Cassandra Voices

Category: Uncategorized

  • Garden of Forgetting

    Back in the 1990s, you may not believe this, even if you actually lived through that decade it’s hard to believe it now, but people went about in all kinds of crazy outfits: fake fur, feathers, sequins, lycra, metallics, colour-change intelligent fabric, you name it. Not for Pride or a summer festival, but for everyday.

    This one dude I knew used to go out dancing with a pair of wooden shades on his head. I’m telling you. Solid wood, no glass at all, just slits carved across for him to see through.

    Amazing face on him, sharp ebony cheekbones, hyper-alert like he was going full tilt at some secret mission no one else would ever get the point of, but he didn’t mind, he was damn well going to get through it anyhow. An odd sort of perfectionist.

    And he didn’t look stupid at all in his wooden shades, I swear, he was the coolest dude ever. Coulda been a rapper but he was teacher by day, part-time DJ by night.

    Back then everyone under thirty wanted to be a DJ, but in his case it was true. I asked him once how could he even see the turntables through those shades, and put out my hand to try them on. He shook his head, said I’d have to make my own. But he did tell me this:

    The weird thing about wooden shades is, your vision compensates: once you have them on the wood disappears, your eye registers only the view between the slits.

    It’s all so far off now, the 1990s. Almost further off than the 1950s. Just barely the far side of the millennium, a time when everything was on a roll — music, fashion, economy, peace, technology — it seemed every new thing was the coolest thing on the planet. We had no idea then that a load of less cool stuff was just over the horizon.

    All we wanted was to be at the best party, to dance all night and through the sunrise, to get a pair of those silver throwaway glasses in time so we could watch the next eclipse without going blind.

    For half that decade we didn’t yet have email and the idea of usable mobile phones was like something off Star Trek.

    Back then, climate change was called global warming and was just a significant maybe that we still hoped was not true — not the inconvenient fact that today burns down homes, villages, forests and fields, spawns hail drifts at the height of summer, sweeps people and cars away in flash floods.

    When the internet arrived, a glitchy as yet unpopulated net full of holes and white error space and ‘did-you-means’, we welcomed it and cherished its absurdly clashing links, not knowing this http://wwworld wide web kkshhhhhhteeupppoppmeeeia would lure us in with anarchic, random amusements, then trap us in a life governed by algorithms. That it would force us to fill in online forms, accept cookies to track our every move, offer no safe return to the out-of-date earthly world.

    And now? Now that the Nineties are a long way off, yet their legacy still with us. Or we buried in it? I can’t explain. My brain goes fuzzy at the left temple when I try to get it straight. Somehow it’s linked to the wooden shades worn by my DJ friend, because it seemed after a while that we were all of us permanently wearing sunglasses.

    Not the old kind which made reds go brown and the sky turquoise instead of blue, so you knew you had them on. These shades were different. Smarter. They made everything so clear, so colourful and so detailed, you could keep zooming in and in, from coastal map to city street, from exterior to interior, from the human standing in front of you right in close on the iris and the clouds reflected in the gaping pupil. If you looked carefully you’d see a camera reflected there also.

    A mechanical eye as witness to your own, and vice versa, so at the point where your gaze ended and the digital image or electronic gaze began, no join was visible. This was the infinite excitement of digital, a playground of looped possibility, invisible glasses producing such perfect images of the world, we forgot they even were images.

    Reality, though. What is it really? A warm summer night spent tossing and turning because things are not going as you hoped. The knowledge that ‘warming’ does not necessarily translate to sunnier  weather.

    Reality tonight is knowing you are alone, either because everyone you know is asleep, or because you have gradually let go of your friends, avoided their birthdays after birthdays, their need (like your own) for a repeat audience to hear old stories.

    Reality is the cool touch of shadow on skin, walking from the coffee shop to the unfinished building that is home. A space where energy is diminished, where it costs more and its use makes you uneasy.

    Reality is hearing from Athens that Nea Demokratia won the election, and knowing ‘new democracy’ in this case means Old Fascism. A trend pinging round networks and nations, improbable yet seemingly unstoppable, because it’s hard to chase a thing without a physical presence, hard to stop an online joke that suddenly is no joke at all.

    In a mundane world, humans (s)elect the bizarre. Election by algorithm. Reality can be all kind of goodness but right now this is not the case. Truth refracted through digital is squashed, re-versioned, bounced through the parabola and comes out the far side as untruth. This is not reality. Not the reality you want to inhabit.

    Or is it up to us where we look, what shades we choose to wear? Reality might be a warm hand in yours, unfiltered voices, music. Yes, maybe reality is music. We lost the beat is all, are having trouble finding it again. We must try a little harder, gather up the strings and feathers we threw for fun into the sky while dancing, which now lie scattered on the sands. Bring them together.

     

    Swans and stones

    you with your white hair and your negatived face, with your quick words and quicker laughter, your voice in the idiom of my youth. perhaps not particularly _your_ voice, perhaps it could be any dublinish voice, belong to any one of thousands of people, but yours is the voice I hear and it transports me in and out of that time. and later, in and out of a time and place made with you

    something here about time travel – being kidnapped by or in time. silvery anthropoid outlines on a spaceship transporter. gaps in the  continuum. moving through time on the USS Ellipsis…

    glitches

    the timecode on the video fucked. randomly disintegrating or  scratched up on purpose, it’s hard to tell

    time displaced

    until i read, in a book on time called pip-pip about a language spoken on a remote island, that this language uses the same word to mean both time and place. think also of the greek kairos we spoke of, which if we had it right is time as season, the perfect moment for a thing. those messages are gone now. deleted, or lost in the old phone. what remains suggests perfect moments are easily missed

    something feathery re-tunes the white noise and flaps into frame

    a man found a swan on a dublin street and wrapped it in his jacket, carried it back to water. someone put up a photo on the w-w-web, and the man was that day’s social media hero in minutes… how embarrassing all that for the swan, i am sure there’s a perfect explanation if we only got swan point-of-view, and besides we are the ones who put all that concrete in the swan’s way. who tamed it with stale crusts, left it to swim with cars for company on a straight-edged codicil to some long forgotten river

    is it this swan i’m seeing, or is it a group of swans? 

    the swans photographed in the garden that day when the guards ripped my film from the camera and exposed it to the sun’s slant rays. hard to unremember that moment, it stole some fragile link to the garden’s long-ago use as a corral for dublinish rebels

    sunken concrete garden that today’s dubliners hurry past, drone of traffic surrounding it, iron railings hiding it in plain view

    garden of forgetting

    since the arrest there’s been no point going back there, no point walking past the water and up the steps to the tall dark metal swans

    before, standing there made me one of them

    one of four swans circling back to a land known before we were banished to the cold seas, four swans changing back into children, our put-on feathers leaving us, and after our feet touch down we get old in sudden bursts like time-lapse until we are four white-haired children a thousand years old, our lives all used up in faraway places, happy now to be touching down on solid ground for one last sped-up, blood-warm moment

     

     

  • Helping Artists at Risk – Evgeny Shtorn in conversation with Mary Ann DeVlieg

    Mary Ann DeVlieg is an internationally experienced consultant, facilitator and trainer with a background in the arts, arts mobility and policy. She evaluates international cultural collaboration projects for the European Commission and charitable foundations. Since 2010 she has been working to protect and defend the rights of artists-at-risk, she founded the EU working group, Arts-Rights-Justice, co-founded Artsfex, advises and trains artists and arts organisations on protection and defence.

    Evgeny Shtorn is an LGBT activist, organiser and researcher from Russia. In 2018, he was forced to leave Russia and claim asylum. He currently works as Cultural Diversity Researcher at Create – National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts and co-facilitates a project ‘Something from There‘ with people seeking asylum, supported by the National Gallery of Ireland. As an activist he started the grassroots initiative Queer Diaspora Ireland in order to highlight issues of gender based violence and bullying in a hostile system of institutionalised living.

    All Images © John Malcolm Anderson.

    Evgeny: Mary Ann you are working a lot with artists who are coming to Europe seeking international protection. Some of them had a very well-established life and professional record. But when they were targeted by their governments and had to flee their countries of origin they found themselves completely isolated in the hosting countries, going through a difficult asylum process, without any perspective for the further development of their careers and arts practice. What makes you step into this field and why are you putting your time and energy helping artists at risk.

    Mary Ann: There were two assassinations of people working in the arts that affected me a lot. First was Mark Weil, founder of Tashkent’s Ilhom theater, who was murdered at the entrance to his apartment building in the Uzbek capital. Second is Juliano Mer-Khamis, Israeli-Palestinian film actor who was working in Palestine for many years, running the Freedom Theatre in Jenin. All my life I had been working with artists in relatively luxurious settings. But when you find out that people were killed just for being an artist, for doing what they do, then you have to ask: ‘Are we a sector that has some kind of solidarity?’, ‘Does this link of being from the same field create an extra responsibility to ensure that other artists are safe?’.

    Also, I’ve always worked in the arts and as much as I would like to help other people who are perhaps more deserving, I thought a lot and concluded that I can really only do best in the milieu that I know so well. Then I found out that someone (Todd Lester, founder of freeDimensional, based in New York) was putting artists residencies together with artists who were in danger. I offered to help and became a volunteer case-worker and subsequently ended up co-directing the organisation. But everybody’s story is completely different. With artists at risk you find stories spanning the whole spectrum. People who maybe are not that much at risk, but they don’t see any career path for themselves in their countries.

    Others are people who were physically maimed, beaten up, almost left for dead, people who have to go from one safe house to another, women who were repeatedly raped, members of the family targeted. The first guy I was working with was told to stop making films but he didn’t. Then the secret service came to him and told him that they knew that his father had heart problems, and that if his father was beaten up he probably wouldn’t survive. This threat to loved ones is a common way to intimidate and pressurise people.

    There is also censorship of work that can range from not posing too much danger, all the way to really endangering the artist.  I was working with an art critic in China who had his work published widely in journals, catalogues and other critical research outlets. The government wouldn’t allow anyone to hire him anymore, so by the time I found out about him he was living on the street from handouts of food and money.

    We call it ‘censorship’ but the term encompasses deleting words from a text all the way through to people who are being physically harmed, put in prison or killed. One can generalize by saying that there is something in the art work or art practice that upsets either a political party, or government in power, or religious faction, or some sort of social custom. And it could be the artist even just being who they are, as in the case of female singers in some countries. It might be work that that is not necessarily confrontational, but shows behaviour that somebody doesn’t like in the country, all the way through to work which is definitely oppositional: songs or a fictional film which criticises the government. There are as many strategies as there are people; there are as many reasons for the persecution as there are people persecuted, but the majority of the perpetrators are the organs of state. Isn’t it ironic that the state which is legally charged to protect people and to uphold any kind of universal legislation protecting freedom of expression, including freedom of artistic expression, is in effect the most common perpetrator!

    Evgeny: Could you describe the most successful case in your practice?

    Mary Ann: I don’t think I can, and to explain my answer, it is that now I’m much more interested in what happens after the relocation of the at-risk artist to a safe place, or what happens perhaps during the relocation. Organisations and funding bodies that support so-called ‘temporary relocation’ have to say it is temporary, probably because otherwise they wouldn’t get visas, but we all know it’s not necessarily temporary.

    So what I’m really concerned with is that after the honeymoon period – while people are happy, they are safe, perhaps they have a three month or even two year residency and everybody is nice to them – after this 90 days they often realize they can’t probably ever go home; maybe they have family there, and they realize they have lost their audience, the language may be a huge factor in creating a new audience, the gatekeepers (curators and programmers) either treat the artist as a sort of exotic victim asking her or him to constantly relate their sorrows and pain or they may reject the artist arguing that the aesthetic the artist was trained in, is not what their audience likes.

    So my main concern is how to set up a system that helps – not to get any special help more than the artists native or settled in the host country, because let’s face it, being an artist in any case is really tough. But at least it’s possible to ‘level the playing field’; to give these newcomer artists some training and support to bring them to the same level of opportunity as other artists established in the country, a chance to work in the art world, which is a competitive environment.

    For me it’s not about the aesthetic, it’s not helping this or that person because their aesthetic is the same as mine. It is about something that should link us together. In the art world, which is not the easiest world to be, people should have that feeling of solidarity. Sometimes this lack of solidarity might have to do with the nature of the artistic discipline. When you make films for example you are working in international teams, musicians are also very united, in some artistic sectors, people tend to work together in groups or the sector is very well networked, and they make friends who love, respect and support them. It’s different with someone whom nobody knows, or, for example, young artists who had been doing very good work, but don’t have international connections and thus they would not have as much support.

    Evgeny: Would you agree that this solidarity often depends on the colour of skin of the artist who was persecuted?

    Mary Ann: First of all, the divide between Global North and Global South is very marked. Here in the Global North we have arts councils, we have awards, we have money, we have a system and people to manage it. This is not at all the same in all countries of the Global South.

    In the last 15-20 years, Arab artists have made huge and very successful strides to enter the international market, especially in the visual arts. I would dare to guess that the majority of them are not practicing Muslims or perhaps are Christians and this may be why it’s easier for the people in the West to reach out to them. That would be an excuse, but not a reason! Do you feel the difference? We should not excuse behaviour that gives preference to people we feel easier around, or closer to, but it happens. And I think if you have someone who is not speaking western European languages, someone whose work is not in the currently trending aesthetic of the West it’s probably much harder for people to relate to.

    A lot of rappers get in trouble in many countries, including the West, and it’s harder for the human rights campaigning organisations to relate to them, because their lyrics can be quite upsetting, confrontational, even violent. It’s not only about the artistic discipline, but also about the transferability of that discipline into the aesthetic that is accepted by the West and the nature of the work. Many of the at-risk artists that have been relocated were trained in the West. Now to go further than that and say whether there is racism involved I would suggest that there is a kind of racism involved if you are only sympathetic to things that you can relate to and that goes back to my solidarity argument. Is there something about us working in the arts field where even if we might not particularly like somebody’s work, or we might not particularly understand the context, we can still say that we are all in the arts sector and we will support one another?

    Evgeny: You work a lot with organizations on the level of European Union what do you think the EU is already doing to protect artists at risk and what is not doing, but from your point of view should do?

    Mary Ann: I can speak very briefly about what it is doing. In the last couple of years, the European Union and the European Commission’s Directorate in charge of Culture as its implementing institution, have been supportive of initiatives where artists go and work with refugees. And I think it’s wonderful work when and if the artists want to work in the refugee camps or wherever, with kids, mothers, fathers – that’s absolutely fine, but that is not where I am specifically working.

    What is really my concern is the pathway of an artist who, like a human right defender, is in grave danger and needs to move to safety.  And for that, it is harder and harder to get a visa. Especially when the person has a partner or a family. I can mention for example, the Goethe Institut in a certain country had been working with an artist-at-risk and was talking to the Foreign Office in Germany, begging them to give him a visa, but the person had a family and it was soon obvious there was no way they would give him a visa.

    This has been hardening in all countries. It’s not quite as bad as Trump’s travel ban, but this anti-migrant sentiment is everywhere. So what I feel the countries, via the EU, should be doing is training people who are in charge of giving visas with the deeper understanding of what is art and how an artist can be in danger. Now the visa system is outsourced in many countries and those who are looking at visas don’t have any idea of what they are looking at; they are asking absurd questions. But at the same time it’s hard to claim for special treatment for artists – and what about other professionals, doctors, engineers and so on!

    To be fair, the EU has really done a lot in terms of setting up, training and funding initiatives to support human rights defenders with emergency grants and other assistance including temporary relocation, and ‘artists’ can in many cases be defined as defenders.

    Evgeny: Could you say what country within the EU would be the best example of receiving artists in need of international protection and the most hostile one.

    Mary Ann: Regarding the most hostile I don’t know, because I obviously don’t work with them! But good examples are in the Nordic countries who host the most writers and artists at risk via ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network). In Sweden, some years ago the relevant minister mandated the Swedish Arts Council to give more support for people at risk needing temporary relocation. There is legislation and methods to make it easier. But in each case it depends on the political will, and the political will depends on the will of the party, its ideology and also the general opinion in the street. Denmark is a good example. It was a Scandinavian paradise and the politics changed and people are incited to blame migrants for all the problems. I know one temporary relocation city in Sweden where the politics changed and the far-right local government have announced the closure of the programme because they don’t want any more migrants.

    Evgeny: In what countries artists are at risk mostly? Can we make a list of countries where we have to look with more attention?

    Mary Ann: I don’t have the answer to that from the top of my head. The EU ProtectDefenders has a newsletter in which they announce which countries are currently particularly dangerous. In general the danger also depends on what the artist talking about. Mexico, for example, is terribly dangerous for journaists or artists who are trying to uncover things related to the mafias, corrupt police or assassinations; China is particularly bad in terms of censorship. Every year Freemuse publishes statistics about artists who have been prosecuted, but of course they are limited to the cases that are made known – there are many countries that still are off the radar, or where artists might not want to make noise about it, just to keep a low profile until the difficulties die down.

    A couple of years ago, I was part of a research team who assisted in a study launched by the Artists At Risk Connection, an initiative based in New York. Many Turkish artists answered it, and even though at that time the purges hadn’t got as bad as now, a lot of them didn’t want to make a big deal about their persecution, even if they told their story, they preferred to remain anonymous, in the hope that if they were quiet it would just go away. But we do have the best statistics that we can make, even if partial, published every year; they are accessible; people who are interested can easily find them online, from Freemuse, and for writers Index on Censorship or PEN.

    Evgeny: Do you think that an artist who has success in the West can benefit more from support in a critical moment, even if they are very critical and vocal about problems in their countries?

    Mary Ann: It really depends on the country and on the case. A very famous Cuban artist, Tania Bruguera keeps going back to Cuba and being ‘disruptive’, but she is well supported by the West, and when she was in jail in Cuba, the City of New York offered her a symbolic artists residency. I think these things can help. At the same time many of us have been working on the case of the poet, curator and artist, Ashraf Fayadh, in Saudi Arabia – he was put in prison because just one person said that his poetry was blasphemous, and he’s been given sentences from beheading, to years in jail and hundreds of lashes. Even though he has had several appeals, the number of years and lashes just changes. His is a very particular situation, because the Saudi government does not have competence to rule over religious affairs.

    The Saudi monarchy most likely would be happy to get rid of this embarrassing case, because people in the West are constantly advocating on his behalf, but only the religious authorities there have the competence to rule over that case. Recently we saw the exchange of political prisoners between Russia and Ukraine and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov who spent 5 years in jail in Russia has been released among them. It was interpreted as a favour that Russia gave to the West.

    Evgeny: I would like to touch now a very problematic topic, quite popular among some post-colonial scholars and anti-racist activists, which is an idea of so called ‘white saviours’. Do you think this critical approach is valid for the work you and other people in the field have been doing?

    Mary Ann: It is valid and for already quite a long time in the field of human rights defenders and artists at risk there has been recognition and a movement to stress that it shouldn’t be all about coming to the West – there should be temporary relocation in the other world regions, as close to home as the person can be and still be safe.

    Once again, that would mitigate the problems of the loss of the language, of the time zone, of the family, of everything basically that would make the artist or defender feel less isolated. The idea is that if there are more possibilities to stay close to home, there won’t be such a massive negative impact on a person who has to flee. It is already happening in the arts. There are some programmes for the MENA region and in Africa. One woman in Lebanon who has a house in the mountains and hosts artists in danger there. But as I said the divide between Global North and Global South is massive. In many of those countries they don’t have properly functioning arts funding programmes, so they don’t even properly fund local artists nor those who have to flee seeking safety. I see this problem as complex; it’s not necessarily the ‘white saviour’ attitude, it is the Global North where you can get subsidies, where you can get a whole system of support, where you simply have more possibilities to do art, which doesn’t remove the question of what is the most ethical way to use those resources.

    I have been very vocal about certain initiatives which have been set up in the Western countries, because from my point of view, the money should go to the countries in other world regions for special programmes, training, networks for local people so that they can create their own systems relevant to their own contexts. It might be a different model, taking into account culture and context, than what we set up in terms of temporary relocation here and we shouldn’t be the ones who say what is the best way to deal with this. There should be more discussions and understanding to find solutions, but to have more regional support systems is definitely one of them. Of course if you are a visual artist and you are invited in New York you may be happy to go there, but it shouldn’t be the only possibility, when we speak about real dangers and risks.

    Evgeny: Do relocated artists feel excluded in the arts sector of the hosting society, that their aesthetic is not welcomed, that their art is perceived is something less important and valuable?

    Mary Ann: Yes, I have heard a lot of them reflecting the same sorts of concern. First of all, in order to get funding, they have to play the victim forever, due to a certain ‘fetishisation’, as a colleague of mine calls it, of the refugee artists. Secondly, artists who have relocated, envision projects bridging what they know of their home country, with the local community, including the diaspora there. They have wonderful project ideas, but are not getting grants because they don’t know how to work the system, they don’t yet know this special way of using the language needed for funding applications; they often don’t have enough weight behind them even though their ideas are brilliant and better than initiatives devised by artists who have not lived the situations themselves.

    Evgeny: You intend to start a PhD in the Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research in TU-Dublin. Did you decide to summarize all the decades you’ve been supporting artists at risk?

    Mary Ann: All my life I’ve been advocating for policy improvement. The way I’ve done it is to get people together to talk – artists, gatekeepers (the organisers, people with the power to decide who is and who is not shown or presented), the policy makers, the funders, sometimes politicians who are managing cultural funds in their city or in their country.

    I think, having worked as a funder and as a policy maker myself in the past, it’s easy to get further and further away from the reality, so bringing together these cross-disciplinary, cross-professional and international groups helps people actually to start to understand. When you start in the early days advocating for policy, you usually mistakenly start by asking policy-makers to do things which are not in their competence. Understanding what they can and cannot do is essential, and to understand this, frank discussions really help.

    However, for the last couple of years I have been seeing what I would call hypocrisy: a certain rhetoric in arts policies, especially around cultural diversity, which speaks about openness, about new voices, about support for everybody, but when we look at relocated artists, those who I am calling ‘artists impacted by displacement’, there are multiple obstacles and legal restrictions such as the prohibition to work and earn money, for people seeking asylum.

    When the artist can only be defined as an artist by how much, as a percentage of their total income, is earned from art, it is absurd. Only if you can prove that this percentage of your income is your artistic work can you be labelled as an artist. The arts council in a certain country can’t even consult with artists still waiting for refugee status, because they are not legally allowed to be called ‘artists’. They can’t even consult with these artists on how they could make their policies better! I’m getting more and more angry about ridiculous situations like this.

    In my PhD I try to look at various philosophical and sociological texts about the role of artist in the society, legal texts on cultural rights and human rights, research into migration and diaspora, to build up a strong intellectual argument and then to look at selected countries’ policy rhetoric to compare it with what is happening on the ground. My main hope is that I will be able to use it to advocate for policy change.

  • Not in Our Name – the Fall and Fall of Conor McGregor

    Greater in combat
    Than a person who conquers
    A thousand times a thousand people
    Is the person who conquers himself
    Gautama Buddha, the Dhammapada, (third century B.C.E.)

    There is no opponent
    Who the fuck is Jose Aldo?
    There is no Jose Aldo,
    There is no no-one
    You’re against yourself,
    You’re against yourself.
    Conor McGregor, Interview, (2013)

    Anyone with even a passing interest in combat sports cannot but be aware of the terminal decline of a one-time candidate for the greatest Irish sportsman of all time, Conor McGregor.

    For a time, when he could do no wrong, it seemed like the entire Irish nation was behind McGregor. The pride of a fighting nation. There were a few dissenting voices admittedly, who wisely recognised a crassness and thuggery to his character. A premonition, perhaps, of what was to come. The rest of us were mesmerised by the meteoric rise of the dual-weight UFC champion.

    The Irish sportsman has almost always been a plucky underdog, destined to fail at the highest level.

    Our national rugby team, ranked number one in the world going into the last World Cup, recently imploded with barely a whimper before the might of the All Blacks.

    There have been exceptions, it is true – Padraig Harrington and Brian O’Driscoll, for example – but Irish people seem to bear a psychic wound handed down from a colonial legacy of brutal suppression. As a nation, we don’t believe in ourselves.

    Mould-breaker

    McGregor broke that mould, and for a time, we celebrated him for it. Many of us, myself included, were seduced by the story of a plucky kid from Crumlin who became champion of the world.

    McGregor was the law of attraction in action, and became probably the most recognisable Irishman in the world. His self-belief, audacity and sheer natural athleticism were a sight to behold. He was that most un-Irish of Irish sportsmen, one who backed himself against the very best, and won.

    For a time, everything he touched turned to gold. I vividly remember the high points: getting up at 5am to watch his six-second-demolition of the reigning champion Jose Aldo; he showed what dedication, self-belief and hard work could do. ‘Who the fuck is Jose Aldo?’, he said, ‘You’re against yourself.’  Did he have any idea how prophetic those words were?

    Pantomime Gangster

    It is time to call McGregor out for what he has become: a caricature of a nineteenth-century punch-drunk, stage Irishman. An empty vessel behind which lurks self-destruction and self-loathing. A false hero. A morally bankrupt shell of a man.

    An immutable law of the universe is the higher you rise, the further you have to fall. Just as McGregor’s rise was meteoric, so his fall has been catastrophic. It is like watching a brutal car crash in slow motion.

    The decline of McGregor is not just as a sportsman, but as a man. A would-be role model has been reduced to one whose demons have taken control. He is someone who clearly needs help, not selfies and adulation.

    If you invoke the gods of war, expect to be their victim in the end. In Irish mythology Cú Chulainn is our greatest warrior-hero. Unsurpassed in battle, even he eventually meets his doom when An Morrígan, the Celtic goddess of the battlefield, turns against him, leaving his corpse tied to a standing stone with his own spear driven through his gut. W.B. Yeats evoked the scene in ‘Cuchulain Comforted’, (1939)

    A man that had six mortal wounds, a man
    Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
    Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

    Similarly, McGregor invoked the gods of war, who smiled on him for a time, before turning on him.

    Yet McGregor’s fall began slowly, almost imperceptibly. For a long while we, as a nation, looked the other way and ignored the excesses. This seemingly loveable rogue could do no wrong. He said controversial things, ‘but sure that’s grand, he’s Irish.’ With a twinkle in the eye he could get away with it.

    But no more. Now he serves as a warning to our children on what fame and excessive wealth can bring – that empty promise of chronic materialism which is the real sickness of our age.

    First came the money. Ostentatious, crass and tasteless displays of wealth at a time when there are ten thousand homeless in Ireland; McGregor buys an €80,000 Gucci mink coat and brags about it on a social media account which bears painful witness to his slow descent into delusion and madness.

    Gone was the bright-eyed kid from Dublin, whose positive attitude and laughter were contagious.

    The press conferences, which at one time were sharp and witty, steadily grew nastier and more vindictive. The wit and humour of the early years soon dried up.

    We looked away in shame at the racial taunts directed against Flyod Mayweather before that circus of a fight. He may have made one hundred million dollars, but he lost his soul that night. Or maybe he lost it last year when he was brutally demolished, choked out, by Khabib Nurmagomedov, a disciplined martial artist.

    Arrested Development

    And so the glint in McGregor’s eyes grew darker, his face harder, and the fuse shorter. The losses seemed unbearable for him, and his demons came out to play. Surrounded by yes-men, with no one calling him out, there was no bounds to his mis-behaviour.

    Arrests followed for assault, ‘strong arm battery and criminal mischief’; lurid headlines; different cities, new countries, but the same old story.

    Images revealed McGregor on yet another rollover – out of his mind on drink and drugs. The signs of chronic cocaine and alcohol abuse evident for all to see. Then came photos of McGregor mingling with some of Dublin’s most notorious mobsters – men with the blood of many victims on their hands. McGregor had become notorious alright, but not in a good way.

    Recently he was found guilty in a Dublin court of a shameful and unprovoked assault against an older man in a Dublin pub. The CCTV footage catches him red-handed. One can only imagine what happens behind closed doors off camera.

    Worse still are the sexual assault allegations, though of course anyone is innocent until proven guilty, and McGregor deserves the presumption of innocence.

    ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’

    McGregor was a showman, never a real person. A pantomime gangster in a twenty-first-century Punch and Judy show. The story of his notoriety is based on a lie. The hardman attitude, the association with real criminals were contrived to create a false persona.

    As they say in Dublin: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’ He was never supposed to start believing his own bullshit.

    Somewhere along the road, the dream became a living nightmare. Now stuck in a circus of his own making, he is the ringmaster who no longer wants to play the role. But with the lions circling, like all doomed heroes, he is in the hands of his inescapable fate.

    What we are also seeing is the moral bankruptcy of UFC itself. There is something rotten in the state of Nevada. What does it say for a sporting code when its greatest heroes, McGregor and John Jones, fall from grace in such spectacular fashion?

    False comparisons have been made between McGregor and Mike Tyson, but Tyson grew up in a real ghetto. His mother was a prostitute and from childhood Tyson had to fight just to survive. Today, Tyson has tamed the monster within and has largely redeemed himself.

    McGregor had choices. He grew up in a functional family in the working class Dublin suburb of Crumlin. The Image McGregor has cultivated of being from the ghetto are designed for his American fans. He took a decision to associate with gangland criminals and thugs, and assumed the role of a pantomime gangster.

    Out of control

    It is clear now that McGregor has been out of control for several years with illusions of invincibility. In a country with more stringent laws than Ireland, he would probably be behind bars already. For his own, and others’, safety that seems like the best place for him.

    Perhaps the demons were always there, and it’s possible that one too many punches to the head have damaged him more deeply than we are aware.

    Maybe the pressure of living a lie in a toxic world of fame and wealth inevitably leads to this. No doubt, living without constraints would test anyone’s character.

    Money can’t buy class, and it certainly doesn’t lead to happiness. It can buy you time though, but however painfully slow, the wheels of Irish justice will turn.

    The Irish state has an embarrassing record of tolerance for the rich and famous breaking the law, and our sexual assault laws, and criminal justice system more generally, are outdated and not fit for purpose. It could be years before any trial occurs, if it ever comes to pass. Money has a way of making these things go away. But even if allegations magically disappear, reputational damage cannot.

    An addict in full self-destruct mode with bottomless pockets owning a whiskey company. What could possibly go wrong? The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Like any addict who has lost the ability to make rational choices, McGregor is trapped in pit of self-pity, self-loathing and resentment.

    In archetypal Irish fashion, McGregor has become a dirty family secret. Since the spiral of his decline began, collectively we have just stopped talking about him. ‘Nothing to see here, move on.’

    But we need to talk about Conor McGregor.

    We need to draw a line.

    This behaviour is not ok.

    Not in our name

    Not in my name. When, and if, McGregor ever walks into the Octagon again, with the Irish flag on his shoulders, he does not do so in the name of the Irish people. The men and women who died in the pursuit of Irish independence would not permit this. He does not represent me or my people. Not in our name.

    What McGregor clearly needs is help, not adoration, and to be held accountable for his actions, before the courts if necessary.

    Not more selfies with the mindless fans who do not seem to care about his behaviour. No more being egged on by the sycophantic thugs who surround him, or by his equally lost family. No more glorifying the shadow side of masculinity. Do we really want teenage boys aspiring to be Conor McGregor? He is the poster-child for a failed version of Irish masculinity.

    The saddest part about McGregor is what he could have been: a role model and inspiration for kids around the world. Instead he is alone in the world, alone with his demons. For all his tens of millions of dollars, I do not envy him.

    We could be heroes

    At this time of tremendous upheaval and change in the world, we desperately need new heroes.

    As Joseph Campbell masterfully put it, a hero is someone ‘who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself’. Not to the false and empty pursuit of money and fame like McGregor. But at least we can thank him for showing us the antithesis of a hero.

    Jungian psychologist Jasbinder Garnermann describes how essential it is to confront the unconscious shadow in the human psyche in order to fight our demons:

    The hero’s obliviousness to his inner nature becomes his fatal flaw … The shadow defeats kings, princes and generals, men who have fought great wars and shown superhuman courage. These are all heroes who have vanquished the external enemy. But, to a man, they have been brought down by the enemy within. And for this battle, humankind is still in training.

    I take no pleasure in writing these words, in seeing the sorry fall of a fellow man. We all have our demons and fallen from grace at some stage in our lives. Conor just had further to fall, and no one to save him from himself.

    Yet there is always hope of redemption, even for those who have descended to the darkest depths, but that would require McGregor to confront his demons – a fight he has shown no stomach for so far.

    No matter how far we fall, each of us has the instinct for transcendence, and the hope of  redemption. Maybe one day he will indeed make amends, and remember his own words:

    I just feel like I can beat myself. I can beat my mind, I believe in myself so much that nothing is going to stop me

    I wish him well: that he can turn things around before he loses everything, if it is not already too late.

  • Better Butter

    ‘God bless all here’ as our ancestors used to say upon arrival at the home of a friend, neighbour, or stranger. Not just a blessing on all within that home, it meant he who entered possessed not the evil eye.

    In my great-grandparents’ time, curses, spells, and witchcraft were common practise. It was the 1870’s and women were careful with their milk and butter. They believed bad feelings caused concern for the precious household, products which brought valuable shillings back from the market.

    Essie Donoghue Feery was one of these extraordinary women. Her devoted husband, John ‘The Clock’ Feery was sentenced to two years in jail for severely injuring members of the stronger McCormack family, after they’d driven him, Essie and nine young children out of a cottage on land he’d worked hard for years. This left the Feerys homeless and penniless.

    The McCormack woman was of the evil eye, and had conspired with her husband and five sons to torment John off his land. He was a lone man, yet still he done them six men great harm before conceding defeat. Retreating a mile and a half back into the bog of Ring, he built a beautiful peat hut as a homestead for his wife and children.

    Feery is a name that describes the little people most gifted with a deathless courage. But back to this one woman Essie Donoghue Feery, of great faith, kindness, and compassion. Old Evil Eye McCormack saw her chance. John was in jail and Essie alone there with nine children. This was the way of it.

    The Evil Eye brought evil everywhere with her. Every few days calling to the peat hut with offers to help pretending to be in kindness and remorse for harms done. But Essie was no fool. She knew the Evil Eye meant no good. In milking Essie’s two cows the following day, the cows ceased to produce milk. On churning the butter, it failed to rise in the churn and became sour. This denied Essie much needed shillings from the market.

    Essie had been born and reared above, in the hills. Croghan was four miles away, but she called in to Old Lady Dunne, said to have far greater spells than Evil Eye McCormack. ‘What ails you, Essie Dear ?’ asked Old Lady Dunne. On hearing the story, Old Lady Dunne rose from her chair, and this she did say: ‘Musha, Musha, Essie Dear. I am an old lady but follow me. I’ve waited many years to curse the Evil Eye McCormack. Now do exactly as I tell you.’ She returned from her garden with herbs and then this she did say. ‘I am bid by God to only use the poison of plant to destroy evil and the goodness of plant to help the sick. Person, or animal.’ She began to chant and held up the herbs as if in offering.

    ‘Now Essie, half an hour before you know the evil eye to be coming, put a poker in the coals of the fire and throw a few of these herbs upon it. Just a few at a time, because too much and the smoke could leave you unconscious. Then when you see Evil Eye McCormack coming across the bog towards you, use the red hot poker to make a sign of the cross on the inside of your front door, and continue to put herbs upon the fire. Do as I bid you and this will be the last time Evil Eye McCormack ever bothers you. This done, I’ll summon the black fallen angel to drive her away.’

    It is said that once Essie made the sign of a cross on the door with that red hot poker, Evil Eye McCormack was heard roaring across the Bog of Ring and Derrycoffey. ‘My heart! My heart! Oh God, my heart is burning!’ No one saw her after that, but Essie’s cows and butter became better than ever.

    Fast forward to in our cottage in 1970, where I sat in the dark with the light of the big open turf fire blazing. About ten of us sat around Paddy O’ Reilly, who lived two cottages up from ours. He was my favourite storyteller about the Banshee. I saw the flames of that fire reflected in his eyes just at the moment he told us of the black banshee roaring in the Bog of Ring many years before. He said, so terrifying were her haunting cries heard across the bog, it drove several people into insanity. They’d never be the same again.

  • SEVEN VIVID UNINTERRUPTED DAYS

     

                                             Translation By Sally McCorry

     

    January 1st

    The first of January is always a special day. It’s as if everybody is suffering from a delicious jet lag to enjoy slowly. I, on the other hand, left my house at eight thirty in the morning, I don’t know why. Perhaps I just wanted to do things I’ve never done before. So I looked for a bar that was open. The only one I found was the Tropical Paradise, a bar owned by Chinese people. When I went in two Chinese children stared at me with wide eyes, I smiled at them and they carried on staring at me. I waited for a few interminable seconds for something to happen, then the larger child – he could only have been seven or eight – said ‘coffee.’ I nodded. The coffee pot was too high for him to get at properly, he could only just reach to fill the moka. Then he said something to the boy, who I think was his little brother, he helped him clamber on to his shoulders, and they got busy around the coffee pot. At a certain point the smaller child overbalanced backwards, and they both fell to the ground. I was worried for a moment they had hurt themselves, but then, as if nothing had happened, the smaller child pulled himself back up onto the shoulders of the larger one. After a few minutes the kids gave me my cup of coffee. It was disgusting, full of lumps, I don’t even know how that was possible. They, on the other hand, looked pretty pleased with themselves. The smaller one even gave the other a pat on the shoulder. I left them a euro and I didn’t want the change. It was just half past nine, and I didn’t know what to do. I left Tropical Paradise and waited for something to happen, but sometimes, truly, nothing happens. I could at least have had a bit of a headache, but no, nothing. So I promised myself again that I would count how many cigarettes I smoked. I didn’t want to smoke more than five a day. I went back home. G told me I was a bollocks because I woke her up. John Connor was snoring peacefully, you could hear him from the living-room. I settled down on the sofa pretending I was processing the jet lag that I didn’t have. By midday I already had three smokes. Then I went to sleep so I couldn’t smoke any more. I dreamed I had won the Olympic bronze medal for the 200 metre backstroke. I was thrilled and didn’t want to wake up. John Connor woke at five in the afternoon. He couldn’t speak and his hair was all messy and standing up, stiff with gel. ‘Que mierda,’ he slurred as soon as he saw me, and dived into the shower. Afterwards he put more gel in his hair and went back to sleep. G, in the meantime, was staring out of the window. ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I cooked a plate of pasta and olive oil. In the evening I watched that documentary by Herzog, the one with airplanes taking off and landing under the sun of Sub-Saharan Africa. I found it really moving. It had got dark outside. G and I screwed – actually I screwed while she lay unmoving, thinking about something else. ‘S,’ she said to me, ‘I don’t want you to take me for granted.’ We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

    Total cigarettes smoked: 6.

    January 2nd

    G and I went to IKEA. Outside it was drizzling sadly. I scraped the side of the car along a fence when I parked. I didn’t get angry though, I didn’t feel the need. Inside IKEA everything looks like it works really well, we take for granted that man has become definitively free. G wanted to buy a lamp. I was confused, why would she want to buy a lamp? I felt somehow inferior so I tried to be ironic. I started speaking in a Scandinavian accent. ‘Will you stop that,’ G asked me. I stopped that. We left after four hours with an energy-saving light bulb, a sofa cover with a moose on it, a kind of folding structure that was supposed to be a lamp, and potato fritters that I didn’t have high hopes for. I spent forty-five euro fifty cents altogether. On the upside I only smoked three cigarettes. I saw an old man fall over in the car park. He tripped all by himself and fell flat on his face. When he got up again he reassured everyone, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ He actually looked a little bit dopey and fell over again not long afterwards. G told me she thought what had happened to the old man was a solitary flashmob or something like that, only we didn’t know the context or the finale. Maybe he only wanted some attention. ‘Our generation is too shrewd,’ I said to her. G told me she felt like part of a mechanism that carried on going round even if everything was out of kilter. I told her I didn’t understand, even though really I totally understood.

    John Connor was still recovering at home from the drinking session two days ago. ‘Que mierda,’ he said, then ran into the bathroom to vomit. He came back into the living room and we assembled the lamp thing we had bought. It took seven hours because John Connor reckoned he knew alternative methods. He phoned IKEA but of course they couldn’t understand each other. Whatever, in the end it worked, well, the light turned on. We stood and stared at it in silence. We ate boiled potatoes watching that lamp, as if we had done something great for all humanity. I had smoked twelve cigarettes by eleven that evening , it was probably the lamp’s fault. I fell asleep watching the documentary about the airplanes landing and taking off. It was less interesting from an intellectual perspective, yet I was struck by the colours of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the end it wasn’t exactly an intense day, from any standpoint.

    Total cigarettes smoked: 13 + half a joint.

    January 3rd

    G and I packed our suitcases. I wanted to go away for a while. I told her I didn’t want to see the sky through the window any more, and she said, ‘so let’s pack our bags,’ so we packed our bags. I thought we could go into the mountains. She, on the other hand, had only been packing her bag to humour me. ‘I thought you’d get it out of your system,’ she told me candidly. I didn’t speak to her again all day and I went back to looking out of the window. In the meantime John Connor burnt himself on the radiator. I don’t know how he managed that. Now he is lying on his bed crying with a wet towel on his back.

    G stopped taking the pill recently, she says it makes her arse too big. Right now I really want to screw. So I went to buy condoms, I always look for Skins or Ultraslim rubbers like that because I usually feel fuck all with a condom on. However, we screwed even though the condom was too tight and it dried out almost immediately. At one point I was on top of her and really couldn’t feel anything. I was thinking about other stuff I realised. I was thinking about football and Torino’s midfield. ‘Don’t you like me any more?’ she asked, a little out of breath. ‘No, I like you.’ And I carried on pushing mechanically, like an unsatisfying and repetitive job. ‘Fuck it,’ I said to myself,  peeled off the condom and went on without it. I came on her belly and fell asleep. That’s all. G wouldn’t let me watch the documentary with the airplanes landing and taking off, she insisted on watching a Virzì film. It wasn’t bad but I would have preferred to watch the documentary with the planes landing. It was one of those days where you feel you have to try and work out whether or not you did something wrong.

    Total cigarettes smoked: 9.

    There was some space left over so I glued in this picture of the poster for the film with the airplanes taking off.

    January 4th

    G woke up irritated because she couldn’t access Facebook. Actually, last night I told her she was like a sister to me and I think she was offended. Whatever, it is sunny outside and I decided to go cycling in the hills. I sweated a lot. When I came back G was trying to change the settings on my computer, I don’t know why. We have all been a bit nervy this week. This evening is John Connor’s big moment, he will be on the television programme A Minute to Win on RAI 2.

    From what I understand, he has a minute to play some stupid games and if everything goes well he will win 500,000 euro. John has spent the last month practicing, doing things like popping the top off a bottle and making it land directly in the waste paper basket, or building pyramids of glasses, or putting a biscuit on his eye and, without touching it, flipping it into his mouth. Before leaving for Milan he hugged me. He was sure that somehow he was going to turn his life around.

    G and I sat down in front of the TV at nine sharp: John Connor was the first contestant. The first challenge, for 500 euro, was easy. He had to unwind twenty metres of paper tape with his arms. He managed it with ten seconds to spare but he looked strained. Then he started dancing to We Are The Champions with Nicola Savino. It’s one of those shows where you take your friends to be part of the audience and John had taken two of his brothers. I asked G if she knew how many brothers he had. She just said, ‘lots, I think.’

    The second challenge, for 1,000 euro, involved landing three coloured rings on the prongs of an upside-down horseshoe. My first thought was that he was going to have some problems, but he started well, in thirty seconds he had managed two out of three. The problem was the last one wasn’t having any of it. He kept trying while Nicola Savino did the countdown. Nothing doing. He lost a life. His second attempt didn’t go much better, he actually got jumpy and couldn’t even get one ring in place. He began muttering and looked irritated. His last attempt was a disaster: after twenty seconds he started shouting and throwing the rings too hard. Nicola Savino told him to relax. After that I don’t know exactly what happened but Nicola Savino kept talking, telling him to calm down while continuing the countdown, even though it was clear he was never going to win the challenge and immediately after the gong sounded, John Connor threw himself at Nicola Savino who kept shouting, ‘it’s only a game, just a game, calm down.’ G covered her eyes. I watched it all. While he tried to protect himself, John Connor kept punching and kicking Nicola Savino. Then a group of bodyguards from RAI got up onto the stage, with technicians and cameramen trying to block John, but his brothers came to defend him and the TV channel went for an ad break.

    ‘How much has he won?’

    ‘Five hundred euro I think, but he made so much trouble, I don’t know if they’ll give it to him.’

    ‘Why does everything always go to shit?’ I didn’t know what to say. Stupid day. I’ve started smoking hard again today, around 15-20 cigarettes + a number of joints.

     January 5th

    I woke up early when everybody else was still asleep. I have the constant feeling I am wasting time, as if time is something that gives life quality, that’s why I wake up early. My cousin called me. He has hooked up with a Finnish girl, he told me she is regularly trying to kill herself and he can’t cope with her any more. He asked for some advice. I told him to take her to the seaside. He was bringing her to lunch at our house instead he told me, maybe talking to other people would do her good. So I made ragù.

    For some reason I expected her to be tall and blonde, but she was minute with long black hair and a pale face. She wasn’t exactly full of vitality or shining with friendliness, she was like a crow. She started crying as soon as she sat down on the sofa. G tried to ask her something, but she just shook her head.

    ‘What’s her name?’

    ‘Tulla I think, or Lulla, something like that,’ my cousin replied.

    Naturally, Tulla ate fuck all, she rocked on her chair facing her plate making strange wheezing noises. I asked my cousin if everything was alright. He said there was nothing to worry about. We finished and Tulla went to the bathroom. Not long afterwards I heard shouting. She was trying to slit the veins in her wrists with a razor blade, only the blade was blunt and she didn’t look very capable of doing it. My cousin looked at me like someone who had been expecting this moment to come. I felt responsible somehow and slapped her but she grabbed my arm and started trying to bite me. There was blood all over the floor. We took Tulla into the living-room.

    G started to clean the blood from the floor while my cousin caressed Tulla who, incredibly, started laughing. At that moment John Connor came in. I hugged him instinctively and he hugged me back hard. Then, I don’t know exactly why, John started behaving flirtatiously with Tulla and she seemed to enjoy it. My cousin confessed to me that he didn’t want her on his conscience and so if John Connor wanted her he wouldn’t object. He looked relieved.

    ‘I knew you would help me,’ he said. Suddenly, Tulla and John Connor went outside and G, my cousin, and I stayed at home drinking.

    ‘Why does she want to kill herself?’

    ‘I don’t know, I think she’s missing Finland.’

    ‘So why doesn’t she go back there?’ G asked.

    ‘I think she hates her parents.’

    We got drunk and fell asleep. I woke up at about eleven in the evening. I went out for a walk. This city makes you feel lonely. Then I went home and started watching the documentary with the airplanes landing and taking off in Africa. Definitively beautiful.

    Total cigarettes smoked: between 15 and 20.

    January 6th

    Yesterday evening I left the shutters open so I woke with the first light of dawn. G was curled up in a foetal position and the expression on her face showed she was satisfied with her sleep. I decided not to wake her up. My cousin is on the sofa sleeping, fully dressed. He wakes up and says when we were small we used to spend more time together, and asks me if he can have a shower. I want to listen to some music but I don’t want to wake everyone up. The only answer is to go out. My cousin says he feels he needs to go out too. So he does, following me. There is a strange smell of damp trodden-on leaves. I think it’s probably easy to catch some kind of fungal infection. My cousin thanks me for what I have done with Tulla, right then and there I want to say I don’t know what he is talking about, but it would take too long, so I just say, ‘you’re welcome.’ We stroll along the avenue and he confesses his problems relating to his son, he hardly ever sees him and when he does he is overtaken by a desire to do too much and he ends messing up. He fears his son may think he’s a bit of a dickhead. I say something about simply being himself, and if you’re a bit of a dickhead, whatever, but he replies, quite rightly, that I couldn’t possibly understand. Then he says that soon we won’t see each other again because he is going to Brazil. I let the conversation drop. When we get back home John Connor is making coffee, when he sees my cousin he sniggers. My cousin looks at me, he thinks the snigger is aimed at him and says, ‘fuck you laughing at?’ John Connor, who is excitable, loses control of what he is doing and spills coffee all over his trousers and starts swearing. G wakes up, opens the door, and tells us not to wake her up again for any reason and that she is going back to sleep as soon as she can. When John Connor asks her what the matter is, she says, ‘what’s the matter with yous?’ and slams the door going back into her bedroom. I still want to listen to some music, but I leave it. Around two in the afternoon my cousin says, ‘Let’s go out and have a drink.’ I agree and light my fourth ciggie of the day. My cousin orders two dry Camparis at the first bar we come to. The sun begins to hide, and a dumb grey breeze blows in our faces. We drink another two vodka lemons, then my cousin hugs me and says he feels safe at last. Then we grab a kebab that we eat in the car. He asks me if I can go with him to pick up the kid as he doesn’t feel up to it on his own so I say yes. We stop in another bar and he offers me a Sambuca, a vodka lemon, a Borghetti, and then another vodka lemon, a beer, and finally, a Fernet-Branca for the road. Darkness is beginning to creep in. We are still rotten drunk when we get to his wife’s house. My cousin can’t find anywhere to park, so he gets out and tries to move a municipal rubbish bin, but its wheels are locked, he pulls too hard towards himself and ends up tipping it all into the street. ‘Help, S,’ he says, ‘I’m fucking up again.’ His wife comes out to see who is making all this noise.

    ‘Hi Laura,’ I say.

    ‘Is he drunk?’ she asks me.

    ‘No, he’s just really wound up.’

    ‘Drive slowly. No, actually, you drive.’

    ‘I’m drunk.’

    ‘Then don’t go anywhere for a bit.’

    My nephew must be about eight or nine, he is blond and has a baby face. I don’t think he is stupid, but to tell the truth I’ve never really had the opportunity to talk much with him. When my cousin sees his son, he pulls himself together, and runs to hug him.

    ‘Dad, you smell of alcohol!’ He says, and tries to wriggle out of the hug.

    ‘We’re going to go bowling,’ my cousin says. Then insists on driving. At the second roundabout we hit, just outside of town we end up on a flowery ‘welcome’ message planted in the middle. My cousin reverses and then drives on. ‘I am extremely calm,’ he tells me. I feel like I’m about to vomit. He puts Shine On You Crazy Diamond on really loud and starts shouting something about Pink Floyd before miming a series of instruments I can’t identify. At least we are listening to some music though. Then, as he is very emotional, he pulls into a lay-by in tears to sing Wish You Were Here. He tries to get my nephew – whose face at this point is showing a mixture of terror and embarrassment – to join in. At ‘Swimmininafishboooonnneee’ he drops his head on the steering wheel. I decide to take over the driving. ‘Thanks, Uncle,’ my nephew says. It’s such a sweet thing. In the first town we reach my cousin pulls the handbrake. ‘There’s a bar,’ he whispers. We go in. I don’t feel well so I order a tonic water, Ivan wants nothing and my cousin can’t make himself understood. We get back into the car and my cousin insists on driving again. At the first right curve, he slides off his seat and lands on top of me, and we end up in a field. The kid and I just about manage to get the car out and back onto the road. ‘I’ll take you home to sleep,’ I say.

    ‘Thanks, Uncle,’ still so very sweet. When I get home it must be about two in the morning. G is asleep. I decide to do my very, very best not to wake her up. I can’t watch the documentary about airplanes because my head is spinning too much.

    Total cigarettes smoked: about sixty.

    January 7th

    This morning I woke up with a certain degree of impatience. I quickly started making coffee while G was still asleep then I went to the bathroom. Halfway through I remembered about the coffee and ran back into the kitchen. The coffeepot was gurgling like a baby trying to swallow processed food or something. I was just in time to pour some burned coffee into a small cup while the pot agonisingly continued to spurt coffee in bursts. Some coffee dribbled down the side of the pot. It made me dry-heave. Then I went back into the bathroom.

    I woke G up, she wasn’t happy about that. She confessed that for the last couple of nights she had dreamed about her uncle but didn’t want to go into it. She got up and we decided to reorganise our bedroom. At first I tried to move a sort of wardrobe with shelves. It seemed to have got stuck in the gap between one tile and the next. I tried lifting it. I tried pushing harder, but nothing, no movement. I checked nothing was blocking the wardrobe then I pushed again, still nothing. At this point John Connor came in and offered to give a hand. I think he loves doing these things so he moved me aside confidently, pulled up his sleeves to his shoulders and started pushing, telling me to do the same. We got to a stage where the whole operation had taken on an air of mystery. Then, after a push that wasn’t even that strong, the wardrobe slid along the tiles as if it had wheels. An electric cable wound around one of the wardrobe’s legs was the key to the conundrum. By freeing the wardrobe, we wrenched the cable from the wall basically, wrecking the whole electrical system in our room. John Connor hurried to say sorry, then his dismay turned into anger against the electrician who conceived of a system like this.

    I told G. She said that in that case she may as well just go back to sleep. It was about midday. ‘Exactly,’ she said, ‘so I can think about uncle.’ I didn’t answer.

    John Connor and I went out. We started walking alongside the river in complete silence until he said, ‘me and Tulla want to get married.’ In answer to my consternation, he said that it was all happening too quickly but in his situation, he could understand fuck all so he decided to only make clear-cut decisions, such as marriages, homicides, ejaculations, or fights.

    We carried on walking until we reached a wider part of the path where around fifty South Americans were playing football.

    I told John Connor he was right.

    We joined the game. Twenty-four players on their team, twenty-three on ours. At one-metre-seventy-nine I am the tallest and most powerful and so I play centre-forward. The game develops into a complex web of sideways passes, kick-ups, pointless back heels, and incitement from the women at the edge of the pitch, until someone tackles his opponent and finds himself wedged between a sequence of double-tackles and is forced to kick the ball long. We had been playing for forty minutes and I touched the ball once – with my head – during one of those long kicks out of defence. No one had scored yet.

    Then one of the blokes, about sixty, keepy-uppying the ball in front of me, instead of passing it to a dwarf nearby, trips, and leaves it unguarded. I pull back my left foot immediately and kick the ball full force. The ball hits the left goalpost half-way and it’s in. There is a roar immediately. On the side of the pitch the women are hugging each other. My twenty-two teammates start run towards me and I am submerged. Someone tries to kiss me in the confusion of bodies. Apparently no one had scored a goal in ten or eleven matches. According to them it was because of their excellent defence. Only I, being a strong European, could breach it with my accurate kick. They started calling me ‘Bomber.’ There were no more opportunities to score after that.

    The match ended at sunset.

    At the final whistle, John Connor came to me and said I was a really tough European. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I thanked him.

    We rolled a joint sitting on the edge of the pitch, as the sharp cold of the evening massaged our sweaty backs. I let myself fall, land backward on the hard, almost-icy ground and for a moment I felt sheltered.

    Total ciggies: no clue.

    Walter Comoglio is an italian writer, currently based in Dublin.

    This short story appears in his first book named La sera che ho deciso di bloccare la strada, published by Gorilla Sapiens Edizioni, winner of 2017 POP prize Italy for best debut.

  • UK Election 2019: Why has common sense become a ‘radical’ proposition?

    Last week two young people were stabbed to death at London Bridge while attending a conference organized by the University of Cambridge on rehabilitation of prisoners through education. Boris Johnson and other Conservatives were quick to politicize the tragedy, implying the attack – by a convicted terrorist on day release – signified a failure of the very approaches its victims promoted. But, as one of the victims, Jack Merritt’s father, movingly wrote, his son would be ‘livid’ at the thought of his death being used to fuel an ‘agenda of hate.’[i]

    Merritt’s death was not symptomatic of a failure of rehabilitation as an approach to crime and punishment, but of a government failure to fund it adequately. In fact, they provide for neither rehabilitative nor restorative forms of justice in such a way as to make either approach effective.

    Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones’ deaths were a major international news story, but sadly stabbings of young people in London are all too common: from January to September 2019, there were over 67 homicides by stabbing (of over 110 homicides)[ii][1], and in 2018/19 there were almost 15,000 knife crimes in London overall.

    In the U.K. as a whole,[iii] in the twelve months preceding March 2019, there were over 43,516 knife crimes recorded, representing an 80% rise over five years.[iv] Cuts to police funding, including the number of police officers, have contributed to this astounding rise in violent crime, and the ensuing deaths of young people – as have cuts to prison and probationary services.

    Poverty, lack of access to healthcare (including mental health services), inadequate education and widespread inequalities relating to class and race, all contribute to proliferating violence in our society, whether terrorism, gang or domestic.

    Traditionally Conservatives have been characterized as ‘strong’ on law and order, but ironically their policies often exacerbate the conditions that lead to crime. It is no exaggeration to say that austerity kills people in myriad ways. Besides knife crime, many deaths can be attributed to inadequate health care, homelessness, and even a sense of despair at the power wielded by an increasingly draconian welfare system.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has been caricatured as crusty Marxists, out-of-touch fantasists, and even crazed Communists, by the neo-liberal radicals who have brought the U.K. to its knees. But all Labour is proposing, in its detailed and costed manifesto, is a level of public spending to bring the U.K. in line with European averages.

    Labour simply proposes to reverse the austerity that has been to the benefit of several rich Tory donors, and the detriment of the rest of us, raising the overall standard of living to a point where business can flourish. It is not fantastical at all: it is common sense.

    The Labour Party is seeking to cancel measures that literally punish people for being poor. For example, under new Universal Credit measures people are sanctioned simply for missing phone calls, with excuses rarely tolerated. They also want to raise the minimum wage, build more affordable accommodation and end homelessness.

    Labour want to restore a standard of decency to the country. Is this really so radical? How have we arrived at a point where improving the lot of the homeless, of vulnerable children and wayward teenagers is characterized as ‘radical’?

    Corbyn’s plans would simply bring the U.K. up to the European average of spending 45% of GDP on public services, in line with France, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and others.

    And, in proposing to re-nationalise chaotically run and profiteering private railway companies, it aims to bring the highest commuting fares in Europe in line with the average.[v]

    Moreover, by funding Fire Services appropriately, Labour seeks to do a lot more to prevent scandalous tragedies such as Grenfell. Again: why is this radical? When did our society begin to lose all perspective and with it decency?

    The right-wing, mainstream press that stoke fear of a fictional ‘Communism,’ frame common sense solutions to society’s greatest ills as dangerous pipe-dreams. In so doing they pave the way for a further fragmentation of society – accelerating Margaret Thatcher idea of ‘no such thing as society,’ – and leading to Dickensian suffering.

    At this point in the election cycle, with the fear-mongering rampant, we can only hope that what is clear on the ground – the obvious, unending effects of austerity and inequality – will sway people more than the lies and embellishments of those seeking to profit from social breakdown.

    Dr Christiana Spens is the author of The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media (Palgrave, 2019) and Shooting Hipsters: Rethinking Dissent in the Age of PR (Repeater Books, 2016). She earned her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews and is now based in Glasgow, where she writes for various publications including Studio International, Art Quarterly and Prospect.

    [i] David Merritt, ‘’Jack would be livid his death has been used to further an agenda of hate’’, The Guardian, December 3rd, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/jack-merritt-london-bridge-attack-dave-merritt

    [ii] Aidan Milan, ‘How many deadly stabbings have there been in London so far this year?’, Metro, September 25th, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/25/many-deadly-stabbings-london-far-year-10804537/

    [iii] Excluding Greater Manchester, due to recording issues.

    [iv] Statista, ‘Number of knife crimes recorded in London from 2010/11 to 2018/19 (in 1,000s)’  https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-london/

    [v] Reality Check Team, ‘Are UK train fares the highest in Europe?’, BBC, August 14th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49346642

  • Overheard in the Local

    Overheard in the local last night
    D’ye go to mass at all?
    Ah, just the odd time, ye know, Christmas ‘n funerals.
    I see, I do go meself most weeks, don’t agree with it all but
    I like the words but I tell ye something ye get a very different
    class of a handshake down in Terrenure than ye do in Kimmage.
    What d’ye mean?
    The other week I was having an early one in Vaughn’s in Terenure
    and said I’d go to mass there. Me favourite part of the mass is the aul
    handshake with yer neighbour, ye know, ‘Peace be with you.’ I got a
    fierce slippery shite of a shake from an uppety aul one down there,like
    she wouldn’t mind if I was doin’ her plumbin’ or rakin’ her garden but she
    wasn’t mad keen on seein’ me in public like, know what I’m sayin’? Like an eel her hand was.
    Sounds like a fuckin’ posh parish.
    Now your talkin’, different ball game up in Kimmage Manor. When ye shake with yer neighbour up there it’s like sayin’ ‘Done deal mate!’ like you’ve agreed on the price of a car, firm as fuck like after a mad barney, like real, ye know?
    Feck Terenure man, up the Manor! Pint?

  • Cassandra Voices Christmas Gathering

    The CASSANDRA VOICES MAGAZINE CHRISTMAS GATHERING will take place at TAILORS’ HALL, Back Lane, Dublin 8, on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13th from 8PM.

    Tailors’ Hall is the oldest surviving Guild Hall in Dublin, and has been at the heart of the city’s cultural life for over three hundred years.

    Fittingly, this was a meeting place of the United Irishmen in the 1790s, and we aim to present a similar unity of purpose, and forms, with a range of local and international musical, literary and humanitarian voices.

    Leading the charge will be Dublin supergroup Shakalak and we’ll also hear from Massmiliano Galli, Gareth Quinn Redmond, and more.

    There’ll also be words from activist Bruna Kadletz, as well as authors Maggie Armstrong and Daniel Wade.

    We are offering liquid and comestible refreshments, though you might like to supplement with your tipple of choice.

    The event is FREE, though we require you to REGISTER individually, and you can DONATE to our running costs.

    We’re also looking for long-term SUPPORT via PATREON for our fledgling publication.

    Cick here to register.

    Best Wishes

    Cassandra Voices

     

     

     

     

  • Ismail’s Story

    What is the experience of a refugee caught in the crisis on the Mediterranean Sea? Approximately 18,910 lives have been lost or are missing since 2014, including three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi in 2015; so far in 2019 there have been an estimated 1089 deaths.[i]

    Yesterday in a Dáil Éireann briefing room we heard testimonies from Search and Rescue NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea: Refugee Rescue, Proactiva Open Arms, Sea-Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Irish Refugee and Migrant Coalition. The event was hosted by Sean Crowe T.D. and Senator Alice-Mary Higgins.

    Frontline Witnesses Search and Rescue Briefing, Dáil Éireann, November 7th, 2019.

    The NGOs provided accounts of ongoing tragedies from a hidden frontier.

    Their work is conducted against the backdrop of systematic criminalization of Search and Rescue missions there, as well as misinformation campaigns from Far Right movements in Italy and Spain. Piracy is rife, and the Libyan coast guards are a law onto themselves.

    NGOs fill a void left by the EU’s abnegation of responsibility, fulfilling Article 98 of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, in spite of the consequences.

    First to speak was the impressive Ismail Adam, a young man from Sudan. He has lived in Ireland since 2017 after a two-year journey. He described Libyan detention centres, months of hiding in a household working in exchange for shelter, and the eventual Italian crossing.

    The traffickers told the group the passage would take three to four hours. After perhaps two days the boat was still in the middle of the sea. Ismail was just sixteen-years old at the time.

    Since arriving in Ireland this resilient young man has embarked on the Leaving Certificate, having gained refugee status – assisted by the intervention of the Irish Refugee and Migrant Coalition.

    In his own words:

    I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future, losing a future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.
    I am here to speak for all generations to come with new ideas … I am only a young man and I don’t have all the solutions but we can work together and make it better.
    I feel that we have such an opportunity, in this really connecting world, to get know each other.
    In my anger I am not blind and in my fear I’m not afraid of telling the world how I feel.
    In Ireland we live a privileged, safe and great life.
    I think that is enough now.

    Ismail Adam

    How we respond to this global humanitarian crisis, involving over seventy million refugees worldwide,[ii] poses major question for receiving countries. All too often we lose sight of precious humanity who become pawns in political games.

    Images courtesy of Fellipe Lopes.

    [i] UNHCR Operational Portal, Mediterranea Situation: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Worldwide displacement tops 70 million, UN Refugee Chief urges greater solidarity in response,’ UNHCR, June 19th, 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/6/5d03b22b4/worldwide-displacement-tops-70-million-un-refugee-chief-urges-greater-solidarity.html

  • Bull Moose: ‘We apologize, we love China’ – When Money, China and Values Collide

    Two stories were in the headlines this October illustrating how money is undermining our values. ‘Ah,’ I hear you say, ‘a story as old as time,’ but before tuning out, let us explain what’s different this time, and why it really matters. 

    Given the pace of technological change, the weight of power of two individuals, LeBron James and Mark Zuckerberg, have raised the stakes. They are among a tiny elite with the power to influence our collective future. In America, this group includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump.

    It matters, therefore, when these individuals make public pronouncements.

    Hong Kong Protests 

    On October 4th, Houston Rockets NBA team’s General Manager, Daryl Morey, retweeted an image (since deleted) that simply read: ‘Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.’[i]  

    The Chinese reaction was swift. Within a matter of days, Chinese teams, streaming services, sponsors, and partners had cut ties with the Rockets and the NBA. As the NBA struggled to contain the fallout, Commissioner Adam Silver initially made a non-committal statement, recognizing and regretting that the tweet had deeply offended certain people. Only later did he explicitly defend Morley’s freedom of expression.[ii]

    Enter LeBron James on October 14th, fresh from touring China, who explained the situation to reporters in the following terms: ‘Yes, we all do have freedom of speech,’ he said, ‘but at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others, and you’re only thinking about yourself.

    He continued: ‘I don’t want to get in a word sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.’[iii]

    The essence of what LeBron was saying seemed to be that ‘we should be careful to exercise freedom of speech in case, heaven forbid, we offend someone.’ Yes, this is the same LeBron James who not long ago vowed to keep speaking out on social issues, no matter what the backlash;[iv] the same person who has been called the most powerful voice in his profession, and publicly feuded with Fox News over criticism of President Trump.[v]

    Caring only for the interests and values of ones’ own community, while giving a metaphorical shrug in response to others, is nothing new in the world of sport. Football fans might recall Manchester City’s manager Pep Guardiola’s insistent support for Catalan independence, while he turned a blind eye to the right of self-determination of those in the Middle East living under his bosses’ thumb.[vi]

    Yet this situation was different, and not simply because of the vast sums of money involved: by a conservative estimate the NBA makes $500 million in annual revenue from China; there were reports that the NBA stood to lose up to fifteen percent on its salary cap next year because of the Chinese ban. 

    Not that the players needed reminding. Faced with questions over how he viewed the issue, Houston Rockets star James Harden simply tweeted: ‘We apologize. We love China.’ [vii]

    Questioning Zuckerberg

    On October 23rd, a different but related story was being played out in Washington DC, as Mark Zuckerberg fielded questions before Congress over proposals for Libra, Facebook’s new digital currency.

    In case you aren’t aware, Facebook is seeking approval for it from regulators, but the hearings quickly turned into a debate on the company’s recent decision not to fact check, or ban, political ads.

    This matters for two reasons: first, the scale of the Facebook’s earnings from ads; secondly, because social media is becoming the primary source of Americans’ news.

    Facebook already enjoys a metaphorical license to prints money through its early arrival at the scene of the social media goldrush, and through clever (some would say monopolistic) acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.

    By the third quarter of 2019, its global advertising revenue had risen to over $17 billion dollars, growing 28% year-on-year. If current trends continue, Facebook’s earnings will approach $100 billion in annual revenue by 2020 from advertising alone.

    Moreover, recent research suggests over 55% of Americans now get at least some of their news from social media.[viii]

    Combine these facts with the company’s ability to psychologically profile users, and tailor messages accordingly, and this translates into a significant power to influence, if not outright buy, Presidential elections.

    As Siva Vaidhyanathan pointed out in The New York Times, Facebook actions were logical: even if they had been willing to differentiate between what is political and factual, in practice it is often nigh-on impossible.[ix]

    We can assume that Zuckerberg, ever the calculating pragmatist, would justify his company’s stance on political ads on the basis that it aligns with freedom of speech values.

    This assertion is not simply questionable, but plain wrong, for multiple reasons. Just one example suffices: it was not a question of freedom of speech to allow an ad to run saying the Pope had officially endorsed Trump in the last election,[x] it was simply an implicit endorsement of a lie.

    Silicon Valley has long been identified with the liberal left, but Facebook’s new approach is altering this view. For one, the company seems to have concluded that its digital currency stands little chance in a Democrat-controlled House or Senate.

    In the short term, aligning itself more heavily with Republicans may seem like good business on Facebook’s part, but in the medium term it risks alienating the other side of America’s polarized electorate.

    During that same hearing on the Hill, some Republicans jumped to defend Facebook on Libra, saying any Democratic interference amounted to regulatory overreach and would strangle American innovation. They also applauded Facebook’s non-interference policy on political ads.      

    Facebook followed on by playing the nationalist card, with Zuckerberg claiming: ‘Libra will be backed mostly by dollars, and I believe it will extend America’s financial leadership as well as our democratic values and oversight around the world.’ Otherwise, he added, China would take the lead on digital payments.[xi]

    In China, Zuckerberg may have found a convenient scapegoat, which has also frustrated the global advance of his company. While other multinational brands like the NBA, Apple and Google, have large operations in China, Facebook has never been able to crack the Chinese market. This is not for want of trying. Zuckerberg famously jogged through the smog in Beijing, learned Mandarin, and even asked Xi JinPing to give an honorary Chinese name to his soon-to-be-born child four years ago – a request Xi declined.[xii]

    Money, China and Values

    The United States of America has been, by many measures, one of the world’s most successful democracies, with freedom of expression a core value. In certain respects, such as raising life expectancy and GDP, China can also boast great achievements, but these have been achieved with compliance and obedience as core values, and against a background of well-documented human rights abuses.

    The challenge for the U.S. in the 21st century is to maintain its freedoms, even as we enter into a new digital age with unlimited potential for monitoring, surveillance, censorship and mass manipulation. 

    In the end, calling on Facebook to fix itself, or the NBA to uphold universal values and free speech may be futile. Instead, perhaps we should accept that these companies hold power that is not subject to democratic oversight, and in some cases interference is unwarranted.  

    As Americans we’ve always expressed our preferences for companies and products with our wallets. For the times we are in, therefore, Bull Moose argues we should become more conscious of where we spend our time online, and with whom we are sharing our data, as the data we leave behind, and our attention, is increasingly being monetized. 

    The old saying, ‘if the product is free, you are the product,’ is more relevant than ever.  Whether it is the NBA or Facebook, you have a choice to love, hate or even speak out against them.   

    It is that freedom that still sets us apart from China.

    [i] Untitled, ‘NBA’s Rockets try to calm storm after ‘stand with Hong Kong’ post prompts fury in China’ Hong Kong Free Press, October 7th, 2019, https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/07/nbas-rockets-try-calm-storm-stand-hong-kong-post-prompts-fury-china/

    [ii] Untitled ‘Adam Silver supports free speech rights of Rockets GM Daryl Morey’, ESPN, October 7th, 2019, https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27792662/adam-silver-supports-free-speech-rights-houston-rockets-gm-daryl-morey

    [iii] Dylan Scott, ‘Why everybody is mad at LeBron’, Vox, October 15th, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/15/20915339/lebron-james-hong-kong-quotes-daryl-morey

    [iv] Untitled, ‘LeBron James plans to keep speaking out on social issues’ NBA.com, August 29th, 2018,   https://www.nba.com/article/2018/08/29/lebron-james-los-angeles-lakers-vows-speak-out-social-issues

    [v] Jerry Bembry, ‘LeBron James is the most powerful voice in his profession’, The Undefeated, February 28th, 2018, https://theundefeated.com/features/lebron-james-to-take-floor-for-nba-all-star-game-as-the-most-powerful-voice-in-his-profession/

    [vi] David Mathieson, ‘Guardiola’s hypocrisy over Man City’s owner undermines his pleas about Catalonia’, The New Statesman, March 13th, 2018, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/sport/2018/03/guardiola-s-hypocrisy-over-man-city-s-owner-undermines-his-pleas-about

    [vii] Kurt Baddenhausen, ‘China Feud Over Morey’s Hong Kong Tweet Threatens Rapid Growth Of NBA Team Values’, Forbes, October 9th, 2019,  https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/10/09/the-nbas-soaring-franchise-value-growth-at-stake-with-china-feud/#5c00fb0e4257

    [viii] Peter Suciu, ‘More Americans Are Getting Their News From Social Media’, ForbesOctober 11th, 2019,   https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2019/10/11/more-americans-are-getting-their-news-from-social-media/#15012e063e17

    [ix] Siva Vaidhyanathan, ‘The Real Reason Facebook Won’t Fact-Check Political Ads’, New York Times, November 2nd, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg-political-ads.html

    [x] Hannah Ritchie, ‘Read all about it: The biggest fake news stories of 2016’, CNBC, December 30th, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html

    [xi] Gregory Barber, ‘Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s Libra Testimony to Congress’, Wired, 23rd of October, 2019,  https://www.wired.com/story/how-watch-mark-zuckerbergs-libra-testimony-congress/

    [xii] April Glaster, ‘Why Mark Zuckerberg Keeps Saying Facebook Needs to Win Against China’, Slate.com, 23rd of October, 2019, https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-libra-cryptocurrency-china-free-speech.html