fund members state deficits.

    Were this to happen, other leading  central banks would follow suit and a 1930s-style meltdown could be averted. The alternative scenario does not bear thinking about.

  • Under Lockdown in Piedmont

    Imagine a world where people live isolated in underground one-person apartments, talk to each other only through video-calls, and cannot go out because, if they do, they will not be able to breathe for long. You have just imagined the world of E.M. Forster’s novella The Machine Stops, in which humanity have altered the world ecosystems to such an extent that human life is forced to become increasingly isolated, artificial and protected.

    With a few alterations, that is the world of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, which most of you who are reading this have probably been experiencing for a few weeks. At the end of Forster’s story (forgive the spoiler) one character makes a short-lived, desperate yet joyful dash for freedom, running outside in the decayed police-patrolled natural world. What shall we do?

    I have been in lockdown at my family home in Piedmont, as I write this, for almost one month. While in some respects my life has proceeded as normal – sleeping, breakfast, reading, writing, preparing lectures, brushing the cat, cleaning – in other respects all of that has happened in a hiatus, during which many commitments and responsibilities have been suspended, and a number of new questions have opened up, while other always-present questions have surfaced with greater urgency.

    Severe Measures

    The lockdown measures imposed by the Italian government have been increasingly severe. At the moment, it is forbidden to go out for ‘non-essential’ pursuits. We cannot, for instance, take a stroll, we cannot visit friends or family, and if we go food shopping, we should do it quickly and only one person per household. Even the most introverted of us have started missing seeing their friends’ faces, and hating the screens that reproduce a slightly slowed down, eerie, two dimensional image of them.

    Our bodies, already weakened by sedentary lifestyles, are becoming weaker, muscle-mass decreasing quickly through lack of exercise. We do what we can, setting up home gyms, doing yoga in our bedrooms, a few push ups in the morning. No running, swimming, no going for walks; hardly breathing in the fresh air, panting, moving, or sweating. I do a little gardening in pots on the balcony, which I hadn’t done before. All of a sudden tomato seeds seemed the most important item on my shopping list during my weekly, stressful visit to the supermarket.

    During the first days of lockdown it was still permitted to go out for leisure and to drive from one place to another without a special reason. So we went for long walks in the countryside, where we discovered that many others had had the same idea. Seeing the paths in the hills crowded with people on a Tuesday afternoon made me think that perhaps in all this fear and sadness we could at least collectively recover a sense of enjoyment of being in nature.

    I have not changed my mind. But what we can recover now, we can recover through lack. There are three, fundamental things that we cannot do right now: go outside for a long walk just to breathe in the fresh air (much fresher now, crisp, less polluted); see, hug, kiss or touch our friends; and move our bodies until they hurt, covering distances until we are exhausted.

    What do these three things have in common? They are part of our animal nature. What else? They are the things that a strange, anthropocentric yet anthropo-destructive idea of progress has sought to eliminate. The things that in the name of comfort, modernity, or growth we have chosen to progressively give up. And now that the process is unexpectedly complete and that we are unable to have those things even to a small degree, our bodies are screaming. Shall we listen?

    In Common with Other Animals

    In her work on Kantian-based animal ethics, Christine Korsgaard makes the point that the things we value most and primarily in our lives, are the things we share with other animals. Among them are the exact three needs just listed, now denied and which we’ve been increasingly denying ourselves: social physical closeness, free movement, and contact with the natural world. When these things are missing there is little joy, little flourishing; no amount of internet speed can replace them.

    Korsgaard reminds us of these things to show that even a Kantian approach, according to which humans have value because they are able to think ethically, needs to embrace other animals, because the things our ethical thinking values are those all us – all of us animals – value.

    The rebellion of my animal nature, which I can say I’ve been feeling rising for years during days sitting at a desk, is manifesting now in the restlessness of so many of us in lockdown. In the ‘ahh’ of relief we’ve let out when we step outside in the spring sunshine for a minute. Here is my appeal: let us not treat this restlessness as a problem. Let us treat it as a symptom of reality, a helpful reminder of where we need to ground our activities from now on.

    I keep reading about suggestions for maintaining a sense of normality, with activities organised for the sake of continuing as normal. As if, without that experience of ‘normality’, a chasm opens up for us to be swallowed into.

    But these days are not normal. Continuing to fill the time to distract ourselves from that fact, and the unknowing that comes with it, is precisely to perpetrate the distracted, unmotivatedly-optimistic routine that allows unrestrained invasion of natural spaces, greenhouse gas emissions, accumulation of wealth while others have none, ingestion of other individuals and harmful substances, and progressive isolation in the pursuit of largely unexamined goals. The list could go on.

    So shouldn’t we instead acknowledge the non-normal, take a good look at it, and show ourselves that being swallowed is not the only way to respond to the void left by our previous activities?

    There is talk of reconstruction and change after the current pandemic. I hope that may be true. At an existential, affective and conceptual level, my suggestion is that we start by holding firmly to our animality. Keeping that at the core means a number of things: that we have bodies which we need to nourish and treat as bodies through movement, physical closeness, healthy food, sunlight, etc.. That other people are also animals, and as such they most of all need food, care, warmth, a roof over their heads – something which the current economic system and political structures are not fully taking care of, which, in this perspective, is a basic, fundamental lack.

    It means that we are, in essential respects, just like other animals, pigs, cows, birds, fishes, goats, cats, etc. with whom we share bodies with pumping blood and beating hearts; the fact of being alive; of wanting to continue being alive, and of being sadly mortal. It means that for all of us animals to flourish a natural environment is not an accessory but simply necessary, and with that environment too we share a certain movement of life, development, needs and mutual influence.

    This is philosophical and very concrete at the same time. It involves new laws and policies to give everyone a roof over their head. Travelling less and changing vehicles we use. Adopting a stray cat or dog. Feeding the birds in your garden. Stopping for a chat with your elderly neighbour and really asking her, “How are you?” You can add to the list, in your head or say it out loud. We need everyone’s imagination.

    Another fact we have observed in the lockdown is that we are able to delay gratification and give up long term habits and wealth for the sake of something important. It is excellent news – considering the greater challenges we face such as climate change – that we are capable of changing our habits, such that the pleasure of satisfying those basic needs we are giving up now will return tenfold.

    A Need to Change

    I’ve lived in six different cities over the last ten years. I have friends, whom I miss, in all of them. I have been unable to adopt a companion animal or even keep a houseplant, because I am rarely in the same place for long enough. I have boarded so many planes I am scared to count them.

    I have missed my parents, who are growing older in a country where I do not normally live. I have missed the cat whom I found and left with them before moving abroad.

    I buy vegetables wrapped in plastic which I cook distractedly and eat my dinner quickly while I watch something on my laptop. I work in philosophy, yet rarely do I have the time to think and watch and wait for as long as it takes for something meaningful to come to me.

    I am thirty five, and I am tired. I know, dimly, what I need to change, but I am afraid to change it if I see everyone around me going in the opposite direction, thinking I am insane. But maybe I am not alone in hoping for encouragement and a bigger movement.

    The day I arrived here in Italy, on March 7th, I saw the buds appearing on the trees that line the avenue outside my house. I have been watching them every day since, observing their development into tiny pale green leaves and then into oblong bright green ones that now sway leisurely in the wind with a soft rustling sound. If I am going to change my lifestyle after these months, I’ll start with this.

  • Barcelona Under Lockdown

    It all happened too fast, so quickly that we didn’t have time to fully understand. The night before we were sipping beer and eating tapas and waiting for spring to come in the warm evening breeze; the following day we were on the sofa consulting the Netflix schedule for the umpteenth time, without finding an entirely satisfactory choice.

    That feeling is like after an unexpected accident, with a supernatural aftertaste. It is as if a divine finger had pushed a gigantic ‘STOP’ button, and our swirling swarm on planet Earth had been suspended; crystallized in a drop of time. One after another, the places where we went to disfrutar de la vida, ‘to enjoy life’, closed their shutters, leaving us confused and lost.

    For some it was a trauma to be compelled to cook for themselves. Staying indoors in a city that has unbridled sociability as one of its calling cards is difficult, but Barcelona is still trying to maintain its atmosphere despite the lockdown.

    Normally in the evenings the lights of buildings are turned off, with people outside. Lately I discovered that the building opposite my own is actually inhabited.

    Yesterday I went out to dispose of the trash and do the occasional shopping we are allowed to do. As I left the door from the balconies above I heard a ripple of applause: for a moment I was moved, it seemed to me that I had become the hero in a dystopian film.

    I know they weren’t applauding me, it was just a manifestation of unity in this battle, fought with heavy doses of TV series, bored yawning, punctuated by scared, masked bellboys who bring stuff up to your home. I understood these people: even applauding strangers helps fill the empty minutes.

    At least to help us stop missing our previous lives, the weather has decided to remain cold, even if the cold of Barcelona is far from the perennial grey nightmare overhead in Dublin, under which I lived for eight years.

    Occupying one’s time is difficult, with the bars all closed there is no possibility of drinking red vermouth with friends. I live in Barceloneta, a neighbourhood that is a peninsula kissed by the sea.

    Out on the street, the police remind you to stay at home, speaking calmly into megaphones. Someone brings out their dog to take a piss. The most important road, Carrer de la Maquinista, is empty. The most famous restaurant, ‘La Bombeta’, is closed. The buzz of people’s voices is replaced by the singing of birds, unexpected protagonists in neighborhood life, the vida de barrio that we miss so much.

    Flags of Catalonia are still draped from the balconies, moved by a gentle wind. At this time, these people should be my enemies on the football field, as my team, Napoli was set to face Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League round of sixteen, but looking at their worried and tired eyes, so similar to my own, I never felt so close to them. There will be time for confrontation, on the field. Now is the time to be close, very close. If not with our bodies, then in our hearts.

    We all wonder when we will be able to walk back to the Paseo Joan de Borbò, stopping at one of the many bars to talk about stuffed bombas; or who is the greater footballer between Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi; or to watch that black-eyed chica that turns the cabeza and makes the corazon skip a beat, every time she passes by.

    Such a simple thing, like shopping, has become an experience reminiscent of hours spent gaming; at times I feel I am becoming the protagonist of any chapter in the Fallout saga. The neighbourhood is deserted, everything is closed and dark. The only lights on Plaza de la Barceloneta are those emanating from the church of Sant Miquel.

    In the supermarket people are afraid even to smile at you. They are not worried about touching you or being too close, they are simply afraid to recognize in you the fragility of the human condition that unites us all. Breathing inside a mask is for me, with my glasses, embarrassing: with each breath the lenses mist up, giving my vision of the surroundings a dreamlike quality.

    In the meantime people are dying, the daily bulletins are becoming increasingly distressing; there is a great deal of concern, and prayers, for the situation in Madrid, but more than miracles the patients need respirators and medical personnel. Here in Barcelona, too, cuts to the health budget are being felt.

    People have stopped applauding and there is silence around me, so dense and spooky that it is frightening. More than the infection, and what can happen to any of us if we are hospitalized alongside people fighting for their lives.

    We are used to fight for our place in the world, but are we prepared to fight for a lifesaving hospital bed? Now we don’t want to think about it. On the sofas where we spend our days we try to feel secure. Less weak.

    In the meanwhile, I’m out. I allow myself five minutes to smoke a cigarette sitting on a bench. But my mind is not free. I just cannot relax. My only thought is about how to get home and carefully spread the antibacterial soap between my hands. A little anguish peeps out: what if I caught the virus on this excursion? I already know that for the next two weeks this thought will haunt me.

    But I’m not the only one: here we are, stuck between the duty to stay at home and the desire to go out. In the middle of two fires, or, as De Lucia would say, entre dos aguas. But Barcelona no se rinde – ‘Barcelona won’t give up’. It plays the rumba and waits patiently. The day when we will be allowed to leave our thirty-five-square-metre apartments is inching closer.

    When I get back home, I close the door behind me. The sofa seems to look at me worriedly: “Where have you been?”, he seems to ask me. Everything is so unreal that I don’t know how to answer.

  • Journeys of Displacement – a Personal Reflection

    In October of 2013, a ship carrying hundreds of women, men and children, mainly from Eritrea and Ethiopia, sank off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. Over three hundred of those on board drowned, prompting a brief media focus on the precarious journeys of those seeking refuge in Europe.

    One of the accounts published in the aftermath was that of a local diver, Renato Sollustri, who was part of the search and recovery response. He described swimming into the hold of the submerged boat and seeing the body of a young woman who seemed as if she was pregnant. He recounted taking her out of the boat: ‘We laid her on the sea bed. We tied her with a rope to the other bodies and then…we rose with them from the depths of the sea.’ When they surfaced and lifted her onto a waiting boat they found that she had given birth while the boat sank, the body of her new-born son, attached by his umbilical cord, underneath her clothes.

    I had spent the years prior to reading the account active in migrant justice and refugee solidarity work. During those years I had heard many other stories of horrific, preventable, lonely deaths, of women, men and children: suffocating in the backs of refrigerated trucks; killed by high-speed trains; pushed back at sea or left to die by smugglers when injured along the way through mountainous or desert border crossings.

    The account of Sollustri, however, impacted on an even more immediate level. I had recently had a child myself, and I knew the powerful, visceral urge to protect, to keep him safe. I dreamt about the young, as yet unidentified, woman for weeks afterwards and closely followed the accounts of survivors, many of whom, despite initial platitudes and promises of citizenship, ended up destitute and precarious, living on the streets of Italian cities, without access to the island graves of their loved ones.

    Many of us involved in refugee and migrant solidarity networks thought at the time that the widespread coverage of the sinking, and subsequent shipwrecks in the weeks and months afterwards, might serve to spotlight the deadly causality of EU migration policies – of externalised, securitised borders and preventable deaths at sea, which continued and intensified in the years following. Some of those deaths catalysed public grief and empathy, such as the images of young Alan Kurdî, and many others became almost normalised in a context in which the death toll was ongoing and relentless.

    I knew that I should be there, in whatever capacity was useful – to witness, accompany and respond, to platform and archive journeys that were defined by such profound and often overwhelming displacement, external and internal.

    I had worked in refugee camp contexts and with displaced communities for most of my adult life – in Chiapas, Guatemala, Haiti, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The topographies of those journeys were different, but the inner processes, of trauma and resilience, vulnerability and strength, identity reformation in exile, the humiliations of enforced dependency, mirrored and echoed each other, beyond borders.

    I had trained in Gaza as an EMT to volunteer with ambulance services during airstrikes and intensified violence and I had learned Arabic. It was this – a shared language and the emotional and psychological access and intimacy it engenders – that was to become the most practical form of solidarity I could offer over the years that followed.

    I mobilised a support system around my young child in Dublin – family and friends – and started travelling to, and volunteering with, sea and shore response teams, with mobile medics and later psycho-social projects in Lesvos, Lampedusa, refugee camps in the North of Greece and the Balkans, and in Calais.

    The trips were short when Tadhg was young, a week or two at a time, longer as he got older. When the situation and context of the work allowed for it, I took him with me, and his presence, his little legs and hand in mine slowed my own pace down.

    And in that stillness came a prioritisation of long conversations, of deepening connections with other mothers and their children, sharing memories and vulnerabilities, grief and courage and hopes in their tents as they struggled to adjust to lives lived in limbo.

    It was that shared space that prompted me to then train as a psychotherapist, to be able to respond to the physiological and cognitive registers of trauma, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, that I was witnessing in so many contexts, feeling in so many conversations.

    At times the work was devastating, working with survivors of brutally violent torture, with women like Nadia, a Yazidi survivor of ISIS captivity who had been gang-raped repeatedly in the presence of her children; who survived the executions of twenty-three members of her family, many of those in front of her. And at times there was joy, beautiful, poignant moments of the overwhelming joy of survival; of families and lone voyagers who had survived the wars and sea crossings and, despite the hardships to come, created acts and moments of beauty and creative resistance; of music, community and self-organisation.

    My phone, and WhatsApp messages, became a constant portal into so many stories: of refuge-seekers enduring geographical journeys not yet completed; of those navigating the re-building of lives, recovering themselves in places of safety. Glimpses, too, of the often deeply isolating experience of forced migration – the seeping expressions of loneliness when the external journey has ended and the internal one begins.

    It remains so, my phone is a conduit to a multiplicity of stories in a multiplicity of languages. And my own life, too, within it all, has come to reflect aspects of a different sort of displacement, though one in which choice, privilege and power is recognised and held, always, with critical self-reflexivity and accountability.

    That life, or lives, are lived between Dublin and camps in Greece, Lebanon and elsewhere, juggling jobs and parenthood here and the necessity of constant response, long-distance, to an escalating humanitarian crisis and the violent erosion of the most basic rights of refuge-seekers there.

    It has within it forms of unofficial social work – one that so many volunteers and solidarity activists have by necessity become adept at over the past years – but forms of social care that are carried by individuals or disparate networks, in which there is no system to hold the work, no safety net for the many who fall through it. And in the scale and immediacy of trying to resource so many families and unaccompanied minors, raise funds, organise legal supports, secure emergency housing, lobby and advocate for changes to policies that comprehensively deny rights and justice, we always fall short in our attempts to support those who have become friends and, often, spiritually, family.

    That failure weighs heavily, along with the presence within the absence, of holding the urgency of the memories of the tens of thousands of named and unnamed women, men and children who have died making the journey, their lives and deaths tugging at the borders of consciousness and spirit. But hope is held alongside the grief – one that honours the survival, and strength and potentiality of those who have lived – who continue to endure and to tentatively hold space for a life of arrival, and welcome.

    And within that we honour our own survival, and strength and potentiality, as individuals and communities who witness these times of injustice, but who work to create spaces of refuge and love within them.

  • Ireland’s Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

    The total number of deaths attributed to the Coronavirus in Ireland had reached 22 by March 27th, from 2,121 confirmed cases. However, with 14 of those occurring over the previous two day it suggests that number could rise steeply. Indeed, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned that intensive care units may be at capacity ‘within a few days.’ Historically underfunded and mismanaged, the system of public healthcare in Ireland is at full stretch.

    Entrance of the Mater Hospital in Dublin on the North Circular rd. on 27 March 2020. Daniele Idini/Cassandra Voices

    Nonetheless, a concerted promotion of social distancing and enhanced hygiene, instigated in particular by civil society and the medical profession, and eventually led by an initially hesitant government, offers hope that the trajectory in the rise of the curve of new cases will flatten. This will bring vital breathing space to implement a detailed national action plan.

    The provisional success of containment measures came in the wake of doomsday scenarios being painted in the national media. On March 8th The Sunday Business Post led with a headline quoting a senior health official to the effect that 1.9 million – out of a total population under five million – were likely to catch the virus over a concentrated three-week burst. Collective minds were also focused by the harrowing accounts arriving, especially through social media, from Italy, leading to hording of foodstuffs.

    Daniele Idini/Cassanda Voices

    But air travel continued unabated to and from countries such as Spain and Italy, from where the first cases were traced from February 29th. At least the annual Six Nations rugby fixture against Italy, scheduled for March 7th in Dublin was cancelled. Nevertheless, ignoring the looming threat, as many as twenty thousand Irish horse racing fans travelled to and from the annual Cheltenham Festival in the U.K., between March 10th and 13th.

    Flight Zurich-Dublin, 19 March 2020. Davide Beschi/Cassandra Voices

    Importantly, the government announced the closure of schools and universities from March 13th, calming mounting fears and, after a rising volume of complaints on social media, elected to call off the annual St Patrick’s Day parades. This followed the decision of organisers in the small towns of Cobh, Middleton and Youghal to cancel.

    Pubs were not shut down until March 15th, however, by which time concerned citizens were uploading videos of crowded venues onto broadsheet.ie.

    O’Connell Bridge, 27 March 2020. Daniele Idini/Cassandra Voices

    On March 19th the Dáil passed emergency legislation containing financial measures assisting those affected, and permitting the Gardaí to close down mass gatherings and, potentially, to order people to stay in their homes; as well as providing for the detention of a person on foot of a medical recommendation.

    On the evening of St. Patrick’s Day, Taoiseach Varadkar, a trained doctor, solemnly addressed the nation. The competence he projected provided reassurance, even to his critics, that the State would henceforth deploy all means necessary to confront the contagion.

    An initial two-week lockdown, permitting walks within 2km of a person’s home, was finally announced on March 27th. It remains to be seen whether this delay in taking this course of action will prove costly. More draconian measures, however, bring their own health risks.

    Montjoy Square, 27 March 2020. Daniele Idini/Cassandra Voices

    A long-running housing crisis has seen Dublin becoming the third most expensive city to rent in Europe behind Paris and Geneva. This means almost 50% of young adults aged between 25 and 29 now live with their parents. Also, many immigrants, in particular, live in cramped conditions in large groups in the capital. These factors could accelerate the spread of the disease.

    One revealing development has been a massive increase in the availability of properties to rent on the Dublin market, especially near the city centre. This suggests these had been reserved for short-term, Airbnb lets, and that the authorities have not been enforcing regulations prohibiting short-term rents in pressure zones.

    As of March 24th, Ireland’s testing figures compared favourably with other European countries. The rate of 1,350 tests per million lagged behind Austria and Germany, but was ahead of the U.K. and France. Senior health officials are following WHO guidelines, rather than trialling risky hypotheses, like the flawed ‘herd immunity’ idea, initially floated in the U.K., and elsewhere.

    The pandemic has hit Ireland during a period of political instability after a February general election yielded an indecisive result, with Leo Varadkar’s government no longer commanding a Dáil majority. Notwithstanding the challenge of installing a new cabinet under emergency conditions, it sets a dangerous precedent for a caretaker government to be in power for a prolonged period.

    The pandemic appears to have increased the prospect of a united Ireland, especially given the U.K.’s mishandling of the pandemic. The Northern Ireland Power-Sharing Executive, containing politicians from both the Unionist and Nationalist communities, has already agreed to heightened cooperation with the Republic.

    Ireland suffers from a legacy of poor planning decisions, with sprawling developments and one-off rural housing commonplace, leading to reliance on motor cars. In the peculiar circumstances of a pandemic, however, this may prove advantageous as communal apartment blocks and crowded public transport seems to have exacerbated transmissions elsewhere.

    Henry Street, Dublin. 23 March 2020. Daniele Idini/Cassandra Voices

    Located on an island, albeit one with a portion under the United Kingdom, and having a comparatively young and well educated population, Ireland can control its borders easier than most. A best case scenario sees the virus being excluded in a matter of months.

    It is unclear, however, whether this can be achieved without curbing liberties to a point where national cohesion dissipates. There is also a danger that reliance on food imports, exposed as a weak point in Brexit negotiations, could drive up the cost of many staples, and even exacerbate long-term health inequalities.

    President Michael D. Higgins, who is almost eighty years of age, wrote a poem called ‘Take Care’ to reassure his people in a period of dread uncertainty. A portion reads:

    Belief
    requires
    that you hold steady.
    Bend, if you will,
    with the wind.
    The tree is your teacher,
    roots at once
    more firm
    from experience