Cassandra Voices

Tag: have

  • I Have a Dream

    There is a hidden global superpower that dominates all our lives. It does not reside inside any government building or military base, but instead, rests snug as a bug within each and every one of us – the brain. In centuries past, it was widely believed that human consciousness was located somewhere between the heart and the gut. This medieval mindset meant people’s everyday awareness of life, and their surrounding relationships were a lot more visceral and emotional than our own. However, with the Age of Enlightenment the old world of deep feeling awareness was transformed into a more detached and reasoned approach to human cognizance. Over the years, neuroscientists have slowly revealed how the brain reigns supreme over every function of the human body, and all our everyday interactions with the world outside. It is both a living matrix of layered complexity, and a biochemical organ through which consciousness has become both self-reflective and ordered. As a result, our brain is viewed by many as the most fascinating and complex structure in the known universe.

    Sadly, the brain also harbours the greatest everyday threat to all humanity. This threat comes from something that is often far more insidious and widespread than inequality, poverty and even climate disaster – our dreams. Not long ago, dreams were primary seen by psychoanalysts as the early alarm bells of emotional and psychological tensions which, left unchecked, could fester into a multitude of mental health disorders such as neurosis, psychosis, phobias etc.

    Today, however, neuroscientists and psychologists have discarded this psycho-drama interpretation of dreams, preferring instead to see them as the unintended outcome of the brain simply undertaking much needed housekeeping while we sleep. Dreams emerge as a direct result of the brain recharging important memories that would otherwise be wiped clean by time. It is the arbitrariness of these memories being triggered that shape the ensuing drama of our dreams. Unfortunately, alongside the recharging of memories comes the unleashing of various electro-chemical and emotional reactions tied up with them.

    Upon waking, these emotional and electrochemical disturbances permeate our everyday existence. This process can be both positive and sublime as witnessed in the form of the mysterious muse who, darkly veiled, imbues life and inspiration into poetry, literature, music and art.

    In addition, there are the eureka moments experienced by scientists, mathematicians and various pioneers who following months and even years of grappling with a problem suddenly, after a peaceful sleep, experience the realisation of something that was always knowingly obvious. On a more intimate level, there is the heightened sexual arousal felt by millions of people as they emerge from their dreams drowsy, half asleep and half awake, delicately exploring the sensual surge towards climax. Lastly, and most significant of all, there is the emotional, psychological and social impact of dreams on our everyday wellbeing and relationship with others. How often have you heard someone claim that they are not a morning person, but instead are grumpy, bad tempered and full of resentment? It is these negative moods and feelings that become engrained within a person’s sense of being, as well as their everyday relationship with the world around them.

    In essence, dreams are not the play ground of wishful illusions or the expression of deep seated mental health disorders, but accidents caused by one of our brain’s basic functions – the maintenance of important memories that could aid our survival. Amongst all its sublime riches, by randomly triggering our memories in the form of dreams, the brain sets in motion a flurry of biochemical reactions that linger and become the breeding ground for all sorts of social, emotional and psychological problems. It could be that dreams rather than money are the root of all evil..

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Have Video Games Become a Respected and Distinct Art form?

    In recent years, ‘video games as an art form’ has become somewhat of a hotly debated topic.

    While some argue that video games don’t have the potential to be meaningful art, others argue the opposite and favour video games being considered art because of their expressive elements, such as music, design, visuals, acting, and interaction.

    Take the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2023, which finally recognised VGM (video game music) as an art form, creating a new award called the ‘Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media.’

    Composer Stephanie Economou won the inaugural award for score in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok, but what about other elements of video games? Do they also deserve their own categories in their respective art form considerations?

    Let’s dive in to find out.

    Why should video games be respected as a distinct art form?

    Many people these days say that video games, whether graphically demanding, high-end triple-A blockbuster games, casual games, the world’s best online slots from award-winning providers, Indie games or MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-play games), should be respected as an art form, each with their own distinct categories.

    They may be completely different from any other artistic mediums, but does that mean they don’t deserve to be treated as art? The debate will no doubt rage on for many years to come.

    Some will always favour them being considered art, and others will always have the opposite view.

    What makes video games so popular?

    Video games have been extremely popular since they arrived fifty years ago. These days, they have incredibly realistic 3D-rendered graphics and visually stunning animated sequences.

    Experts have even described the scores often found in hit titles as one of contemporary music’s most exciting new areas. Games today feature powerful classical/orchestral music brought to you by full orchestras, well-known composers and talented young musicians.

    If the soundtracks in some of the industry’s biggest titles are getting the recognition they deserve, why aren’t the games and the expressive elements contained within them also getting the recognition they deserve?

    Some of the most famous video game soundtracks that have won awards (or have been nominated for awards) are the following, which some of you may already be familiar with. If not, remember to check out these soundtracks, which are now considered a serious art form:

    • Video game: Legend of Zelda: Breath of Wild. Composer: Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata, and Hajime Wakai. Notable songs: Rito Village, Guardian Battle, Mipha’s Theme
    • Video game: Dark Souls. Composer: Motoi Sakuraba. Notable songs: Gwyn, Taurus Demon, Lord of Cinder, Ornstein & Smough
    • Video game: The Elder Scrolls V – Skyrim. Composer: Jeremy Soule. Notable songs: Death or Sovngarde, Imperial Thorne, Secunda, From Past to Present, Dragonborn, and others
    • Video game: The Last of Us. Composer: Gustavo Santaolla. Notable songs: The Path and Vanishing Grace

    Other famous games featuring epic scores include God Of War Ragnarök (Bear McCreary), Hogwarts Legacy (Peter Murray, J Scott Rakozy & Chuck E. Myers), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (Sarah Schachner).

    Some of the most iconic and widely acclaimed composers who have also plied their trade in the gaming industry are Nobuo Uematsu, Stephen Barton, Gordy Haab, Motoi Sakuraba, Yoko Shimomura, Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, Inon Zur, David Wise, Martin O’Donnell, Michiru Yamana, Gustavo Santaolla, and countless others.

    Final thoughts

    There is clearly a case for video games and their expressive elements being considered an art form. However, it seems that video games will always be compared to traditional art forms like music, writing, painting, sculpture, and storytelling, and they may never be taken seriously. Only time will tell.

    In May 2011, the United States National Endowment for the Arts expanded the allowable projects to include “interactive games.” In other words, in accepting grants for art projects in 2012, they recognised video games as an art form, which many will say was a huge step in the right direction.

    Perhaps, over the coming years, more similar situations will happen across the world, and video games may one day be treated as a serious art form, just like the other traditional art forms.

    Cassandra Voices encourages responsible online gambling.

  • Poem: ‘They Have Gained An Audience’

    THEY HAVE GAINED AN AUDIENCE

    with the divine. The plumbline is vertical
    as the resulting verse, so that neither agony
    nor ecstasy travel horizontally but curl and rise,
    sweet smoke from the swung thurible. Perhaps

    these are the only prophets left to us, still able
    to loop the loose thread of heaven through earth’s
    needle-eye, a tremendous feat because her heavy lid
    cannot stay open, closes now even on a clear day.

    I imagine a bird and the bird is language, the bird
    encircles the head of the most high and does not
    flinch or burn, does not hide itself in a cleft of rock
    that the holy might pass by. It cannot land. The point
    is that the bird approaches—the point is flight. We need

    only send our winged words through the needle’s eye,
    the poets tell me, as though it’s easy, as though handfuls
    of heaven are there for anyone to pattern, Dante or
    the old woman at the end of the street who drives out
    alone to check her spring calves. And yet to see her
    returning at dusk, you’d swear she has covenantal
    rainbows on her face, in her white hair.

    Image: Daniele Idini

  • “We have Sick Journalism in Ireland”

    Joe MacAnthony might be considered the greatest investigative reporter to have ever operated in the history of the Irish State. His career in Ireland, however, was cut short by vested interests that still appear to insulate those with money in power from accountability and criminal sanction.

    Having exposed the staggering corruption lying behind the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes, he eventually ran out of Irish publishers, and was forced to take a job with the Canadian Broadcasting Authority. After receiving threats to his life, he moved to Canada with his wife and four children, where he lived for thirty-five years.

    0:00 Introduction
    1:13     The Irish Sweepstakes
    14:42     Story on Ray Burke
    19:30 Closed down in RTE
    24:00     Move to Canada
    29:00     Death Threats
    31:00 Unable to Work in Ireland
    32:58     Views on the Irish Times
    34:10     ‘We have sick journalism in Ireland’
    38:00     Possibility of Solution

    As testament to MacAnthony’s stature in Irish journalism, on November 15 2020 Liam Collins wrote for the Sunday Independent:

    The first Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes draw took place 90 years ago this month and it quickly became a global phenomenon. Behind the razzmatazz and the instant riches, however, was a hidden tale of greed. More than four decades later, investigative journalist Joe MacAnthony broke the biggest story in the history of the Sunday Independent and revealed where the Sweep millions went.

    The state-sponsored lottery was set up under the first Cumann na nGaedhal (later Fine Gael) government of the State in 1930, and would bring unheard of riches to former Minister for Industry and Commerce Josephy McGrath, and his heirs, who became firm fixtures in the commercial life of the country, with many influential friends. MacAnthony estimates their fortune amounted to up to four hundred million dollars by 1972.

    Last week filmmaker and Cassandra Voices contributor Bob Quinn sent us a recording of a film he made in 2006 entitled ‘They’ll Never Show That.’

    MacAnthony reflects on his career, and the sorry state of Irish media as he saw it; the structure of which remains substantially unaltered today; in an era increasingly hostile to investigative reporting.

    Having blazed a trail with his work on the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes, MacAnthony explains how his revelations into the corrupt affairs of former Fianna Fáil Minister Ray Burke as far back as the 1970s, hastened the end of his career in both the Sunday Independent and RTE, who withdrew his security card for a period of six months, while he continued to draw a salary.

    MacAnthony provides a chilling assessment of Irish media:

    the Irish Times, when you look at the manner in which this whole thing seems to be fitted to whoever can make the most money in the upper circles of that paper … that is a total disgrace, an unconscionable disgrace in terms of Irish press freedom … the result is we have sick journalists in Ireland and it is sick journalism, and it’s not due to the people who want to be good journalists. It’s the people who control what the good or bad journalists say and who encourage triviality … I mean, the level of triviality that you read. It’s unbelievable.

    He argues that corruption has come about through what he calls ‘facilitators’ – accountants and lawyers – who ensure that few, if any, politicians are ever held to account.

    Ray Burke would serve just four and-a-half months of a six month sentence behind bars, while Liam Lawlor served a few weeks for contempt.

    MacAnthony traces the lenient treatment of politicians to a class distinction, between those who get ‘six years and who gets probation,’ while ‘basically no lawyer in this country and no accountant ever imagines he’s going to go to jail for playing ducks and drakes.’

    He asserts

    it’s just embedded. A culture is embedded … that you can get away with murder.

    MacAnthony proposed the solution of a ‘counter power,’ similar to the FBI, which could set up ‘stings on politicians.’

    He concludes:

    Nobody goes to jail … I mean, these exile millionaires like Denis O’Brien, I mean, that’s disgusting … here is a guy who makes … money out of Irish assets and then goes off and lives somewhere else and only comes in here … when he has the prospect of taking more money out of the system.

    He warns:

    You know, every time you take money out of the system somebody pays and they’re paying [with their] health or they pay in other areas, but they always pay. So these people, I mean, there is conscience involved here. You know that when you make a lot of money, somebody’s suffering at the other end of the scale.

  • Does Ireland still have a Problem with Whistleblowing?

    Over the past few years, a broad consensus has emerged that in Ireland providing adequate protections for whistleblowing, and whistleblowers, is a lot more difficult to achieve in practice than in theory.

    In many fields, extreme real life consequences for a brave decision to go public with revelations of wrongdoing have been apparent. The protections currently in place do not shield individuals from repercussions in one’s personal and family life, or career. We are talking about losing a job, harassment, unwanted public exposure, grave false allegations and framing, protracted legal challenges, financial difficulties to name but a few. All too often, such individuals are dismissed as ‘rats’. There follow death threats and even the potential for imprisonment. At any level such a decision is a life-changing event. In many cases it is traumatic.

    There are many examples: Garda John Wilson and Maurice McCabe’s ordeals are well recounted in a RTE in a documentary. Back in 2017, banking whistleblower Jonathan Sugarman testified to the Oireachtas that: “Official Ireland has absolutely and completely destroyed the lives of every single whistleblower who has come forward, from whatever walk of life they’ve come.” 

    Many others have come forward to expose misconduct they witness emanating from so-called ‘official Ireland,’ a term that broadly signifies the nexus of the Irish ruling class’s power, across the public and private sector. It is fair to say, as sources have revealed, that there were, and possibly are, many more people who feel unable to go down the whistleblowing path.

    Notwithstanding the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, the law should better regulate whistleblower disclosures and their protection, and encourage people to step forward when they witness wrongdoing.

    Even now in 2021, after much debate and revelations, and with Irish whistleblowing legislation being under the process of amendment in compliance with the EU Directive 2019/1937, it is alleged that a culture of ostracizing whistleblowers persists in the civil service, Garda, as well financial and other corporate institutions.

    If the legislation is there to protect individuals, why then, are some, or many unwilling to proceed? Why is it that after long pondering, and perhaps after seeking confidential advice from a lawyer or union, they find themselves unable to proceed with a disclosure?

    And what can the whistleblower expect to endure after making the brave decision? More to the point, does the proposed new legislation offer adequate protect form the extensive tentacles of ‘official Ireland’?

    I posed these questions to human rights barrister David Langwallner, who was asked by Sinn Féin to help draft a private member’s bill which they propose to introduce to Dáil Éireann by July 31st, 2021.

    Daneiel Idini (DI): David, can I ask you what’s happening these days with regard to whistleblowing in Ireland?

    David Langwallner (DL): What happened was and I’ve got to be a bit circumspect about this. I was approached by a former client of mine who’s a whistleblower, and that client indicated that the Oireachtas was about to introduce, in compliance with EU law, a newly amended protected disclosure legislation to pass in 2021. There is an existing Protected Disclosures Act 2014. But certain deficiencies were pointed out to me by the Sinn Fein party. I had a meeting with them, they’ve asked me to draft a private member’s bill that they propose to introduce by July 31th 2021, first because of perceived and actual deficiencies in the existing whistleblowing bill.

    DI: How long have you been dealing with the issue of whistleblowing concerning Ireland?

    DL: I have represented whistleblowers [in the inquiry into a bank inquiry.] I continue to represent Garda whistleblowers and corporate whistleblowers. I lectured for one semester whistleblowing, at Middlesex University and I have gathered extensive materials.

    DI: You have also written two articles, one in the Village magazine and one in broadsheets on the pitfalls of whistleblowing. And tell me what exactly is wrong with Ireland’s handling of whistleblowing.

    DL: I think a number of things. The first thing is that the new proposed act is seeking to introduce private whistleblower regulation. The real problem in Ireland is state corruption. So you need regulation for whistleblowing and provisions that deal with whistleblowers in the Police; whistleblowers in the Department of Civil Service; whistleblowers within the structure of inquiries; whistleblowers within the structure of the public health system; and indeed the prison service and the present bill does not address that fully.

    DI: Is that because of the fact the whistleblower is forced to refer to the top of the organization that he is trying to blow the whistle on?

    DL: So that is that deficiency, I suppose. But the other deficiencies, documents, and literature suggest that there is no point in having a structure where a whistleblower is subject to the necessity to follow internal procedures before they (feel safe) to go externally.

    The reason for this is that when internal procedures are usually invoked, there’s the risk that bullies, submission, demonization, can ostracize the whistleblower.

    The first recipients of the disclosure are usually the very people who want cover-up in the first place. And in a culture like Ireland’s one, there are very few independent people who take this seriously.

    So a whistleblower has to do a job. He has to be able to circumvent the internal processes and procedures of the corporate or public organization that they’re in.

    And that means a whistleblower has to be allowed to go outside that organization, to the press, for example. But the difficulty that we face in this Irish media context though, is that there is very little investigative press, anymore, who are not controlled by the established parties. The same parties are concealing all the levels of misconduct and wrongdoing.

    DI: So can you tell me in a nutshell in a few minutes exactly what the current legislation covers and if it tackles this “Culture” of antagonism towards whistleblowing?

    DL: Well, the current legislation covers things like criminal wrongdoing, corruption, bad financial administration, miscarriages of justice. It’s extensive to that extent. But the problem is that it doesn’t matter how extensive the coverage is in terms of protection If the culture is not receptive to whistleblowing.

    So, the person I represented to the inquiry into whistleblowing and audit the second day of the case,(the first effective third case,) the police got wind of this and they threatened the breach of the Official Secrets Act. So to intimidate to not go ahead. So even if you’ve got a culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation, you could also, at the same time have, like the Soviets, a fabulous constitution that protected every right under the sun but it was utterly meaningless in practical terms.

    You could have a whistle-blowing statute that protects everything, but not when organizations such as the Department of Justice, Police, corrupt politicians get involved. I think what we need to do is create a more receptive culture. It means creating an independent ombudsman, allowing for external reportage.

    DI: Can you give me an example of what is the path that he has to follow to effectively become a whistleblower and therefore denounce what he saw?

    DL: Well say, for example, a senior police officer who sees that the police are actively framing people for child sex abuse, for example. The process of complaint in that particular context is that the police officer in question would have to make an internal complaint within the police. And those at the top police force were part of corruption.

    DI: Are you saying that there should be more protections for someone who makes the disclosure directly to an external, independent first recipient. Someone or a body that is not in the organization involved by the whistleblower disclosures?

    DL: There can be no barrier, statutorily, to someone going to an external body or agency or the press, having to have exhausted internal procedures. As they have to go through the hoops of internal procedures, those procedures would try to demonize and diminish them and have a vested interest.

    So you have to go first internally, and then go to an ombudsman, before you go to the press or external body.

    I think in conjunction with the whistleblower allegation, we need to build in a procedure where the whistleblower is almost immediately protected, and that I mean that there must be a party to go to that can give them a income structure if there were suspended from work, so that they don’t have to interact with people who are blowing the whistle on the workplace. The lack of such support is inherent in our culture of compliance, which is so amazing.

    For the purpose of clarification, I had further conversations with David on the last points touched on in the above interview as to the psychological impact that a whistleblower faces. If not properly addressed with, for example, access to therapeutic psychological support, as well as other forms of protection, even more stigmatization may be the result.

    I also discussed with him, as well as with other sources, that currently wish to remain anonymous, the procedures for disclosure that are in place for whistleblowers to use. It’s pretty obvious that internal procedures of disclosures, in some cases, can be painful as well as inefficient for all the reasons discussed above. But are alternatives offered, for example the Garda Ombudsman with regard to complaints about Gardai, allowing for the full protection available under the Act? And is the compensation scheme adequate, or should this include aggravated and exemplary damages?

    Should the protections, and possible compensation, also include redress to family members of whistleblowers, who might have suffered the consequence of this “culture”.

    We will continue to ask these and other questions, but in the meantime, there remains one important question for me to ask which is: has Ireland got any better for whistleblowing, after years of revelations, media coverage, and resignations; or are things pretty much as they always were, if not worse?