Cassandra Voices

Tag: 2018April

  • A Breakthrough to Save Humanity

    In Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (1320) we encounter a forlorn Ulysses (Greek, Odysseus) in the Inferno, punished to eternal torments for deceitful stratagems in the Trojan war, and beyond. Dante adds a layer to the Classical myth, where the aged warrior returns to his native Ithaca only to find:

    not sweetness of a son, not reverence
    for an ageing father, not the debt of love
    I owed Penelope to make her happy
    could quench deep in myself the burning wish
    to know the world and have experience
    of all man’s vices, of all human worth.

    He persuades his crew to embark on a final voyage to a: ‘world they called unpeopled’. For five months they sail until, ‘there appeared a mountain shape, darkened / by distance, that arose to endless heights,’ which is the mount of Purgatory. But, ‘celebrations soon turned into grief,’ as a whirlwind wrecks the fleet, consigning Odysseus and his crew to a watery grave. A hero, who dared travel beyond accepted limitations, is doomed to an excruciating hell, even if there is a suspicion that Dante admires his chutzpah for seeking to experience “all human worth.”[i]

    Fear of the sea is an intuitive recognition of the danger it poses, in contrast to an attachment to home ground. As Herman Melville in Moby Dick (1851) puts it: ‘For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not from that isle, thou canst never return!’[ii]

    Odysseus’s sorry fate also reflects a medieval mindset that looked askance at unfettered ambition. This devolved into superstitions deterring voyages to unchartered territories. Thus Laurens van der Post relates a story told to him by Carl Jung, ‘that if one wanted to fix a precise moment at which the Renaissance began, it would be the day when the Italian poet Petrarch decided to defy superstition and climbed a mountain in the Alps, just for the sake of reaching its summit.’[iii] Through a rebirth in Classical ideas that followed in Petrarch’s wake, Europeans opened their eyes to hidden possibilities, leading to the discovery of new continents that relied on a spirit of innovation.

    Poetic Inspiration

    Poetry in its widest sense is a font of ingenuity and invention. Thus Andre Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto saw it as: ‘Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.’ Reversing a dictum attributed to Stalin describing poets as engineers of the human soul, Breton attributes scientific breakthroughs to a poetic imagination, arguing: ‘the conquests of science rest far more on a surrealistic than on a logical thinking.’[iv]

    This reinforces Percy Shelley’s proposition that poets, operating in varying capacities, are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world.’ The spark for any new venture comes from an imagination Shelley equates with poetry. He distinguishes this faculty from reason, which he describes as the ‘enumeration of qualities already known’; whereas ‘imagination in the perception of the values of those qualities, both separately and as a whole … Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.’[v]

    Too often governments, corporations and individuals inhibit that poetic ignition. Across society we see reason and logic in constant motion, but imagination is barely nurtured, and often frowned on. We proceed from point A to B, all too often ignoring possibilities arising in the remainder of the alphabet. Yet scientific innovation is predicated on poetically imagining possibilities beyond contemporary restraints. It is notable that, besides his contributions to the understanding of the physical universe, Albert Einstein was a prolific poet.

    Technological advances have diminished our intuitive fear of the ocean. As Melville put it: ‘however much … man may brag of his science and skill … yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him … nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.’[vi]

    Incontestably, a combination of greed and frightening religious extremism motivated the global exploration of the sixteenth century, which rapidly encompassed the whole Earth. But the first voyagers also displayed admirable qualities, including a willingness to set aside a fear of the unknown, the strange and exotic.

    Crossing great stretches of ocean demanded breakthroughs in nautical engineering, including the development of a lighter, more mobile, craft, the caravel. Developed in Portugal under Henry the Navigator (d.1460), this vessel could sail into a head wind. Such innovations occurred because adventurous spirits imagined pathways previously considered taboo. It is only by taking such imaginative flights, overcoming prejudices and applying the required labour, that new inventions are realised.

    Despite the ensuing carnage and destruction of natural environments wrought by European colonisation, there remains an enduring heroism in this original repudiation of orthodoxy. In Dante’s Inferno Odysseus did founder, but we may laud a spirit rejecting preconceived limitations that a medieval mind considered hubristic. Innovation demands an interrogation of established ideas, a rejection of preconception and the embrace of the unknown – like a bird taking flight for the first time in its evolution. How did that feel?

    The Great Adventure of Our Time

    Theodore Zeldin recently considered what the great adventure of our time should be: if in the sixteenth century it was discovering new continents; and scientific enquiry in the seventeenth; or addressing political equality in the eighteenth. Precisely the most valuable quest in our time remained elusive to him, but he argued that giving a new meaning to work could offer a great adventure: ‘so that it is more than the exercise of a valued skill, more than the enjoyment of collaboration with others, more than a price that has to be paid in search of security and status, means using work to redefine freedom.’[vii]

    A revolution in working practices does seem overdue, with technology performing most basic and increasingly complex tasks. A new departure in attitudes to employment should also appeal to anyone disheartened by the irrationality of boundless economic growth. Any new economy ought to harness creativity in different domains, and address the tendency towards homogenisation of large corporations. Still, I fear this aspiration to alter work practices is insufficiently ambitious for the environmental challenges of the twenty-first century, in the shape of runaway climate change and a Sixth Extinction.

    Previously Naomi Klein has pointed a finger at unbridled capitalism,[viii] but simply achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth appears insufficient. Historically at least, socialism has been defined in materialistic terms, apportioning needs within a hierarchy that continues to inflate. There is a moral obligation to furnish all humans with basic necessities yes, but we must also enter into a harmonious relationship with the natural world, which, thus far, most political ideologies and organised religions have failed adequately to take account of. Within an altered ethical framework, encompassing an idea of Wild Law that I have previously expounded on, necessity will be the mother of invention of the tools required for favourable adaptations.

    ‘By nature free’

    We are in Milton’s words from Paradise Lost (1667): ‘By nature free, not overruled by fate’, but each individual vessel still faces ruin unless we tame the raging waters of our collective acquisitiveness. We require an Age of Empathy elevating symbiosis and cooperation. Thus according to Gandhi: ‘Man is not born to live in isolation but is essentially a social animal independent and interdependent. No one should ride on another’s back.’[ix]

    If we continue to gorge ourselves on the world’s resources – failing to acknowledge the limit of natural capital – we confront death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Let us hope it does not take another Flood of Biblical proportions to awaken us to this reality. Alas, a shock to the global system seems necessary to shake us out of our collective stupor. We must face up to what the future holds, and aggressively confront sinister and self-serving conspiracy theories.

    The field of science – a term only coined in the 1830s the field having previously been referred to as natural philosophy – alone cannot convey the world as it will appear in the decades to come if we continue on our present course. The arts play a vital role in conveying the apocalyptic scenes awaiting. Science fiction has long plotted dystopian scenarios – going back to Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) – and this vision is entering the mainstream of literature.

    In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) a father and son wander through an apocalyptic landscape denied the sun’s live-giving rays. Cannibalism is rife as the last humans compete with one another. In the final paragraph there is a mesmerising ode to a lost Nature:

    Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not to be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.[x]

    Verily a Paradise Lost.

    Harsh Realities

    When we face up to harsh realities a change in outlook can occur. Laurens van der Post writes:

    It was only when man looked death full in the face that the mortality which is imminent in the final regard releases him from all excess in his proportions, and in the surrender of egotistical presumption which follows as night in the day, unlocks him for the experience of compassion for all living things, ‘from ant to Emperor, whale to cat’, as the Buddhists of Tibet put it, which is the sign of his conscious return from exile to the all-belonging, which has been his point of departure and is then his Home. [xi]

    Humans are capable of mind-boggling cruelty and selfishness but within our spectrum we possess staggering levels of empathy and compassion. These diverging characteristics may even co-exist in the same person.

    I propose that the great adventure of this epoch lies in the way we relate to Nature, which is all life on Earth, including ourselves. The challenge, as I see it, is to ground ourselves within that diverse ecology rather than placing ourselves above other forms of life, as the Western philosophic tradition has purported to do so. Thus Plato formatively established a hierarchy of beings in his Timaeus (c.360 BCE), proceeding from men at the top down through women to the ‘lower’ animals. Somewhat comically he compares other animals unfavourably to human beings:

    The race of birds was produced by a process of transformation, whereby feathers grew instead of hair, from harmless empty-headed men, who were interested in the heavens but were silly enough to think that the most certain astronomical demonstrations proceed through observation. Wild land animals have come from men who made no use of philosophy and never in any way considered the nature of the heavens because they had ceased to use the circles in the head and followed the leadership of the parts in the soul in the breast.[xii]

    Unfortunately, the lasting impression Plato has made on Western culture with these ideas has been no laughing matter.

    Sentience

    Widening the circle of empathy brings us into communion with all living beings. Even plant life deserves reverence. In Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees[xiii] we discover remarkable species, displaying unaccounted for intelligences. Trees communicate with one another using an array of languages including scent from blossoms, and via electrical signals that travel at a third of an inch per minute. This allows them to warn neighbours if they are under attack. Chemical signals are also passed via fungal networks around root tips, a so-called ‘wood wide web.’

    Moreover, the ability of plants to learn from external stimuli has been exhibited in Dr Monica Gagliano’s experiments on the sensitivity of the mimosa plant. Gagliano released individual drops of water on the plant’s foliage at regular intervals. At first the anxious plants instantly closed their leaves, mistaking the single droplets for the onset of heavy rainfall. After a number of false alarms, however, the plants recognised these to be harmless and kept their leaves open. Remarkably, the small plants learnt from the experience, applying the lessons weeks later.[xiv]

    Thus, in consuming any plant we should be mindful of all its complexity, and prize agricultural systems that permits a wide diversity of life to co-exist. Nonetheless, plant life can be distinguished from animal in terms of sentience: which is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Essentially, we know that other animals feel pain – both physical and psychological – via central nervous systems similar to our own. The precise boundaries between plant and animal life may be frayed, but the evidence for pain in other animals is unmistakable.

    Factory farming may soon be viewed as among the worst crimes in human history. The food writer Michael Pollan referred to a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) he visited as, ‘a place I won’t soon forget: a deep circle of porcine hell.’ In a display of cognitive dissonance he acknowledges the pork sandwich he eats is ‘underwritten by the most brutal kind of agriculture.’ At least he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson to the effect that ‘however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.’[xv]

    The effect of animal domestication, especially grazing ruminants and the cultivation of foodstuffs for their consumption, also has a devastating effect on surviving free animals, compelled to make way for a vast expansion of agriculture around the globe. Astonishingly, today humans, our livestock (and pets) account for ninety-six percent of the Earth’s total land vertebrate biomass.[xvi] This has all occurred alongside immeasurable devastation to the plant kingdom.

    It is futile to read a philosophy of veganism back through human history to condemn ancestors who often killed animals for survival – or even to focus on those remaining hunter-gatherer communities living in remote and inhospitable regions. But in Western societies, at least, there are a multitude of healthful and tasty alternatives to animal products, displaying great qualities of human inventiveness in the gastronomic field. We are not obligate carnivores, unlike our near relative homo neanderthalensis that seems to have gone extinct for this reason.[xvii] A global food chain now allows us to overcome seasonal shortages and localized crop failures to provide a nutritious plant-based-diet-for-all.

    New Departure

    In his biographic account of hunting whales on board a Norwegian vessel in the 1920s Laurens van der Post, recites an extraordinary statement on the new departure he considered necessary in our relationship to the natural world:

    I could not deny the excitement and acceleration into a consummation of archaic joy which the process of stalking and hunting, even at sea, had invoked in me, although I was at present now only as an observer. On the other hand, hard on these emotions, came an equal and opposite revulsion which nearly overwhelmed me when the hunt, as now, was successful and one was faced with the acceptance of the fact that one had aided and abetted in an act of murder of such a unique manifestation of creation. The only dispensation of the paradox ever granted to me in the past, unaware as I had been of the immensity of it until revealed to me in this moment at sea, was that in hunting out of necessity, all revulsions were redeemed by the satisfaction one felt in bringing food home to the hungry. That such satisfaction was not an illusion, nor a form of special pleading in the court of natural conscience, was proved to me by the profound feeling of gratitude one invariably felt for the animal that had died in order for others to live … [but]what could this possibly have to do with the necessities which were essential for the redemption of the act of killing … in this increasingly technological moment of my youth, when control of life was passing more and more from nature to man, and when there were already available all sorts of artificial substitutes for the essential oils which animals like the whale had once been the only source of supply, what, I asked myself bitterly, could justify such killing except the greed of man for money … Worse still, I was certain that our imperviousness to the consternation caused by such killing in the heart of the nature could be the beginning of an enmity between man and the life which had brought him forth that could imperil his future on earth itself.[xviii]

    Dietary change may indeed be relevant to the wider transformation of the human person. The legendary gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s maxim ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,’ perhaps overstates the argument, yet the constituents of a diet do exert a profound influence on minds inseparable from bodies. This is ingrained in almost every spiritual tradition, even Christianity. Thus in Western monasticism, going back to the Early Church Fathers and the Rule of St. Benedict, consumption of animal products was considered incompatible with a life of meditation and prayer.

    We are a product of the air we breathe, the fluids we imbibe and the bacteria with which we co-exist, our genetic programming, and perhaps morphic resonances, whereby self-organising systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems.[xix] Nonetheless, the vast complexity of food at our disposal makes this arguably the leading variable in that process of growth and atrophy characterising life as we know it.

    Humanity today utilises a mere six hundred out of the hundreds of thousands of edible plants that exist on Earth.[xx] This vast, unrealised potential of unnurtured crop varieties mean we are only skimming the surface of agricultural possibilities, with dramatic implications for the environments that we manage. Untapped potential may also lies in the cultivation of bacteria, that could be conditioned to taste like familiar foodstuffs, including meat. George Monbiot recently argued that lab-grown food could save the planet,[xxi] albeit these technologies are still in their infancy. What we now require is an alliance of farmers, chefs, scientists and gastronomes, unbound by convention, to imagine new possibilities in a Fourth Agricultural Revolution.

    Theodore Zeldin is right to say that: ‘The invention of a new dish is an act of freedom, small but not insignificant.’[xxii] We can all play a part in this great adventure.

    An altered relationship with Nature would be a revolution unlike any other in human history, and it is surely essential for this to occur in the Anthropocene, our current geological age of human impacts, where the accumulated bones of domesticated chickens are a sign of our overweening presence, along with nuclear residues, and climate chaos. Aside from any ethical stance, ecological limits are in sight: we cannot continue slaughtering over fifty billion domesticated animals each year for food.

    Vegan Diet

    As Jiddu Krishnamurti puts it: ‘We haven’t time to fool around anymore – the house is on fire.’[xxiii] The world’s population now stands at over seven billion. At the beginning of the last century we were a mere one and a half billion, with a far shorter life span than today, leading lives far less exacting on the planet’s resources. We have since applied science to the manufacture of all manner of conveniences, culminating in a global obesity pandemic and giant plastic graveyards in the Pacific Ocean. We have waged a relentless war on the natural world that sees no sign of abating. Since the 1970s, when I was born, 60% of all mammal species have gone extinct,[xxiv] mainly through a loss of habitat intimately connected to the foods we eat.

    Scientists are devoting their imaginative faculties to the realisation of a carbon-diminished future, but environmental morality should not be reduced to an exercise in carbon accounting. I would argue that the single most transformative step any person can take in their life is to embrace a vegan philosophy, which entails a cooperative rather than exploitative relationship with Nature. And if you should fail initially, try and try again.

    Projected population growth over the coming decades makes meat consumption even more unsustainable, leading to further, horrific ‘efficiencies’ in factory farming. The whole edifice of animal agriculture ought to crumble, perhaps bringing an expansion in human consciousness. Thus Charles Darwin argues that the history of man’s moral development has been a continual extension of the objects of his ‘social instincts’ and ‘sympathies’ writing:

    Originally each man had regard only for himself and those of a very narrow circle about him; later he came to regard more and more not only, the welfare, but the happiness of all his fellow men; then his sympathies became more tender and widely diffused, extending to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed and other useless members of society, and finally to the lower animals.[xxv]

    Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’

    Five hundred years after Dante’s Divine Comedy in 1833 Alfred Lord Tennyson published his poem ‘Ulysses’, where he develops the epic tale of Odysseus further. Again we find a frustrated Odysseus in Ithaca before a final voyage bemoaning:

    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
    To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!’
    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

    In the spirit of his age of expansion Tennyson hails an ambition ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,’ and so might we adopt such an approach to confront impending environmental crises. As a species we are entering unknown and decidedly choppy waters, and now require imaginative capacities to take flight. This is an ominous, but ultimately heroic quest that requires us to cross new moral frontiers.

    [i] Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Mark Musa (Translator), New York, Penguin, 2003, Canto 26

    [ii] Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Wordsworth Classics, London, 1992 p.262

    [iii] Laurens van der Post, Yet Being Someone Other, The Hogarth Press, London, 1982, p.18

    [iv] MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM BY ANDRÉ BRETON, 1924.

    [v] Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (1821)

    [vi] Melville, 1992, p,261

    [vii] Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life: A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future, MacLehose Press, London, p.313

    [viii] Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2014.

    [ix] Anthony Parel, Gandhi, Freedom and Self-Rule, Lexington Books, London, 2000, Washington, p.109

    [x] Cormac McCarthy, The Road, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, p.287

    [xi] van der Post, 1992 p.223

    [xii] Plato, Timaeus and Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Penguin Classics, London, 2008, p.90

    [xiii] Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, Jane Billinghurst (translator), Black Inc., Carlton, 2016

    [xiv] Monica Gagliano, Thus Spoke the Plant, North Atlantic Books, New York, 2018

    [xv] Michael Pollan, Cooked – A Natural History of Transformation, Penguin, New York, pp.49-51

    [xvi] Olivia Rosane, ‘Humans and Big Ag Livestock Now Account for 96 Percent of Mammal Biomass’, EcoWatch, 2018, https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html

    [xvii] Tim Flannery, Europe – A Natural History, Allen Lane, London, 2018, p.177

    [xviii] van der Post, 1982, p.88

    [xix] Rupert Sheldrake, https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance

    [xx] Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, Harper Perennial, London, 1994, p.93

    [xxi] George Monbiot, ‘Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet’, The Guardian, January 8th, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-grown-food-destroy-farming-save-planet

    [xxii] Zeldin, 1994, p.94

    [xxiii]  Jiddu Krishnamurti, ‘Knowledge and the transformation of man,’ https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/knowledge-and-transformation-man

    [xxiv] Damian Carrington, ‘Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds’, The Guardian, October 30th, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds

    [xxv] From The Descent of Man.

  • Westerlywind – A Short Story

    Worthless. Humiliated. Deeply uncomfortable. Skin crawling. Awful. Shitty shit shitty fucking horror shit shit cock horror. Hate. Disdain. Awful, awful. Sad. Afraid. Unwelcome. Outside. Other. Ugly. Repulsive. Grotesque. Agnes. She wondered how, every time she appeared to be enjoying her time in Greenpoint. How, when things seemed like they were generally ok, she ended up with this gut-wrenching awareness that she was a gorgon who smelled of menstrual blood and dirty clothes.

    Her old friend Derya is turning 25 and Agnes arrives at the apartment at the weird hour. The hour of semi-sobriety, of eyes open to who is coming and going at a party.

    She heads for the punch before she attempts to talk to anyone. Everyone is preoccupied and ambivalent. The initial vague panic sets in. Agnes moves from the punch and rejoins the group with whom she arrived. Her husband Jen and Jen’s buddy, Martin. They’ve been hanging out all day at this stage. They drove in together. They ate BBQ together. Their day has already happened. She feels shame for having fought with Jen in front of Martin twice and was looking forward to getting away from the two of them upon arrival. As they have all run out of ways of making jokes or poking fun or having any kind of laugh together, there are a lot of silences and looking around. They have been hanging out for eight hours. Five of which involved a drive. How could they be expected to like each other at this stage. Jen tells a terrible story about drinking insane amounts of Red Bull in college and burning a wooden deer in a parking lot. Martin laughs hard even though Jen has told this story one hundred times and Martin was there when the event occurred. Agnes widens her eyes in disbelief and decides to brave the party room, thinking, I married a total asshole. She slams back her punch and ventures out for more, pressing down the mounting fear that builds within her.

    There is a place Agnes revisits when a fissure appears in her emotional fabric. It’s buried deeply inside her heart. When she feels a certain way in a certain mood in a certain environment, it is back there she goes. It is a darkened cloak room in a Catholic school. St Pius X. It is a year after her father has died. She is 12 years old. She is confronted by a group of girls about her odour. She pretends to not understand that she does indeed stink. She pretends that her classmates are simply identifying her smell and trying to ‘help’ her in the same way that her condescending delusional mother tries to ‘help’ people on her case load as a social worker; only she knows these girls are meaner, because they are 12. They have not properly learned how to pretend to be kind just yet, or, they have not been properly trained in the art of transforming their dysfunction into judgement about other people’s pain. Professionally.

    Party. Panic attack worsens.

    The Dan Crowleys and Robert Roberges are plentiful in certain Brooklyn zip codes, at certain launches and parties. She is reminded of her station in life each time she visits this fucking place. Agnes epitomizes the very visible invisible. The wrong frame of mind and intrusive thoughts abound, corroding her ability to make the smallest conversational effort.

    “So, what else…” falls out of her mouth, an involuntary verbal spasm. Stopping her. Turning her to melting, pointless garbage. She is so easily embarrassed by herself. Her own words, or lack of words in this case, cause her very innards to burn. Her mouth, dry now, presses its lips to the glass in her hand. She is reminded of a high school assembly when an alcoholic and a drug addict came to speak to her 11th grade class. She is standing near the punch table yet again, as she is reminded of this. Then she thinks of what the alcoholic hilariously stated was her past self-abuse motto. Agnes decides this is a great way to break the ice with the man to her left fumbling with cracker crumbs on his shirt. She conjurs her best raspy Rhode Island accent to re-enact the remembered phrase to the stranger. POOR ME. POOR ME. POUR ME ANOTHER DRINK. She says as she smiles at him, directing her eyes toward her glass in a knowing manner. He moves swiftly away from her, pretending to have heard nothing. Hey, do you have the time? She yells after him in an attempt to recover from the obvious rejection. Just then the host of the birthday party appears. Fucking finally. DERYA!! Says Agnes. Agnes. Says Derya. They hug and kiss. Some party! Says Agnes. Derya has to go check the stove. The moment of affirmation ends abruptly.

    Astounding paranoia is the accomplice to this sorry state. Imagine someone walking through life wincing. That is an Agnes smile. That. All the time. Her husband, Jen, does not understand why she gets mad about things that are of no great importance. Why she feels affected by the slightest discomfort. Why her twinkle is infrequent. A callus formed over time. A hardness. A protective layer. And when a crack appears it reveals a heartache so great, no person could take it. She tries to keep it to herself. And sometimes at a gathering here or there her oddness takes hold. Her choking self-hatred rears its head, and she runs out of her external self. Her inner life surfaces, paralysing her. Reminding her of the collective experiences that have corroded her spirit. A lack of kindness can erode a person. Cause them to burn alive. Faces red from embarrassment. Faces red from too much wine. The tale is worn and it ages, as pain will. It wears through the skin. Hardship surfaces. It becomes apparent eventually.

    Smell.

    Agnes stands by the punchbowl and the peanuts and cheese and crackers, and reckons she is really quite okay with talking to nobody. Her inebriation is nearing wistfulness: in the company of old friends, she is forced to remember old friends. She remembers the cloakroom confrontation after prayer group with the Shultz family. George and his very religious mother, Ellen. She smells her sweater the entire way to the cloakroom. They all know she smells. So does she. She says goodbye and scurries away from them, and pretends she lives in the house next door to where she actually lives. The beat up old mansard hellhole. When they walk away, after she’s hidden in a backyard bush, and once the coast is clear, Agnes moves over to the apartment building she actually lives in. On the second floor. Where a dachshund named Boru has led the other creatures in a revolt involving copious amounts of waste on unread newspapers. The floor is regularly soaked with piss and shit, so much so that there is now no way of getting the smell out of the wood. Toxic and right outside her bedroom door. She climbs the apartment stairs, goes to the kitchen and toasts two bagels. She then smothers them with Philadelphia cream cheese and moves to the living room to sit down on the blue recliner purchased for her dying father and watch Gargoyles. A cartoon about gargoyles. Something stirs within Agnes. She gets up and goes into her older brother Stephen’s room. Has a look around. It smells like teenage boy. She goes to the kitchen and grabs a pile of papers. She re-enters Stephen’s room, places the Providence journal on the floor and pulls down her pants and takes a shit.

    This party is hilarious, Agnes slurs to Martin. Martin nods. He is a quiet person. Martin. Have you seen my purse? I just had it. Have you seen it? I just had it. I just had it. Where’s Jen? I want to put my new lipstick on. I want to. Oh Martin, let’s play that game where we look around at every appalling person at a party and decide if they would be a Nazi or a member of the Resistance. Where’s Jen, says Martin.

    Booze is a noose around our Agnes’ neck. A boring old piece of fraying rope that used to have a pleasant function. That rope was once integral to a tyre swing placed over a river. It wore down over time and has been left in a pile of leaves. To rot. Agnes picked it up. She made a knot. That ancient rope around her neck. Alcohol. A misused piece of rope. That once held a tyre and simple pleasure that is now a shabby lariat looking for a lighting fixture.

    Agnes has found herself a party stranger to talk to momentarily while Martin rubs Jen’s shoulders. Long drive my ass she thinks to herself. Oh me? I’m just down visiting. I’m here for Derya. You know? Quarter of a century the old gal…anyway. What do I? I work in a deli called Hudson St., we make grinders. That’s what we call sandwiches in Rhode Island. Have you ever had an Italian? GRINDER. Italian Grinder? Ahahaha. What is wrong with me? AHAHHAHA. It’s funny. You’re not laughing. An Italian grinder consists of provolone cheese, capicola (pronounced like this: gabeegole), oh you’ve seen The Sopranos? Well there are a lot of Calabrese and Sicilians in Providence. Ahem. So, what else… salami, boiled ham, lettuce, tomato, red onion, oil and balsamic on the bread and oh no go right ahead. I have to go to the bathroom, too. No you go first. You work in a magazine. I’m better at holding my pee in. AHAHAHAHAAHA!!!! You know. Well, lunch rush has taught me a thing. It was nice meeting…She is now standing alone trying to look unbothered by the fact that she thinks, where did I put my glass? It’s in my hand. More liquid. More liquid it is. I would drink toilet water if it had a splash of vodka in it. Look at me.

    There were these games. These games that they would play at St. Pius the X. The 12 year olds. These old games that they were too old to play imbued with new meaning. She understands them. Too old was she. There were no playmates any longer. Games meant so much more when you understood that you were a fat girl with braces and a wen on your nose. Games were meant to humiliate if you were not a pretty little figure. BUT HOPE. SWEET HOPE. Laughter. Kinship. Joy. She jumps in. Red rover, red rover let Agnes come over. RED ROVER RED ROVE’R LET AGNES COME OVER.

    There are seven of her classmates in a row. Holding hands. Creating a chain. She runs right for the hot spot, at the boys she hopes to astonish with her comedic genius thus winning friendship from them and respect from the rest of the class. Ryan Roberge and Daniel Crowley. She runs in SLOW MOTION screaming HEEEERE IIII COOOMMME. She should of added YOUUU STUPID MOTHHHHERFUCKERRRS. That was one of those verbal expressions of frustration that came later in life accompanied by the finger when someone overtook her on the highway. But alas she was a reasonably good-natured 12. In the absence of resolution to childhood trauma the world is a rage canvas. Oh you stupid motherfuckers. Agnes runs in slow motion and she slowly breaks through with everyone laughing. Victory!! Victory, she thinks, until she realises that Crowley and Roberge pretend to have broken arms almost before she gets to them. As she pierces through their false union with all her husky hope that crushing feeling envelops her. She is the joke. The joke on TOP of her fucking joke. Extra funny. The game is for the other children soon to be teenagers gaping at one another. That game of breaking the flesh gate is for them at that moment. They get to play a child’s game all but for the chance to touch in front of the lay teachers.

    There is an extra benefit to humiliating one tubby fool. The moment keeps recreating itself for the entertainment of the other children. They played that game of Agnes breaking arms for 30 minutes that day, and 30 minutes the next. And the next. And the next. It was just so funny, and then the joke got old. She was the rerun of a live sitcom for the week. Agnes didn’t stand up in frustrated defiance against her peers. She just let the pain of every recess wash over her, and then it stopped one day. Something else replaced it.

    No such thing as victory. Life’s beauty is reserved for the beautiful. Is it possible to be that child and then become a proper, fully-formed adult? She feels more kinship with pigeons than she does her fellow man. That’s why she has found herself outside Derya’s birthday party. On the fire escape, watching from above as some hammered suit flings change at cabs. Agnes glasses him.

    Moira Brady Averill (1983–2016) was a writer, comedian, and self-described “career waitress” from Providence, Rhode Island. She married a Dubliner, the composer Gareth Averill, and became a central figure on the offbeat fringes of Ireland’s comedy and theatre scene. For the Tiger Dublin Fringe festival she co-wrote and performed the shows Very Rich Hours and Flemish Proverbs, which won the award for Best Design in 2015. She created and MCed the script-tearing variety night Meat Scandal, and through the collective Change of Address she collaborated with artists in direct provision. Alongside her comedic work, Moira left behind many pieces of short fiction of a more serious tone, in varying states of completion. ‘Westerlywind’, in which her recurring semi-autobiographical anti-heroine Agnes goes to a birthday party in Brooklyn, is one such piece.

  • Catalan Independence Debate Presents False Dichotomy

    Catalan secessionists have succeeded in framing the debate over Catalan independence as a stark choice between two mutually exclusive options: either the status quo of Catalonia retaining regional autonomy within Spain, or for Catalonia to become an independent republic. Anyone objecting that neither might not be the best solution to the current deadlock is dismissed as ‘undemocratic’, by both sides. It is a superb rhetorical technique: is there anything more ‘undemocratic’ than not allowing citizens to decide on their future?

    The Spanish government response to the secessionist challenge has been to deny their opponents the opportunity to stage a referendum, decrying it as as illegal under the Spanish constitution. To inflame matters further, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sent the Policia Nacional to break up the un-constitutional independence referendum, held on October 1st, injuring peaceful citizen taking part in the vote. Rajoy’s strategy has been short-sighted, indicating a lack of interest in bringing about a negotiated solution to an ever-growing problem that threatens the very core of Spanish democracy.

    Contrary to what the Spanish government believes, what is wrong with the idea of a referendum is not that it is illegal under current constitutional law – laws are contingent and can always be changed – but that it is based on a false dichotomy.

    A false dichotomy operates when an argument presents two options and ignores, either intentionally or out of ignorance, unexpressed alternatives. The choice might conceivably come down to remaining an autonomous region within Spain, or full independence, but these are, by no means, the only alternatives. Hence, the question should really be: how can two mutually-exclusive choices adequately represent the diversity of beliefs in the region and the country as a whole? A false dichotomy forces homogenisation of opinions, and asks those confronting the dichotomy to drop any differing views they might hold, which does not represent one or other of the mutually-antagonistic options.

    Therefore, the danger of a referendum is that of oversimplification. In a highly divided region such as Catalonia, where secessionists represent almost half of the population (a recent poll puts support for independence at 40,8 %), finding a solution in which one side is proclaimed the victor over the other – a zero sum game – will not bring permanent stability. It denies the losing side a voice in the future of their region. This has been the failed strategy of the Spanish government over the past number of years: to deny the validity of the interests of almost half of Catalans. Not taking into consideration one’s opponent’s interests is undemocratic, even if this comes about through a ‘democratic’ vote, such as a referendum. That is why most constitutions include ‘checks and balances’ against the dictatorship of the majority.

    Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP) is also guilty of blocking concessions that had given Catalonia a special status within Spain, including the right to be considered a nation, back in 2006. This left many Catalans with a grievance towards the government in Madrid, and brought significant support for pro-independence parties. The sense of betrayal might explain the insistence on a referendum as the only solution to the situation in Catalonia: ‘we already tried the negotiation table and look what happened’, claim the secessionists. But regardless of how emotionally-justified this reaction might be, it is nonetheless an inadequate response.

    A more stable outcome, and one that has hardly been discussed by the main political actors, would require a process of negotiation with the final objective of arriving at a new status for Catalonia that would meet the interests of most Catalans. Democracy is not only about voting; it also involves political representatives arriving at a consensus through negotiation, which reflects the needs and interests of most citizens. A referendum would leave the voice of the losing side unattended, and on a highly divisive issue like Catalan secession, this would not resolve the underlying divisions. But for the negotiation to start, Rajoy must go.

    Antonio Garzón Vico is Assistant Professor of Business of Biotech at the School of Biomolecular & Biomedical Science, University College Dublin.

  • How Russian Internet Surveillance Operates

    The issue of data privacy is becoming a source of increasing individual and corporate unease with wide political ramifications. To that end the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force in less than two months, will attempt to harmonize and enhance data protection standards across the continent.

    Around the world governments actively monitor Internet communications. Here I examine Russia’s System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) that the government employs for the purposes of lawful interception of various IT and telecommunication systems.

    The original version of SORM was introduced in 1995, and allowed the Federal Security Services (FSB) to monitor phone calls and the Internet activity of users, despite the limited reach and functionality of Internet services at that time.

    SORM-1 was represented by special hardware furnished by the FSB that telecommunication operators were mandated to adopt within their infrastructures. The arguments used in favour of SORM-1 were around maintaining security in the public interest, at a time of considerable unrest in the country.

    As information technologies have matured in Russia, so have the technologies utilized by the government to oversee and, where the need arises, tame them. In 1998 a new version of SORM was released (SORM-2). This time it was required that SORM-2 be installed on the servers of Internet service providers, thus providing the FSB with oversight over all transactions passing through these servers.

    Subsequently, the scope of SORM-2 was further expanded to encompass monitoring of social networks and forum traffic. All operators were required to integrate this fully at their own cost. In addition, more governmental institutions and security agencies, apart from the FSB, were given leave to exploit the information-gathering-potential of SORM-2 (including the Police, Customs Authorities, Presidential Security Services and others).

    In 2014 the most recent version of SORM was deployed pursuant to a ministerial order issued by the Russian Ministry of Communication, with less than a one year deadline imposed for implementation. SORM-3 covers a wider range of online resources and activities, which may be subjected to targeted surveillance. These include, but are not limited to, users’ phone numbers, unique media access control addresses, as well as email addresses accessed from, for instance, mail.ru, yandex.ru, rambler.ru etc.

    Notably, SORM-3 resorts to a very comprehensive data processing protocol called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), in which the content of each piece (packet) of data is thoroughly scrutinized, and rerouted accordingly.

    Ordinarily, in order to acquire specific data, the governmental agency in charge requires a court order. But operatives are under no obligation to present this to a raided party. Refusal to divulge data in the absence of a court order will get you nowhere. Moreover, while the court order is required to seize the content, metadata (the description and ancillary context of the data in question) may be collected in its absence.

    In 2015 the lawfulness of SORM was raised by the European Court of Human Rights in Zakharov v Russia. The Court held that SORM potentially violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a right to respect for private and family life), concluding that given the significant risk of SORM being misused, the Russian state had failed to provide adequate safeguards to eliminate its potential arbitrariness, as well as failing to arrange for suitable measures to prevent unwarranted scrutiny.

    At present, Russia is not the only county introducing far-reaching control of its IT and Telecommunication platforms. Systems that bear resemblance to SORM are already operating in the Europe Union with the European Telecommunications Standard’s Institute’s (ETSI) specifications, and in the United States through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

    Although targeted surveillance plays an important role in the prevention of crime, including terrorism, the full scope of governmental surveillance technologies are not clearly defined, either in Russia, or in other countries.

  • Could Torture Ever be ‘Right’?

    The recent appointment of Gina Haspel as CIA Director is a sign of a growing official approval for the use of torture, despite its illegality under international and US domestic law. It is widely known that she previously helped cover up US government torture.

    FRONTLINE reported recently that ‘Haspel ran one of the first black sites – secret CIA prisons where the agency held perceived high-level terrorism suspects. She also participated in the controversial decision to destroy evidence of interrogation sessions in which detainees were subjected to waterboarding.’

    President Trump repeatedly praised torture techniques, too, announcing during his campaign that, ‘Torture works. Ok, folks? You know, I have these guys – ‘torture doesn’t work!’ – believe me, it works.’

    This idea that ‘torture works’ is often taken as moral justification for its use. Furthermore, while explicit moral argument in favour of torture is unusual, it is implicit in the characterisation of ‘terrorists’ as ‘baddies’. Even if an act of torture is regarded as unsavoury, it may still be deemed worthwhile if lives can be saved by using it. These arguments, however, are deeply flawed, as I will explain.

    In the absence of an internationally-agreed definition of terrorism I use this one adopted by the UN Security Council in 2004:

    … Criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily harm, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act, which constitute offences within the scope of and as defined in the international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism.
    (UN Security Council Res. 1566, 2004, para. 3)

    “Terrorists”, therefore, are defined as individuals who commit criminal offences, such as those detailed above, for the purpose of creating “a state of terror in the general republic”.

    Terrorism is also a crime under specific domestic codes, including the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. Specific offences include: ‘Membership of proscribed organizations, fund-raising for terrorism, directing a terrorist organization, and incitement of terrorism overseas.’ A person can be described as a terrorist, and prosecuted for criminal acts under domestic and international law as terrorist, for a wide range of deeds, ranging from simply being a member of a terrorist organization, to hijacking a plane.

    Let us assume for the purpose of this piece that any terrorists who is about to be tortured has already been found guilty of one of the criminal offences detailed above, rather than being merely suspected. So I will be talking about people who are guilty of offences that contribute to terrorism.

    My focus is on the state as a moral actor, rather than individuals working for the state; though there are interesting dilemmas in terms of individual responsibility.

    In 1984 the UN defined torture as:

    Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.(United Nations Torture Convention of 1984)

    This definition does not include, however, ‘pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions’ as The Telegraph put it in 2005, such as the death penalty.

    We may assume that Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s description of the plight of a person sentenced to death by the state in The Idiot is biographical, considering his own experience of narrowly avoiding a Czarist firing squad, allegedly for taking part in anti-governmental activities. By comparison with the fate of a person assailed and killed by brigands he says: ‘the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no greater agony than that’. He asks: ‘Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness?’

    This effect of lawful actions is important when it comes to deciding what form of torture, if any, could be permissible, as it implies that exceptions can be made, and in general there is ambiguity around what is generally understood as torture, and that which is actually illegal.

    As exposed by the water-boarding controversy, there are certain actions that are widely believed to constitute torture, but which can be defended as legal on technical grounds. In other words, if some actions generally considered torturous, are permitted, then there is the possibility that some actions are ‘torture’, without being illegal (domestically and internationally).

    That leaves the potential for certain torture techniques to be, not only legal, but seen as ‘right’ as in accordance with the law. It is precisely this loop-hole and the ambiguity in understanding of what is legal, and what is ‘right’, which opens the doors to the possibility of legally-sanctioned ‘torture warrants’.

    Which, if any, torture, could be considered ‘right’, then? Is something always ‘right’ because it is ‘legal’? Is it ever ‘right’ to legalise actions, such as those in self-defence, that are otherwise wrong? Could torture be one of those exceptions?

    Without delving too deeply into moral philosophy, we can take two approaches. The first, that of moral realism, identifies an action as inherently and objectively wrong. The second approach is utilitarian: which advocates the course that benefits the most people, maximizing general happiness and minimizing total pain.

    Utilitarianism is a form of Consequentialism, which broadly states that an action’s ‘rightness’ depends on the consequences of that action. We need not focus the discussion too much on ‘increasing utility’ and happiness; instead, I think it makes sense to consider the subject of torture pragmatically, as well as consider the wider consequences of using torture. Consequentialism is the stance often used to justify the use of torture, so let us consider whether the end ever justifies the means.

    It is difficult to find a justification of torture adopting moral realism, although there are manifestations of moral realism – Christian just law theory for example – which leave room for retaliation, and might be used to defend torture that is punitive. Our main discussion of torture, however, concerns that which is used to interrogate terrorists to extract information, because it is that use which tends to be defended.

    When might the ends justify the means to torture terrorists? Three significant arguments are adduced: (a) The Ticking Time Bomb Argument; (b) Secret Torture; and (c) the Machiavellian Approach. I will argue that none of these approaches are persuasive from a practical, Consequentialist perspective, and explain why torture is ineffective, morally wrong, and should never be legalised. I will finish by arguing that the institutionalisation of ‘legal torture’ is a problem in itself, and reiterate the danger inherent in legalising actions that are widely regarded as torture, even if a state’s lawyers can find ways to avoid official acknowledgement.

    I will argue that a zero tolerance approach to torture is the only way to avoid not only grave human rights abuses, but also the undermining of the Rule of Law. ‘Borderline’ or ‘legal’ torture methods, such as water-boarding, as well as the ‘torture warrants’ proposed by Alan Dershowitz are never the ‘right’ option either, precisely because any legalisation risks terrible consequences that far outweigh any positive outcomes.

    (a) The Ticking Time Bomb

    Many torture-sympathisers are fond of the ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ argument, which is a Philosophical thought experiment designed to test the limits of a moral proposition. It defies the ethical intuition that it is morally wrong to ever torture somebody, by constructing a situation in which there appears to be moral justification for using it. It is said that if someone doesn’t torture Terrorist X a certain number of civilians will die, that Terrorist X is guilty, and definitely knows where the bomb is, and that this is the only avenue of investigation open to the police.

    I would argue, first of all, that if this is really the only line of enquiry then the authorities have already failed, because even if they do torture Terrorist X, they are unlikely to stop the bomb from going off. Terrorists are often trained to resist torture, and those with an Islamic Fundamentalist background may actually seek martyrdom. Neither death, however slow and painful, nor the threat of it, or just the pain, is likely to persuade them to divulge any useful information.

    If the bomb is ‘about to go off’ then Terrorist X will know that, and will therefore be aware that he will not have to endure the interrogation for very long (should he be a terrorist averse to pain, rather than one trying to embrace it, if anyone truly does that). Another practical point in response to this scenario is that under such pressure Terrorist X may simply lie about the bomb’s whereabouts, to stop the torture, which would be detrimental to any counter-terrorist operation, as such information would be a waste of time.

    There are other serious difficulties with the scenario. It is not meant to be ‘practical’, precisely because it is a thought experiment. It is what Bob Brecher calls ‘a fantasy’, in the sense that rarely, if ever, could such a scenario occur in real life. Basing legislation and even moral theory on a fantasy, is simply irresponsible. It is one thing for moral philosophers to test their intuitions; quite another for policy-makers and lawyers to base legislation on it.

    Thus torture is unlikely to help stop the bomb, so the consequences of using torture here are ineffective, of no benefit to society, the counter-terror operation (whose time may be wasted), or, obviously, Terrorist X. Moreover, even in the extremely unlikely scenario that Terrorist X speaks, and the bomb doesn’t go off, the wider repercussions of using torture are so dire that even then, it is not right to use it.

    Firstly, it undermines the authority and integrity of international law. If a state finds a loophole in it that permits torture, then principles of individual human rights are clearly breached. Further, should a state use torture without legal sanction, and gets away with it, then international law loses its authority, in that its laws are broken without any consequences, rendering the international legal system weak and ineffectual, in actuality and in reputation.

    Abu Ghraib, a stain on the reputation of the United States.

    A state’s reputation is also ruined if it permits torture, especially where it is known and admired for being a liberal democracy. It will be seen as hypocritical, and as acting in a way that undermines its own values. The use of torture by the United States at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison, for example, has lowered many people’s estimation of the United States, which is now widely regarded as hypocritical and aggressive, rather than an inspiration to democrats and republicans worldwide.

    Reputational damage is problematic, furthermore, as it sets a bad example for other states, who may then use torture using the argument that, ‘If [America] can use torture, then why not us?’ Within a state, also, the legislation of even some ‘borderline’ kinds of torture may lead to a wider tolerance and use of worse torture, and might lead to it being used not just against terrorist, but other criminals and alleged criminals.

    In addition to these harmful consequences of even the limited use of torture, it may also prove to be not only ineffective for counter-terrorism (and even if it does ‘work’, the evidence collected under duress would be inadmissible in court), but also counter-productive. Torturing terrorists is likely to lead to retaliation and further terrorism, rather than diminish it.

    (b) Secret Torture

    One response to the negative consequences of the use of torture on terrorists outlined above, is that if it is hidden from public view, most of these repercussions could be mitigated. It is true that if it is kept under wraps, then the state in question could avoid undermining international law, superficially at least.

    If international law does not allow, or is not used to justify torture, then at least its integrity is kept intact, and in public its authority too. In keeping torture absolutely secret, furthermore, it avoids acquiring a bad reputation, which may also prevent the slippery slope of other states drawing legitimacy from the torturous state. Torture may also, if kept secret, not lead to retaliation.

    So if torture has few negative consequences, as outlined above, through being covered up, then perhaps it could be ‘right’ on some level? The first problem with this solution, however, is that keeping torture secret is almost impossible. Many states in recent history – the US and UK to name a couple – have failed in their efforts to do so, leading to all the negative consequences outlined already. Moreover, even if the secret is kept, it would be the height of hypocrisy for a liberal democracy to behave in this way, and completely undermines the Rule of Law.

    Another problem with this ‘solution’ is that even if kept secret, torture not only has damaging effects on the victim, but also on the torturer. Torture corrupts the perpetrator, and anyone who allows it. To allow, even to obligate, a person to torture another for the sake of his state, is destructive. It means that that person will possibly suffer horrendous guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in some cases, having accepted a level of personal responsibility.

    When torture is carried out in secret, there will always be people who know that it has happened, who have been involved at an individual level, and are aware that a state has permitted actions entirely contrary to its supposed values. It is highly unlikely, anyway, that something as grave as torture would remain a secret forever, even if the state in question ‘gets away with it’ in the immediate sense of not being punished for violating international law.

    (c) Machiavellian Approach

    A cynical approach to the problem of torture and the modern state, is simply to dispense with the liberal democratic ideals that prevent (at least in theory) certain states from using it. Indeed torture could be the ‘right’ option for a state unconcerned by its reputation, either domestically or internationally. Its government may not mind undermining international legal structures, and have no problem with setting a bad example to other states, provoking retaliation, and losing a virtuous reputation.

    If a state is utterly Machiavellian, and wishes to instill fear in its enemies then the use of torture could seem attractive, and ‘right’ in the distorted sense that torture might lead to the acquisition of power and wealth.

    Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli 1469-1527.

    Even if a state adopts this attitude, however, it is nevertheless in breach of international law, which has consequences, whether that state respects it or not. Although international legal structures are often criticised for being slow and ineffectual, they are still a force to be reckoned with. Twinned with the reputational damage, (whether the state in question cares about its reputation or not), it is unlikely that a ruthlessly Machiavellian, torture-happy state would escape sanctions from other countries and international legal structures.

    Even the most secretive, Macchiavellian state would likely run into trouble at some point. If the entire world became cynical and Machiavellian, then perhaps one such state could avoid punishment – as Nazi Germany sought for instance – but in such a situation internal opposition would surely emerge eventually, and certainly result in retaliation in some shape. Endemic violence, whether within state borders or otherwise, is never a favourable outcome, and certainly never ‘right’.

    Torturing a terrorist is never the ‘right’ thing to do, even in a hypothetical scenario of someone knowing where a ticking time bomb is located; even if it is kept under wraps, even if a state’s lawyers find a loophole in international law, and even if a state is utterly Machiavellian in its disregard for human rights, international law, and reputational damage.

    It is never right, even on a practical level, because the negative consequences outweigh whatever benefits there may seem to be. It risks retaliation, international opprobrium and possibly intervention (through the application of international law or otherwise); it damages state employees as well as those tortured; and imperils the integrity of its founding ideals (assuming the state is not Macchiavellian): these risks are simply not worth any short-term benefits one could possibly gain through torture.

    For a liberal democracy to permit the torture of terrorists, in the hope of gaining more power over them, ultimately reduces that state to the level of the terrorist, if not becoming a ‘terrorist’ in the conventional sense, then ‘terrorist’ in it wider meaning. There is too much of a family resemblance between he who terrorizes and he who tortures to take seriously the idea that someone who tortures a terrorist is really any better than him, really any more ‘right’. Torture lowers the perpetrator to the level of the terrrorist, embracing her own moral demise.

    Christiana Spens is a writer and academic, currently based in Scotland. Having read Philosophy at Cambridge, she then completed a Masters and PhD in Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews. She has written several books, most recently Shooting Hipsters: Rethinking Dissent in the Age of PR (Repeater Books, 2016) and The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media  (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). She writes regularly for Prospect, Studio Internationaland White Noise, on art, politics and literature. 

  • A Tiger’s Resurrection

    One beauty of the game of golf is the possibility to play it right up until your death. Indeed, many’s the enthusiast who has breathed his last on the fairway. It is often said there are worse ways to go. My own father had the unfortunate experience of attempting to resuscitate a man on the third green in Lahinch, but sadly the cardiac arrest proved too severe. There was general consensus – among his golf brethren at least – that there was no better spot on which to meet your maker.

    This brings us to the recent resuscitation in the fortunes of Tiger Woods. The Golfing Gods had created, we thought, a man capable of walking on any water hazard. An unbreakable spirit. His rise through the world rankings spread the gospel of the game, and brought a global following of disciples.

    Yet when the burden of carrying the clubs grew too heavy it seemed Golf had killed poor Tiger. Success and the weight of expectation brought behaviour patterns not associated with a ‘heavenly being’. They certainly did not accord with his father Earl’s earlier perception of messianic powers lying in his son. In 1996 he said: ‘The world will be a better place to live in by virtue of his existence. He will bring to the world a humanitarianism. I know I was personally selected by God to nurture this young man’.

    This false prophecy from a Father about a Son ended up an unholeable Ghostly mess. Life lived through golf left a man unable to see the Woods for the trees. The Tiger we admired no longer lives. He was crucified, and the game of golf suffered for his sins. Unfortunately the young apostles in his wake could not captivate the masses. Golf’s television ratings were left drowning in a river of Jordan Spieth and co..

    However, one beauty of this Life is the possibility of redemption. The list of humans, sporting or otherwise, resurrected from past indiscretions is legion. Tiger has sought forgiveness for being a false idol, and the High Priests and Pharisees of golf and television no longer wash their hands of him. In return they have been rewarded by far more than thirty silver pieces.

    On reflection, it is now legitimate to ask whether Tiger has been something of the sacrificial lamb in this story. Perhaps it is really for the rest of us to repent, and seek redemption from our past expression of vitriol and disgust towards him.

    Life and Golf sometimes share similar teachings. Humility, respect, and even silence are all part of the learning. The Buddhist in Tiger should appreciate these lessons. When he returns to the garden of Augusta after Easter the predominantly Christian crowd will rise to the occasion and rejoice in his humbled return with respectful applause. The awestruck silence as the game’s saviour rounds Amen Corner once again may confirm that golf’s prayers have been answered.

     

    Tim Rice is the reigning Irish PGA champion.

  • Defiant Compassion

    On yoga teacher training courses among the heartening questions I receive are ones that readers of my previous piece have also posed: how can I be compassionate towards what I consider wrong, or evil, and still fight it? And, does an excess of compassion diminish a capacity to affect change?

    The short answer is the second question is ‘no’, while the first question invites you to take some simple steps, assuming you have arrived at a place of compassion.

    In that article I advocated compassion towards Donald Trump, because feelings of hatred will (a) not change his behaviour, and (b) make you miserable. Extending compassion to someone so obviously tortured by vanity maintains sanity, and acknowledges a shared humanity.

    By adopting this approach we bring calm to our own lives, and thereby make the world around us a marginally better place. Getting angry at Trump solves nothing.

    Have you ever wanted to impress someone so badly on the first date that you went out of your way to make it perfect in every way? So ideal you expected to sweep her off her feet? And then she never called you back?  Yeah, me too. The mistake we made was to have a preordained plan rather than focusing on the person when we actually met them, and being authentically ourselves. It’s a case of wanting something so badly that you are blind to the reality of what is needed to make it work.

    Yogis have a name for this: ‘Avidya’, loosely translated as ‘ignorance or blindness’. While its root is habit, it branches into ego, attachment, aversion, and fear. When we give into hate or anger (towards Trump or whoever), or fear (failing to make the right impression on our date) we are blinded by that mindset. We won’t get what we want, no matter how hard we try, because we have lost all perspective.

    By clearing our minds through compassion, and stepping back from our fear or anger we begin to see more clearly. Then we find fresh avenues of thought that were previously hidden. Now we are ready to act with awareness instead of rage. When this occurs, according to yogis, there is nothing you can’t change because you see a situation as it really is, instead of idealising it

    This leads to the second question as to whether excessive compassion leads to crippling passivity. I would start by saying it is almost impossible to affect change without compassion. But compassion shouldn’t imply passivity. Compassion is a mindset, and passivity is an action (that is, the decision to do nothing, which is an action in itself).

    Through growing awareness you develop compassion; then you resist anger and see the world more clearly. You find ways to resist that are born of reflection and rooted in reality, not impulsive responses based on distorted outlooks. Now is your time to act: with total clarity, knowledge, purpose, and a drive that will never run out of fuel, because it is rooted in truth instead of fear. Welcome to compassionate defiance.

    But this is only halfway towards a solution we are still working on within ourselves. The second part is the action. Once you have decided to act, what then?

    There are many great examples of compassionate defiance through history. Not least in Gandhi’s campaign that brought down an Empire. His approach was based on yogic wisdom, especially drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. Like Descartes’ Discourse on Method, it is the kind of book you can read in a day. Its influence is still felt in every corner of the globe. From it we glean a simple key to unlock action out of compassion:

    You have the right to work but never the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is the perfect evenness of mind.

    Take refuge in an attitude of detachment and you will amass a wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action grow miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the rewards they believe they are entitled to.

    This is the bedrock of Karma yoga: the use of yoga in the world. By detaching ourselves (or being compassionate towards ourselves) from emotional responses to the outcomes of our actions we retain our composure. We have already seen what anger and hate can do when we allow ego, attachment, aversion, fear to cloud our judgment. Now we must stay the course to prevent our actions from leading to more Avidya.

    The kernel of the passage is to act with the clarity of truth, and to be content with that. For we cannot predict the outcome of our actions, and trying to do so only leads to suffering. Act because it is right and let the result take care of itself. To do otherwise is to live a life of constant resentment, not grounded in reality, but based on what we desire in any given moment, just like the failed date experience.

    To affect change one must be willing to let others make changes in themselves. Truth must be uncovered individually for it be lasting. That is the genius of the Gita, and the genius of compassionate defiance. In other words, ‘Speaking Truth to Power’ starts with compassion for others, and ends with compassion for yourself.

    When we can do these things, change can take place all around us. We stop being Trolls on our own emotions and start being effective.

  • Why is Software so Complicated?

    In the beginning in order to count we used, as we still do, our fingers, and sometimes our toes. Not only are they conveniently arranged according to the prime divisors of their sum (2 and 5 multiplied make 10, and no other primes less than 10 divide evenly therein), but we can also fold them up and down according to our needs, so allowing a primitive but very effective memory aid.

    In more recent times the abacus was was the paradigm of calculation. It was efficient, communicable, and easily learned, mainly because it is like having many more fingers we can fold up and down.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Chinese-abacus.jpg
    Chinese Abacus.

    In the ‘good old days’ of early electro-magnetic computation we programmed directly onto the computer via switches. Think of an abacus with an automatic left-alignment capability. We still need to know how to use an abacus but we can mechanically automate left-alignment. Things progressed to abstractions such as punch-cards, which could be prepared in one’s own time and then inputed into the computer to perform the calculations.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Blue-punch-card-front-horiz.png
    Punch-card.

    As you can see there are similarities between punch-cards and an abacus. They both use a columnar layout, they are of limited scope, and both require familiarity with arithmetic. Already we can also see the increase in complexity, both in terms of the density of the information on display and the amount of meta-information used.

    Nowadays we have the X86-64 architecture. Good luck with that.

    Modern microchip.

    And yet, even though these devices are so tiny and complicated that they operate near the limits of measurability itself, to such an extent that the designers have to worry about electrons jumping from one adjacent wire to another and hence spoiling everything, we don’t need luck to make them work. We use abstractions!

    We encode these abstractions in software. The first recognised programme was designed by Ada Lovelace, who worked with Babbage on the Analytical Engine,  and calculated Bernoulli Numbers. Ever since we have been working to increase both the power and clarity of our ability to communicate our calculable ideas both to computers, and to other humans.

    As a brief digression, programming is at least as much about sharing thought with other people as it is with computers. A good piece of software not only runs efficiently on whatever the hardware requires; it is also easily understood by other programmers so that when, not if, it needs to be altered to fix errors, or extend its functionality, this can happen with a minimum of stress.

    So why IS software complicated? Some of the reasons are:

    • Hardware gets more complicated and so the requirements to programme them becomes more complicated.
    • The ecosystem gets more complicated as we create more and more general libraries each of which specialises in one particular competence (for example numerical calculations).
    • New techniques are developed all the time, normally coming from academia, especially the field of Pure Mathematics.
    • We demand ever more functionality from our computers, such as real-time communication, or fancy graphics.
    • We keep on adding leaky abstractions.

    As seen above, computer hardware is becoming more and more complicated as the years go by, and this rate of increasing complexity is well described by one of the most famous heuristics in the industry: Moore’s Law which states: ‘the number of transistors in dense integrated circuits doubles every eighteen months’. This has held true for over sixty years, though we are coming up against hard quantum mechanical limits now. While this means we can perform more calculations, faster, than ever before, it also means the hardware is becoming more complicated, and so the software needed to manage the hardware must keep pace.

    A contemporary operating system is typically composed of many millions of lines of code, broken into many different parts. Typically an operating system comprises a kernel that interfaces directly with the hardware, and many libraries that specialise in tasks such as networking or the graphical user interface, as well as the programs most users need, such as word processors, games, and web browsers.

    In Mathematics itself there is a more than two-thousand year quest to define and guarantee the correctness of the subject itself, and quite apart from every novelty of efficient computation, the foundations themselves have undergone radical development in recent years. One hundred years ago Set Theory was introduced and has served well, if trickily, ever since. The trickiness involved, as well the seeming vagueness of some of the underlying assumptions, further led some, especially L. E. J. Brouwer, to try to reformulate Mathematics on an ‘intuitionistic’ basis. This in turn led to the recent Univalent Foundations and Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT). HoTT, in particular, shows considerable promise in allowing us to reason with great abstraction and powerful correctness on the theory and practice of programming.

    Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer.jpeg
    The face of a man who looked upon infinity and saw only potential.

    Our demands for greater ‘power’ impose constraints that can only be met with greater complexity. Without going into great detail, as we move from the relatively simple one-to-one, client-server computational architecture to a fully distributed computation model, as is ubiquitous in Nature (the speed of light guarantees a locality of computation), so we are more and more reliant on the subtle and intriguing theories such as Paxos, which no matter one’s expertise is still not simple. Developments in this area, from the use of bunches of graphics cards for statistical modeling, to the growth of secure data storage systems, tend to be significant both in terms of novelty and difficulty.

    Abstractions, especially as implemented by the congenitally lazy programmer, tend to reveal too many of the underlying assumptions, and hence ‘leak’ complexity both up and down our level of abstracion, though mainly up. These leaks then require us to stick our fingers in the complexity dyke, and no matter how many fingers we may abstract, the water of complexity will tend to flow downwards, around and past and through our ability to count. (Reality is not necessarily countable.)

    So what can we do about it? The answer is simple, we can provide simplicity through abstraction.

    Let me give you an example. When we are young and learning to count we learn first to count to ten, using our fingers. Each count has its own term, one, two, three, etc.. Then we learn how to count to twenty, and the terms associated. The thirties follow, and the forties, and patterns begin to form. Then, like a piece of magic, we learn how number can be represented in table.

    Having constructed a table of the first hundred number we can not only extend this to the first one thousand, but also to the first million, as befits our patience. More importantly we can abstract over the pattern, and use this pattern in its most general sense, allowing each entry of the first one hundred to refer to a table of one hundred, thereby giving a table of tables, of numerical size 10,000, or as the Greeks would have it, a myriad. So we abstract, for we are ‘outside the area contained within the lines drawn’.

    Of course, for this to work, we need to know and understand the complexities, we need to measure them, and abstract over them, and most of all we need to learn Mathematics, for it is the language of abstraction.

    Huge efforts have been made in this field, and are ongoing. Coq is a fabulous development, as is Agda, and Haskell and Rust are becoming mainstream. In Mathematics itself there is still roiling debate and vigorous argument about the nature and validity of abstraction, both pure and applied. The conversations around these topics leach into Computer Science of course, but also Philosophy, Law, Economics and even Political Science.

    Programming is like a mixture of Poetry and Mathematics. It has all the rigour of Poetry and all the interpretability of Mathematics.

    You want to know the secret of success in this field, as in so many others?

    Play. Look at children learn. From repetition of simple tasks that adults find mind-numbingly boring children learn the abstractions that give them all their languages, all their games, all their mastery over themselves and other things. So it is with mathematicians, they play with numbers and their patterns. So it is with programmers, computers are the toys with which they learn the abstractions to understand things simply, but no simpler.

    Make like a child, be simple, practice, and understand. This is the simplicity of software.

    The featured image, taken by John McSporran which shows up in searches of complexity with reuse rights, is aptly entitled ‘complexity’. Though not a picture of software it is undeniably complicated, and also beautiful, and a good deal more intuitively so than any map of dependency graphs. It also, perhaps amusingly, evokes Ted Stevens’ series of tubes.

    Eoin Tierney is the Science Editor of Cassandra Voices.

  • A Look Inside Italian Politics

    Posterity will determine if the Italian election results of March 4th 2018 marked an earthquake that will endure in the landscape. Or will a result, apparently seismic, turn out to be like the volcano that smoulders, without ever fully clearing its throat? No one is quite sure the precise dish the electorate will be served after the election.

    The success of the Eurosceptic and unashamedly anti-immigrant Northern League under Matteo Salvini (now seemingly reconciled to preserving the territorial integrity of the Italian state), and to a greater extent, the relatively unknown quantity of the Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi di Maio, combined with the decline of Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia and the centrist Democratic Party under Matteo Renzi, reflects a Europe-wide populist surge; the decline of traditional parties, and emphasises the waning legacies of iconic figures of the first decade of the twentieth century, such as Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, Bertie Ahern and Berlusconi himself.

    But the widely-bandied term ‘populist’ tells us very little, and is often used simply to dismiss the popular appeal of a party by those opposed to its objectives. In a recent European context it has become shorthand for increasing xenophobia, and outright racism, triggered especially by the refugee crisis of 2015, and associated with the ‘strongman’ leadership of Putin’s Russia.

    M5S has been criticised both within Italy, and in the international media, for reflecting prejudices commonly expressed in Italian society. On the other hand, there is often a failure to recognise the determination of the Movement to clean up Italian politics, particularly in their southern electoral strongholds.

    Roger Cohen of the New York Times crudely dismisses M5S, lumping them with the Northern League, as one of the ‘out-with-the-bums parties’, and linked to Europe-wide ‘angry illiberal movements’. An apparently “illiberal” approach to immigration may largely be explained, however, by the responsiveness of M5S policies to the concerns of supporter, rather than any racist demagoguery emanating from its leadership.

    Such criticism also ignores how Italy is the first port of call for the majority of refugees who take the Mediterranean route into Europe, and how other states are not rising to the challenge of accommodating more new arrivals.

    M5S offers a new political formula that could easily have continent-wide ramifications. They promote technocratic expertise, with an emphasis on sustainability at a local level. The ‘five stars’, refers to the party’s five core values: public water access, sustainable transportation, sustainable development, a right to Internet access, and environmentalism. These founding principals clearly distinguishes them from the Northern League, and authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary or Russia.

    One of their most important rules is that any political career is a temporary service: no one who has already been elected twice at any level (local or national) can be a candidate again. Elected representatives put a proportion of their salaries back into a micro credit fund for small businesses, and reject campaign contributions. In short, M5S is attempting to inoculate itself against prevailing corruption, and ‘strongman’ leadership.

    But whether M5S can simply focus on discrete objectives and local issues, while ignoring national, regional and global institutions, is doubtful. Environmentalism can morph into short-term nimbyism. Moreover, without being corrupt or paternalistic, an elected representative may offer a course that is not instantly popular in a direct democracy scheme but may prove wise, and popular, in the long run.

    There are parallels with the current political constellation in England (if not the wider United Kingdom), where the Northern League plays the character of UKIP, the Eurosceptic right the Tory party; Forza Italia assumes the part of a Europhile Tory rump; the Democratic Party is represented by ‘New’ (an increasingly obsolete description) Labour ; and the Five Star Movement (less the political nous of a veteran such as Jeremy Corbyn) reprises the role of a Euro-doubtful Momentum.

    But of course Italian politics is unique in many respects. This is a long-legged country with characteristics of an ‘Asiatic’ Mediterranean, and a ‘Germanic’ North, as well as its own, often intoxicating, Latin inheritance. There is enduring, embedded, wealth alongside grinding, endemic poverty, mainly below the Mezzogiorno, but increasingly found in all major urban centres. The significance of Milan lying at a latitude closer to London than Palermo should not be discounted.

    II

    In many respects Italy is a fractured polity and unstable democracy, which emerged out of a long fascist dictatorship (1922-45) under Benito Mussolini, and wartime alliance with Nazi Germany. During the Cold War most governments lasted less than a year, and featured a revolving cast of roguish characters, foremost sevent-time Prime Minister, and twenty-seven-time minister Guilio Andreotti. In that time Italy’s Communist Party was the largest in Europe (with a membership exceeding two million under the astute leadership of Palmiro Togliatti), which despite not participating in governments held the feet of the ruling elite to the coals.

    The Master and his Apprentice. ©INTERNATIONAL PHOTO/LAPRESSE 12-06-1984 ROMA SPETTACOLO NELLA FOTO: SILVIO BERLUSCONI E GIULIO ANDREOTTI

    Corruption has long been the bane of Italian politics, particularly in the south of the country. Between them the Neapolitan Camorra, Calabrian Ndrangheta and Siclian Cosa Nostra have maintained fiefdoms the like of which are unknown in other Western European country, with tentacles reaching into the rest of Italy and beyond.

    The endurance of organised crime can be traced to the Allied conquest of Italy during the Second World War. The fascists had kept local chieftains under the thumb, often by simply imprisoning them without trial. But just as de-Baathification in Iraq after the invasion in 2003 unleashed underlying, atavistic forces, similarly, across southern Italy after 1945, gangsters entered a vacuum left behind by a decapitated state.

    Only after the fascist prisons were thrown open, and shadowy American Intelligence figures such as ‘Lucky’ Luciano arrived on the scene, was a humanitarian crisis averted. Reliance was placed on old networks of patronage to feed the population, as Norman Lewis’s account in Naples 1945 illuminates. Italian democracy has been counting the cost of Allied authorities ‘looking the other way’ ever since.

    'Lucky' Luciano.
    ‘Lucky’ Luciano, unlucky Italy.

    Any journalist investigating their affairs whether in Italy or elsewhere, as the recent likely contract killing of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner Martina Kusnirova reveals, must be aware of the dangers. Investigating judges  require huge security details; even then some, such as Judge Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, are still assassinated.

    The scene of the Massacre of Capaci where Giovanni Falcone, Francesca Morvillo and their police escort were killed by a Mafia bomb. 23 May 1992.

    The Mani Pulite (clean hands) judicial investigation into corruption of 1992 brought the false dawn of a Second Republic. Electoral laws were amended and the Christian Democrats, which had provided the Prime Ministers to all bar three post-war governments until that point, disappeared entirely.

    However, a corrupt deck was merely shuffled, and many Italians lost faith in politics altogether during the lost decade (2001-2011) of billionaire Berlusconi’s showman leadership. His clownish antics provided a front for deepening corruption, while the television media he controlled provided a drip-feed of light entertainment, football and titillation that kept the patient Italian public in a mildly delusional state. Here M5S politician Alessandro di Battista reads out a court ruling against a former longtime aide to Berlusconi and the founder of Forza Italia, Marcello Dell’Utri, who is in jail because of his links to the Cosa Nostra.

    https://www.facebook.com/dibattista.alessandro/videos/1444836532295073/

    The period since the end of the Cold War also witnessed a steady rise in inequality, and the effects of the economic crisis, beginning in 2008, continues to be felt. In 2017 the bottom 30 percent of the population was at risk of poverty and social exclusion. That is up from 28.7 the previous year.

    Berlusconi also coarsened political debate, bringing respectability to the expression of prejudice against foreigners living in Italy, thereby providing an obvious scapegoat when times grew hard.

    III

    In a wide-ranging account, Delizia – the Epic History of Italian Food (2007), John Dickie describes Italian food at the turn of the twentieth century as ‘local rather than national, whereas French cooks were armed with a uniform terminology – coulis, hors d’oeurvres, potage – their Italian counterparts spoke a variety of mongrel food dialects’.

    Dickie continues: ‘The history of Italian food after unification is the story of the relationship between these proud local food cultures, and the dream of bringing all of Italy to one table, thereby creating a national cuisine to rival that of France’. This fragmentation reflects a prevailing loyalty towards town or region, rather than country or nation.

    The history of the pizza is instructive. It shares a provenance similar to Greek pitta and Turkish pide, as part of an extended family of Mediterranean flat breads. The author of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi (1826-90) dismissed this Neapolitan dish as ‘a patchwork of greasy filth that harmonises perfectly with the person selling it’. The Margherita pizza, named in honour of Queen Margherita’s visit to Napoli in 1889, represents the colours, red (tomato), white (mozzarella cheese) and green (basil), of the Italian flag. More importantly, its name accommodated the people of a city, renowned for poverty and disease, within the new nation’s gastronomy.

    Dickie likens the Margherita’s propaganda value to Princess Diana embracing AIDS victims. But Napoli’s waste management problems continue to this day: in 2015 Europe’s biggest illegal dump –‘Italy’s Chernobyl’ – was uncovered nearby. The greasiness of Italian politics, like the layer of mozzarella on top of a pizza, has long held in check progressive forces of green and red.

    Despite Italy’s relative novelty – unification only culminated in 1871 – this is an old country. The architectural layers found in almost every city are a daily reminder of past glories. Italians generally seem unmistakably Italian, no matter where they are from on the peninsula or islands. Notwithstanding regional variation, there is a quintessence to life across the land. Bureaucracy and conviviality represent the poles of annoyance and enchantment any resident or outsider negotiates.

    The nation’s varied constituents were never static aboriginal communities. A central location in the Mediterranean, pointing into Africa but firmly lodged in Europe – the Alps were the ‘traitor’ of Italy according to Napoleon –  has brought migrant waves since time immemorial. Anyone who is anyone has spent time here, from Hannibal to Lord Byron and Gore Vidal.

    It is now the main entry point for Africans who aspire to live in Europe. Italy took some 64 percent of the 186,000 migrants who reached Europe in 2017 through the Mediterranean route. It took the majority of these migrants in 2016 too. The current surge is unprecedented but there is no end in sight as looming Climate Change threatens further mass movements of peoples. Recent new arrivals join five million foreign nationals already living in Italy. It is estimated that there are as many as 670,000 illegal immigrants living in the country.

    Desperate people are being trafficked across the Mediterranean aboard flimsy vessels, while the European Community washes its hands. The Dublin Regulation (2013) ordains that any decision on refugee status falls for determination in the country where a person first lands, unless family reunification is involved. Many Italians argue other European countries are not sharing the burden, and they have a point.

    With a prevailing sense of being overwhelmed by immigration at a time when the economy is still in remission, predictably, extremism is on the rise. Berlusconi broke taboos that many politicians now habitually cross.

    On February 5th Luca Traini, a former candidate for the Northern League, was arrested after targeting African migrants in a two-hour drive-by shooting spree in the Marche city of Macerata. This came days after the discovery there of the body of an eighteen-year-old Italian woman, allegedly killed and dismembered by a Nigerian immigrant gang. The threat of further bloodshed is acute.

    In its aftermath Silvio Berlusconi called for the expulsion of thousands of migrants, while League leader Matteo Salvini said ‘those who fill us with migrants instigate violence’.

    IV

    The Five Star Movement is the sulphur in the Italian political wind, whose promotion of direct participation of citizens in the management of public affairs through digital democracy could provide an example well beyond Italy. But in any situation where an electorate is ill-informed by a media dominated by vested interests this can have dangerous consequences, no matter how progressive the core ideas of any movement. However, the despondency of some commentators regarding the capacity of the Internet to inform, as opposed to trigger prejudice, may be misplaced in the long term.

    M5S propose a fusion of green and red politics that should have admirers beyond Italian shores: they embrace theories of de-growth, and support ‘green’ employment. The need to stop polluting Italy’s environment is recognised, and they call for an end to expensive ‘great works’, including incinerators and high-speed rail links. They aim to raise the quality of life and bring about greater social justice.

    But the thorny issue of their approach to the European Community remains, which is closely connected to resolving the immigration imbroglio. Somewhat disconcertingly, after a ballot of members a decision was made to join a political group in the European Parliament which also contains UKIP. The option, however, of joining the Greens/EFA group was also discussed, but was unavailable due to that group’s prior rejection of the idea.

    For a country like Italy to leave the Community would be a hammer blow from which it might not recover, at least in its present configuration. Moreover, in a globalised world it is surely impossible for any one country, especially one so unstable as Italy, simply to go its own way, at least with a democratic government. Removed from the European mainstream, Italy could easily fall prey to authoritarian government, which is part of its political DNA.

    ©Daniele Idini

    Leading members of M5S have at times offered inflammatory views on immigration, in particular Beppe Grillo, its animating spirit. On 23 December, 2016 he wrote on his blog that all undocumented immigrants should be expelled from the country, and that the Schengen Accord, allowing free movement of people between signatory states, should be temporarily suspended in the event of a terrorist attack.

    Grillo seems to have been panicked by the terror threat. In the wake of the 2016 Berlin attack and the killing of a suspected terrorist near Milan he wrote: ‘Our country is becoming a place where terrorists come and go and we are not able to recognise and report them and they can wander all over Europe undisturbed thanks to Schengen’.

    On 21 April 2017, Grillo also published a piece questioning the role of NGOs operating rescue ships off the coast of Libya. He suggested they may be aiding traffickers. Grillo’s comments raise serious questions over whether M5S will calm the growing scapegoating of immigrants in Italy. While his views may reflect what many Italians feel, it is surely incumbent on a politician to lead rather than follow, and not to exaggerate any threats.

    Fortunately the M5S is a broad church, and Grillo, while still influential, is not their leader in parliament. Last year Luigi Di Maio called for ‘an immediate stop to the sea-taxi service’. He also said he would support a referendum for Italy to leave the Eurozone and would vote to leave. In January 2018, however, he reversed his previous position. What appears to be the relative abatement of the terror threat will, hopefully, go some way towards calming the fears of many Italians. But other European states must recognise that preserving the European Community will require a sharing of the refugee burden.

    V

    In his 1963 account The Italians, Luigi Barzini endeavours to explain why his countrymen have historically failed to coagulate into a singular nation.  Firstly, he points to ‘rapid and enthusiastic acceptance of changing political fashions and of foreign conquerors which made all revolutions irresistible but superficial and all new regimes unstable.’ This might be identified in the enthusiastic post-war approval of Communism, and the earlier groundswell of support for Mussolini’s Fascism. The MS5’s embrace of digital democracy has been dismissed as a political fad in the era of the Internet.

    Secondly, Barzini found ‘an art of living as if all laws were obnoxious obstacles to be overcome somehow, an art which made the best of laws ridiculously ineffective’. This reflects a permissive attitude towards organised crime, which M5S are at least seriously challenging.

    Finally he averts to ‘the certainty that the most inflexible government could, in the long run, be corroded from the inside.’ This final point is important in terms of understanding the reluctance of many among M5S to work with other parties to form a government. It is also reflects the cynical response of many commentators to the efforts of the M5S leadership to form a government. Italy requires meaningful reforms and this will require deals to be done, even with the Northern League, who are surely no worse than Berlusconi’s cronies. It is unfortunate that the Democratic Party, with whom M5S should have most policies in common, have expressed a determination to remain in opposition.

    It would perhaps be wise to recognise that politics is the art of the possible, and that reforming a political system as dysfunctional as Italy’s will take considerable time, but at least the priorities of M5S appear progressive in terms of social justice and sustainability. Perhaps most important are the precautions the Movement are taking against ‘strong man’ leadership, which could be a template for other political systems to follow.

    Frank Armstrong is the content editor of Cassandra Voices.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini

  • What the Irish Abortion Debate Ignores

    The greatest trial lawyer of the last century was undoubtedly Clarence Darrow. He was often described as just a lucky country bumpkin, or a ‘lucky old son of a […]’ in the vernacular of the time. More than a lawyer though, he became the exemplar and paradigm of secularism in America, a voice of reason pitched against a cacophony of superstition and religious hysteria.

    By the time of the Scopes Trial in 1925 Darrow was widely regarded as a dog who had had his day. The case involved a young schoolteacher who had shown the temerity to teach Darwinism in the Deep South: Dayton, Tennessee to be precise. It is dramatised in the play, and film, Inherit The Wind (1960), which at times plays fast and loose with the facts for dramatic effect.

    It was actually a test case; the arrest had been staged by the American Council of Civil Liberties in order to bring a showdown with the fundamentalism that was creeping into American politics. The schoolteacher had volunteered for the task.

    The American Council for Civil Liberties wanted a clean-cut preppie lawyer, but they got Darrow. Why? Because they were bereft of funds and the Baltimore Herald, under its legendary editor H.L. Mencken, insisted. Mencken was the greatest muck-racking controversialist in the history of journalism, a uniquely acerbic wit, perhaps only rivaled by that of Christopher Hitchens. They were paying for the trial, and would call the shots.

    So Darrow dragged his weary bones into the Lions’ Den of the Deep South, assailed by a plethora of ailments which would ultimately kill him, but not just yet. His opponent was an old adversary, and if not quite a friend, someone for whom he had a degree of respect. Enter three time unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency of the United States: William Jennings Bryant.

    Darrow and Bryant’s careers shared a certain trajectory in that both rode a populist and progressive wave, involving the enfranchisement and protection of the ordinary working man both in the great cities and rural heartlands. Where they differed markedly was that Bryant was also a religious fanatic, who railed against the imposition of northern secular values on the Southern states. They were in league with one another in seeking to improve the lot of the poor in life, but fell out over their understanding of the origins of life. The divisive issue was Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, as it remains today.

    It was really a show trial with a foregone conclusion. The question of guilt was never in doubt. America itself was in the dock. The Baltimore Sun ensured an international spotlight, while the new medium of radio provided an immediacy to the coverage, foreshadowing the role of television in the OJ Simpson Trial seventy years on.

    With the continuing culture wars in America, the case has never been of merely historic interest. It also has a relevance to the understanding of events in contemporary Ireland, which sees a similar confrontation. The new battleground is the forthcoming referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which says:

    The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

    II

    In the recent case of M & ors -v- Minister for Justice & ors the Supreme Court of Ireland gave the green light for the abortion referendum to proceed. But this is just the opening salvo in a long campaign. The forces of obscurantism and absurdity are mustering. No doubt the roughhouse Youth Defence will swing into action, while more polite academics and lawyers, but with similar extreme views, will work out the stratagems and ruses. The X Case of 1992, where a fourteen-year old girl, pregnant as a result of statutory rape, was initially denied by the High Court the right to travel to the UK for an abortion but given leave on appeal by the Supreme Court to do so, will seem like a squall by comparison to the force of this hurricane.

    So what is going to happen?

    First and foremost the recent decision paves the way for the referendum. I expect, in sequence, the following to ensue:

    1.    There will be a challenge to the wording and content of the referendum on the bases that people are either being misled or that it is deliberately vague. This will fail, as it always does, but another publicity bun fest is guaranteed.

    2.    There will then be deep scrutiny of all funding sources and avowed support, either explicit or implicit, by governmental structures, as well as any other interference in the process to engineer an outcome.

    This may, or may not, succeed, but could delay the Referendum process, require a redraft, or if after the event, lead to an application for the invalidation of the result, which will also prove unsuccessful.

    Thus it will fail, but further publicity will ensue.

    But I think there is a paradigm shift. This is the final battle, the last hurrah.

    What can the so-called Catholic intelligentsia do to avoid the democratic of the people will if the obvious legal route proves fruitless, as it ought?

    There is one last avenue available in my considered legal opinion, and that is to argue that the right to abortion violates the right to life itself.

    This is precisely what the Supreme Court denied in the M & ors, as they confined the protection of the unborn to the clause likely to be deleted through the referendum. So wider arguments under the substantive right to life can seemingly be negated. This seems settled, but no doubt challenges are being considered to the absence of protection of life arising out of the probable deletion of the Eighth Amendment. Once legislation is formulated, a multiplicity of challenges seem inevitable.

    A harbinger of this appears in an Irish Times article by (14/3/18) by one of the leading ideologues on the Pro Life side William Binchy. He suggests that the forthcoming referendum repealing the Eighth, if passed, will open the door to unfettered abortion-on-demand, akin to the regime in the United States under Roe v Wade; but he dangles the opportunity for a further challenge too, quoting from Chief Justice Frank Clarke’s judgement in M & ors: ‘the State is entitled to take account of the respect which is due to human life as a factor which may be taken into account as an aspect of the common good in legislating.’

    A never ending saga in short.

    Then there are the informal tactics and strategies that will be used. These include variations on a theme and, potentially, violence. The clamour is going to get worse and worse. Protests, attacks on the court, demonstrations outside Dail Eireann, civil unrest, intimidation, shock tactics, framing, the kitchen sink.

    III

    The Catholic Church still runs most maternity hospitals, and has put the kibosh on the implementation of the X case for over twenty years. So the league of decency will endure, and democracy will be frustrated.

    This is no longer a Secular Age. Religious fundamentalism in all parts of the world is on the rise. In Ireland there are well placed boyos in the judiciary, and the once proud voices of secularism are no longer heard: Susan Denham has retired, and Adrian Hardiman passed away. All contacts with pious judges will be utilised to disrupt the passage of this referendum. But in the light of the present decision I still predict this will prove fruitless.

    The world will be watching as they were in Dayton Tennessee. The outcome will expose Ireland for what it is in many respects: a grubby Third World, sexually-hysterical, religiously-disturbed state.

    This outcome will be different however. The abortion argument will prevail. The Religious Right will lose. Or at least they will lose this vote. But let me sound a cautionary note.

    A drawn out Referendum campaign will keep attention away from the real burning issues of housing, homelessness and rising inequality. Who cares about the right to choose, after all, if you cannot afford to eat?

    Those funding the litigation might do well to focus on the quality of life of the living rather than the inception of life itself.

    It seems to me that this victory for progressives will be deeply ambiguous. Yes, a right to choose will be established, but at what cost?

    There is merit, I grudgingly concede, in the argument that abortion as a lifestyle choice fits with a Neoliberal paradigm. An extension of consumerism that ignores the gathering storm of economic catastrophe brought on by rising poverty and ecological meltdown.

    Political talents and revenue are being devoted to pursue fruitless opposition to a done deal: fight the good fight for abortion, and forget about the war against homelessness.

    I just wonder who is going to reprise the role of Darrow or William Jennings Bryant, and, above all, who is going to get the role of Mencken, the prince of gutter press journalists in this morality play.

    There is a wider struggle at work, in defence of reason and the Enlightenment, which the vacancy of Neoliberalism ignores. Thus, the legendary Darrow asked in the Scopes Trial:

    Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? In addition, tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. Soon you may ban books and newspapers. Then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!

    IV

    Noam Chomsky recently claimed that the Republican Party is the ‘most dangerous organization in world history’. He has corrected many interviewers who mistakenly assume he meant ‘the most dangerous organization in the world today’. Given his precision with language, what seems an outlandish statement, is clearly one he takes seriously.

    The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has been criticized for being not nearly stringent enough to succeed in keeping temperature rise below two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial averages. It is earnestly hoped by environmentalists that it is a stepping-stone before a more robust deal. Fat chance, as Trump’s administration goes about dismantling even that fig leaf of modesty.

    Chomsky also mentioned in a recent BBC Newsnight interview that there has to be a connection between the denial of the science, and the fact that nearly 40% of the American public believe the Second Coming will occur by 2050.

    In his illuminating Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014) Carlo Rovelli chides humanity for failing to draw the lessons necessary for survival:

    I believe our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years; for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have even been in existence. We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. The brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us. For the Earth they may turn out to be a small irrelevant blip, but I do not think that we will outlast them unscathed – especially since public and political opinion prefers to ignore the dangers which we are running, hiding our heads in the sand. We are perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I fear soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilisation.

    The passage points to the differences between ideas informed by science, and those grounded in fundamentalist interpretations of religion. Science sees humanity for what we are in the universe, rather than being its centre and purpose. Far more terrifying than this is the preacher who refuses to accept that we might just be an irrelevant blip in the universe, and sees the Earth as something created for us to make hay with. Not only that, but many milenerian Christians rapturously await the demise of civilization and the end of days.

    It seems odd in these circumstances that that such effort should be made on behalf of the human unborn, when they assume it is all going to be over imminently.

    Human beings commonly display a desire for transcendence in this our cruel world. Marx stated in his ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right‘ that ‘Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. He admitted that ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

    He goes on, however, to argue that the ‘abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.’

    The Religious Right is to an extent, a predictable outcome of the social and economic “vale of tears” in our time, although their collusion with Big Business in the United States is truly horrifying. It certainly helps that Genesis with it assumption of man’s dominion over the Earth permits a scorched earth economic policy.

    Lost in all of this is the message of Pope Francis, and others, for Christian socialism and environmental responsibility; a worldwide enforcement of social and economic rights to food, shelter, health care and housing. I am decidedly agnostic about the existence of God. It is religious fundamentalism, extremism and rapacious greed that I despise.

    In fact the church may have its own battle between the Neoliberals and Christian socialists. The smart money is on the former winning out. Pope Francis may suffer the same fate as Pope John XXIII.

    V

    I once represented a middle aged woman named Carmel Doyle who as a five-year-old recited a bible story which the Catholic Church made millions out of from an Oscar-nominated film called Give Up Yer Aul Sins. Yet the child, now a poor adult, would have received nothing had I not fought her case.

    It seems to be the inception, not quality of life, that matters to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church: let them eat cake and dream of the afterlife.

    The Religious Right have resorted to murder when necessary. I think of Gods Banker Roberto Calvi hanging off Blackfriars bridge; Pier Paolo Passolini the Marxist and Atheist film director murdered on a beach near Rome; the collusion for decades between ‘Christian’ ‘Democrats’ in Italy and the mafia, to the advantage of the Vatican; but most are killed by a thousand cuts.

    So let us commence a life watch. The abortion life watch juxtaposed with the homelessness outside the doors of the court where constitutional issues are finely disentangled as the social structure unravels. While Rome burns, progressives will fiddle amid the gladiatorial circuses of the forthcoming referendum.

    Neoliberalism has no problem with abortion. There are, after all, far too many of us. I maintain that it is important that a woman should not be compelled to endure a pregnancy against her will, but it is permitted by economic elites as way of controlling population, without the troublesome necessity of infanticide through poverty. That was a solution advocated satirically by Jonathan Swift in his A Modest Proposal, a vital cautionary tale for these dangerous times.

    Featured Image: Marina Azzaro