ISRAELI RESOLUTIONS

Football matters heat up in Israel, the belligerent nation, as elections loom and the rhetoric cranks up in relation to neighbours Syria. Pessimists predict an attack – possibly nuclear -  on Iran. 'First strike' resonates in the language between Tehran (35 degrees North, 51 degrees West) and Tel Aviv (32 degrees North, 34 degrees West). 

Hands are thrown in the air – as flapping goalkeepers do -  at the prospect of Iran gaining nuclear weapons. Hands remain firmly at the sides – as defensive walls do -  on the knowledge that Israel already has them. And plenty of back-up from allies, such as the USA.

Meanwhile, ordinary Israelis face into the new year with resolve. 

The organisation Zochrot, which seeks to present the history of the Nakba (The Palestinian Catastrophe, 1948) to the people of Israel, makes plans for the coming twelve months. Members are resolved, as Israelis and patriots, to face the legacy of the formation of the state in order that approaches short of a permanent state of belligerence can be engendered for internal and external relations.

But all is not calm on the football terraces. Maccabi Tel Aviv's recent game against Stoke (53 degrees North, 2 degrees West) City was marred by anti-Arab chanting from the Israeli fans. A right wing member of the Israeli Knesset cranks up pre-election national fervour by proposing to force all members of the national team to sing the national anthem and sign a declaration of loyalty to the state.

This flies in the face of the reality of life in Israel where a form of apartheid exists for members of Arab communities, both Muslim and Christian. Israel is a complex society and more highly contested internally than right wingers in the Knesset will allow.

But Israelis have resolve. Glasgow (55 degrees North, 4 degrees West) Celtic midfielder Beram Kayal called the proposal  unnecessary. He plays his heart out for Glasgow Celtic -  he was badly injured against Glasgow Rangers on 28th December and was stretchered off with twenty minutes left to play -  and Israel - the national team are indebted to Kayal for a winning header against Latvia in March. The Israeli Football Association opposed the proposal.

On the ground, in the cities and villages of Israel itself, in the under-siege zones of the West Bank and Gaza, there are Israelis who know that belligerence will rise in the run up to the elections. Who know that a future for their children and their children's children needs to be built on co-operation, a lessening of militarism and belligerence and a formation of statehood that is genuinely democratic.  

As the Israelis in Zochrot delicately unpick the history of the formation of the state, as Arabs and others within Israel press for recognition of the complexity of the state, as the world urges a resolution of the oppression of the Palestinians, let the football terraces echo with the chanted resolve that the new year may bring peace.  

http://www.zochrot.org/en/video/report-exhibition-return-palestinian-refugees

When Saturday Comes; Magazine; Issue 299; January 2012

WALKING THE PEACE BRIDGE

 

Thousands of people walk across the new pedestrian Peace Bridge in Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West) during the holiday season. The Peace Bridge crosses the river Foyle, linking a decommissioned British Army barracks with an urban expressway that cuts off the river from the city centre.

The Hegarty family in the city come to terms with the outcome of the inquest into the killing of young Daniel in 1972 by a soldier in the British Army. Relatives of the boy, dead over 40 years, still sound anguished on the local radio. They are not vengeful. They are mightily forgiving. They want acknowledgement and truth. They may get a prosecution.

In Baghdad (33 degrees North, 44 degrees West), families come to terms with the deaths caused by recent car bombs. They will still be grieving in 40 years. The legacy of grief caused by violent death in war is long. The invasion of Iraq to a) find weapons of mass destruction by delivering mass destruction as shock and awe and b) to topple a dictator by replacing him with political instability and blatant international theft will scar the people of Iraq for generations.

In Homs (34 degrees North, 36 degrees East) families face into the mid-winter festivities and the coming year with places empty at the family table. The Assad family will gather in power and wealth. Sensing threat, they will invoke their military might to further clamp down on dissent in Syria.

In Tripoli (32 degrees North, 13 degrees East) and Bengazi (32 degrees North, 20 degrees East), families will gather in relief and fear. A war is over - at least its violent phase - and they can make plans for 2012. Already the fragility of the new Libya that is emerging is evident.

The indigenous people of the Ene-Tambo (11 degrees South, 74 degrees West) river basin on the borders of Brazil and Peru know that if they pause now to celebrate they will soon have to face the predations of dam builders, logging companies, mining corporations and agri-business seed grabbers such as Monsanto. They know that their world is nothing more than a resource rich basket from which global corporations in league with central governments and urban populations will steal for profit and survival.

In 1651 Thomas Hobbes wrote The Leviathan. Quoted by Steven Pinker, Hobbes cited ‘three principal cause of quarrel’: predation, primarily of land; pre-emption of predation of others; credible deterrence or honour. Such a mix, updated to expand land to wealth in general, to include co-option with predation, to add hubris to honour and usurpation to deterrence, still applies today.

There is a mighty bridge in Isfahan (32 degrees North, 51 degrees East). The Si-o-se pol bridge was built in 1632, in Hobbes’ time, but in a different culture and place. Crossing the Zanandeh (the life giver) River, it is one of 33 bridges in one of Iran’s glorious cities. There are plans afoot to blast it and much else of Iran to pieces.

War never ceases. Walking the bridges is part of the process of opposing war. A small part. A necessary step.

Derry Peace Bridge: http://www.ilex-urc.com/Projects/Peace-Bridge.aspx

Si-o-se pol bridge, Isfahan:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21787900@N05/4067359681/

The Better Angels of Our Nature; book; Steven Pinker; Allen Lane; 2011

SEASONAL DELUGES

On Marlborough Terrace and Harding Street, on sloping hills in the city of Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), retaining walls collapse following torrential rain. Residents flee their homes in panic. Earth, masonry, vegetation and rocks tumble into gardens, backyards, onto cars and heating-oil tanks. Images on television and in the press are from tsunami-hit regions. No loss of life is reported.

Across the world, in the adjacent coastal cities of Lligan and Cagayon de Oro (8 degrees North, 124 degrees East), in a region of Mindanao, which a Reuters account chillingly reports as 'resource-rich', devastation of an immense scale is visited on people asleep in their beds as flash floods follow Typhoon Washi and wreak havoc. The death toll is over 400 and rising. Children search for loved ones. Families are rent asunder. 

These extreme weather conditions – high winds, relentless rain – are they Acts of Nature or Acts of God? The fear, terror, death, destruction, loss of life, limb and property, loss of kin, the overwhelming trauma they cause – all of these are so very human in scale and impact. 

What role has 'Man' in these tragedies?

The flood waters of war recede ever so slightly in Iraq, with the return to home of the bulk of the American military. The rushing deluge of destruction visited by the shock and the awe of the American military is seeping away. The typhoon of munitions they delivered is calming.

Echoing the experiences of people in Derry and Mindanao, the fear, terror, death, destruction, loss of life, limb and property, loss of kin, the overwhelming trauma  – all of these are present on a human scale. 

What role has 'Man' in the tragedy in Iraq?

'Man' is central to all of this. It is possible to name him Man, without the qualifications of apostrophes. In collusion with Nature and God, creating circumstances of poverty and neglect, oppression, resource hunger and rape, brutality and belief, Man acts to make it so, all across the world.

Where are the outcomes from the Climate Change talks in Durban (29 degrees South, 31 degrees East) that will improve the circumstances for coastal dwellers? Where are the building regulations that will ensure safety of residents and their property? Where are the disarmament policies that will dismantle the arms trade and its pernicious effect on conflict? Where are the peacemakers?

They are not in a manger, under a star. Or among the angels. They are among the shepherds who watched and who tended their flocks.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground.

The devastated ground. The resource-rich ground. The plundered ground. The sodden ground. The Man and Woman-made ground.

EURO PANTO

This is pantomime season, in particular in the states of northern Europe. Old folk tales of Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and The Beanstalk, pastiche histories such as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, exotic orientalisms such as Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, are played out before family audiences who are encouraged to shout well known phrases such as 'He's behind you!' and sing along to current popular songs. Pantomimes are high colour, all-singing and all-dancing, utterly sexist, occasionally racist and homophobic, full-on popular entertainments, staged in well-worn manners in theatres across Europe.  

This weekend's summit of EU leaders is the season's highlight. Already one of the leads, Cameron of the UK, has pulled out, but there is still a very strong cast, led by Sarkozy of France and Merkel of Germany. 

In a confusing re-write of the traditional form, it's not clear who is the villain – the witch, the evil giant, the ugly sisters – though villainous activities by Banks and Markets off-stage are driving the plot.

Europeans from across the Union watch this pantomime with ill-ease. From Tramore (52 degrees North, 7 degrees West) to Kunda (59 degrees North, 26 degrees East) from Letterkenny (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West) to Beja (38 degrees North, 7 degrees West), citizens gaze in wonder at the comings and goings of the lead players and wonder at the impact of the phone call just before curtain up from Obama, the American impresario.  

Kenny from Ireland wants to preserve the country's low rate of corporation tax. It is Jack and the Beanstalk then. How many magic beans can we get for our sovereign moily cow in order to give them to those Ugly Sisters, the rapacious Banks and Markets?

Of course, it's more Greek Tragedy than Pantomime, with elements of French Farce and German Symbolism. It plays out on stages across Europe with Chinese lanterns waving in the wings and American eagles roosting in the gantries above the actors. 

European citizens gaze in awe as the players plunder about the stage, sensing that a gloss is being varnished across the individual tragedies they will face when they leave their seats and begin to .... march with sovereign tread... in Alexander Blok's memorable phrase. They continue then, perhaps advancing as citizens in Tahrir Square recently advanced.

Behind them limps the hungry dog, 

and wrapped in wild snow at their head

carrying a blood-red flag - 

soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, 

invulnerable where bullets crossed - 

crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, 

a flowery diadem of frost, 

ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.

Blok's seasonal, mystical, symbolic image is part-pantomime, part-tragedy. As is the experience of citizens, as the curtain remains up and lives are always at stake.

The Twelve; poem; Alexander Blok; English translation by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France; Eyre and Spottiswode; 1970

READING THE LAST LECTURE BY RANDY PAUSCH

Randy Pausch was a decent human being. His early death, due to cancer, was a tragedy for his family, friends and colleagues in the specialist field of computer science known as virtual reality.

An academic in Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, USA (40 degrees North, 79 degrees West), Pausch gave a last lecture on 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams'. It is available on websites and in book form. It is hugely popular.

It is an attempt to make general statements about the experience of early death, leaving a legacy to family and friends, the lessons a life delivers and a summation of experience that can be used by other people.

It is sentimental. It presumes a universality that would not have the same status were it to come from a culture other than the Anglo-American culture. And it makes no allowance for that.

Chapter 35 has a commonsensical list of things to do to make good meetings. The presumption that everyone experiences 'meetings' is hard to take. Chapter 11 calls Disneyland the happiest place on earth, which is a grand claim for a commercial theme park. Chapter 10 details Pausch's love of large cuddly toys. 

The impression grows that the core dream is to remain – or become - a child. A particular child: a white middle-class child in America. This is mawkish, presumptuous and narrow.

(As an aside, will lectures and books coming from China in one hundred years time make a similiar presumption?)

Life lessons are gleaned in playing American Football, a regional, minority sport in global terms. The term 'coach', familiar to people who view American sports' films and computer games, is presumed to be universally known. It summarises an endearingly old school portrait that is sentimental. And grim. In  Chapter 7, the coach refuses to give water to young players. Pausch says we were a 'bunch of brats.' The lessons of life are learned in the school of hard knocks. 

The sentimental desire to preserve childhood into adulthood manifests in Pausch's work in preparing the brightest and best educated young computer scientists for a working life in the entertainment industry – theme parks, video and on-line gaming, virtual reality simulations. This is never viewed  ironically. 

How many of these best and brightest end up working, directly or indirectly, on military applications, as the military and entertainment industries increasingly converge?

Clichés masquerading as aphorisms abound. Stretching them to a lecture and a book, where being unique is best expressed by a desire to accumulate large cuddly toys, is sentimental.

Deep human urges at stake. The urge to leave a legacy for your children. The urge for wisdom in a maelstrom of data and knowledge. Pausch's book reveals that an alert intelligence is not sufficient. That context is vital. That a narrow didactic approach, presumed to be universally applicable, does not get to the heart of the matter.  Pain and the fear of death are everywhere and real, not virtual, hurtful tragedies. They are experienced differently by different people in diverse places, in their various circumstances. 

Pausch's book offers no sense of the truth that all across the world there are people coping with untimely death, from cancers, other conditions and circumstances, most of them without the benefit of the expensive medical inputs that facilities like The John Hopkins Hospital can provide.

The urge for eternity impels us all. Telling people you love them is the heart of it. Pausch's pioneering work with the Alice Project, making 3D computer programming tools available to young people and their teachers, is a sterling legacy. 

His Last Lecture is not. 

The Last Lecture; book; Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow; Hodder and Stoughton; 2008

TIPS TO AVOID BEING VOTED OFF

Janet Devlin, the flame-haired chanteuse from Omagh (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), is voted off the British TV series, the X-Factor and is quite blasé about it. It was never really for me, says she. For others it is a disappointment, even a tragedy. The schoolgirl is a fine singer and will make great music in the future. Her X-Factor experience came to an end when she stumbled over the lyrics of songs she was performing. The votes of judges and the public left her.

Tip Number 1: If you want votes, remember the words. 

Egyptians begin an extended polling period, with a first visit to the voting booths. They are presented with a lengthy ballot paper. It includes symbols beside candidates' names to facilitate illiterate voters. Some candidates are not happy with the symbols allocated. A camera. A banana. A football.

Tip Number 2: If you want votes, choose your symbols wisely.

Indian shoppers will be voting with their feet in the face of moves by global giants – Wallmart, Tesco, Carrefour – to muscle in on the lucrative local retail trade. Politicians in 28 cities have opposed the moves. IKEA is about to announce grand expansion plans across India. The globalisation contest plays out on the High Streets. Will profits stay in India, with  local farmers and shop-keepers, or be re-repatriated to Europe and the USA?

Tip Number 3: If you want votes, affirm the local.

Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of The Democratic Unionist Party, speaks at the party's annual conference. He uses the language of sharing to entice Catholic voters. 

'I do not want a society where people live close together, but live separate lives.' 

Permute any three from six of the words 'Catholic/Protestant' (religious and cultural identity), 'Irish/British' (national identity) and 'Nationalist/Unionist' (political identity) to get your voter. Historically Catholic/Irish/Nationalist voters vote for 'green' parties and Protestant/British/Unionist voters vote for 'orange' parties. (See Tip 2 on symbols.) Peter Robinson wants the votes of Catholic/British/Unionist and of Catholic/Irish/Unionist voters. He says he wants to persuade, rather than defeat.

Tip Number 4: If you want votes, change the language.

Overall, if you want votes, remember, choose, affirm, change.

If you want change, vote?

Tip Number 5: If you want change, organise.

WALKING LIKE EGYPTIANS

The offer of the ruling military council to install Mr. Ganzouri as the head of a new national government of Egypt is not going down well with the protesters in Cairo (30 degrees North, 31 degrees East). The protesters are walking to Tahrir Square and will walk further. The military elite are stood stock still.

While the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) presents its regrets for the deaths in Tahrir Square, anger among Egyptians sets them on the move.  Bangles rattling.

Slide your feet up the street bend your back 

Shift your arm then you pull it back 

Life is hard you know (oh whey oh) 

Money's short, food prices rise, tourist revenues decrease, religious fervour mounts, long-simmering angers boil up. And the barricades grow in the streets.

The Generals are behind them – well behind them – shielded by plexiglass and inertia. They are motionless hieroglyphs of a time past.

All the old paintings on the tombs 

They do the sand dance don't you know 

If they move too quick (oh whey oh) 

They're falling down like a domino 

Mr. Ganzouri is of the old regime, although he sometimes challenged it. The protesters in Tahrir Square – and people across the world - don't want challenge. They want change. They are on the move.

All the kids in the marketplace say 

Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh 

Walk like an Egyptian 

Even in the face of police and army violence, they are walking. Can they bring the Armed Forces with them?

If you want to find all the cops

They're hanging out in the doughnut shops.

Going on the Million Man March? Women too? Battles to be fought and won?

Walks to be completed. To deliver the genuine social change Egyptians desire.

 We are all Egyptians. Walking, in the deserts of al-Mutanabbi.

The desert knows me well, the night and the mounted men.

The battle and the sword, the paper and the pen.

Bangles rattling.

Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh 

Walk like an Egyptian; song; The Bangles; 1986; You Tube; various

Extract; poem; al-Mutanabbi; www.princeton.edu/~arabic/poetry/

JIM FIXED. ANT AND DEC WRECK

Symbols matter. Concrete matters attach to them. 

Jimmy Saville, former DJ, TV presenter, marathon runner and charity fund-raiser, is buried -  fixed in earth, not concrete -  at a forty five degree angle. As a symbol of his eccentricity, it is consistent and whimsical. 

Instead of presenting TV shows today, he would be on them, exploited as a freak, by the ubiquitously laddish Ant and Dec. They are currently in a highly stage-managed jungle, itself a symbol of the lengths popular culture owners will go to as they exploit the good. And thereby wreck it.

Alan Titley asks 'an bhfaca tú riamh billiún?', which translates to English as 'did you ever see a billion?' A billion is a symbol. A mathematical symbol, 1, 000, 000, 000. Or 1, 000, 000, 000, 000. It depends on whether you use the short or the long system of numbers. 

The jingoistic rows that erupt around this numbering are themselves symbols of unresolved historical, linguistic and cultural tensions. 

A billion is a huge number, in any system, especially stacked in Euros, and Titley's question is relevant in Ireland today as billions of them are handed over to nameless bondholders.

A million is another number, another symbol. The concrete reality behind the announcement that 1, 000, 000 young people are unemployed in the United Kingdom is evident in the destitute lives and broken dreams of each and every one of the young people the symbol represents. 

Will the symbolic act by the Arab League in shutting Syria out represent an improvement in the lives of people bearing the brunt of the repression by the state? 

The city of Homs (34 degrees North, 36 degrees East; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYzuh6iEdQU&feature=related), where much of the violence has been delivered, is itself a symbol. Of dissent and resistance to the al-Assad family oligarchy. 

In concrete terms, this means death and devastation. There are claims that security forces have killed more than 1,100 civilians in the city and its surrounding province since the uprising began. Syria gears up to endure a full-scale civil war.

Not quite civil war, but the threat by the First Minster of Northern Ireland to bring down the government if a symbol – the crown  - is taken off the cap badge of prison officers, certainly provoked political disquiet, in the same week that the power-sharing executive presented its long-awaited programme for government, itself a symbol of possible better futures. Citizens do not expect quick fixes in the fields of jobs, health and education.

With Jimmy dead and gone, propped at 45 degrees to overlook the sea, who will fix us? Not Ant and Dec, who will change their names to Pant and Feic to present their new show Strictly Come, Celebrities: Z Factor: No Talent. 

Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, advocates a symbolic gesture as a curative response to abuse in football matches. A handshake is patently not sufficient in the face of the concrete reality of racism. But it may be sufficient to unseat Blatter and set him up for the golden version. 

Jim'll sign off with his closing gesture, an eccentric symbol of dated TV innocence. At least he aimed to fix, not wreck.

...... kindly look after yourselves very very safely and don't let anything happen to you untoward at all.....

Crobhinge; column; Alan Titley; The Irish Times; 17.11.2011

Jim'll fix it; BBC TV; Jimmy Saville; You Tube; various

THE BERLUSCONI MYSTERY

In the days of the Greeks, the Salsetto had been a river. Later, in the days of the Romans, it became a brook, then a rivulet by the time of Italian unification, and later still, in the Fascist era, a stinking little trickle, before finally becoming, with the advent of democracy, an illegal dumping ground.

As a metaphoric whizz through Sicilian history, the words of Andrea Camilleri, who writes the Inspector Montalbano Mysteries, ring true. 

As for Sicily today:

The police stations had no petrol, the court had no paper, the hospitals had no thermometers, and meanwhile the government was thinking of building a bridge over the Straits of Messina. But there was always plenty of petrol for the useless escorts of ministers, vice-ministers, under-secretaries, committee chairmen, senators, chamber deputies, regional deputies, cabinet chiefs and under-assistant briefcase-carriers.

A modern-day Commedia dell' Arte troupe presided over by il Cavaliere himself, Silvio Berlusconi, who, having passed his 'sell-by' date, is being dumped by the powers that be, the Markets.

Democracy is not an illegal dumping ground. It is a best effort by citizens to organise in the face of exploitation. 

The call for a referendum on the European Greek Cuts Programme by the now-former Greek Prime Minister, Papandreou, albeit something of a stunt to save his political bacon, did European citizens a favour by pulling the mask from the faces of the False Gods of the Markets. 

As Fintan O'Toole noted in The Irish Times, these False Gods explicitly ranted:

..... that the most reckless, irresponsible and ultimately impermissible thing a government could do was to seek the consent of its own people to decisions that would shape their lives.

Markets and Banks rather than citizens call the shots, never more explicitly than in Ireland where the government handed over Euro 700 million to 'vulture capitalist gamblers' (O'Toole), aka unsecured bondholders, because of a threat from the European Central Bank: give the spivs your taxpayers' money or we’ll bring down your banking system.

This is the mesh (not mess) that links modern capitalism and democracy. Events in Greece, Ireland and Italy are obscene. They unmask the fraud that modern capitalism is good for democracy. 

Fintan O'Toole concludes:

We can have the form of rapacious finance capitalism that has become the dominant force in our economies and societies. Or we can have democracy. But we can’t have both.

There is no great mystery here. We name the criminals. We are Inspector Montalbano and the criminals in the Markets and the Banks are our biggest case.

The Wings of the Sphinx – An Inspector Monatalbano Mystery; book; Andrea Camilleri; Mantle/Macmillan; 2010

Triumph of the spivs as democracy is sidelined; article; Fintan O'Toole; The Irish Times; 8.11.2011

THE CULTURE THREAT

An entity called Palestine (A country? A nation? A state? A geography? A territory?) joins UNESCO, and the USA, a nation of great power, objects and withdraws US$ 60 million of funding from the UN agency.

Is it the E word, Palestinian Education, that is so threatening? Or is it the S word, Palestinian Science? Or could it be the C word, Palestinian Culture, that sends alarm bells thrilling through Washington (38 degrees North, 77 degrees West)? 

This move is pre-mature, Washington states. It should wait until a comprehensive agreement between Palestine and Israel, a state recognised by the UN and with whom it has a complicated relationship, is achieved. 

It appears as if the geo-political entity Palestine has had enough waiting and is nudging doors open at the UN. The USA is threatened and responds accordingly.

Al Pacino, the marvellous American actor, plays a training officer in a CIA film drama, The Recruit, inducting new recruits to that USA government covert agency. In a speech outlining threat and response, he asks and answers the question   'why are we here?' :

... I say we are all here in this room because we believe. We believe in good and evil, and we choose good. We believe in right and wrong, and we choose right. Our cause is just. Our enemies...everywhere. They're all around us....

Choices of good/evil and right/wrong, assertions of just cause, naming of enemies and placing them everywhere, even within, are all political matters and thus butt against the C word, Culture.

According to Edward Said, a Palestinian academic who spent a long career in America, Culture

means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principle aims is pleasure.'

Could it be this P word, Pleasure, that is so threatening? As in the pleasure of building peace in the minds of men and women, as UNESCO would have it?

Said adds that Culture is:

..... each society's reservoir of the best that has been known or thought......

Perhaps this is the threatening aspect of the C word? That attention might need to be given to the stories peoples and nations know and think as they contest land and history. Thus, again according to Said, Culture

is a sort of theatre where various political and ideological causes engage one another.

Violence erupts on the ground and on the seas of Palestine. Military engagements between the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and Hamas and other armed groups continue. Armed engagements are likely between the IDF and a flotilla of vessels, including Canadian and Irish ships, off the coast of Palestine in coming days. Israel cuts funding to UNESCO and test launches a ballistic missile.

Edward Said found himself feeling:

... even with regard to the Palestinian movement, and certainly in the context in America in which I find myself – I still feel finally, somehow misplaced...... 

Is that what is so threatening about Culture? That it is not easily fixed?

The Recruit; film; Roger Donaldson; Touchstone Pictures; 2003

Culture and Imperialism; book; Edward Said; Vintage; 1994

Edward Said: a critical reader; book; Michael Sprinker; Blackwell; 1992

  

            

THE CONTINUING DELUGE

The votes are cast. The seven will become one and Ireland will have a new President. The campaign got dirty at the end as various occurrences in the pasts of the lead candidates flowed in complex torrents in the press and on the television. 

Once, for a dare, 

He filled his heart-shaped swimming pool 

With bank notes, high denomination, 

And fed a pound of caviar to his dog. 

The dog was sick; a chartered plane 

Flew in a replacement for the Persian rug.

Eighteen people were evacuated by boat from their homes in the village of Beragh, County Tyrone (54 degrees north, 7 degrees West) as a river burst its banks. Bailing out the banks (financial, not aqueous) flooded the political boats with Euro zone summits. 

He made a billion yen 

Leap from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, 

Turn somersaults through Brussels, 

New York, Sofia and Johannesburg. 

It cracked the bullion market open wide. 

An off-duty Garda officer was swept away in Wicklow (52 degrees North, 6 degrees West). A nurse was inundated in Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West). 

Some of them were dreamers 

And some of them were fools 

Who were making plans and thinking of the future 

Citizens drown and NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency in Ireland, agreed incentives, including salaries of  200, 000 euros a year, to encourage property developers to make debt repayments. 

Bailing out banks does not bring liquidity for citizens.

Some of them were angry 

At the way the earth was abused 

By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power 

Parliamentarians in Italy engaged in fisticuffs in a battle for the financial lifeboats. They are going down perhaps, but fighting, even among themselves. 

Flood waters rose in Bangkok (13 degrees North, 100 degrees West). The EU appealed to China for a bail-out. The Tories in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees East) re-launched their own canoes in Europe.

Water is a god 

That doles its favours by the drop, 

And waiting is a way of life. 

The clocks go back in Ireland.

Governments fell, coalitions cracked 

Insurrection raised its bloody flag 

From north to south. 

Round the decay of that colossal wreck, 

boundless and bare, 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Before the Deluge; song lyric; Jackson Brown; 1979

After the Deluge; poem; Wole Soyinka; The Guardian; 2002

Ozymandias; poem; Percy Bysshe Shelly; 1792-1822