Cassandra Voices

Tag: 2018September

  • The Torture of my Irish Visa Application

    I am writing this account for the sake of those who follow. As victims of serious negligence by the state bureaucracy, my family and I feel vulnerable, and thus wish to remain anonymous. In any case, revealing my identity will add nothing to what I am about to disclose. If anyone wishes to contact me for support or guidance, please contact the editor of this magazine.

    I – The Background

    I am an Irish citizen originally from Pakistan. By the time of my citizenship application, I had already been living in Ireland for ten years, at all times on a valid visa. I am married to a Lithuanian national (and EU citizen), and we have a child, who is Irish by birth. We availed of the welfare system for a few years after the recession, when we struggled to find work despite our Irish university educations, but we have both since gained full-time employment.

    I entered Ireland on a student visa. A few years later, I met my partner, and we got married. The effect of marrying an EU national in an EU state is that it elevates your legal status in that country. It allowed me to take out a five-year 4EUFam visa, meaning I had a right to remain, live, and work in Ireland.

    Fast forward five years, in 2015, I contacted the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (henceforth INIS), asking them what my options were, as I wished to remain in the country permanently. They replied that I had two options. Either, apply for a ten-year Permanent Residence Card (Form EU3), six months before the expiration of my visa, or apply for full citizenship.

    In February 2016 my wife applied on my behalf, as is required, for the ten years visa. We expected the application to run smoothly, as we had always lived here in accordance with the Free Movement of Persons Regulation, had no criminal records, an Irish child, and had been consistently resident in the country.

    Also, importantly, my wife had also applied for, and received, a Permanent Residence Certificate in 2010 (Form EU2), which provides leave to remain in the state, which can only be obtained after living and working in the country for at least five years.

    Once certain conditions are met, this certificate grants that person’s family leave to remain. The free movement of EU citizens and their family members is a fundamental right under EU Law, enshrined in Article 45, and developed by EU secondary legislation and the case law of the European Court of Justice.

    Nine months passed, because of a backlog at the INIS, as applications, which were supposed to be processed within six months, were taking much longer. But I hear this is only happening to Pakistani nationals, and a few select others.

    In the meantime my five year visa expired, but the INIS sends a letter, which I can take with me to the notorious Burgh Quay, and request a 6 month extension, while my application is being processed. I had already, optimistically, sent my application for citizenship.

    II – The Bombshell

    In November 2016 we received a letter from the INIS, saying the Minister has decided to refuse my application, for the following reason:

    You have not submitted the necessary documents which were requested.

    The documents requested were as follows:

    For each period of study, copies of the following documents should be supplied:

    -Letter from college/course provider including start date and (expected) completion date

    -Letter from private medical insurance provider for EU citizen and any dependants

    -Evidence of financial resources and corresponding bank statements

    For each period of involuntarily unemployment, copies of the following documents should be provided:

    -Letter from Department of Social Protection with details of benefit claims

    -Letter from previous employer outlining circumstances of redundancy

    -P60s for prior 2 years of employment

    Therefore your application does not meet the requirements of Regulation 15(2) of the Regulations as you have failed to submit the necessary supporting documentation set out in Schedule 7 of the Regulations.

    In order to qualify for permanent residence under Regulation 12(1) of the Regulations, you must reside in the State with the EU citizen in conformity with the Regulations for a continuous period of 5 years. You have submitted the following as evidence of the EU citizen’s activity:

    (long list of documents)

    This does not satisfy the Minister that the EU citizen has resided in the State while engaged in employment, self-employment, the pursuit of a course of study, involuntary unemployment or the possession of sufficient resources in conformity of Regulation (6)(3) of the Regulations. Therefore, it does not appear you are entitled to permanent residence as a family member in accordance with Regulation 12(1)(b) of the Regulations.

    It is now open to you to make representations to the Minister as to why your application should not be refused. Such representations must be made within 15 working days of the date of issue of the letter.

    Naively, we assumed there had been a mistake, because we were sure we had submitted all the documents correctly. I had just fifteen days to re-submit all the necessary documentation for the application, without even knowing what exactly was missing in the first place.

    In February 2017, after three months, we received a letter from the INIS, stating:

    The Minister has examined your application based on the documentation on file.

    I am to inform you that the Minister has decided to refuse your application for a permanent residence card under the Regulations. This is for the following reasons:

    In order to qualify for permanent residence under Regulation 12(1) of the Regulations, you must reside in the State with the EU citizen in conformity with the Regulations for continuous period of 5 years. You submitted the following as evidence of the EU citizen’s activity.

    (list of documents)

    This does not satisfy the Minister that the EU citizen has resided in the State while engaged in employment, self-employment, the pursuit of a course of study, involuntary unemployment or the possession of sufficient resources in conformity of Regulation (6)(3) of the Regulations. Therefore, it does not appear you are entitled to permanent residence as a family member in accordance with Regulation 12(1)(b) of the Regulations.

    …

    Request for review:

    If you feel that the deciding officer has erred in fact or in law, then you may request a review of the above decision. This must be done in accordance with Regulation 21 of the Regulations and should contain the details set out in Form EU4. A request for a review of a decision must be made on Form EU4 within 15 working days.

    It is noted that you now have no immigration status in the State. In the event that you do not submit a request for a review of the decision not to grant you a Permanent Residence Card within the prescribed 15 working days, your file will be referred to the Removals Unit, Repatriation Division for consideration under Regulation 20 of the Regulations.

    At that moment panic set in. Shocked, confused, alone and scared, after receiving the letter, we immediately contacted a prominent immigration lawyer, booked an appointment and went to see her. Assuming the INIS is overworked, we thought a mistake had happened in their offices. After ten years in Ireland, we had reasonable amount of faith in the public services.

    We disclosed everything, looking for realistic, practical advice. What did we get from her? Scaremongering and incorrect advice. She told us that not only my own, but also my wife’s immigration status was not certain, even though she had a Permanent Residence Certificate, which was a serious shock. She said the INIS had become very strict on people who were receiving social welfare and were an economic burden on the State. She said they were deporting as many immigrants in that position as possible.

    It seemed even my wife, an EU citizen, could be deported. I felt belittled after being questioned as to why I had even considered applying for a ten-year visa, and not just settled for reapplying for the five-year visa.

    We were told that we might have to fight our case in court, and that she would get in touch with a barrister, and get back to us to say what further steps needed to be taken, which she never did.

    She took €100 for the consultation. We contacted her a few more times, but she was never available and despite our leaving messages, she never responded.

    As a last ditch effort, she had advised us to re-submit our documents and appeal the decision, and also apply for leave to remain in Ireland based on the European Court of Justice’s judgment in the Zambrano case.

    She also advised us to take out a Freedom of Information Request to obtain records of the original application.

    III – Digging Deeper

    We started dissecting the Regulations ourselves, because the solicitor’s advice did not sit well with us. The more we dug, the more we realized that her advice had been misleading.

    We racked our brains about what could be wrong with the application. We could not think of any other reason apart from that a document was missing. The letter from the INIS, however, did not specify the exact reason. We collected all the documents again and re-sent them to the INIS.

    We were absolutely certain we had provided all proofs and all documents as requested, and that my wife and I both had a legal right to remain in the country.

    We decided to appeal the Minister’s decision, meaning more letters, more documents, more legislation, more time, and more effort. I also sent an application for a visa under the Zambrano judgement.

    We were considering our options, and we did not have many immediate ones. If I were deported, it would be horrendous for my family. For starters, my wife would be left to look after our child alone in Ireland. It would also make it very difficult for me to return as a deportee. Plus, I seriously feared living in Pakistan as an atheist vegan.

    If we were all to move, as non-Muslims, my family would be treated as dangerous outsiders in an intolerant and violent country.

    The only other option was to try to move to Lithuania, but for that we needed to show one year of private health insurance costing €5000, paid up front, and enough money in our bank accounts to survive for a year. There was also the small matter that I did not speak Lithuanian, which would have made getting a job extremely challenging.

    I also made a Freedom of Information Request to the relevant Officer at the Department of Justice and Equality for a full copy of my original application and supporting documents, so we could go through everything they had on file as part of the application. That was the only way we had of finding out what was actually missing.

    The INIS had never been specific about which document was missing, or what were the shortcomings of my application.

    Meanwhile, my wife had been getting headaches and having sleepless nights because of the stress of fighting my case, as well as forthcoming exams.

    We did not let them break us. We continued our full-times studies, while working part-time. We were sure we had the right to live here, and knew there must be something wrong. But at the same time we knew we were in an extremely vulnerable position.

    Also, the temporary extension on my visa was about to expire, and I had exams coming up, which I could not sit if I was thrown out of the country.

    This also threw my citizenship application into jeopardy as it cannot be processed without a valid visa.

    IV – Aftershocks

    We started to delve deeper into the legislation, and sent numerous emails and letters to the INIS, stating relevant legislation which safeguarded my right to remain as a family member of an EU citizen.

    The weeks were passing, and we were hardly receiving any responses, even when we were asking for an extension to my temporary visa, while we appealed, and also while the visa under the Zambrano judgement was in process.

    We told them about my forthcoming exams, and the threat to my employment which required a valid visa. Even on the rare occasion when we did receive a response, it was completely useless and frustrating, more or less stating:

    Your correspondence has been forwarded to the relevant section.

    The clock was ticking. Desperation was setting in.

    A friend of our’s suggested contacting our local TD, as we could not get answers from the INIS ourselves.

    She was quick to reply, and genuinely willing to help. She agreed to send correspondence on my behalf to the INIS, firstly to get an update on my three applications (the appeal, the visa based on Zambrano judgement, and the citizenship application), and secondly, to request a temporary visa extension because of my work and academic circumstances.

    Lo and behold, in only a matter of days, I received direct correspondence from INIS via email and post, with a clear update on my three applications, and also with an entitlement to a temporary extension.

    The letter had said my appeal was still being assessed, and I would be informed as soon as the Minister had made a decision. It is funny how people higher up in the pecking order can get information about you faster than you can get information about yourself.

    When we visited their office on Burgh Quay to extend my visa, we were spoken to very rudely, including being shouted at that we did not have any rights here in this country because my wife was at that time involuntarily unemployed.

    But at least we had found a bit of calm in the midst of very rough seas.

    V – Another Angle

    There was no time to rest while the appeal was in motion. We knew at least that the INIS would have to take all our documentation on file into account at the time of making the final decision.

    Looking for another way of communicating our case to the INIS, we came across SOLVIT.

    We told them our story, and they offered to send a letter to the INIS spelling out all our legal rights, and why the INIS had no legitimate basis for refusing the application. They performed this service for free, for which we remain extremely grateful.

    SOLVIT confirmed that based on all the factors, including that my wife had been resident for over 10 years in Ireland, was involuntarily unemployed, and also had a Permanent Residence Certificate, we indeed had a right to remain as a family in the state.

    A few days later they got back to us stating that after pressing the INIS for an answer, they were informed that the INIS had not received a P60 form from my wife, which is why they had rejected my application.

    But we were sure we had sent it!

    We wrote to the INIS stating that we had already submitted the P60 at least twice. Of course, we also took the precaution of sending a copy again ourselves, and via SOLVIT for good measure too.

    More weeks passed by, until one afternoon, I received a call from someone in the INIS, admitting that there had been a mistake with my application (note the passive voice).

    They apologised, and said my visa would be approved. She also casually asked me if I could withdraw my Freedom of Information request.

    To make it clear, that is all I ever got from them in terms of an apology.

    I wonder how many officers go through a single application before the INIS decides to reject it? Are there checks in place, which can offset or safeguard against negligence, laziness or carelessness?

    This is the cold and inefficient system we are up against, which has total power to decide the fate of individuals and their families.

    VI – Relief at last

    A few days later, in May 2017, I finally received a letter stating my application had been approved:

    Your application has been examined under the provisions of the Regulations and the Directive.

    I wish to inform you that your application has been approved, as you fulfill the relevant conditions set out in the Regulations.

    No mention of any mistake, as if the six months of torture had never happened.

    A few months later, we received the records in response to our Freedom of Information request. These contained disturbing revelations, which included an internal memo from within the INIS, admitting that the initial application had been ‘incorrectly refused’, and which sought to rectify their mistake by withdrawing their refusal, and closing down the Freedom of Information request itself, unless I responded within ten days. It also suggested that they had only attended to our case because SOLVIT had applied on our behalf.

    The Freedom Of Information records contain other information which I will be investigating in the months to come.

    *******

    I wonder was the INIS even aware of how the legislation operates?

    And what of human rights? My child is Irish, and I, as his father, should have an inherent right to be with him in this State. I shudder to consider that I was almost deported because of this.

    After being granted my visa, I wanted to complain about my treatment by the INIS. We went to the Ombudsman, but they do not handle immigration matters. We also went to FLAC, and other prominent immigration law firms, who all said that because we had not incurred monetary loss, the INIS had no case to answer. Do stress, mental pain and anguish, as well as a huge amount of wasted time, count for nothing?

    Fast forward a few weeks, and my citizenship was granted too.

    I wonder what if we had not been fluent in English? We would never have had a chance of overturning this injustice, and been expelled from the country.

    So what advice would I have for someone in the situation I found myself? Do your research, and know the legislation like the back of your hand. Don’t blindly trust solicitors to fight for your case. Also, look for ways of using organisations like SOLVIT to communicate with state bodies, or an elected representative, although it should be noted that access to SOLVIT is restricted to EU citizens.

    If you are sure you have a right to remain, never give up, keep fighting, and finding new ways to advance your case.

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  • Alternatives to Italy’s Political Malaise

    Seemingly out-manoeuvred by more experienced, and ruthless, political ‘partners’, the Five Star Movement (M5S) has entered a crucial phase after forming a coalition government with the right wing La Lega. The key question is whether the issue of immigration will continue to dominate Italian political debate, or whether M5S can bring about meaningful social reforms. For the moment it is advantage La Lega.

    I – La Lega Leading the New Government

    After three months the new Italian government composed of M5S and La Lega is facing difficulties in aligning a complex mix of political leaders, many of whom are in power for the first time. The clash of conflicting ideas and constituencies, played out in newspaper articles and websites, brings to mind – not only to foreign observers – a stereotype of Italian political chaos.

    The ‘yellow’ (as MS5 are referred), having earned 32.4% of the national vote in the March election, on the basis of an economic platform leaning towards socialism, should be leading the coalition. But this mantle seems to have been usurped by the minority ‘green’ (La Lega) partner, which gained 17.6% of the vote. The has been achieved through Le Pen-ist propaganda, focusing on migration, security issues and Euro-scepticism, while winking to Trumpism (and esteem for Vladimir Putin).

    Matteo Salvini, the leader of La Lega has emerged as the public face (and sole heir of Lega father Umberto Bossi, following his forced retirement after charges of public finance misuse) of the government. He is Deputy Premier and Minister of the Interior; while his supposed ally, and interlocutor, Luigi Di Maio, the leader of M5S, is Minister for Labour and Economic Development. The factions are supposedly being coordinated by Premier Giuseppe Conte, the M5S nominee.

    Salvini has injected atavistic fears of a foreign ‘other’ into political debate, highlighting criminality and legality, loss of jobs and waste of resources, as well as undeserved social spending in a period of economic crisis. Within days of entering office he stated to the media that he wished to divert five billion euros from migrant reception and integration policies, while ramping up anti-EU rhetoric.

    In June 2018 he closed Italian ports – in particular the ports of Sicily – to the ‘Acquarius’, a ship from the fleet of the NGO ‘SOS Mediterranèe’ (MSF – ‘Doctors Without Borders’), sailing from Libya with six-hundred-and-twenty-nine migrants (including one-hundred-and-twenty-three unaccompanied minors) aboard, which had previously been prevented from entering La Valletta in Malta.

    Salvini invited the captain, ‘to continue the crusade with all its comfortable services along the Mediterranean costs’, as far as Valencia, Spain, where the new Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez authorized it to dock. He then told another ship the ‘Lifeline’ it had no chance of entering Italian ports, and went on to ask his EU partners to consider radical changes in EU migration policies.

    On August 2018, he created an internal conflict within the Italian Guardia costiera (‘Coastal Guard’), prohibiting another ship, the ‘Dicotti’, from unloading one-hundred-and-fifty migrants in Catania, Sicily, and then instigated what seems to have been a politically motivated investigation into the Agrigento public prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio on several charges, including abduction and segregation, illegal detention and abuse of public administration.

    At the end of August 2018 he met the anti-EU and Far Right leader of Hungary Viktor Orban, theorizing on the so-called Democratura, or ‘Authoritarian Democracy’, while endorsing the Hungarian leader’s policy of closing his country’s borders to migrants.

    Astonishingly, according to a majority of Italian commentators, in view of recent polls, Salvini had mastered the situation and, by escalating declarations, had emerged as a real political animal, front and centre of the political stage, to the detriment of the M5S.

    In reality Salvini has been in election mode since the formation of the government, as he awaits another opportunity to go to the polls, with surveys showing his party appealing up to 30% of the electorate. This could allow his party to reconcile with former allies, and enter a coalition with the former fascisti Fratelli d’Italia or Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

    II – Transatlantic Connections

    But the rapture of opinion writers can be misleading. Another Matteo (Renzi)’s recent adventures have shown the volatility of Italian voting intentions in an era of social media. Nothing should be taken for grant at this early stage in the electoral cycle.

    Certainly Salvini’s political position has been strengthened by an axis with other Populist forces in Europe and throughout the world. Apart from reciprocal cuddles with Marine Le Pen, and the muscular chest-to-chest recognition by Putin, there are also bonds with the US Presidency. This has served to legitimate him and his party.

    Salvini and other Italian right-wing parties see the 2016 US Presidential election as a sign of a shift in Euro-Atlantic politics away from buonismo, and ‘human rights-oriented policies’ deemed to be weak, inefficient and unpopular

    Indeed, Attaccateve al Trump, a book by Paola Tommasi, with a degree of notoriety in Italy, credits the dissolution of the Italian Christian Democrats with the unlikely election, ‘Berlusconi-style’, of the outsider Trump.

    Steve Bannon – Trump’s former consultant and spin-doctor – has hailed La Lega as a part of the constellation of ‘Breitbart’ (and perhaps Cambridge Analytica?) declaring with some confidence that ‘the Italian fellows are doing a good job’. Subsequently, Trump, while fomenting against Trudeau (as he travelled back to Washington from last June’s G-7 in Canada), recognized Italy as a primary political partner and warmly welcomed the new Italian policy on migrants.

    Tellingly, both governments during their first days, created a storm over migration issues. Trump followed up victory by imposing visa restrictions on migrants arriving from selected countries, which generated street protests in the principal US cities. He has recently had to cope with a reversal in public approval on account of the shameful separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border, and incarceration in small cages, but his wife Melania’s apparent repentance was perhaps designed to balance the effect.

    Salvini’s declarations on migrants issues also unleashed an emotional wave, expressed in national press and television, where commentators weighed in to contest human rights violations and defend the previous government’s policies.

    But, as indicated, the overall effect on voting intentions appears to have been favourable for Salvini. Recent polls suggest his anti-intellectualism, and jibes about buonism, have galvanized a significant part of population. Many appear to appreciate his ‘muscular’ approach both in internal affairs, and in dealings with EU partners.

    III – Democratic Impasse

    The Democratic Party, out of Palazzo Chigi since the March elections, ending the premiership of Paolo Gentiloni, but with Matteo Renzi still on board, have proved ineffectual in opposition. A new leadership has still not emerged, and the old one never developed a comprehensive political platform for these challenging times, apart from to say: ‘we lost, it is up to them to govern’; meaning, in essence, ‘we remain on the side of the river hoping that corpses of political adversaries will pass by’.

    The new (transitional) political secretary Maurizio Martina – appointed after the electoral collapse to keep a steady course before the next congress – has, unsurprisingly, inveighed against Salvini. In parliament there have been many pious statements from ambitious Democrat deputies attacking the approach of the Lega leader, but meaningful initiatives have been lacking thus far.

    After falling from a high of 40% in the European elections of 2014 to just 19% in the March election a perception has emerged of a distinct lack of consensus in the Democratic Party. Energy has been wasted on strategies designed to compete with other party’s web presences, without producing any visible impact or, even worse, running an ‘opposition within an opposition’, against the left wing (‘former communists’), who are castigated for not toeing the leadership’s line.

    The fallen ‘Matteo’ underestimated the ill-effects of simplistic proposals on institutional reforms, investing too much rhetoric on the efficiency and rapidity of political outcomes. He remained devoted to a Blairite ‘third way’, without any deep reflection on the future of centre-left politics in an era of shifting economic and technological plates. There were no original policies on equality or redistribution of wealth, no weltanschaung for Democrats in the years to come.

    Affected by a curious ‘Zelig-style’ syndrome, leading to the party co-opting other parties’ proposals (on immigration, public funding of politics and cutting costs of institutions), the Democrats under ‘Matteo the 1st’ shared with ‘Matteo the 2nd’ a certain ‘muscularity’ in the tone adopted towards European partners, political adversaries (within and outside the Party), bureaucracies and allegedly ‘strong powers’. But they never renounced an associations with large corporations or the institutions of European financial orthodoxy, as they sought to retain the support of a shrinking constituency of moderates.

    As a result, left-wing supporters left the party in droves, especially to the M5S. Beffa delle beffe, though not unexpectedly, at the last elections even former moderates seemed to prefer the more consistent right-wing voice of La Lega.

    The Democratic ‘Matteo’ has divided his own party – and wider Italian society – pitching two sides against one another. One derives from the Catholic Democrazia Cristiana (later Popolari and Margherita), while the other stems from the former Partito Comunista Italiano (later Partito Democratico della Sinistra and finally Democratici di Sinistra).

    Aldo Moro – compromesso historico.

    After the election, ignoring the lesson of one of its greatest leader Aldo Moro – the great exponent of compromesso storico between Christian Democrats and Communists – he refused to countenance any convergence on social issues with the M5S.

    In this depressing scenario, a strong answer to Salvini came from Roberto Speranza, the young leader of Liberi e Uguali (‘Free and Equal’), the political party that emerged from those groups leaving the Democrats before the elections, under the leadership of Massimo D’Alema, former Premier and Communist leader, in opposition to Matteo Renzi. Speranza reported Salvini to the prosecutors’ office in Rome for instigating racial hatred.

    Indeed numerous public declarations and decisions taken by the green-yellow alliance appear inconsistent with constitutional values, and international laws to which Italy is bound by treaty.

    In the ‘Acquarius’ case, as in the more recent ‘Dicotti’ case, Sicily was the safest port to dock, rather than Valencia. Any practice by Italian military forces involving returning migrants to Libya before security and peaceful conditions have been restored runs contrary to the European Court of Human Rights-stated principle of ‘non refoulement’.

    IV – What does the M5S Stand For?

    As regards the M5S, which is based on the principle of digital democracy and contesting Italian ‘cast’ politics and patronage, it is not clear what it stands for.

    Doubts have been raised about its initial roots in a project of ‘community behavioural analysis’ by one of its founders, the ‘Internet guru’ Roberto Casaleggio, who died in 2016, but whose legacy has been carried on by his son Davide, with even greater efficiency.

    M5S is associated with a private consultancy firm that seemingly derives financial gains from political information and advertising. The firm can also organize political communication and harness the vote of M5S, contrary to democratic principles enshrined in the Italian Constitution, which predicates democratic participation on political organizations, and freedom of individual political consciousness.

    A stronger juridical stance against these new forms of political organization risks having any decision being twisted to reinforce populism. Moreover, any rejection by the court of such charges would be a sign of the failure of traditional constitutional instruments.

    A finding against M5S would solidify a public perception that public institutions are anti-democratic – just as when the government was being formed President Mattarella was accused by the ‘piazza’ of inappropriate interference over blocking the appointment of Paolo Savona as Minister of the Economy.

    What then for the new Matteo? Time runs fast but it is too early to appreciate the impact of Salvini’s strategies, in particular if he will last better than the ‘other Matteo’ on the prow of the Italian Government ship, and in the hearts of (certain) Italians. While a significant constituency has been galvanised by what appears to be a certain strength of personality, still the percentage of Italians who have ever gone as far as voting for La Lega amounts to a mere 5.6 million, out of over 51 millions of voters.

    Far more of Italy’s citizens are seeking new voices supporting civic ideals, under a new Democratic leadership.

    A turning point might be the opposition within the M5S to common political action with La Lega. This has already been seen at local level since the beginning of unnatural alliance: in June 2018, in response to Salvin’s repeated denunciation of migrants, Mr. Nicola Sguera, a city council member in Benevento, resigned declaring ‘We hoped for ‘Podemos’, now we have ‘Orban’’; for similar reasons Carlotta Trevisan resigned her role as deputy president of the city council in Rivoli.

    At a national level their leader Di Maio has hushed up criticisms declaring: ‘I want suggestions, not complaint: now we run the government’, and recently declared in Versilia, that ‘misunderstanding and conflicts are not surprising, we will do our best’, and that ‘blockages and ‘refoulments’ cannot be made with kindness’.

    However, the recent Roman meetings of M5S, before and after the summer parliamentary recess, witnessed further grumbling by the left-wing of the movement, led by Senate President Roberto Fico, who declared, contradicting Salvini and his leader Di Maio, that ‘Italian Ports shall remain open to NGOs, they are doing an essential job”.

    Moreover, Barbara Lezzi, Minister for the South, Senators Elena Fattori, Paola Nugnes and Luigi Gallo are among the deputies showing commitment to the idea that ‘refoulments’ are not a policy appropriate for a civilised country. Fico also came out against the meeting on August 28th between Salvini and Orban, declaring, ‘there’s no political leader more distant from me in Europe’.

    Worse still, after the meeting between the two Far Right leaders and the final declarations on a common stance in Europe (with the schizophrenic Salvini supporting the Orban position against migrant re-locations in the European Union, contrary the official position of his government), Prime Minister Conte leaked to the media that it was no longer possible to have an official public position.

    V – The Reality About Immigration

    The political context could easily evolve differently between the right-wing La Lega politics and the leftist M5S, which is animated in particular by opposition to the elitist politics of the Democrats, and is still rooted in the family photo album of la sinistra italiana.

    There is a compelling argument that the whole ‘immigration affair’ is a lot of hot air, and part of a complex public relations campaign being orchestrated by unscrupulous politicians ‘senza arte né parte’ (‘without any virtue nor strong political faith’), for whom the M5S is naively providing a stage and microphone.

    Its impact is increased by the inability of Italy and the EU more generally – blackmailed in part by their own constituencies – to agree on a real and effective common migration policy.

    According to official United Nations reports, collected in the World Population Prospects – and reported in the ‘Huffington Post’ in 2017 – migratory flows into Europe from 2000 to 2010 were 1.2 million people per year, which makes up a mere 0.2% out of a population of five hundred million inhabitants (one million have arrived in the United States over the same period).

    That figure then dramatically fell to 400,000 entries per year between 2010 and 2015 due to the Economic Crisis, which led to less money being remitted to sustain travel costs from Central, Western or Eastern Africa to Europe.

    According to ‘Liberazione’, these numbers will have declined further in 2018: 8% less have disembarked on the Italian coast than in the same period last year. Data from the Ministry of the Interior indicates that 14,441 people arrived in Italy by sea in the first six months of 2018, while 64,033 had arrived in the same period of the previous year. This is not to say international migration is not a genuine issue, but it puts it in perspective.

    In 2015 the United Nations said international migration had reached 244 millions per annum, 20 millions of whom were refugees. That number had grown from 154 millions in 1990 to 175 millions in 2000. Migrations will persist as long as economic cleavages exists between rich and poor countries. The real point is the small proportion of those, about one million, actually entering Europe, the biggest economy in the world (comprising 23.8% of the world’s GDP, against the 22.2% of the US), with 500 million inhabitants, compared to total migrations around the world.

    The essential issue is how to adopt efficient, humane and stable institutions for the governance of humanitarian emergencies and economic migration to Europe.

    Instruments to deal with economic migrations are not easy to be put in place. Decisions touch on political ties with foreign states, anachronistic colonial attitudes, distribution of military and security power, sovereignty over international waters, irrational beliefs and ancient fears, as well as normative politics.

    Meaningful measures are, however, on the table for European governments to discuss. For instance, Angela Merkel recently proposed a common EU force for border control. Indeed, even in the absence of intense passions, a European Agenda on Migrations has been debated since 2013 among EU leaders, and the Migration Compact proposed by the previous Italian Government envisaged a scheme for infrastructural investment in Africa.

    In this context, the EU’s ‘La Valletta Fund’ continues to provide financial support to projects tackling the ‘root causes’ of migrations in selected African countries. The new strategy of the European External Action Service – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the EU – includes closer ties and relationships with Europe’s ‘neighbours’, and the ‘neighbours of the neighbours’ from where migrants leave for Europe (not only North Africa, but also Sahara and Sahel countries).

    The EU social agenda, debated since 2015, also contemplates rules and measures for social integration of migrants, within a larger scheme tackling the labour concerns of all Europeans, which could reduce social tensions.

    VI – Three Scenarios

    A responsible Italian leadership would initiate debate on these issues with other EU Member States. In contrast, at the last EU Council meeting an apparent ‘political crisis’ between Conte and some EU partners (Macron, Merkel, and Borissov) was reported.

    The Dublin Regulation should be overhauled, but narrow nationalist politics is creating stasis in the Union, and the Italian government’s intransigence is not helping matters.

    The only positive news stemming from the muscular stance of the yellow-green alliance is renewed (enduring?) attention being paid to the migrant question, and to Italy as a strategic stronghold for a federal Europe, meaning the country could finally reap concrete political advantages as regards sharing the costs of receiving migrants.

    Salvini has gone so far as to warn that if the rules are not changed on migration then Italy will withdraw its annual contribution.

    It remains to be seen whether M5S leaders – presumably to the left of Di Maio – will be able to counterbalance this ‘green’ communication agenda. Can that faction defuse the ‘immigration affair’ and the radicalising narratives of La Lega? Will they succeed in reversing the positions they had to swallow to gain the levers of power, and finally make their 32% of electoral votes correspond with real political power?

    One opportunity for the inexperienced M5S and its leaders – in contrast La Lega as La Lega Norde was in local government from the 1980s and national politics from the 90s – is to implement their economic and social platform, from which Salvini’s ‘immigration issue’ has diverted attention.

    These include the reddito di cittadinanza (‘basic social income’) it promised voters, and long-standing environmental commitments, including the closure or modernisation of the ILVA iron plant in Taranto, and the blockage or relocation of the docking of the ‘Trans-Adriatic Pipeline’ in Puglia.

    The current route of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

    There is also the issue of investment in social housing and infrastructures for workers, active employment policies and the restructuring of unemployment agencies, digitalisation and other services for SMEs, simplification of laws, and incentives for youth entrepreneurship.

    Recently Di Maio, now heading a monstre Ministry reuniting Labour with Economic Development (Industry), has initiated an investigation into the feasibility of basic income, against the indifference or opposition of his La Lega partners. On these points, the interests of the historical Lega constituencies and the expectations of M5S supporters might seriously diverge.

    La Lega’s leadership in the north of Italy, after years of regional and local governments, are perceived as guarantors of established commercial interests, tied to the former Forza Italia barons of the northern economy. Any M5S initiatives implying significant redistribution of public resources seem likely to create rifts.

    The more the M5S pursues social and economic priorities the greater the prospect of divergence with La Lega. But if M5S renounces these social policies they risk division into right and left factions, just like the Democratic Party before them, making its prospects in the next elections uncertain. Failure to act could generate new alliances before the next elections.

    Would this mean glory for the ‘green’ ‘Matteo’? Two scenarios present themselves to Italian citizens in the medium term. The first is an abrupt end to the coalition, involving a never-ending cycle of elections, in which La Lega pickpockets the right wing M5S votes, and attracts new voters from traditional centre-right parties; or perhaps restoring a political dowry to the prodigal son Silvio Berlusconi, and his centre-right Forza Italia heirs.

    The second scenario is a revitalized (inspired by Spain’s Socialists perhaps) ‘Democratic Party’ leadership emerging to end the short-lived Matteo II’s era in Italian politics, supporting dialogue with the M5S , under Fico, and reviving the social movements that Matteo I sank

    This could bring an end to the financial and economic stalemate which has ruined so many firms and families, unravelling a delicate social fabric so as to give an opportunity to demagogues like Salvini.

    Nothing is shaped until everything is shaped. A third scenario could play out where the M5S and La Lega develop ties at institutional levels, and become an inseparable Populist force. To the leadership of the Democrats, and the new forces emerging in Italian civil society, the hard task is to play the cards in front of them.

  • The Towering Qualities Needed in an Advocate

    Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song’ is a short history, and valedictory, to the tradition of songwriting, fusing aphorisms and personal reflections on failure with nostalgia and regret. In this ‘Tower’, like that of Babel, the songsters of history communicate unsatisfactorily:

    I said to Hank Williams “How lonely does it get?”
    Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
    But I hear him coughing all night long
    Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song

    Cohen also hints at the immortality of his verse:

    Now, I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
    They’re movin’ us tomorrow to the tower down the track
    But you’ll be hearin’ from me, baby, long after I’m gone
    I’ll be speakin’ to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song.

    As advocates barristers, especially those representing criminal defendants, see themselves as part of a great tradition: maintaining a vocation in eliciting the truth, and telling it. We also trade in ambiguity, testing the veracity of an opponent’s case in order to establish reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury.

    What sort of qualities should an advocate have? Fearlessness is intrinsic, which does not mean hysteria or histrionics. Flailing arms should give way to precision bombing, and the careful assembly of evidence.

    A true advocate is honest, and never misleads a court, or fabricates evidence: offering persuasion within ethical bounds.

    Nonetheless, the best bend the rules, leading a witness through examination-in-chief, at least until challenged.

    An advocate should be unafraid to criticize the vectors of established authority. Thus Sir Edward Carson, frustrated by the proceedings of a tribunal presided over by a judge, who claimed he was not acting in his judicial capacity, responded: ‘Any fool can see that’.

    Another great skill is knowing when to keep shtum. Silence can be golden, and verbosity pointless. This extends to deciding who to call as your witness. The old lawyers’ joke is that your client is your worst enemy. A question too far, when you cannot anticipate the answer, is a journey into unknown, perilous territory.

    Advocacy is more art than science, and thus demands a high degree of creativity. It requires nimble thinking, judgment, and a degree of circumspection. This branch of alchemy cannot be taught in law schools, as is assumed in the United States.

    It often benefits from non-linear sequences of thought that are the hallmark of a person who is out-of-the-ordinary. This may involve throwing out the rule book for that most devastating of interrogations: the surprise question. This remains the height of creativity in the often gentle, though far from gentile, art of cross examination.

    Great advocates have their idiosyncrasies: from the thespian US lawyers, or indeed the late Adrian Hardiman in Ireland, to the blind courage and rhetoric of the aforementioned Carson, who displayed a unique combination of fearlessness and cold judgment.

    After being frustrated by a playful deluge of responses from Oscar Wilde on his apparently innocent relationship with boys, Carson asked him about one Graingier, and, ‘had he kissed him’?

    Wilde fell for the trap, responding, ‘oh no he was far too ugly’, and Reading Gaol beckoned. Implicitly he had revealed that his relationships with boys was of a different order.

    It goes to show that a witness should never be over-confident. A witness box is the last place to send a stage performer, or for anyone who plays to the gallery.

    Cross examination involves strategies, ruses, subtle discrediting, and of course laying traps. The strategy should be mapped out in advance, and requires the prosecution’s evidence to be parsed meticulously, in order to be dismantled.

    In appealing to a jury, the great advocate often eschews the chronology of a case, instead presenting a fluid and protean account. They often mix it up, and it may not be initially apparent what they are getting at.

    Any aspiring advocate ought to study and indeed listen closely to how senior advocates go about their trade. To attain greatness anyone must commune with the dead, and living, and be humble.

    Increasingly, I believe great advocates should have a commitment to social justice. Alas, few do. Victory and payment is one thing; serving the community, or that nebulous notion of justice, another. Amidst the scramble for Mammon this often gets lost sight of.

    The greater the capacity of an advocate for empathy, the more she will be prepared to do on behalf of her client, though it should be noted that even the best have their foibles.

    I am deeply skeptical, from wide experience, about the motivations and funding sources of the human rights industry, and the type of advocacy we often hear that arrives in the form of sound bites. This is safe sex advocacy on politically correct issues such as gender equity, funded by shady organizations like the Ford Foundation, while ignoring far more pressing issues of homelessness, poverty and social exclusion.

    The crucial test is whether you are willing to represent the wretched of the earth: including the gangster, the property speculator and the drug baron.

    I intensely dislike those who take up causes driven by populist bandwagons. These are not advocates, but politicians in disguise.

    The world is full of public avengers, and family lawyers often deserve contempt for the fake outrage and indignation peppering their speech, while they enrich themselves on cultivating misery with contrived, and even state-sponsored, fabrications.

    As mentioned, advocacy intersects with creativity, which always contains an element of mystery. As when a tennis players enter the ‘zone’, great advocates are often inscrutable in their methods, and react instinctively. Great, as opposed to good, advocacy cannot really be taught. That ability is innate.

    That is not to diminish the value of the science behind the trade: a closing speech should scrupulously assemble the weaknesses of the opponent’s evidence, establishing corroboration, or otherwise, and exposing holes and contradictions.

    From his rhetorical palette the advocate paints in mosaic, fusing a degree of passion with calculated mind games.

    An advocate should be a psychologist in his approach to keeping a jury as a criminal barrister, or judges elsewhere, on side.

    What should be said before a judge, as opposed to a jury, is markedly different. A judge is case-hardened, and less likely to be swayed by the tricks of the trade, unlike a jury, whose affection should be courted.

    But trial courts are becoming increasingly like reality television, or beauty contests. It is getting like Crufts, or a horse parade.

    As I have indicated, a much underrated virtue is discerning when to leave something unsaid. Evidence that may seem advantageous may remain unexplored in a closing speech for fear it will generate ambiguity, and even implode another argument. But this should not lead to timorousness. Points should be put decisively, which may border on stridency.

    I am increasingly of the view that advocacy is a necessary life skill, with application far beyond the courtroom. We all have to sell ourselves and relate to others: our daily lives involve persuasion, and to be too timid in discussion may invite disaster.

    It is important to be confident and assertive, but never too sure of yourself. The minute you believe your own hype, or that you are the cleverest man in the room is when you need to get out of there. This unfortunately is often a feature of the ruling class of any country.

    Like artists, most great advocates are assailed by doubt. These are complex and ambiguous creatures, whose practice of the dark arts may lead to a perception that there is something of the night about them. Perhaps as a result, the burden, and not just of proof, can be onerous.

    In our times public advocacy, not confined to the court room, is in high demand. As Leonard Cohen sang:

    Now, you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure:
    The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
    And there’s a mighty Judgement comin’ but I may be wrong
    You see, I hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song

    The world is completely out of balance and spinning towards the disasters of an economic and environmental apocalypse. The acceptance of neo-liberalism dogma is accelerating the prospect of social and economic collapse.

    This has been steered by a diabolic trinity of religious fundamentalism, neo-liberalism, and the post-truth peddling of relativists in the universities: academics who sing for their supper. But there’s a “mighty Judgement comin’”.

    Public advocacy from the likes of Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy and our own Cassandra Voices is rising up.

    Where better to learn advocacy than in the criminal and public courts of the Tower of Song? For the advocate is a truth-teller, who exposes bullshit wherever it is found. Real training in these skills is difficult to find. The art is increasingly diminished by failure to engage in adequate self-reflection.

    The mark of the truly great advocate is a resolute independence. He is never a dutiful servant of the state: the best would never dream of acting for the prosecution. That is left to careerists, and others who can only dream of advocacy’s Tower of Song.

  • Inside the Session

    The Cassandra Voices musician of the month for September, Louise O’Connor, explores what makes a trad session so special.

    I recently attended a large music festival in England where a trad session took over the night in a small fire-lit tent. There were Irish tunes, Scottish tunes, English tunes and a few Appalachian ones for good measure. Being an Irish fiddle player I was most at home with the jigs and the reels.

    I sat and played for hours, mesmerised by the sight of a topless, heavily-tattooed man with a rainbow-coloured mohawk who sean-nós danced with ferocious intensity on a piece of wood throughout.

    A trad session never fails to surprise.

    These sessions have been a constant source of surprise and companionship for me for many years now.

    Growing up in the Burren in County Clare, I played the fiddle from the age of seven. Aged seventeen I departed for university and the bright lights of Cork City. I hardly played in those days, preferring to listen to free jazz, contemporary classical music or the latest heavy instrumental rock band that my new urban friends introduced me to.

    Fiddling at 3842m near Chamonix. Photo by Marc Cleriot.

    I wasn’t to return to trad until, aged twenty-two, I found myself back in Cork after a period of travelling. The college gang had disbanded and I was in need of new friends. Cue the interjecting character of a French housemate with a passion for learning the bodhran. She brought me along to a session in a local pub. I befriended the fiddle player and was hooked. I was hooked on the atmosphere, the ritualistic nature of it, the sheer craic.

    A series of lessons from that fiddle player I befriended and I was almost session ready. Apart from one thing: nerves. On the first occasion that my new teacher persuaded me to play in a session, my hands were sweating so profusely that it was practically impossible for me to play.

    Things have certainly got better since then, and the meaning and importance of the session has grown and grown for me.

    Céilí dancing in Germany.

    In my years spent abroad, it permeated my experiences as a weekly ritual that allows release, a sense of stability and company on my many solo jaunts.

    It is obvious how the session format was born out of the Irish emigrant experience in London and America, and the need to hold on to roots. Thanks to mass Irish emigration and the dispersion of the tunes, as a fiddle player I have been welcomed with open arms within the global fraternity of trad musicians. I leaned into the music and the dance as I travelled. I slowly started to depend on it.

    Sessions in Oslo were my main social outlet. In Germany I organised céilís in the market square, while in Chamonix, I played tunes at 3842m at a temperature of -10. In Northern England, I picked up wild Scottish reels at the local session, and played them frantically on my lunch break, helping to relieve the stiffness of the office environment I was working in.

    II – Among Old Friends

    Returning to play sessions in Dublin was a slightly daunting task. I was no longer a novelty. Fiddle players are ten a penny in our fair capital. I forced myself out to sessions in the early days of Dublin life. I always feared I would not know enough tunes, and it would be embarrassing.

    My first session came about after meeting a retired gentleman, who invited me to one in a nearby seaside village. It turned out to be have been running for twenty-five years, in a practically empty pub, and involved a group of retired men in their sixties upwards. I was the only female to have ever played in the session, so my arrival was a source of some bewilderment.

    Overtime, however, they grew accustomed to my presence, and I settled into an uplifting weekly meeting. The session was more like a history lesson in Irish music, or a support group for musical fanatics. After each set the tunes were discussed; its origin; the historical recordings; the alternative key it might have been played in; the ornamental possibilities present in each one.

    I absolutely delighted in the whole experience. Each person had their own seat, and had sat in that seat for twenty-odd years. Being granted a seat at that session felt like quite the honour, and I was intrigued to hear the stories of sessions and festivals in the 60s and 70s in London, Doolin, and Mayo.

    At some point they would close their eyes and disappear into the reverie of music. And I imagined they were transported at times, back to these epic sessions they spoke of. The tunes were the same, the session was the same. The only difference was the passage of time.

    When they told me short stories about each tune, it added to the magic of my schooling. I went away each week armed with a list of tunes to learn, and a story that went with each. My eagerness to tweak my trad vocabulary was renewed every week.

    It was a gentle initiation into the Dublin school of trad from men most of whom had been playing for half a century.

    III – Central Sessions

    After a house move, I began playing at a session in the city centre, which is a more varied affair. Musicians drop in from all corners of the world.

    It is the type of session where audience members are as much a part of the session as the musicians. They sit in for the chats, and contribute with a song or a dance. Many onlookers marvel at the whole process.

    Like moths to a flame, tourists are drawn to the beat of the tunes. You see the sparkle of awe in their eyes at the frenzied energy through a set of reels, and the ‘earthing’ experience of a mournful sean nós song, which usually brings everyone in the pub to a halt.

    We all savour the natural ebb and flow of the occasion.

    ‘You guys don’t get paid? Phenomenal! How do you know all the tunes?’ A young girl from Vermont asked me. ‘It’s an oral tradition’, I tell her. A tradition, truly, that is handed down by ear, by being involved in the session itself.

    It is a much debated topic at a session, but you might never actually know what a tune is called.

    IV – Trad Festivals

    And then there are the trad festivals. I write this after my best summer yet of attending trad festivals. There is little in this world that gives me greater pleasure than heading West in my car of a summer’s evening towards a trad festival, with my fiddle and a tent packed up, and tunes racing through my head.

    I camped at the Willie Clancy festival this year with my friend, a solicitor and concertina player in her 60s who I met in sean nos dancing circles. As it was her first Willie Clancy she remarked that if she lasted the whole week she’d be a different person… and she did. She camped the whole week.

    And, as she said she would never be the same again.

    The relentless music everywhere, the workshops, the set dancing céilís, the first wild camping experience, the wonderfully open and honest meetings with strangers.

    All the components of a transformative experience that indeed has left its mark on her, uncovering courageous aspects of herself buried deep within. Maybe we were all different after that week of glorious sunshine, swims in the Atlantic and trad sessions by the beach. At these festivals, there is a different quality of time. There are days on end to sit and converse, to make friends, to learn new tunes and to gain new perspectives.

    *******

    The trad experience has certainly changed for me, from my beginnings being plagued by frenetic nervousness, to a point where, in the right lighting, and in the right context, I can even be persuaded to dance a step at a session or sing a song. I’ve constantly surprised myself while being held within the cocoon of the session.

    It is as if the hot summer evenings of this year’s trad sessions melted my resistance in a way. I gave in to the encouraging wink and a nod: ‘Go on, give us a step.’ I cared less about perfection and more about embracing the occasion.

    I have now started to give the same encouragement to others, in teaching ‘a step’ to groups in the form of céilí dancing. I want to involve people in the magic of the Irish music that I’ve been so privileged to be immersed in.

    I’m glad that trad music has returned to my life, and it’s certainly here to stay.

    Louise O’Connor is a fiddle player and runs Celtic Dance Party, teaching traditional céilí group dances. Her website is www.louise.ie. Instagram: @celticdanceparty. Facebook: Celtic Dance Party.

    Image: Olesya Zdorovetsky

  • The Limits of Artificial Intelligence

    The 2018 FIFA World Cup was an unqualified success. While the number of goals scored per game was the same as four years previously in Brazil, the entertainment value was way ahead, as were the number of close games.

    One of the pre-tournament favorites, France, won, and deservedly so. Still, luck played a significant role: both in the absence of technology in the build-up to the first goal, when a free kick was incorrectly awarded, and for the second – the result of a controversial VAR penalty decision. This served to remind us that technology is only as good as the humans using it.

    Prior to the tournament, all the big investment firms used data analysis and artificial intelligence to predict the eventual winner. Goldman Sachs ran over a million simulations and concluded that Brazil would emerge victorious. Another corporate giant, UBS predicted Germany would win after running ten thousand virtual tournaments through its software.  Well Germany was knocked out in the group phase, while Brazil only made it as far as the quarter-finals, only to be knocked out by Belgium.

    Recognizing the limits of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and technology in general, is important. Predictive tools may be excellent at setting the correct price for a product, or service, according to consumer demand and competition (full disclosure – one of my clients is an award-winning pricing analytics firm), or at predicting how many teachers will be needed in a given school district. But when it comes to predicting the future of our economy (the Crash), our culture (#MeToo), our politics (Trump), or even a sports tournaments like the World Cup, it does not perform so well.

    Yet there is no shortage of effort to turn messy and complex scenarios, into neat algorithms and software programs, in an effort to control or predict those variables that make us human. 

    For example, human resources departments increasingly use AI and data analysis to track and predict employee performance, run training programs and vet potential employees.  Political campaigns also use past behavior and demographic data to bombard us with targeted messages, playing to our fears and hopes. In the echo chambers of social media, we are constantly subjected to commercials for products or services curated and micro-targeted to our (supposed) needs. 

    There are those who argue the problem is not with the technology, but with the data – if we had access to better data than our predictions would be more accurate. This may be true, but only to a point.

    This still would not take into account unpredictable occurrences, or the flashes of inspiration which can make ordinary people do extraordinary and unusual things.

    The truth is, past behavior, and success, is no guarantee of future behavior or success.  Technology is most life-changing and effective when it is used as an enabler of human performance, not as a predictor. This is good news for those among us who are put off by the artificial constraints imposed on us in the daily doses of propaganda, curated specifically for each individual by machines.

    The more we continuously train ourselves to think and act independently the more we prepare ourselves for an uncertain and unpredictable world.

    I, for one, am hoping to be the next Croatia, the one that few saw coming…

  • Pandora’s Slippery Box

    It is difficult to speak of abstract forces without personalising them, or investing them, magically, with consciousness and will. When we (by this I mean you; I never do this) refer to the markets as ‘growing jittery’, or ‘recovering’, we (you) indulge in the same thinking that saw maidens being sacrificed to appease volcano gods. When we talk of a giraffe’s necks being ‘designed’ by evolution to reach high branches, or a bat’s ears for echo-location, it is acceptable shorthand, but it is also a fundamental misrepresentation of natural selection.

    So while it is strictly incorrect for scientists to ascribe moral virtues to inanimate processes, it is still possible to say that one of the virtues of the scientific method is that it is anti-fabulist. It is arduous, collaborative, impersonal, and counter-intuitive. It moves forward, as the process of evolution does, in hard-won steps more often than grand moments of individual inspiration, and although there may be room for the individual genius, and times when the lightning of pure spirit ignites and inseminates the fertile ground of laborious research, mostly it is donkey work that advances the project of universal knowledge, and it is not just unromantic but positively anti-romantic.

    And this is a virtue because oh my goodness just think what it would be like if we trusted our imaginations and narrative impulses – those most charming, fascinating, and childish part of ourselves – with the serious and useful business of determining the movements of planets, or making our mobile telephones function.

    Inspiration without moral authority is of course sacrilegious, which is why Frankenstein’s creature was an abomination, and why the original Prometheus was very properly housed on a rock facility and provided with access to vulture-based liver extraction technology.

    We no longer believe that the sun is dragged across the sky by a chariot, or that the behaviour of rivers and oceans are governed by the whims of gods and spirits. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are objectively and absolutely correct in this. Your Tinder profile is not powered by app sprites, but by logarithms and sciencey things to do with sums, which I do not pretend to understand, but which I know to be real because the little computer that I carry around with me in my pocket has a digital watch and can take photographs.

    There is no ghost in the machine, or divinity in the device. Your tablet was not delivered from the sky to a digital Moses on a mountain top; it was pieced together painstakingly by children in a sweat shop from lots of little bits of silicon or whatever, according to rules, principles, and facts assembled over the millennia by observation, trial and error.

    It is one of the tenets of Creationism that creation cannot be in error, which is why fossilised Victorians in the Southern States of the United States cannot get their heads around the whole business of dinosaurs. In scientific methodology there is no room for error either, because if something is erroneous it is not science but nescience. And since no experiment conducted in good faith looks to a particular outcome, and the proper conduct of the scientific exercise scorns the idea of a ‘happy ending’, as priggishly as a vegan in a massage parlour, there can be no such thing as a failed experiment.

    Of course an experiment can feel like a success or failure. It is hard to imagine Dr Frankenstein rubbing his hands in triumph because he had managed through painstaking research to verify another way not to create life. The universal feeling of rightness or satisfaction that lightens the human heart at the correct conclusion of a fairytale, the narrative conclusion of a fable, or the almost audible click that Yeats observed as being a property of a successful poem – the inherent appreciation of the justness, or beauty, of anything, especially of an idea, is an instinct that, while valuable to the creation of advertisements, is above all things, suspect in the pursuit of truth. And don’t give me any guff, please, about the idea of objective scientific facts being in itself a kind of fairytale, you fucking student.

    Kepler is a hero because he recognised this; and Einstein is a figure of pathos because he did not. Kepler’s beatific vision originally reconciled the apparent irregularities of the heavenly spheres with the absolute elegance of Platonic solids. When the vision failed to correspond to his observed data, he wrestled with the data, urging it to conform. But he did not falsify it, or ignore the profound disappointment of a reality that fails to satisfy our equally profound, but not at all truthful religious impulses.

    Einstein, on the other hand, succumbed to the human heresy that the external universe must be morally comprehensible, and apparently had some kind of problem with dice.

    It goes without saying, I hope, that when I talk about Einstein or Kepler or the wider histories of human thought, I don’t really know what I am talking about. I know nothing about astrophysics or the precise differences between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, or indeed about Newton or Einstein themselves, except insofar that they are symbols in clever conversation.

    But I suspect Einstein’s search for elegance and intuitive beauty was similar to Newton’s work in alchemy.

    Their moments of inspiration are cultural nodes, and purely poetic. Is there a more prefect symbol than a falling apple for post-lapsarian revelation; what lovelier image for intellectual discovery than the journey on a beam of light?

    Anyway, what has all this got to do with poetry? Well if the first function of poetry is entertainment, then the use of narrative and those concentrated nuggets of narrative that we call symbols is useful and natural and effective. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes are beautiful. And they can be true, after a fashion.

    They can be true if we demand from truth nothing more than emotional resonance. They can be true in the Freudian or Jungian sense of narrative being the only vector of meaning, which itself is fundamentally Romantic. If, however, we insist that poetry should address itself to actual truth, we are in a pickle.

    I do not use the word pickle lightly. Modernism challenged the idea of narrative truth and ended up in autoprocticism. We have still not thrown overboard our dissolute mythologies, which includes the very idea of story itself. The use of dramatic devices are suspect because they are effective. Thought gorges itself on story, as flies are coprophagic, but the uses of narrative – since we are obliged to take account of objective truth – are as intellectually defunct as appeals to the Greek pantheon are silly and pretentious. Gods and heroes have their place in contemporary culture, and that place is called ComiCon.

    The problem is not a new one, it is the corollary of the problem of free verse (Now don’t tell me that free verse isn’t problematic, you fucking beatnik). Q. Roland Lehr, the celebrated ‘sage, mage and king of rage’, has observed often enough, God knows, that formal conservatism in versifying is associated with narrow right wing politics. In certain cases – that of James McAuley, for instance – an understandable taste, and a developed talent for rhyme, metre, and syntactical sense found its expression in the perverse fabulism of orthodox Catholicism.

    (Orthodox Catholicism, says you, is there any other kind?) And I forgive you for you have hit on a point worth making: that although the tapestry of gorgeous lies that constitutes Catholic doctrine is intellectually and morally unacceptable to any evolved adult, it has this at least to justify it: that it was up until recently taken seriously, and literally, as an interpretive framework for understanding the world. This gives it clout, which is more than can be said for the Marvel universe say.

    But no matter its historical importance, and the sophistication and depth of its emotional and aesthetic appeal, the idea of the communion of saints is no more acceptable than the baroque minutiae of the sagas of Sith and Jedi: not simply because it is not true, but because its mendacity is grounded in an intuitive, and therefore inherently dodgy, appeal to a deep-rooted, primitive impulse to tell stories. And the rich linguistic imagination that may have been useful to our distant ancestors, while surviving a bewildering prehistory of poisonous berries, cave bears and anachronistic dinosaurs, is as embarrassingly dated now, and as destructive, as selling cigarettes to children.

    One good question about all this is who cares? To the morally sound atheist the whole business of poetry and aesthetics can sometimes seem simplistic, a gallimaufry of oxypygical nephelococcygisms.

    However, the value of a shared moral framework, either as crudely sanctimonious as editorials in The Guardian – or as cunningly wrought and intricately plotted as the storylines of the great English soap operas, which have been the United Kingdom’s crowning cultural achievement over the last half-century – is obvious. Whether this moral framework should have an aesthetic function as an entertainment, as the Iliad had, as well as primarily intellectual and theoretical function, as Emmerdale or Coronation Street have, is the question.

    Where can we find a system of art that is commercially responsible, aesthetically amusing and allied to objective truth? There is mysticism in the tremulous bob of a quark, probably, but it is unlikely to strike to the soul of the general reader as effectively as the hackneyed beams of a discredited moon trailing its tiresome beams on an uninspired sea.

    There is majesty and awe to be discovered still in the sight of a mountain range at sunset, if you like that sort of thing, and in the rank variety of living matter that continues to infest the planet in spite of humanity’s best endeavours to make the place more conveniently habitable. But these childish tricks of the light and inherited blood hardly have the gravitas that we demand of serious art (if they very idea of art as a serious pursuit is not in itself kind of ridiculous).

    We cannot escape from story any more than we can divest ourselves of language, which is to say no more than a bird can break free from the shackles of flight, or loosen the muzzle of song. And yet the scientific method that frustrates the narrative impulse, that offers its material and objective gifts in exchange for childish images, whose stern practise refuse to obey the tyranny of the story arc – that bent rod of servility that defines the slavery of human whim, has not yet yielded up a satisfying and rigorous alternative to childish mythology.

    Until we can imagine and describe our world in human language as accurately as we can using the divine language of mathematics, the best we can do is watch with a critical eye the rigorous moral thought experiments of Corrie, on ITV and Virgin Media One, with an omnibus edition on ITV2 every Sunday.

  • What One Thing Could Make You Happier?

    Studies show that if you get married and then divorce, your happiness will dip below what it was before you married. One might conclude that pursuing the perfect relationship to fulfil your happiness is, at best, a risky business.

    Ninety-five percent of ‘the Feel Good Hormone’ serotonin is produced in your gut, a scientific fact that directly links nutrition to mood and happiness. But most people would find it hard to believe that their guts could have the slightest bearing on their happiness.

    Ask people ‘What One Thing Could Make You Happier?’, and you are bound to receive a wide range of replies, none of which are likely to have a connection to the physical body. The answers you receive, will inevitably include at least one, if not more, of the following: a great job; more money; amazing sex; better friends; more free time; looking better; being more intelligent (or more educated); or finding ‘the one’ to form that perfect union.

    Since the pursuit of love and the perfect relationship lists highly among the beliefs that society at large holds as to the key to establishing lifelong happiness, let us examine some studies, that link relationships to happiness or joie de vivre.

    According to John Gottman of the University of Washington, a world leading researcher on the subject of marriage, married people are a mere ten per cent happier than unmarried. The afterglow of a wedding, with all its pomp and ceremony, lasts approximately two years over which time, there is an increase in overall happiness.

    Less depression is also reported within couples who are married. So yes, to some degree, marriage can elevate happiness, at least temporarily. But like most things in life, it is not that straightforward.

    If you get married and then divorce, your happiness seems to dip below its level beforehand. Hopeless romantics, don’t lose heart: in time your happiness level will return to what it was before you were married. Non-romantics, however, might conclude that the pursuit of a perfect relationship, to fulfil ultimate happiness, is at best, a flawed enterprise.

    The good news for women in their thirties and forties is that the struggle to deal with romantic relationships and societal pressures to conform, by finding the perfect mate and having children tend to disappear.

    A sense of contentment and happiness prevails, as the luxury of discovering the true self and recognising personal needs, for the first time perhaps, comes into view. Overall, in both males and females, happiness increases with age, whether attached or not.

    In marriage, the mental health of males improves overall. However, compared to women, men deteriorate emotionally and physically with notable increased levels of depression as a result of a separation or divorce. For those considering a long term relationship which excludes the certificate of marriage, the news is not good either – those who live together are less happy and have a higher chance of breaking-up than those who marry.

    A number of studies conclude that the arrival of children into a marriage also causes happiness levels within the relationship to decline. But it gets worse when those offspring hatch into teenagers during which time happiness reaches its nadir.

    Indeed, in her acclaimed book Flourishing, Maureen Gaffney cites evidence that the happiness levels experienced by mothers when taking care of their children is lower than that which they experience preparing meals or doing shopping.

    In this age of cosmetic surgery and digitally-enhanced social media imagery, it is tempting to believe that a beautiful body and a perfect face would greatly increase ones happiness. Oh to be younger, slimmer, more attractive, to rid ourselves of that extra ten pounds, increase bust or butt size, harvest more hair follicles, remove wrinkles, turn back the clock, a nip and a tuck, some suction there, a syringe here. Sure what would be the harm?

    Surely then, true happiness would cease to evade us so cruelly if we were only more beautiful? Not so. Whilst there is a slight correlation between a more attractive appearance and increased happiness levels, appearance only accounts if you manage to attract more partners and friends: the mirror is no use.

    There is one area of life that is guaranteed to increase happiness, without exception. People who have five or more close friends are sixty percent happier than those who do not. Friendships actually bring more happiness than family, mostly because they are free from the duties, obligations and expectations that many family bonds involve.

    The factors that make it easier to form new friendships include: ease with strangers; getting involved in social activities; team sports; and being socially active in general.

    Yet again it is not that simple. Unsupportive friendships can have the opposite effect. Choose wisely. Your friendships have a major influence on your happiness levels, so be open to new ones. Cut away old ties that no longer serve your emotional needs. Leave behind friendships that are unreliable, destructive or negative.

    Notice how you feel around the people you consider friends. If the answer is positive, you are on to a winner. Cherish and nurture those relationships because they have the potential to bring a major increase in happiness, often greater than any other external factor, aside maybe from gut health, which is the subject of my forthcoming book Lets Talk About Happiness – The Ultimate Guide to Gut Health in line with the launch of the Vitality Centre on Grafton Street, a clinic which offers overall body wellness, starting with the gut.

    Health and mood have a definite effect on our overall levels of happiness. And what is more, these two things are profoundly linked to your physical body, or to your gut to be more precise, through one very important hormone.

    That hormone is serotonin, referred to previously as ‘the Feel Good Hormone’, because it relates directly to how happy you feel. During bouts of depression it drops. Now here comes the clincher. Ninety-five percent of serotonin is produced in your gut. That is why anti-depressants are used to treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). These drugs boost serotonin production, not in your brain but in your gut, where the effect is to lift your mood.

    Relief from both depression and bowel problems are often achieved. That is because an increase or decrease in serotonin in your gut (or bowels if you prefer) caused by impaction or other gut related issues can lower your mood and vice versa.

    A game changing monument of research arrived on bookshelves in 1999 called The Second Brain by Dr Michael Gershon, who devoted his career to understanding the bowel (the stomach, oesophagus, small intestine, and colon) collectively referred to as the gut.

    Most people rarely ponder the colon, that five foot tube of colon, the importance of which has tended to be overlooked by the medical profession, and society in general to the point that IBS was considered a problem of the mind, before Dr Michael Gershon shone his light on the powerful connection between the gut and brain, affecting our serotonin levels and therefore, happiness.

    To conclude, to any reader who searches for happiness through the pursuit of a perfect relationship, reduce your efforts. Increase your investment in friendships of value and look inward, but not only to the mind but also to the bowel or gut, for there may lie the treasure that you seek.

  • Cancer – A Distorted Version of Our Normal Selves

    We have not slain our enemy, the cancer cell, or figuratively torn the limbs from his body … In our adventures we have only seen our monster more clearly and described his scales and fangs in new ways – ways that reveal a cancer cell to be, like Grendel, a distorted version of our normal selves.
    Harold E. Varmus, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (Stockholm, 1989).

    Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm – substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.
    Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York, 1962)

    Over a decade ago my mother was diagnosed with skin cancer, in the form of a melanoma on her face. At the time this did not seem a big deal, at least once a surgeon had removed the offending growth and performed a successful skin graft. It had been caught early enough to prevent metastasis, or so we thought.

    The ‘scare’ probably shook her more than we recognised. The diagnosis must have realised her worst nightmare after the loss of her own mother, to what seems to have been breast cancer at the age of just fifty.

    Most obviously she became fretful at being exposed to the sun, though by then this would probably have made no difference.

    In hindsight, perhaps she never fully recovered her poise. I suspect an accumulation of worries affected her health, contributing to the later metastasis of the cancer. Revealingly, a recent survey of seventy thousand women, aged seventy or over, showed that an optimistic frame of mind correlated with a reduced risk of cancer, and other fatal diseases. This bolsters Iain McGilchrist’s suggestion that all medicine should be seen as ‘a branch of psychiatry, and psychiatry as a branch of philosophy’.

    Genetic determinism portrays physical bodies as distinct from minds. But this neo-Cartesian view ignores the bewildering complexity of our brains, within which McGilchrist estimates there are more connections ‘than there are particles in the known universe’.

    It should offer solace to those with a genetic history of the disease that minds are exceedingly complex, and malleable, instruments.

    According to Siddhartha Mukherjee, the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010), ‘the Ancient Roman doctor Galen reserved the most malevolent and disquieting of the four humours for cancer: black bile’. He attributed just one other disease to an excess of this ‘oily, viscuous humour: depression’. Indeed melancholia, the medieval name for ‘depressions’ draws its name from the Greek melan, meaning ‘black’, and khole, meaning ‘bile’; Mukherjee describes how ‘Depression and cancer, the psychic and physical diseases of black bile, were thus intrinsically intertwined.’ Moreover, Andrew Soloman quotes an expert to the effect that anxiety, ‘a response to future lost’, should be regarded as  ‘fraternal twins’ with depression, ‘a response to past lost (quoted in Pollan, 2018, p.389)’.

    Although during the Renaissance Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) established that black bile does not exist, the coupling of the two ailments by Galen, who informed Western medicine for over a millennium, is noteworthy. Contemporary approaches may profitably look backwards, as Mukherjee puts it: ‘Scientists often study the past as obsessively as historians because few other professions depend as acutely on it’.

    That is not to say, of course, that cancer is somehow ‘all in the mind’, but increasing focus on the role of depression or stress, and ways of counteracting these, from spirituality to artistic expression or enjoying the great outdoors, would surely be beneficial.

    II – The Human Genome Project

    Mukherjee argues that cancer ‘is stitched into our genome’: somatic cells, along with the bacteria in our body with which we generally co-exist symbiotically, are in a constant flux of death and renewal, such that most of our cells survive no longer than seven years, before being replaced by new ones.

    As we grow older glitches – entropy – enters into this process of renewal. Mukherjee writes: ‘Oncogenes arise from mutations in essential genes that regulate the growth of cells’. It is usually as if we become jaded by a lifetime’s effort, and errors creep in.

    Predicting the behaviour of these mutations has, however, defied understanding since the ‘War on Cancer’ began in the early 1950s. The outbreak of certain rare forms can be traced to genetic inheritance, but the onset of the vast majority is not preordained.

    Mukherjee argues that ‘the Human Genome Project will profile the normal genome against which cancer’s abnormal genomes can be juxtaposed and contrasted’. However the number of genetic mutations involved in most types runs into three figures.

    At best scientists have been able to glean from genomic evidence that certain individuals do not benefit from particular therapies. But this is not the same as understanding at a cellular level why most cancers appear, and pinpointing the preventative measures which ought to be taken.

    Inescapably, the claims of genomic research arrive through the prism of justifying hefty research grants.

    The author of The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry (2012), Rupert Sheldrake has sought to puncture the optimism of those who believe the Human Genome Project will yield infallible algorithms predicting our future life and health: ‘The optimism that life would be understood if molecular biologists knew the ‘programs’ of an organism gave way to the realisation that there is a huge gap between gene sequences and actual human beings’.

    Mukherjee also acknowledges the great variety of environmental factors, which switch on and on off the genetic mutations which give rise to cancers:

    Our bodies, our cells, our genes are being immersed and re-immersed in a changing flux of molecules – pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, plastics, cosmetics, food products, hormones, even novel forms of physical impulses such as radiation and magnetism. Some of these, inevitably, will be carcinogenic. We cannot wish this world away; our task then is to sift through it vigilantly to discriminate bona fide carcinogens from innocent and useful bystanders.

    Revealingly, in a recent U.S. case a jury awarded DeWayne Johnson €289 million in damages against Monsanto, the manufacturers of Roundup a glyphosate weed killer in compensation for the onset of his cancer.

    Other confounding factors include the emerging field epigenetics, our co-habitation with bacteria – itself in constant evolution – and even altered states of consciousness.

    III – Metastatic Melanoma

    Exposure to the sun’s UV-A and UV-B rays is considered the leading cause of melanomas. The incidence is particularly high among Australians, most of whose ancestors evolved in cool and cloudy Northern European conditions, and, surprisingly, Switzerland, where a fondness for the sunny piste seems to be to blame.

    My mother was not particularly pale-skinned, and nor was she ever a sun-worshipper. I recall her scrupulously applying sunscreen on herself, and her children, on beach holidays. The best guess is the damage stemmed from sunburn as a child or young adult. That her life coincided with a depletion in the ozone layer, which filters UV rays high up in the atmosphere, could also have been a factor. It has even been hypothesised that sunscreen itself contains carcinogenic properties.

    When my mother’s cancer returned three years ago, in the form of tumours on the lung it did not seem such devastating news. The first battle had been won, and why not this? If I had known that a metastatic melanoma is usually considered a death sentence, and that treatments only tend to extend life by a few months, I would have reacted differently.

    I remained bullish in my assessment as, a short time beforehand, she had embraced a wholefood plant-based diet. From the start I was skeptical about the treatment, fearing this could do more harm than good; as the sixteenth century physician Paracelsus put it, ‘every medicine is a poison in disguise’.

    Probably wisely however – though I will never know – I kept my counsel, at least to her, and most of my family. I cannot imagine how I would feel if I had persuaded her to get off the treatment, and she had died soon afterwards.

    However, I recently revisited a passage from Professor T. Colin Campbell’ 2013 book Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, in which he describes the response of his wife Karen to a metastasised (Stage 3-Advanced) melanoma on her lymph gland. She refused any of the treatment alternatives her oncologist recommended, much to his annoyance.

    Campbell writes perceptively: ‘Cancer patients intensely want to believe in their oncologist, whom they see as holding the key to their recovery’. Despite refusing treatment, including surgery, Karen Campbell, maintaining a wholefood plant-based diet had lived a further eight years by 2013 without ill-effects, and appears to be still alive today. Obviously we cannot extrapolate too much on the basis of one case, but I cannot help asking myself: ‘what if?’.

    My mother was put on one trial treatment, and later a different one, of a form of immuno-therapy, which harnesses the immune system to attack cancer cells. It came as a shock to her system. Some months into it she developed a sore throat and high fever, which eventually required hospitalisation, and an antibiotic drip.

    Living with my parents through much of the long treatment period I was on hand for many of the oncology treatment days, and the debilitating nausea that followed. Her vitality declined precipitously: from being a committed walker, she found it increasingly difficult to go any distance; whether the cancer played a part in this I do not know.

    She managed, nonetheless, to take the odd foreign trip, overcoming her nerves, and became a grandmother to two further grandchildren in that period.

    She lasted almost three years on the treatment, maintaining the plant-based diet throughout – although she did occasionally eat fish after being encouraged to increase her protein intake. According to the consultant she was top of the class on the basis of her scans. He always professed satisfaction at how well she was doing, which did not exactly chime with the increasing levels of nausea she was experiencing. This also required her to take more and more medications, which lowered further her vitality.

    IV – Plant-Based Prevention?

    Disconcertingly, Mukherjee characterises the history of cancer research as, ‘intensely competitive’, and featuring, ‘a grim, nearly athletic, determination’. It seems patient welfare, as opposed to survival, has not always been to the fore, as experts compete for the next breakthrough in extending life, or finding an ever-elusive cure. The same commitment has not, alas, been shown to prevention strategies, which would bring no reward to the pharmaceutical sector that generally funds the research.

    In 2014 a retired Dublin G.P. John Kelly published a book entitled Stop Feeding Your Cancer in which he argued that ‘The minds of cancer specialists were so cluttered with their pharmaceutical and surgical obligations that they were unable to accommodate critical revisionary thinking.’

    Kelly’s account, which has been criticised for cherry-picking data, was inspired by his reading of the same T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study (2005). Campbell, no ethical vegan, conducted experiments on two groups of laboratory rats infected with cancer. The first group were given a diet comprising twenty percent animal protein. They all promptly died, but the second group were given a diet of only five percent animal protein, and all survived.

    Campbell performed these experiments in the Philippines after observing a lower survival rate among affluent cancer patients with diets high in animal products, compared to their impoverished peers on diets low in meat and dairy. In the laboratory Campbell also found vegetable proteins did not promote cancer, even when consumed in large quantities.

    IV Cure or Cause?

    The heartening news at the beginning of this year was that my mother’s tumours had all but disappeared from her lung, but she nevertheless continued to get sicker and sicker.

    Over time her face took on a disturbingly yellowish hue, which was eventually diagnosed as jaundice – in Galenic terms an excess of yellow bile. A good friend who is a G.P. confided to me that the overwhelming likelihood was that this was linked to her cancer.

    Still it was a great shock when the news came through of another tumour blocking her bile duct.

    It required a painful operation, on an already weakened patient, inserting a tube to stanch the flow of bile into the bloodstream. It never worked properly, and she declined painfully from that point, despite my father’s best efforts to master the appendage.

    I cannot help wondering whether, considering the prolonged bouts of nausea, the treatment itself had caused the inflammation which produced the tumour; the history of cancer is replete with examples of ‘cures’ doing more harm than good. For example, many chemotherapy agents are known carcinogens, and listed on the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Group 1 list as such.

    Mukherjee also describes chemotherapists as acting like ‘lunatic cartographers’ who ‘frantically drew and redrew their strategies to annihilate cancer’. My mother went through immuno-therapy, but the basic approach of poisoning the body in order to kill the cancer appears to be the same.

    It also begs the wider question as to whether a prolonged period on a debilitating cancer treatment is a life worth living.

    The absence of preventative cancer programmes in our systems of public health is nothing short of scandalous. The Chicago Tribune acknowledged in 1975 that the idea of ‘preventive medicine is faintly un-American. It means, first, recognizing that the enemy is us’. Where America leads other nations appear to follow.

    In Plato’s idealised Republic, Socrates castigates doctors that prolong the life of patients without curing them. He pays tribute to the carpenter who, after being prescribed a lengthy treatment regimen, replies:

    that he had no leisure time to be ill and that life is no use to him if he has to neglect his work and always be concerned with his illness. After that he’d bid good-bye to his doctor, resume his usual way of life, and either recover his health or, if his body couldn’t withstand the illness, he’d die and escape his troubles.

    There are of course now many procedures that are relatively simple – such as removing skin cancer – but I cannot help feeling, notwithstanding medical advances, that I too would prefer to die on the job rather than go through a debilitating, long-term course of cancer treatment. I prefer the preventative measure of a plant-based diet to reduce my own risk of developing cancer

    V – Depression

    Like many patients after a terminal diagnosis my mother developed symptoms of depression for which she was prescribed medication. She also benefitted greatly from spiritual counselling in the Catholic tradition from a devoted friend.

    She cast away doubts and annoyances with the Church, realising great benefit from simple prayer, during what the philosopher John Moriarty has described as a universal Golgotha experience. This may give Christianity an enduring relevance, despite historic failings.

    Those resistant to religion might consider the effect of psychedelic drugs on terminal cancer sufferers who experience depression. In How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (2018) Michael Pollan reveals how in NYU and Hopkins trials 85% of cancer patients showed ‘clinically significant reductions in standard measures of anxiety and depression that endured for at least six months after the psylocybin sessions’. Fascinatingly, in both trials ‘the intensity of the mystical experience volunteers reported closely correlated with the degree to which their symptoms [of depression] subsided’.

    *******

    There are no simple answers to the questions I have raised in this article, but based on my experience of losing a close relative to cancer, and reading up on the subject, I would argue that we need to alter the paradigm of research, to explore more fully preventative strategies rather than simply addressing the disease after it has emerged.

    Cancer is not all in the mind, and nor does it ever seem likely to be eradicated fully, but that correlation between good health and a sunny disposition is notable. Can general practitioners, in particular, develop ways of lifting our moods – without recourse to medication – while retaining a focus on physical signs of illness? Perhaps we need to train a new kind of physician, with mindfulness at the core of their study.

    Finally, why is it that public health authorities do not display the same commitment to dietary change as is shown towards curbing tobacco smoking? One conclusion that might be drawn is that pharmaceutical companies, and other vested interests, are an obstacle to this coming about.

     

    Jacqueline Armstrong RIP

  • We Need Another ‘New Deal’ and Umbrella to Unite Under

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), U.S. President between 1933 and 1945, was born to enormous privilege. He came from one of the most aristocratic families in America. A distant cousin, Teddy, had even been elected President.

    In his youth FDR was a bon vivant and ladies man, who strayed from Eleanor, his saintly but still formidable wife. This blue blood seemed an unlikely person to buck the entire system of US capitalism. He remains a hate-figure for U.S. Conservatives today.

    Any account of his life should include the enormous personal tragedy of his incapacitation due to polio. He could not walk, and this disability may have broadened his empathy for others’ suffering.

    Roosevelt was elected President in 1932 on a platform of change: to provide a New Deal to the American people after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and ensuing global depression. The destitution of the American people is movingly depicted in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, where a group of ‘Okies’, led by Tom Joad, are ruined by dustbowl conditions, and the calling in of loans by ruthless bankers.

    Similarly, devastation arrived in the urban centres, captured in the lyrics of the song and Broadway musical E.Y. Yip Harpurg’s ‘Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime’. Even brokers were forced to eat from soup kitchens, as erstwhile respectable folk were reduced to ‘hobos’.

    What had happened was that the bull market of speculation had simply collapsed. The unregulated free market had built mountains of sand out of folly and greed. A dominant economic philosophy of laissez faire had brought light touch regulation and government passivity, as with our own, similarly hegemonic, neo-liberalism.

    The view then, as today, was that government had no business interfering in private transactions and that wealth, growth and efficiency are best achieved by the operation of the invisible hand.

    The crash beginning in 2007 was not that different from the 1929 version, and the political consequences are increasingly similar too. A neo-liberal consensus endorses a shock doctrine allowing crisis to follow crisis, precipitating social and economic collapse.

    FDR adopted the seemingly paradoxical, and certainly heretical, advice of the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes that to save capitalism it was necessary for the government to intervene in the market. Thus Roosevelt set up national agencies and support structures for aid and assistance. It was a bailout to protect the poor and disenfranchised, not the rich.

    His New Deal was in the national interest. Not a shibboleth or paper mask, cloaked in woolly ideas, to protect vested interests.

    The Supreme Court initially blocked New Deal legislation, rejecting what the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes contemptuously branded social statistics in his dissenting opinion in Lochner Herbert Spencers. He insisted the court had no business varying contracts.

    ‘the switch in time’

    The assumption of liberty of contract is that anyone has the freedom to enter into a bargain under whatever terms they choose, and once a contract is struck they are bound by their word. But that is based on the pretence that the market is a level playing field, which it never has been. Many still sign on the doted line without fully understanding the implications. Moreover, neo-liberalism sells short term fixes which often fail.

    An exasperated Roosevelt informed the Supreme Court that if they did not approve his legislation he would appoint new judges, which soon led to a change of heart. This became known among wags as ‘the switch in time that saved nine’.

    Roosevelt displayed an ambivalence towards democracy, but was the best of all leaders: a benevolent dictator. He favoured those at the bottom of the social ladder, who were increasingly aware that democracy had been sabotaged by vested interests. At that time, just as is the case today, transnational corporations and law firms were dictating to governments.

    Roosevelt revived the U.S. economy, with Keynesian pump-priming: government expenditure increasing aggregate demand. It did not lead to a bail out of corrupt banks, but their nationalisation. This brought investment to help ordinary people, not the infliction of wanton cruelty in the form of perma-austerity, which runs contrary to even capitalist logic.

    The best evidence is that a mixed economy, combining private enterprise and public initiative, with social safety nets and public assistance for small enterprises, is a model that works best for society as a whole, rather than the cartelisation of wealth, under the voodoo promise of trickle down.

    Keynes was right then, and still is, but over time he became unfashionable and was derided.

    In late 1970’s Britain, in particular, the excesses of socialism were becoming obvious, with the three-day-working-week, litter on the streets, and the stranglehold of the Unions. With initiative thus stifled, Thatcher and Reagan championed the old formula of untrammelled free markets: new clothing for old and obsolete ideas of unregulated markets, conveniently referred to as neo-liberalism.

    The ideological underpinning came from the Austrian Friedrich Hayek and the Chicago school under Milton Friedman. The curious assumption was that wealth would trickle down like manna from heaven from rich to poor, if a market is left alone. Instead we got the yuppies, like Donald Trump, who siphoned off great wealth.

    Over time we have seen the dismantling of the welfare state; the removal of social protections and safety nets. More sinister developments are of a more recent vintage.

    ‘the new serfdom’

    Firstly, a rapidly declining percentile of the global population is controlling an ever-increasing share of the wealth and resources of the planet, with everybody else increasingly impoverished.

    As a result the distinction between working class and middle class is being eroded. The new class system is a reversion to a medieval pyramid of landlords and serfs: feudal capitalism.

    This blurring of class boundaries is an important point to appreciate, making Antonio Gramsci’s idea of an accommodation between working and middle class interests more compelling than ever. Old-fashioned Marxist class divisions no longer make sense, amidst corporate feudalism, where working and middle classes are both succumbing to serfdom.

    Conversely Hayek, one of the architects of neo-liberalism, actually called socialism the new feudalism or serfdom. It is ironic in the extreme therefore that his ideas have led precisely to what he sought to avoid. Socialist brainwashing has been replaced by neo-liberal.

    More to the point, the unprecedented banking collapse after 2007 led to bail-outs being award to those responsible who were responsible, and the infliction of austerity on the wretched of the earth. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stieglitz, referred to this false paradigm as ‘socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor’.

    Those countries which adopted ‘Roosveltean’ or Keynesian approaches, including nationalisating banks, such as Iceland have been vindicated. This brought stabilisation and recovery.

    Ireland achieved the worst of all possible ends. It established a bad bank NAMA, which cut deals with failed property speculators and lawyers and the congeries of the corrupt. As the IMF and Europe imposed austerity on the defenceless masses those responsible were bailed out and their debts cancelled.

    The fraudulent Irish banks had made their money on misrepresentations, and providing negligent lending advice about the value of stocks, investments and credit ratings. This had caused the economy to overheat and generated a property bubble that many had warned against.

    Now the institutions foreclose against the poor and defenceless, as sanctity of contract is insisted on. The perversion of the system it that the richer you are, the more easily you can cut a deal: the logic of ‘a bank too big to fail’.

    homo economicus

    The neo-liberal recasting of homo sapiens into homo economicus, also initiates a new form of Social Darwinism, permitting only the survival of the fittest or rather the most ruthless in a dog eat dog universe.

    We have seen a slippage in standards, where the young are habituated to lying, as deceit has become the norm among holders of high office. The lines between fact, semi-fact, lies and deceptions have been blurred entirely. Even in the courts of law fabricated cases have reached pandemic proportions.

    It has also led to increasingly vicious tactics against those who demure: like a plague the corruption of banks has spread to other private agencies and even state institutions, where those who blow the whistle or otherwise expose toxic levels of corruption are systematically destroyed.

    In this distorted universe the mugshots of those that should be acclaimed as heroes of our time, now feature in rogues’ galleries of infamy and subversion. The indicted include human rights lawyers, activists, whistleblowers, publicly-minded citizens, and anyone with a shred of a social conscience.

    It is a divisive ‘them’ and ‘us’ social setting. ‘Them’, the poor, the migrant, the displaced, the activist, the troublemaker, the public intellectual, are all marginalised and insidiously destroyed in increments or possibly state-sponsored murder, as in the case of journalists in Malta and Slovakia.

    Targeted assassination by the state is now the norm, and not just under Mr Putin.

    Making Hodge-Podge of Everything

    Even though I am a Harvard law graduate I doubt whether Mr. Trump would grant me leave to enter the United States right now. I am no longer one of ‘us’ but one of ‘them’, what Franz Fanon called The Wretched of The Earth. I should not have given unconditional praise to human rights activists, who impede capitalist interests.

    Our corporate suzerains lead people to safe issues around individual entitlements. We are all in favour of gay marriage, gender equity and not criminalising someone for puffing on a joint. But what about more fundamental rights intrinsic to human life, such as health care, housing and social support? If you argue in favour of this just see what happens.

    Around the world courts are rapidly evicting and rendering homeless surplus populations and in India dumping them on the streets. Housing, either buying or renting, is increasingly unaffordable, diminishing the prospect of human flourishing.

    The privatisation of health care has ineluctably led to life or death being a matter not of right or entitlement, but of affordability.

    There are other sinister ramifications. Those teachers, academics or professionals in badly paid but socially worthwhile occupations must toe the line, and are fired for exposing corruption. In order to survive they have to sing for their supper, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.

    The wise sensei or village elder is no longer looked up to, but instead the old are being asked to quietly await their death.

    Intelligence and achievement have to be costed and channelled into wealth producing activities. You are not a man if you do not descend to the mentality of the hunter.

    Short-termism both in contracts and thinking, has led to reactive decision-making, wherein people are desensitised to the suffering of others.

    In my view these depredations being heaped on society are deliberate. The tactics of social disruption peddled in Chile and Indonesia by the neo-liberals in the late 1970s are now being replicated in Ireland and Greece, among other places. It is a social experiment assessing what level of suffering is required to bring compliance to authority, and obedience to the will of the mega rich.

    This is accompanied by cuts in funding for socially useful public agencies, such as libraries, which are being gradually eliminated. There have also been huge cuts to legal aid, imperiling the ability of the innocent to defend themselves against criminal charges.

    It brings to mind the prescriptions of one Dostoyevsky’s Devils Pyotr Stepanovich who advocates the ‘systematic undermining of every foundation, the systematic destruction of society an all its principles’, which would: ‘demoralize everyone and make hodge-podge of everything’. Then, ‘when society was on the point of collapse – sick, depressed, cynical, and sceptical, but still with a desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self preservation’, his faction would, ‘suddenly gain control of it’.

    The New Deal

    We demand a New Deal. But what will that entail today, and how could it be feasible?

    1. Urgently in Ireland, and other neo liberal countries, the courts need to recognising housing (even without recourse to Article 45), including prohibition against arbitrary eviction, as well as access to health care, as fundamental human rights. The courts need to show leadership and recognise the common good of protecting people against the corporate predation by vulture funds and transnational interests.
    1. We urgently require Keynesian stabilisation including support for small businesses, social safety nets and structural regulation of a wildcatting private sector.
    1. The EU needs to be streamlined to a form of looser associational ties, which do not impose austerity or globalisation of capital, but reinforce standards and regulatory protection of rights and resistance to the interventions of globalised capitalism. There is no point in Brexit if it is replaced by the interests of Steve Bannon and other American ranchers.
    1. The power of officers of the state needs to be strictly regulated. We are living in an age when an over powerful state and police force is intruding unconstitutionally in private lives of others, and state sponsored is increasingly apparent. Where subversion is emanating from the state, and where criminalisation is opaque and multi-faceted: where many of the real problems of criminality can be traced to the state itself.
    1. There is a paucity of political leadership at national and international level. The possibility now exists that various NGOs raising awareness on the impact of Climate Change awareness, miscarriages of justice and social and economic rights, band together in an alternative transnational organisation fronted by the good and the wise. To oppose internationalisation we need an alternative internationalisation lobbying not for growth but sustainability, conservation and a reverse to small is beautiful and artisanal livelihoods. We need to remould human nature to promote altruism, community and compassion for others, engendering a New Deal of collaborative and associative responsibilities.

    So let us organise a petition then for an umbrella organisation to bring a New Deal for the world.

  • The Audacity of a Third Party Candidate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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