Cassandra Voices

Tag: Frank Armstrong Covid-19 coverage

  • Unforgettable Year: June 2020

    June brought criticism of Big Data censorship and the coverage of the pandemic in mainstream media, as it became clear the doomsday scenarios certain epidemiologists painted in March were wide of the mark. Frank Armstrong wrote:

    Accepting Covid-19 represents an extraordinary challenge requiring a concerted response, censorship by Big Data in such a blanket form, including of recognised academic authorities, surely only lends credence to conspiracy theories, fomented by the far-right in particular. Disregard for freedom of expression casts doubt over the integrity of scientific inquiry and inhibits rational debate.

    He found fault in particular with The Guardian’s coverage:

    The free digital site with an estimated 42 million monthly visitors devoted unrelenting rolling coverage to Covid-19, emphasising the simple moral calculus with a banner across its home page. This has been to the almost complete exclusion of all other content for the months of March, April and May.

    The Guardian’s loss of proportion, and nuance, has been particularly damaging as it is the most trusted newspaper brand in the U.K., including, importantly, among readers aged 18 to 29.[lviii] This may be traced to its position as a global news provider of free content dependent on maintaining an enormous click rate to derive a profit.

    He also interpreted the global Black Lives Matters eruption as an unconscious response to the lockdown experience: ‘The extraordinary scenes witnessed around the world could also be interpreted as a proxy for societies throwing off the heavy knee of lockdowns, containing a basic human impulse to interact.’

    Ireland witnessed a number of exuberant demonstrations, including one in Sligo covered by Fellipe Lopes.

    Image (c) Fellipe Lopes

    Justin Frewen scholarly account was to the fore in June, discussing the attendant repression and a Pandemic Shock Doctrine.

    Covid-19’s rapid spread around the world has impacted upon people living in a wide variety of political, economic, social and cultural contexts. These diverse contexts have mediated the repressive policies available to governments – facilitating, refracting or impeding the measures they have attempted to impose – the insecurity and fear caused by the pandemic have undoubtedly facilitated the imposition of repressive measures.

    By PJeganathan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89483458

    He continued:

    Repressive policies and measures can be introduced, as the ‘shock’ caused by the Covid-19 pandemic leaves the public less able to resist. In a world where lockdowns, isolation and quarantining have become the new accepted norm, coordinated, active resistance to repressive and inhibiting policies has become more complicated.

    In another article Frewen discussed whether we are really all in this together:

    Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, the advertising industry has swiftly conceived and produced a slew of adverts to hawk their clients’ wares by tapping into the positive sentiments of this catchphrase. Praising frontline workers or highlighting our newfound unity – separated but together – they strive to manipulate the emotions and purchasing decisions of their target audiences.

     

    Moreover, Laurent Muzellac was proposing that greater attention should be given to the impact of lockdown on younger people, including children:

    governments should not only care about the lives of its citizens today, but also be concerned with the longer term health and wellbeing of the nation. To mitigate the next crisis and guide future investment, the government should first consider how many, and which, lives confinement saved, and which it destroyed.

    Justo Lapiedra (wikicommons)

    Next in an important article on The State of Irish Agriculture Eoghan Harris demonstrated the hypocrisy of the Irish agricultural authorities in claiming that Ireland was the most food secure country in the world:

     Food security in this scenario equates to commodities being traded on a global market with minimal restrictions. The evaluation is predicated on current availability, price and diversity of food consumed – regardless of productive factors or supply chain interference. It takes no account of the environmental or social consequences of this supply line, or any risks lying further down the line, whether a hard Brexit, a global pandemic, or that the global food system has eroded a quarter of all arable topsoil on the planet since the 1950s.

    He further revealed:

    Over the course of the twentieth century, the adaptation of new and increasingly expensive inputs into agriculture have been sold as ‘progress’ to farmers. Numerous chemicals and pharmaceutical companies, including SmithKline, Pfizer, Merck, Schering Plough and Roche located their manufacturing facilities in Ireland during the 1960s and 70s, availing of lax or non-existent environmental regulation and lower labour costs. They stayed because of an attractive corporate tax regimes and unrestricted interference in Ireland’s educational system. By the turn of the twenty-first century they accounted for nearly seventy percent of global pharmaceutical output.

    Also on an environmental theme, David Langwallner was drawn to the work of Arundhati Roy, who has also highlighted the trials of the dispossessed through this pandemic:

    In India and beyond, Arundhati Roy demonstrates how neo-liberalism and environmental damage go hand in glove in her Capitalism a Ghost Story (2014).  Since the publication of The God of Small Things (1997) she has channelled her energies into political activism against the growing environmental and economic calamity being perpetrated on her native land, through the depredations of neo-liberalism. It is that political conscience that is the primary interest of her new awareness.

    While on World Refugee Day Evgeny Shtorn drew attention to the importance of the storytelling medium.

    For centuries only certain people could share their stories. They were those occupying positions of power: men, for example, as opposed to women. Feminist methodologies made it very clear that having one’s voice heard is essential to having a societal impact. Since women’s voices were counted, our societies have changed. Following this logic, other communities made their voices heard through various forms of storytelling: they were LGBTQI communities, disabled people, ethnic and racial minorities, working class people and many other groups. Hearing each and every one of these stories has brought our societies closer to real equality.

    ‘When Travel Means Need’ from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato

    Artist of the Month Letizia Lopreiato found a sanctuary from a sense of exile in Ireland:

    For many years the sensation of exile following the death of my father truly followed me too, just like the narrator in The Plague, until I arrived home. Ireland, Dublin, its magical people, its incredible feeling of community, allowed me to be present, to slow down, to feel my own thoughts. Thoughts that I have had for so long but that I could not hold the energy to engage with, it was like I couldn’t handle the intensity of them for so long, until when It finally felt like I had no escape from the awareness of them, if I truly want to make through it and still be myself.

    Musician of the Month Richard Egan, meanwhile, brought us on a journey from noise to silence:

    In the beginning they need and want to be heard yet, at some point, silence will be required to stay sharp. They should never choose the sound of their own voice over the work. Staying quiet is not what artists are very good at but it is what needs to be done sometimes. Silence doesn’t have to last forever and invariably there will come a time when a fork in the road is reached: one way ‘stop talking’, the other ‘continue speaking’. The artist will feel in their bones when this fateful day arrives.

    Photo credit: Peter Campbell

    Also in music, Andrew Hamilton found Joy in epigrammatic quotations:

    You may ask why on earth do you find these quotes useful? I fully own up to having a tendency towards the austere myself: over the past five years I have gone at least twice a year on silent retreats in a Buddhist monastery and my biggest disappointment during this lockdown has been missing out on a cancelled ten-day silent meditation retreat at the monastery led by an amazing nun. But also reflecting on it for this article I suddenly realised that I probably need a corrective or balance to clichéd notions of what the arts exist for and the gush spewed out from the art and music worlds to continue making anything. Maybe I am very contrary (okay, I am) but when I read blanket statements about how art needs to reflect life (whatever that means and what if mine is really boring and mundane?!) I think of Martin at her fiercest: ‘art work…does not represent life because life is infinite, dimensionless. It is consciousness of itself. And that cannot be represented’.

    And Constance Hauman discovered a creativity in the silence of New York after it shut down on April 4th.

    We also received fiction from Camillus John in which ‘The real facts don’t matter. Only the goal and dream of ultimate justice.’

    Image (c) Constantino Idini

    And new poetry from Micheal O’Siadhail:

    SIDE EFFECT

    So few cars on our Manhattan street
    Pigeons leaving nests that swirl between
    Highrise ledges, fearless land to eat
    Any mid-street grain or scrap they glean.

    Told to stay at home most acquiesce.
    Now we learn how unbeknownst we spare
    Our New York as we’re emitting less
    Long-lived greenhouse gases in the air.

    Same in Paris, London, Madrid, Rome.
    If our frenzied whirl restarts, when pressed
    To create more jobs and we leave home,
    Will we foul then worse our global nest?

    Covid fear amends our habitat –
    Nature’s own backhanded caveat.

    Unforgettable Year: January 2020

    Unforgettable Year: February 2020

    Unforgettable Year: March 2020

    Unforgettable Year: April 2020

    Unforgettable Year: May 2020

  • Unforgettable Year: March 2020

    ‘It’ had well and truly arrived by March, insidiously working its way into our lives like an unwanted guest who slips through the door unbeknownst. Editorially we were looking at the big picture, assessing the implications of what we used to call ‘the coronavirus’ – before becoming COVID-19 on February 11th – through political, legal and cultural lenses; as well as assessing the direct health impact.

    An important contribution came from Duncan Mclean  a senior researcher with the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices, Médecins Sans Frontières Switzerland. He looked back on the history of infectious disease outbreaks and how these can bring out the very worst prejudices, a phenomenon he described as the ‘medical scapegoat.’

    [I]f sickness has historically been portrayed as a punishment for sin, socially excluded groups and minorities have proven most vulnerable. Whether linked to mortality or fear of the unknown, context is key to understanding the long history of how those on the margins of society have been scapegoated.

    Moreover, in light of the introduction of special powers in the wake of the pandemic in Ireland, barrister and lecturer Alice Harrison examined how in Ireland infringements on civil liberties, such as the removal of jury trials in response to perceived threats to the state, have tended to ‘seep’ into ordinary usage.

    Protecting civil liberties, such as the right to jury trial, may seem less important as long as extraordinary powers are not abused. However, the existence of special powers poses the ongoing risk that they may be exploited by unscrupulous, or even tyrannical, politicians or agents of the state.

    Dr Samuel McManus was, however, able to see a ‘silver lining’ to the crisis:

    If there is a silver lining to this crisis it is the revelation of how connected we are to each other, in ways we have almost forgotten. We are a species with special concerns. We cannot afford to operate alone as individuals; to do so is to threaten us all. This realisation is putting into stark relief the way we have organised our societies over the past few decades.

    He averted to the importance of the state delivering public healthcare, as opposed to profit-driven private institutions:

    Some private health care clinics in Dublin are now putting up signs saying they will not accept patients with respiratory symptoms, directing them towards their G.P’s. This is in one way understandable as a means of limiting transmission, but while the public service is taking extra measures to distribute information and organise the response, these private clinics are under no compulsion to do so.

    Frank Armstrong also assessed Ireland’s early response to the pandemic, pointing to inherent weaknesses, and other factors likely to mitigate the worst effects:

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

    He was also moved to write a poem ‘Coronavirus’, while Sammy Jay dwelt on the prescription of isolation in another moving poem.

    Image Patricio Cassinoni

    Fans of music and poetry were delighted by the release that month of a first single ‘Murder Most Foul’ from Bob Dylan’s new album Rough and Rowdy Ways. It offered a pleasant distraction from the unfolding global pandemic, although it contained a stark message according to David Langwallner

    Dylan has released a new seventeen minute-long song, ostensibly about the murder of John F. Kennedy, but which is also a travelogue through American cultural history, with Prince Hamlet and the great, deranged 1960s American DJ, Wolfman Jack, as our guide.

    Also, Musician of the Month Judith Ring revealed how she transforms everyday ‘noise’ into music, while exploring the sonic possibilities of different timbres; and Brian Dillon discussed the ideas behind his new solo project The Line. His debut album Matter had been released by Bad Soup Records in February.

    Photograph by Laura Sheeran

    In other cultural coverage, we interviewed documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle, and introduced his documentary ‘Patrick Kavanagh – No Man’s Fool.’

    We also published an essay by Eamon Kelly ‘The Rocky Road to a Republic’ that argued:

    You might think of the film ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ as some dated artifact, featuring Dub-a-lin in da rare auld times. But many of the cultural assumptions revealed in the film, and which later went towards hindering the film’s reception, are still very much alive in today’s Ireland. The sacred cows may have changed, but the overall cultural relationship with those things deemed sacred is still strikingly similar.

    Image William Murphy

    On a similar theme, David Langwallner called for A Renewed Deal:

    It is clear that we require a Renewed Deal, bringing Keynesian stabilisation measures, including support for small businesses, social safety nets and the shutting down of corporate tax avoidance. The E.U. must desist from imposing austerity under the guise of the Growth and Stability Pact, and reinforce regulatory protection of labour rights and the environment, resisting the lobbying of giant corporations. Courts in Ireland should also recognise a basic human right to housing, including prohibition against arbitrary eviction, as well as healthcare. So let us organise a petition then for an umbrella organisation to bring a Renewed Deal to the world.

    Langwallner also explored the influence of Slavoj Zizek in his Public Intellectual Series.

    ©Basso CANNARSA Opale/Alamy Stock Photo

    Meanwhile in international coverage Elliot Moriarty argued for more nuanced treatment of Rojava, the autonomous administration of north and east Syria:.

    Coverage of the region in the Western media tends to refer to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and ‘the Kurds’ interchangeably. This reinforces a reductive narrative of the SDF as being comprised of fearless but naive nationalists, apparently content to sacrifice themselves in the pursuit of a Kurdish statehood aligned to U.S. interests in the region.

    Image: Alexis Daloumis

    Even further afield in Indonesia, the Hectic Fish was discovering the dubious pleasures of ex-pat life on the island:

    f I end up in prison again, I will enjoy it as much as I did twenty years ago. There is justice at the end of shadows. And there is poetry behind bars. It is bad, but you are worse.

    Another anonymous writer The Man in the Black Pyjamas was bemoaning the impact of the housing crisis on the young people of his generation living in Dublin in ‘Gone’:

    “The country’s changed,” my friend said as we sat in our small, dawn-lit kitchen at half-five in the morning having toast and tea. A month later the landlord raised our rent by 30%, and four years on now we’re all gone from Dublin. Me and my friends, and probably most of the people out drinking in the sun that day. We celebrated equality and left a day or a month or a year later. Off to London or South America or Asia or the Middle East or back down the country or onto friends’ couches or back in with our parents or into homelessness. I wish I could go back to those days, but it’s all gone now: that Dublin, those people, that hope.

    We also had Sarah Hamilton discussing the challenges for aspiring female writers in an interview with Sarah Savitt of Vertigo who said:

    Don’t get too carried away, wasting time on followers and trying to build up clout. You need to know the ecosystem. Spend your time instead learning about how to get an agent, which publishers would suit you, reading work related to them. Follow the submission guidelines that are listed on an agent/publisher’s page. It gives you a better running. Most importantly, keep writing. After all this time, it still really is about the words.

    Furthermore, there was an extraordinary memoir ‘A Rat on the Wall’ from Stephen Mc Randal recalling the ill-treatment of a schoolboy in 1960’s Belfast.

    Illustration by Malina | Artsyfartsy.

    Further poetry came from the irrepressible Kevin Higgins who pointed to enduring fascistic tendencies in Ireland with ‘The Continuing Story of Óglaigh na hÉireann’

    On a more celestial note Kathleen Scott Goldinway brought us ‘The Lamps of the Virgins’

    Finally, the third hard copy edition of Cassandra Voices was launched at the end of March, and featured the introduction by Frank Armstrong,

    That new edition contained a memorable essay by Irish human rights campaigner, educator, film-maker and therapist, Caoimhe Butterly on the theme of Displacement:

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

    Unforgettable Year: January 2020

    Unforgettable Year: February 2020