Cassandra Voices

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  • In the Blink of an Eye

    In the blink of an eye everything can change in the way we live our lives. How do we manage to live, socialise and maintain public health?

    A recent article by Jennifer O’Connell ‘We are world experts at anomalies and blind eyes’ led me to recall how turning a blind eye brought incarceration of pregnant women in laundries and to others living out their lives in psychiatric institutions. But also, that the default creative solution taken by those who do not have the luxury of access, or the means, to survive and thrive within rules laid down by those who do, is to selectively blinker themselves to such rules. And how turning a blind eye to such anomalies is a usually unacknowledged aspect of the way a tate functions.

    A Belgian psychiatrist, speaking from the floor at one of the meetings called to form the European Association for Psychotherapy, proposed ‘an ability to deal with ambiguity’ as a definition for mental health.

    Jagged Lines       

    In a time of extreme change, such as that witnessed during the pandemic, and which climate change may well produce, we may have to live with increasing contradictions.

    I remember attending a talk given by the late Virginia Satir in Dundrum in Dublin. Satir was one of the earliest family therapists in the United States, focussed on bringing about system change through communication.

    She drew a jagged trajectory from one straight line to another. The jagged part indicated the chaos experienced as a system, or family, moves from stasis through change.

    As I was pregnant with my first child at the time, it was helpful to recall the jagged line as I struggled to change nappies, deal with nappy rash after soaking the cloth ones in buckets and washing them (we aspired to mind the planet in the 1980s too), before surrendering to the absorbent benefits of paper while, getting by on less sleep than I’d ever managed.

    “The first weeks of parenthood are chaotic,” a thoughtful friend rang me to say. ”It will be a lot better in six weeks’ time.”

    The jagged line has been a handy reminder in later periods of change and adjustment too, not least during lockdowns and when getting used to wearing a mask.

    Catch 22

    Pain-inducing contradictions can arise. This may lead either to a psychological pathology or, by way of rising above it, creative solutions.

    A subject explored in essays by Gregory Bateson in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Paladin, 1973) in which he critiques previous work from his Palo Alto team proposing the Double Bind theory.

    The double bind is a situation requiring the subject – in a relationship which cannot be escaped from – to choose between alternatives in which they will be wrong-footed either way. In other words, they experience themselves living in a continuing Catch 22.

    Mount Fuji

    ‘Benefits of Inconvenience’

    A recent interview on the Design Talks Plus programme from NNK Japan television offers encouragement. In what may be a turning from the belief that technical progress is always to our advantage, Professor Kawakami Hiroshi of Kyoto University of Advanced Science has spent a decade researching what he calls ‘the benefits of inconvenience’. He argues for less convenience and that the effort required to make sense of the world, while facing challenges, may contribute to a better sense of meaningfulness and wellbeing.

    Hiroshi cites a return to the use of rough earth in children’s playgrounds (balance challenging) and finding the way on foot around a city without satnav – ensuring the need to pay attention to surroundings – as examples. To emphasise his point he began by asking: ‘If you were climbing Mt. Fuji would you want an escalator’?

    The inconvenience in rising to the challenge of struggling with contradictions in rules for living with Covid 19 (and our recent further re-opening of opportunities to socialise) could be seen as an opportunity.

    Maybe the rewards will offset the difficulties. Providing, that is, those struggling are not punished for choices that, either way, will put them in the wrong.

    If restrictions spawn imaginative solutions, in line with the spirit of preventing the spread of variants of Covid-19, crucially, formulated in ways appropriate to particular local situations, then the sense of satisfaction might end up enhancing a sense of well-being

    Unlikely? Maybe. But maybe not. These regularly madden me but, and as Jennifer O’Connell indicated in her article, they are the kind of ‘Irish solutions’  we might be said to excel at.

    Mark Zuckerberg at the Congressional Hearing

    Where to Look

    I was relieved – hope restored –  hearing Roger McNamee, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s early mentors and author of Zucked (UK Harper Collins,2019), on the RTE radio morning news bulletin on October 29th 2021 saying that the Facebooker owner’s launch of Meta, his new holding company, is his way of distracting the world from Frances Haugen’s account. The Facebook whistleblower revealed to the U.S. Congress and a UK Select Committee in the last couple of weeks the ways Zuckerman prioritizes profits over safety. McNamee thought it was also aimed at saving Zuckerman from being held to account.

    What’s hopeful about that? Only that Roger McNamee spoke out and RTE radio reported what he had to say. In the same week I was fuming about an article in the Business Post (Oct, 24th) by Dan O’Brien ‘Covid 19 has brought out the inner catastrophist in our national psyche’.

    I forced myself to complete it several days after I had put it to one side. I wanted to be able to respond to it, but also to offer him at least the courtesy of considering what he had to say, especially given he has had to listen to that he clearly has found difficult in the national conversation.

    I had no argument with the generally accepted facts outlined. However, his omission of the crucial fact that the Irish health system has been more inclined towards collapse than the other European countries he mentions bothered me. That, alongside his use of adjectives, indicated a bias I saw as otherwise unacknowledged. Although mention of his Brazilian wife did offer clues.

    Photo by Daniele Idini.

    Catastrophising

    What most annoyed me was that Dan O’Brien wrote of Irish ‘catastrophising’ conversations. Longer lockdowns here contrasted with the reactions of Italy or Brazil. His hypothesis is that this might be due to their twentieth century experiences of living with war.

    How ought we best manage the fears evoked by a threat? Our bodies are wired for fight or flight. The extreme version of flight is denial, ignoring of facts that we cannot face.

    It can allow us to hide from reality or feel unrealistically invincible in our fighting. Maybe that’s what is needed in wars. In contradiction to O’Brien’s argument, the truth generally is that the more traumatised we are the more likely we may be to use these defences.

    Of course, we need psychological defences that enable us continue to cope during difficult times. Talking about our difficulties and continuing to take the difficult decisions, to find the least bad solutions that we can manage to act on, is usually considered the healthiest way of managing.

    We need to put on blinkers at times and to remain focused on the direction required. But blinding ourselves entirely to the traffic – the many difficulties and demands of the times we live in – can only lead to more of the same.

    In Addition

    We are drawn to solutions that best serve our own interests. Financial Times journalist, Tim Harmon’s book How to Make the World Add Up (2021) reveals research showing that we are more likely to make decisions based on the attitudes of the groups with which we identify than with scientifically proven facts, and that this has also been shown to be true of scientists themselves.

    We want to remain part of our group or tribe. This is research worth taking into account with regard to vaccine take up and hesitancy. Maybe it is important to acknowledge that Dan O’Brien is interested in economics and business and that my background, which also began with a social science perspective, has been a thirty-year career in psychotherapy before I turned to writing. We may have different loyalties affecting our perspectives.

    A quick re-read of what Tim Harford had to say about our use of statistics led me to his first rule for evaluating their use: ‘What are you feeling?’

    He goes on to suggest that looking at how those feelings might be influencing your use of figures can be the best way to ensure accuracy, and the avoidance of spreading ‘false news’.

    I asked myself about the anger fuelling the fingers on my keyboard. I realised it was driven by fear. My own catastrophising of how O’Brien’s article might undermine the national effort. My fear that Covid numbers are rising. I don’t want another lockdown.

    However accurate or questionable O’Brien’s hypothesis, he has given me a timely reminder about rushing to the page. Writing can be a way of working things out. Emotion may fuel effort, but it had better be interrogated to discover what it is really saying if the greater truth is to be served.

    The need to keep financially afloat and the need to save as many lives as possible can be at odds, nor are they unrelated. Funds are necessary.

    Basic services, food and shelter are as essential and contribute as much to public health as other considerations, and have to be paid for. The challenge is to engage with, and work to rise above, fear and strive to find the least damaging solutions. We are left to wonder how we decide what is best amidst the confusion during  times of change.

    Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

    Politics of Distraction

    What do Trump, Zuckerman and Johnson have in common? They are masters, albeit not alone, in offering distraction, a form of click-bait news that feeds  a greed for sensation that briefly satisfy but cannot ultimately sate humanity.

    The distraction makes us look away from what is really at hand and makes us focus instead on what we prefer.

    ‘Get Brexit done’ for Johnson. In Trump’s case, spreading so much false news that there is no longer any focus on the truth, or otherwise, in his own assertions. Listeners are led to believe all news is untrustworthy and that he alone should be listened to and receive votes.

    And, then there is the  promise of a future, technologically ‘advanced’ virtual world – with new toys – in the case of Mark Zuckerman. This is leads to a temptation to avoid looking too closely at the degree of control he has, and the damage that control has done.

    Commentators other than Roger McNamee acknowledge that Zuckerman’s plans for his venture were long in the making, and point to the direction he would like to go in future while trying to re-engage a younger demographic, but the timing of the announcement means that Roges McNamee is making sense.

    Eye on the Ball

    There will be many anomalies, distractions and frightening challenges to confront as we endeavour to live with the pandemic, while keeping our eyes open to the threat of the Earth becoming uninhabitable, at least for humans.

    We’ll need to recall Satir’s jagged line between the two straight ones that each indicated more settled times. Sometimes a withering eye may be needed and sometimes we will need to challenge ourselves to recognise our prejudices and look again, turn ourselves away from simplistic blame and less urgent conflicts, save our energy for the war by being willing to lose relatively insignificant battles.

    There will also be occasions when turning a blind eye will be compassionate and politically essential and others again when we just need to manage to turn off the news and blind ourselves to what is going on around us for our own sanity. Hopefully we will also find the fortitude in time to turn again to face what needs to be faced and take the right actions within our ambit of control.

    Featured Image: The Blind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

  • Anger at Hillary Clinton’s Appointment at Queen’s University in Belfast

    A protest organised by Lasair Dhearg, and involving representatives from People Before Profit and Academics Against Apartheid, gathered on University Road in Belfast on the morning of September 24th, 2021 as Hillary Rodham Clinton posed for journalists and television crews covering her inauguration as the first female Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.

    Chants of ‘shame on Queen’s’, and ‘Hillary you should be at the Hague’, rang through the air as Clinton walked the short distance from the campus entrance to nearby Whitla Hall for the inauguration.

    Several speakers addressed the assembled protestors calling into question her record as U.S. Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, including support for intervention in Libya that has brought anarchic conditions, illegal drone strikes over western Asia and Africa, and unequivocal support for Israel.

    The promotion of Clinton to a seat of learning must surely be, at the very least, controversial. In a televised interview Clinton once joked about the brutal murder of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the leader of Libya, saying, “We came, we saw, he died,” before laughing.

    Considering her apparent heartless disregard for human life, why would Queen’s University offer Clinton such a prestigious post as Chancellor?

    In October, 2018, the University invited Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom to speak, which drew a protest of hundreds of students. This was followed by a visit from Hilary Clinton, coinciding with the establishment of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award in Peace and Reconciliation studies bursary at Queen’s. She also received an honorary doctorate for her ‘exceptional public service in the US and globally, and for her contribution to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.’ This appears to have been a precursor to her instalment as Chancellor.

    Modern universities are no longer only seats of learning, but are businesses run for profit, with huge salaries for those running the organisations, and significant grants available, especially from technology and pharmaceutical companies.

    In order to benefit from research and development grants and encourage greater ties between American corporations and the University, Queen’s seem to be whitewashing Clinton’s record.

    Hillary Clinton has history in Ireland. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited Belfast and is seen as a central figure in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

    She is now milking this for all it’s worth, portraying herself as a mentor, who still has something to offer the youth of Ireland. Yet she has blood on her hands, and an unhealthy disregard for democracy, human rights and the sanctity of life.

    Students across the Western hemisphere are increasingly calling for Justice for Palestine, even as the Israeli lobby works hard to censor and dismiss academics who call Israel an Apartheid state. Indeed, writer Sally Rooney recently declined to have her new novel translated into Hebrew in protest against the conduct of Israel. Queen’s University Belfast now appears to be on the wrong side of history in appointing Hilary Clinton.

    Lasair Dhearg’s Pól Torbóid, who helped organise and also spoke at the event, said,

    Queen’s University’s complicity in the whitewashing of Hillary Clinton and her war crimes further epitomises the university’s role in an international framework of imperialism that sees it not only glorify warmongers like Clinton, but have immense financial investment in military contracts and companies guilty of immense environmental destruction.

    He added:

    As US secretary for war, she authorised over 400 drone strikes across multiple nations, which overwhelmingly killed civilians and even children at a proportion of almost 90%.

    She labelled black men ‘super-predators’ when she helped lobby for the 1994 US Clinton Crime Bill, which was immensely important in creating the mass incarceration levels that exists today in the US to benefit the prison-industrial complex – which is a system of slavery by new means.

    A Zionist, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be an enemy of Palestinian liberation, siding with the oppressor every time it mattered, like during the 2014 Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza. She increased annual US funding to Israel from 2.5billion, to 3.1 billion US dollars whilst she was US Secretary of State, and she stated that countering the BDS movement globally should be a priority for Israel’s defence.

    Unfortunately all these arguments are falling on deaf ears as Queen’s University appears to have entered into a Faustian pact with corporate America in appointing Hillary Clinton as Chancellor.

    Feature Image: Clinton, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune Spear in the White House Situation Room on May 1, 2011. Everyone in the room is watching a live feed from drones operating over the Osama bin Laden complex.

    An earlier version of this article appeared in Al Mayadeen.

  • Is This Where We Are Heading?

    As a journalist, I receive a variety of emails, Facebook messages and text messages almost every day alerting me to this problem, that conspiracy, or whatever the government is doing. Many ask me to report on, or at least take notice of, what they see as important. While I would like to investigate everything, the truth is that I would need a team of researchers to get through these requests.

    With that said, I was really struck by a piece written by Lithuanian citizen-journalist Gluboco Lietuva and decided to look more deeply into what initially seemed over the top claims about the Lithuanian government seriously infringing the human rights of individuals choosing not to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

    To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement. What is happening there is a stark warning of how much control a government is prepared to exert over the lives of an individual declining to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

    It should be noted that this article is not concerned with of the jab itself, but with how an EU government has withdrawn civil rights and forced businesses to choose between profit and a citizen’s right to privacy and bodily integrity, enshrined under Article 8 of the European Charter on Fundamental Rights.

    Gluboco reported that the Lithuanian Pass system prevents him and his family from entering shopping centres to purchase food, banks, clothes shops, or to conduct business in government buildings; or enter book stores, second-hand shops, hairdressers, barber shops, phone repair shops, or even art supply shops. Nor can an unvaccinated person visit a relative or loved one in a hospital or nursing home.

    In promulgating this law it seems the Lithuanian government is pitting one group of people against another after a recent surge in cases. The worry is that such a draconian measure won’t be confined to Lithuania either, as we can see from what is happening in Italy and France.

    The ‘Opportunity Pass’

    According to Gluboco in Lithuania the Covid Pass is called the ’Opportunity Pass’, as it offers the ‘opportunity’ to participate in society. The ’Opportunity Pass’ or Freedom ID is available to Lithuanians who are able to present a vaccination certificate, a recent negative PCR test, or proof of COVID-19 immunity (after having recovered). However, the government is considering excluding people with a negative test.

    Without this Pass rights are seriously restricted. Gluboco went on to say: “My wife and I don’t have the Covid Pass. We refuse to accept authoritarianism and control of the new regime. So, we’ve lost our jobs and been banished from most of society. It’s been six weeks so far.”

    He revealed, furthermore, that there is no end date planned for the new regime. With no Pass, he may only enter small shops with street entrances that mainly sell essential goods: food, pharmaceuticals, optics, or farm/pet supplies. Every other store must, by law, ban people without the Pass.

    In Lithuanian, the Pass is referred to as the Galimybių pasas, abbreviated as “GP”. By law, GP signs must be displayed at the entrance to stores and public buildings to signal compliance with government policy. You must also provide photo ID to prove that the “Opportunity Pass” is your own.

    As an example of the level of control that the state exerts, a construction worker went into a small supermarket to buy breakfast before his morning shift. After using his boss’s QR code he was reported to the police by a staff member and fined €5,000.

    Gluboco went on to say that Lithuania’s Covid Pass started in May as a temporary measure, the goal being to facilitate economic activity. In August, the temporary measure, justified in order to restore the economy, became a permanent law, all but banishing certain people from participation in society.

    Lithuania’s Covid Pass law does not ban specific activities. Instead, it prohibits people without an Opportunity Pass from all services and economic activities involving human contact, apart from limited rights, such as purchasing food in small shops.

    This represents an inversion of traditional rights. In a free society, within reason, you can expect to do whatever you want, unless a law specifically forbids it. Under Lithuania’s new Covid Pass regime, however, the presumption is reversed to the extent that you can’t perform normal activities unless the state allows it.

    In an EU member state, almost every business is forced to comply with the Opportunity Pass and enforcement seems to be strict. Gluboco indicates that many of those who initially opposed the Pass now acquiesce. People grow accustomed to coercion it seems.

    Further to this, he goes on to say: “In just 6 weeks, the Covid Pass has transformed my country into a regime of totalitarianism, control and segregation. This is the new society created in Lithuania, the nation furthest along the path towards authoritarianism confronting all countries which have imposed a Covid Pass regime.”

    “I hope they will die out on their own.”

    What is happening in Lithuania is a warning to those who choose not to take the jab no matter what country you live in. It begs question: could we see this level of coercion, human rights infringement and control introduced into the Ireland and the rest of Europe eventually? The aim appears to be to punish people economically and socially for non-compliance.

    There are also questions in regard to the use of data collected through the Covid-19 digital passes, held jointly by private companies and the relevant EU state which are supposed to abide by GDPR legislation. A citizen’s private data is kept on file by the state and could form the basis of a national identity card.

    I leave you with the chilling words of ex-Lithuanian parliamentarian and now TV host Arúnas Valinskas who said: “There are people who deliberately take sides with the enemy… In times of war, such people were shot. But there is no need to shoot the anti-vaxxers, I hope, they will die out on their own.”

    Featured Image: Lithuanian Army soldiers marching with their dress uniforms in Vilnius (2012).

  • Watering Down the Vodka

    In response to COVID-19: how are we to explain people drawing starkly differing conclusions from the same data? To understand this requires a search for context and motivation.

    In the second series of the Duffer Brothers Stranger Things, set not uncoincidentally in 1984, there is a critical scene in which the story reaches its conclusion. Murray Bauman, the experienced investigator and sceptic is confronted by Nancy and Jonathan, two of the series’ teenage characters. They present him with conclusive proof of events and happenings, apparently shattering all the certainties he had operated with until that point.

    Pouring a large measure of vodka to steady himself, Murray contemplates what he has just heard before explaining to Nancy: “I believe you, but that’s not the problem… you need them to believe you… your priests, your postman, your teachers, the world at large. They won’t believe any of this.” He then clasps his drink close to his chest as if it’s a lifeline.

    “You heard the tape,” Nancy insists, clearly frustrated.

    “That doesn’t matter”, snaps back Bauman as he waves the glass in the air. People want to be comfortable, and this truth is uncomfortable. He takes another gulp of Vodka and grimaces. But it gives him an idea.

    “The story,” he says. “We moderate it, just like this drink here, we water down the vodka … We make it more tolerable.”

    The events that have unfolded since March 2020, when the pandemic began in Europe and the U.S., have been extraordinary by any standards.

    After over seventy years of peace in the West, during which wars were fought on foreign lands, and apart from the occasional lurch to the left or right there has been political stability, democratic norms, a generally fair justice system and continuous growth in prosperity and education.

    Moreover, infectious diseases have been all but conquered with new drugs and treatments. Combined with improvements in public health and nutrition we have seen life expectancy grow year on year in what appears a steady pattern. We have grown accustomed to continuous improvement in the standard of living and security. After seventy years of improvement, we have come to expect this to continue.

    After such a prolonged period of peace even the idea of warfare – or it not being safe to walk the streets – is almost beyond our comprehension. Never before has humanity in the West been so removed from the terrors of war, the tyranny of oppressive regimes and the ravages of natural disasters or famine.

    We get up each day expecting it to be exactly like the last and for tomorrow to be the same. We cannot contemplate a world that is not exactly like that of today.

    Yes, we will have technological changes and workplaces will change, but fundamentally we expect everything to remain the same. Footballers will be paid too much money; screen stars will fall in and out of love with each other; war will break out in some far-flung land and a natural disaster will occur somewhere only to be forgotten and replaced in our consciousness by another somewhere else. Meanwhile, what really concerns us is reaching the gym on time after work, getting the kids to school and catching up on the latest Netflix mini-series.

    So, what happened when we woke up one morning to a potentially fatal virus that was not happening on the other side of the world? By early March we had watched with indifference what was happening in China, but now it was here in our community.

    Cases, first slowly but then steadily, began rising until on the March 11th 2020 we had our first death. Now it was for real; now for the first time in seventy years there was an immediate threat to our health and even our way of life.

    We approached the pandemic within the paradigm of our world of seventy years of increasing prosperity and health. We believed we were invincible, that our medical community would protect us and that all lives were saveable.

    For any illness there must be a drug. If we don’t have it today, we will have it tomorrow. We just need sufficient money and political will and it will be discovered. So, we laid down the challenge to the pharmaceutical industry to produce a vaccine, and all we needed to do was give them enough time to develop it, locking down hard until then.

    In so doing, we revealed an aversion to risk and a failure to critically analyse the extreme, and erroneous, warnings on fatalities that were issued by politicians and scientists; strangely our media and politicians accepted the doomsayers and ignored optimistic assessments.

    The WHO definition of health, as not just the absence of disease, but the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the individual, was ditched. We would get back to that once we found the vaccine and the virus was eliminated. The pharma industry took up the challenge and we sat at home watching Netflix until they told us they were ready.

    Alternative approaches that involved natural immunity, and isolating the vulnerable as the Great Barrington Declaration advised, or applying early treatment with a range of therapeutic drugs were dismissed in a concerted attack by public health officials, doctors, universities, politicians, the media and in particular social media.

    There was to be one response and no challenge would be allowed. Civil rights to freedom of movement and to bodily integrity were trampled on with barely a whimper in the mainstream media.

    Emergency powers not contemplated since World War II were ushered through by the government without so much as a peep from the opposition or the media. Lockdowns were for the greater good; while the fear and panic that had been sowed ensured almost complete compliance and a demonisation of dissenting voices.

    Compelling stories from reliable sources tell us of the more than reasonable possibility of the virus originating in the lab in Wuhan, but we don’t want to know. Valid alternative early-stage treatments, such as Ivermectin, shown to work in other parts of the world are not merely dismissed, but actively smeared.

    Early stage VAERS data on vaccine safety, particularly in young males, is ignored based on thresholds that would have previously stopped approval of a vaccine. The fact that the vaccines have not passed long term safety trials is conveniently ignored.

    Questions about how wide a spectrum of immunity is covered and the length of time immunity lasts is also overlooked. Boosters are unquestioningly accepted and used off-label, although no research exists on the possible impact to both short and long term health, and overall immunity. Public health concerns about the impacts of lockdown on society and other illnesses are forgotten. There is only one train leaving town and you are either in the vaccine carriage, or you are on your own.

    So why did all this happen; why have we thrown away hard won civil rights; why have we allowed ourselves to be coerced into taking drugs, without what would normally be considered informed consent?

    Why aren’t we desperately trying to investigate the origins of the disease? Why have we dismissed any and all alternative treatments? Why was the Swedish approach derided, and now treated as if it did not happen?

    I guess it’s a case of too much, too soon. We craved the comfort of our old world so much that we accepted without question the solution offered; we were told this was simply “following the science”, as if “the science” was settled.

    Once embarked on that path there could be no turning back. There could be no dissenting voices. There could be no alternative science. Voices straying from the perordained plan must be crushed at whatever cost.

    So here we are now nineteen months later and it still not politically correct to say that perhaps we got it wrong. Most people are so desperate to return to our safe world, that to believe that, would be to recognise that we have been misled and badly informed throughout that time.

    It would mean that doctors, much of the scientific community, public health officials, universities and the media have been participants or active orchestrators of the worst medical and public health mismanagement in modern history. That’s too much to take on board, the brain can’t compute, it overheats, dismisses, and attacks those who even suggest it.

    So how will the story unfold? There is surely no question, but that the truth will out. As time passes we will acknowledge the errors. Then we will rue how it was ever possible for such catastrophic mistakes to occur.

    I suspect posterity will not look kindly in particular on a medical community who, with a few honourable exceptions, sat back and watched the policies unfold. Who kept their head down and took the easy road.

    As a society we invest in doctors, educating them and offering them considerable rewards. In return we expect them to look after our interests. We expect them to speak out on our behalf when they see injustice. After after what has just happened it may be difficult to regain that trust.

    I wonder when will the serious post-mortem begin? When will data, evidence and outcomes start driving policies; when will marketing mantras and outright propaganda be left behind?

    Will the story need to be watered down to become more tolerable? How much water do we need to add to the vodka?

  • Palestine: What happens when the violence ends?

    Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky. It’s up to you however you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza.

    I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel. Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.

    The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 led to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Since then areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement, which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.

    If you take nothing else from this article please remember the Occupation is illegal under international law, therefore every decision taken by the Occupation army, the illegal settlers. Yet the Apartheid Israeli judiciary routinely sends Palestinian including young children to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat.

    In some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand, and are told these are official release forms. The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, these are confessions that will condemn them to jail.

    Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial, and we have the flawed corrupt Apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.

    As a result many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state. This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently Apartheid.

    Israelis protest against Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem on 30 July 2020.

    Corruption Charges

    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the Occupied West Bank, and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al-Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

    Is seems conceivable that the leader of the seventh largest military force on Earth would engineer a state of conflict between Israel and a people without an army, air force or navy, to protect themselves. All they have is local militias, composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community.

    But if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.

    The Dust Settles

    So, where are we now and who won and who lost?

    As the bloodletting ends, as it must, the dead are buried and the dust settles over the destroyed building, like a shroud over Gaza.

    The reality is, everything will be the same and yet everything has changed utterly.

    I have always been sceptical when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.

    I genuinely thought it was just bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?

    The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. Twenty-five miles by six miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, with the equivalent of the entire two million population of Northern Ireland squeezed into it.

    Thus far, the destruction in Gaza is an incredible scale.

    The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.

    The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime. The wanton destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are too.

    The Resistance has Won

    The latest Blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten. Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza. It cites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.

    Under international law, however, with Israel illegally occupying the West Bank and enjoying control air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have a right to resist the Occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance.

    Then this David versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian David with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, which uses gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb and murder Gazans at will, and without any recourse to the rules of war.

    The reality is that Israel will only end the bloodshed once it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France  Britain and the EU.

    Yet Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the Occupation. It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.

    The resistance groups retain both the ability, and the will, to continue to resist the illegal Occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.

    The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message from Israel. Indeed, Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes, while their military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.

    I know, it’s hard to believe, but the resistance has won! Gaza may have been levelled: the suffering of the dead, the injured and the dying is unfathomable.

    But while Gaza has been destroyed, the spirit of resistance embodied in the people has survived. This provides the impetus to continue demands for equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives, not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al-Aqsa and across historic Palestine, which Zionists call Israel.

    Netanyahu has only succeeded in uniting Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al-Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born, united and unified from the river to the sea.

    Did Netanyahu help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable? Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply a political gambit aimed at a domestic audience?

    Is it a case of: he or she who kills the most Palestinians getting the most votes?

    Alas, history certainly bears that perspective out to be true.

    Moving Forward

    What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.

    What it will get is another 50,000 or more refugees, many of whom were previously refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.

    This further degrades Palestinian civil society’s ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy.

    Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine. The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace

    Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of Occupation.

    And yet the spirit of Resistance has prevailed once again. But the price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is a continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.

    The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the loss of innocence in the young, their hopes dashed for the future, and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies. This is a psychological trauma seemingly without end.

    When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West. Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur?

    Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.

    What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the Middle East and West Asia? It is in your hands

    Feature Image: Destroyed house in Gaza City, December 2012.

  • Al-Quds: the Red Line

    Al-Quds (‘the holy sanctuary’), Jerusalem is the red line for the Palestinian people, the wider diaspora and the Arab collective. It is the capital of Palestine and home to the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site for sixteen to seventeen months after his migration to Mecca. So how did we get to this current impasse?

    Jerusalem is in flames. Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age. Israeli Zionists and illegal settlers are attacking Palestinian business, homes, and people in the streets, at their residences and places of worship. Palestinians are defending themselves by any means necessary.

    Palestine: To Exist is to Resist

    I won’t give a historical lecture, just some pertinent facts. The First Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel Switzerland. It was decided then that European antisemitism needed to be challenged and that a new state for the Jewish people, free from European antisemitism was to be created. Several places were considered including Madagascar, Uganda and some Latin American countries.

    Finally, it was decided Palestine would become the new Israel. From 1901 onwards the Jewish National Fund began buying land in Palestine. Palestine at that time was part of the Ottoman empire. The land was bought from absentee Turkish landowners, the Palestinians put off the land and Jewish only migrants employed.

    This continued up until World War I. The British formed regiments of Palestinian and Arab troops promising them freedom from Ottoman occupation if they fought for Britain. When the war ended the troops dispersed and Britain and France carved up the Middle East as a prize for both their colonial empires.

    All manifestations of violence today in the Middle East stem from the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and subsequent redrawing of the old Ottoman Empire into a new white European colonial construct. All those who fought for Britain and for the freedom of small nations were abandoned. They were simply cannon fodder to save British lives by using expendable Arab lives.


    History’s Dead Hand on the Middle East
    (Image: Kevin Fox, all rights reserved)

    The Jewish National Fund continued to buy up land and displace the indigenous population. As the 1920s progressed we witnessed clashes between the European colonists and the indigenous population with riots in Jerusalem during this decade.

    With the outbreak of World War II Zionist designs on fully colonising Palestine were set in motion. After 1945 further ethnic clashes occurred. The Zionists were fully armed and trained and the Palestinians had no army, just bands of neighbours and villagers trying to defend their homes and families.

    The Stern Gangs, the Hagana and the Irgun began a campaign to terrorise, murder and displace the indigenous population. They succeeded with the help of Britain and America at the UN and the state of Palestine under the British Mandate was partitioned and the new state of Israel born at the point of terrorist guns. 750,000 Palestinians were forced into exile into the surrounding Arab countries and the systematic erasure of the Palestine footprint in the new state began. Villages were destroyed so their inhabitants could not return. Businesses taken over by Jewish Zionist families, homes sequestered and the land stolen.

    This happened again in 1967 during the Six-Day War with the occupation of the West Bank. This continued Occupation and the siege on Gaza from 2007 are a continuation of the policy of the theft of homes, theft of land, theft of resources and the displacement of the indigenous population.

    From the Wild West to the Middle East, the European white colonial settlement of North America and Canada became the blueprint for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. We can see the house evictions in Sheikh Jarrah East Jerusalem for what they really are: a continuation of the Zionist-Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is a microcosm of everyday reality and life under Occupation.

    These house possessions by Zionists are just the latest step in the long path to the total Judification of Palestine. West Jerusalem is already nearly 100% Zionist.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing criminal corruption charges and is hanging on to power as leader of an extremist Zionist political party Likud by the skin of his teeth. During the Holy Muslim Festival of Ramadan up to 100,000 Palestinians gather for prayer and worship daily at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem known in Arabic as Al Quds

    Now if you remember, the Israeli military Occupation is illegal under international law. The Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.

    Every day Palestinians watch their homes land and businesses confiscated by the Israeli occupation. These daily injustices lead to a growing sense of frustration, anger and discontent.

    The Israeli illegal occupation forces then attacked the peaceful worshippers in the compound adjacent to the Al-Aqsa mosque. They attacked people through dispersal squads who use sound bombs, chemical canisters, arrests and assaults to clear any groups who might congregate.

    This means family, friends, neighbours and communities cannot gather in conversation in the community and in peace at the end of the day attending or leaving prayer.

    The scenes witnessed all over the Arab, Persian and Muslim world of peaceful worshippers, many of them women, being attacked inside the mosque at prayer, has led to the resistance groups in Gaza launching primitive rockets at Israel in retaliation.

    Israel’s disproportionate response by launching military sorties from land, sea and air has destroyed buildings and killed scores of men, women and children.

    While Israelis cower in their bomb shelters from the falling debris of Palestinian rockets with a payload similar to an enormous firework, the Gazan’s have no bomb shelters, no air force, no navy and no land army. They have a few rockets, machine guns, mortars and rifles to defend themselves against one the best-equipped armies in the world today.

    While yet another pro-Zionist American President Biden phones Netanyahu to give his support to the ‘Israel must have the right to defend itself ‘mantra, all we will see and hear from Western media propagandists are further Zionist cries of victimhood.

    I visited Gaza on a medical aid convoy in 2010. I walked the streets the Zionists are turning to rubble. They intend to bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age.

    Electricity only runs for a few hours a day. Fresh drinking water is nearly unheard of and bottled water and fuel for generators is sold to Gaza by Israel

    With a total land, sea and air blockade, the Gazan population has an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. They watch on each day as a bombing campaign destroys one building, one house, one business, one apartment block, and one family at a time. The fear the people, and especially the children, must be living under is unimaginable..

    Occupied Territories Bill: Government Defies Dáil Majority Leaving the Jaber Family to their Fate

    What can we do?

    Support the right of Palestinians as enshrined in International Law to free themselves from Occupation by any means necessary.

    Go on a protest.

    Support BDS and boycott Israel goods and companies.

    Demand your government divests from the political and financial support of Israel.

    Once the killings and bombings stop all the people you see protesting will go home and the Palestinians and the Yemenis and the Syrians will be forgotten. Please remember it’s not just Palestine the Zionists want to destroy. They want total hegemonic control over the entire region. That means destroying any country and its peoples that it cannot control. Look at Iraq and Libya, see Syria and Yemen watch them threaten Lebanon and Iran.

    Netanyahu’s Likud government has made Israel a cancer on the body politic of the region. Like cancer, it must respond to treatment or the host and the body die.

    There will soon be one million Zionist Jewish settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They are all illegally there. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying force suhc as Israel from settling its civilian population in occupied territory.

    UN Resolution 194 states that Palestinians exiled from their homes, land and property have the Right of Return.

    Israel has never let the Palestinians return. It continues to usurp their rights and ethnically cleanse the West Bank of its indigenous population through dispersal and dispossession.

    In 1901 European Jews had a dream of a land free from hatred, from discrimination, from racial and religious prejudice. Far from creating this land, they created a state based on hatred, discrimination, and racial and religious prejudice. To many onlookers, Israel and its settlers have recreated that which they set out to escape.

    Featured Image of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Frank Armstrong (2003).

  • Old Headscarf

    At thirty-two, after decades of sporting a headscarf, I abandoned the practice and exposed my bad hair days. There was a short-lived, still humongous, stir. At home, there was one overriding fear: “And what will people say?”

    I had long interpreted the headscarf as a politico-cultural expression of Islamic modesty; for years though, I never risked taking it off. The spectre of community disapproval deterred me, but then, so did the thought of selling out. That I could enact the archetype of Muslim woman unshackling her chains, could endorse the cardboard tropes, bothered me. When I finally stopped caring and took the plunge, my entire conception of reality shifted.

    Four years on and my experience equips me with insight. A hijabi when headlines hyped the War on Terror, I already know that all are prey to mainstream conditioning; that IQ, educational, or professional qualifications are not automatic safeguards against ignorance. In my life as it unfolds post-headscarf, the comic sea-change in strangers’ attitudes towards me, I can vouch that opting out of norms incurs social penalties. I have witnessed polarities in treatment, know a hunger for acceptance, and appreciate anyone’s pressure to conform to the crowd.

    By interrogating the headscarf as immutable religious law, I am reminded that beliefs and identities are products of historical, political, and cultural forces, configured by upbringing and environmental backdrop. I observe that too many of us outsource our critical faculties in blind deference to expert authorities, subscribing to the fallacy that appointed ‘philosopher-kings’ must comprehend something we can’t, that the structural asymmetry of information serves anything other than vested interests. Hence, if Imperial College London plots a graph about it, or a man in spectacles rattles off numbers, or a stack of death certificates signed by frontline heroes just says so, we’ll dig no deeper; we’ll admire the emperor’s new threads as he stands naked in plain sight.

    So now as I stride into shops, into salons; down hospital corridors; onto Dublin’s public transport, my face unmasked, not even pretending to be sorry, the waves of hostility, the missiles of verbal abuse, are (stifle yawn) old headscarf to me.

    I can hush attacks with official paperwork—I’ve secured a medical exemption. What’s troubling is the visceral nature of the onslaught. Where dishonouring the dead and the vulnerable enters the equation, I see how my behaviour signifies a disregard for the common good. The shock value speaks more to the success of the global fear campaign than to an informed understanding. I don’t blame anyone for adhering to public health guidance, but when inquiry into its validity is cast in tin foil hat terms, when scrutiny of the doublespeak and the doublethink provokes outrage, when repurposing masks as an instrument of control is the step too far; then even the most credulous need to wonder. When a conscientious refusal to play along counts for little more than petulance, an attention-seeking stunt at best, and those, masked up, cruising solo in their cars, represent virtue, then the time for reflection is long overdue.

    The transition from denial to acceptance is a scary leap: shaking off the programming, rearranging beliefs, remodelling the systems on which we have staked our lives, our livelihoods, our selves, is a terrifying task. Or is it because the conspiracy realm is traditionally populated by weirdos that it’s easy to dismiss the evidence? That Bill Gates is up to nothing other than philanthropy is the comfort of faith. Klaus Schwab will spell out The Great Reset in a how-to guide, but the idea of a technocratic agenda still sounds like hogwash. PCR is not fit for purpose, but we accept the reported case numbers. An mRNA vaccine, rushed, and proudly ‘experimental’ may be a gamble, but we’ll roll up our sleeves, we’ll take a jab —make that two—for  the team. Big Pharma, absolved of liability, is fattening that bottom line, but call it old -fashioned opportunism if you must, not an orchestrated end.

    The Orwellian echoes lend an aura of irony to the occasion, more than mobilise action it seems; and so, is the question that nobody sees it, or really that they’d just rather not? A recent encounter gives me heart: Lolloping down a supermarket aisle, shoppers lunging out of my path, I near collided into a fellow unmasked objector. We shared a moment, grinning at one another; armed with the knowledge, that acquiescence, is always a choice.

    Editor’s Note: A report of the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: Using face masks in the community: first update – Effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19 published in February 2021 concluded:

    The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty.

    Additional high-quality studies are needed to assess the relevance of the use of medical face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Featured Image: Anna Shvets Photography

  • Mandatory Hotel Quarantine Alienates Immigrant Communities

    Never before have I felt so far from my country of origin as when I heard that Italy would be added to the list of countries from which arrivals are mandated to enter a hotel quarantine for twelve days on arrival in Ireland. Now any trip to my family will cost almost two grand, and that’s before accounting for the flights and numerous tests.

    That’s quite a spike in price compared to the few hundred euro I needed prior to April 15th. In pure economic terms, it further diminishes the purchasing power of a particular section of immigrants, as well as Irish citizens living abroad; even if only for a particular item, such as the opportunity to visit loved ones occasionally, and to return for a short stay in case of an emergency.

    For many of us, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, the inflated price of the hotel stay is a serious impediment to reaching one’s country of origin; and that’s without considering the dread we feel about spending almost two weeks under hotel arrest, without even access to a kitchen. I wonder how healthy it is to eat takeaway food for twelve days in a row?

    One may argue that the measure is a proportionate response to a public health emergency and that the right to travel abroad does not come before the right of a country to remain Covid free. But this ignores whether we test negative on arrival and show no symptoms and, more broadly, the rights of European citizens living in another member state.

    Under Article 45 of the charter of the fundamental rights of the European Union, as citizens we enjoy a right to freedom of movement. Every citizen of the Union has the right to move and reside freely within each member states’ territory. There has to be a very compelling (and proportionate) reason for this right to be withdrawn.

    The time for extreme restrictions on the right to travel was March 2020, when some member states including Denmark and Poland temporarily closed their borders. But at this stage any restrictions surely should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and not applied indiscriminately. Ireland isn’t exactly Covid-free New Zealand at this stage, and the Irish government is not aiming for a Covid-free status. What’s more the number of exceptions – including for politicians, and elite athletes in all likelihood – demonstrates the law is being applied unfairly.

    As for the variants of concern, well 90% of experts say that Covid-19 will become endemic, and so we will never be able to travel freely again if that argument is applied to international travel.

    I wonder if this is another aspect of our pre-Covid life that we have to reluctantly accept has disappeared – in order to protect the weak and vulnerable? Or so it is argued. Even if that means uselessly undermining the rights of immigrants living in Ireland now confronted with draconian barriers to movement.

    One can understand – confronting the pressure the pandemic has put on healthcare capacity all over the world – why authorities might consider any means possible to stop the spread. But even working from that assumption, it is really difficult to find justification for mandatory hotel quarantine if an individual tests negative on departure and after five days on arrival, for example.

    In any case, regardless of its arguable necessity, this measure’s immediate effect is to further alienate foreign communities living in Ireland and, I suspect, Irish ex-pats abroad, even though the data shows that foreign travel has had a miniscule effect – just one percent of cases according to Leo Varadkar in January – on the spread of the disease.

    Regarding the Irish media’s coverage of this issue, it is disturbing that sympathy seems to be reserved for Irish citizens returning home to loved ones, but silence on how this will affect other EU citizens, and non-EU nationals. It sends out a clear message about how much the political and media establishment value foreign workers living in this country who cannot vote in national elections.

    The effect is to place a prohibitive price tag on returning to countries of origin for communities that are already massively economically disadvantaged by the pandemic; not to mention the housing crisis, and more generally, a widening inequality that too many in the political establishment of this country seem to accept as “the way things are.”

    Now this political establishment has no shame in implementing Populist measures, which seem aimed at gathering political support from a terrorized audience that dreams of a ZeroCovid approach, after being treated to a partially informed debate for months.

    It is a curious paradox that the internationalist establishment left in Ireland has no objection to sealed borders, and the effect this will have on immigrant minorities, many of whom are living on the margins of society.

    Often, the most useless measures to tackle a problem reveal where the real problem lies. In this instance, the cynical alienation shown by NPHET and politicians in proposing and implementing such policies that have major impacts on communities with whom they normally have no contact, apart from well-orchestrated photo ops with appropriately smiling immigrants.

    The question now becomes: for how long will this policy of internment last?

  • A Few Good Men and Women

    In the wake of the murder by a police officer of the unfortunate Sarah Everard, and the ensuing justified anger, many media people were calling for “good” men to act more visibly in opposing violence against women. While I back 100% the calls made for “good” men to speak up, I am also concerned that the more general ideas of social equality are fast becoming reduced to a gender-specific proposition, having the potential knock-on effect of splitting the Left.

    This is not to diminish the seriousness of violence against women, but only to attempt to bring to light how the focus on gender equality may be impacting our perception of more general inequality, and how this apparent narrowing of focus risks being manipulated by those whose interests are not necessarily best served by social equality.

    While many women are exploited by many men, in the wider culture there are those still looking to keep wages low; rents and the cost of living high, while reneging on any social housing provision, who will look to spin the fact of female exploitation in order to capture the female vote to the service of their own particular brand of social exploitation.

    Spin

    In a recent tweet, Una Mullally, responding to Josepha Madigan’s dig at the Kerryman newspaper, suggesting the paper be renamed the Kerryperson, called this out for the cynical political ploy it was. Referencing her own Irish Times article of March 8th which predicted this type of play, Mullally described Madigan’s move as an awkward Fine Gael grab for the female vote, which, as things stand, may decide the next government, as it decided the referendum in 2015.

    But the main talking point in the past week has not been Fine Gael attempts to capture the female vote, but the more immediate mystery as to why “good” men don’t speak out against violence against women.

    Fintan O’Toole, writing in the Irish Times on March 16th said that in order for men to make a more overt stand against violence against women they must first learn to be shocked by that violence. At the moment, he argues, such violence all seems routine to most men. I wonder about that, since it seems to suggest that silence equals complacency equals broad approval.

    When you remove the particular instance O’Toole is referring to, that is, the emotive and highly charged question of violence against women, and replace it with say, general social inequality; you immediately already have an answer as to why “good” men appear to do nothing in the face of violence against women. The truth is, the majority of good men, and good women too, tend to remain strategically schtum on a wide range of problematical social issues until they see which way the political winds are blowing.

    Good Men

    Edmund Burke is reputed to have said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.‘

    Burke wrote the line in a letter in 1770, which is more than a little while ago. The point being, the good men idea is far from being new. In fact, Burke’s quote needs updating, since at the time of his writing the realization of women’s suffrage was a long way in the future. An updated version would read: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and good women to do nothing.‘’

    So instead of posing the question, Why do good men do nothing, in such a way as to refer to a specific issue – in this case male violence against women – it is perhaps clearer to ask why do good people, regardless of gender, not raise their voices in say, situations where right-wing policy creates homelessness and subsequent deaths from exposure; or privatisation results in poor services and deaths due to cut corners and profit-conscious oversights? Why do good people not raise their voices en masse on these issues too?

    By the strict criteria of the “good” men concept as framed by Edmund Burke and others, we are all responsible, good men and good women alike, for homeless deaths, for direct provision deaths, for deaths caused as a result of medical privatisation, for domestic violence in all its guises and so on. Since this is a democracy, we all, strictly speaking, bear equal responsibility for the failings of democracy to deliver equal treatment to all. But these are difficult questions when applied to the real world.

    For instance, if you were an arts practitioner cosying up to Josepha Madigan when she was Minister for Arts, with a view to gaining favour and financial support for some project you had planned, are you complicit in Madigan’s rallying support to oppose Traveller accommodation? Or are the two issues compartmentalised? One being her political position and the other being her apparent social and class intolerance. Do you sacrifice your project to make a point, or do you compromise?

    Herds

    Along with such moral quandaries you also have the problem of the behaviour of crowds, which tend to behave like herds. Even politicians don’t really lead, they too follow the herd in the form of the public mood glimpsed in polls. Most people are spectators, going with the flow of the herd. We stand and watch the game until some critical mass is reached and then we raise our voices in support of whatever new majority appears to be on the rise. This works for every growing gang, from commies to fascists. A critical mass is reached and the herd follows. History shows that the herd will follow any old idea once this critical mass is achieved.

    Søren Kierkegaard, writing on this phenomenon, noted that an individual is worth more than a crowd of individuals, because an individual has personal agency, whereas a crowd tends to go with the flow of the herd. As a result, Kierkegaard comes to the conclusion that truth always belongs to the minority, since the majority tend towards unthinking obedience to the movement of the herd.

    It could be that now is the time where the issue of violence against women is to be embraced by the herd as an issue whose time has come. An issue for which good men are expected to speak up. But the point is, that apart from the particular issue, the question as to why do good people do nothing might be more properly considered in relation to a wider sense of social equality, encompassing all issues of social inequality.

    This applies equally to the politician allowing the market to decide the fates of those seeking housing, as it does to the person turning a blind eye to white collar corruption, or a man turning a blind eye to violence against women.

    Good Men and Good Women

    In this regard, for Fintan O’Toole to suggest that the evil of violence against women is exacerbated by good men doing nothing, is disingenuous at best, or is simply more political gamesmanship.

    Because the Irish Times also plays politics with notions of equality, quietly supporting right-wing Fine Gael policy through the manner in which it shapes and pitches stories, while always being first up with the property supplements when the market shifts, eager supporters of the housing Ponzi scheme, where the wealthy business class figuratively eat our young by selling them over-priced houses, while their political cronies refuse to enter into any believable form of social housing policy.

    Which begs the question, that when Fintan O’Toole is calling on “good” men to be more vociferous in condemning violence against women, is he referring to the same “good” men who remain silent in the face of social inequality on a more general level, keeping strategically schtum on a range of social equality issues, in order to ensure the perpetuation of a neoliberal status quo that is giving rise to social inequality in the first place?

    Conclusion

    All of this is not to suggest that the call for “good” men to raise their voices on the subject of violence against women is a wasted exercise; but only to point out that such a call to “good” men is not new; and furthermore, that by repackaging that call as an issue-specific moral imperative, while ignoring the same demand across a more general range of social equality issues, is to have the effect, whether knowingly or not, of splitting the Left by narrowing the imperative of social equality to a divisive gender issue, in such a way as to assist the project of the establishment parties and the elite they appear to represent.

    This will doubtless remain the situation until such time as good men and good women of all classes speak out against social inequality in all its guises.

  • RTÉ Says: ‘Stars’ In Their Own Cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    II – Bring Cyclists to Justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    III – Motor Mouths

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    IV – A Broader Malaise

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

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

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

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

    RTÉ’s Damien O’Reilly.

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

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

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

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

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

    V – A Tool of the Sector

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

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

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

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

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

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

    College Green c.1890.

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

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

    *******

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

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

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