ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND THE CHALLENGE TO BE HUMAN

Even as we cry 'monster' we recognise that Anders Behring Breivik, the man who bombed Oslo (59 degrees North, 10 degrees East) and shot up Utoya Island (60 degrees North, 10 degrees East), is not at all monstrous. His actions are evil and deadly. His essence is thoroughly human. His capacities for murder and rationalisation are common to the species. He is  homo interimo, the killer, as homo sapiens as anyone. And that's the challenge.

In his view the mass killing of young people is a positive act, a necessary revolutionary act that will produce social change. Perversely he didn't kill his direct enemies, members of the immigrant populations he believes are colonising Europe. Rather he massacred young people of the Left, from families and communities committed to social democracy, almost exclusively white and, in his terms, indigenously Norwegian. 

His concept of 'Norwegian' is nationalistic, Christian, white, exclusive and allied to other concepts across the world which are labelled far-right and fascist. He has allies and connections in The United Kingdom and The Netherlands. His actions mimic the violence of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed government buildings in Oklahoma City (35 degrees North, 97 degrees West) in 1995. He manifests the thuggish culture of the young Russians convicted of nineteen hate-related crimes in Moscow (55 degrees North, 37 degrees East) in 2008, though in his case he layered his personal culture of hate with veneers of membership of The Progressive Party and of the Masonic Order.

And, in an extraordinary orgy of self-publicity and hubris, he published a manifesto of 1 500 pages on the internet, apparently written by himself, in which he details his anxieties and his plans.  He is so thoroughly vain, fragile, oafish in his uniforms and his costumes, boorish and craven. So thoroughly human. So thoroughly human that he made sure the ammunition he used would explode on impact and do maximum damage to his victims, his fellow Norwegians. 

How best to respond to the challenge his views and actions present? Already Norwegians of every hue and creed are reacting with calm and telling grief, their anger and fear moderated by that powerful human antidote to Breivik and his ilk: solidarity, the ability to think of other people as 'us' and the actions necessary to extend the range of people encompassed in that 'us'. This human solidarity is based on a sense of common danger, as beings who can be humiliated. We are all capable of being humiliated and the ultimate humiliation is death and murder is its grimmest form. In Norway, fear and  fright, greed and duplicity, selfishness and evil are being faced and defeated. 

As for Breivik, the words of American philosopher Richard Rorty pertain:

'All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs and their lives...... They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person's 'final vocabulary.'.... Those words are as far as he can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force.'

Breivik's resort to force marks the failure of his final vocabulary. The actions of the Norwegian citizens since the massacre see them embark on a task of redescription, creating new words and new vocabularies for their changed times. 

We need as much imaginative acquaintance as possible with alternative final vocabularies, in particular those vocabularies that enhance the sense of 'us' and strengthen solidarity, the attribute that makes us most thoroughly human. 

Contingency, irony and solidarity: Richard Rorty: Cambridge University Press

TAOISEACH VEXES VATICAN

That was quite a speech by the Taoiseach on Wednesday when he lambasted the Vatican and that state's representatives in Ireland for their responses to a child sexual abuse report concerning priests and bishops in the Roman Catholic diocese of Cloyne, near Cork (51 degrees North, 8 degrees West). This is the third such damning report, leaving people in Ireland well past the state of shock that the initial findings evoked. Now the widespread national emotion is anger, leavened with a dose of 'I-told-you-so'.

If representatives of any other sovereign state acted in this way in Ireland – raping and abusing children, active covering up and not reporting these crimes by superiors, privileging the law of their own state over the law of the land and thereby exonerating their representatives from the crimes, using a confidentiality practice peculiar to their own rules in order to subvert the laws of the state they are resident in – they would be sent packing.

But these are representatives of The Vatican State and bishops are involved, invoking canon law and the secrecy of the confessional. It is a decadent form of sharia law, run by despotic mullahs in the service of Rome, delivering their authority through centuries of the abuse of power and male privilege, based on  religious stories from the Bible.

It is all about Man, nothing about God. All about power, nothing about good. It is evil in practice in that it is, at essence, anti-person, anti-world and anti-now. 

Attempts by people to create other forms of social organisation that did not privilege the priests (or the monarchs) have struggled to produce viable democracies and republics. These attempts have often failed and  currently struggle to offer viable alternatives to religious or aristocratic domination, but it is striking that it is to the Republic that the Taoiseach  appeals in his speech. 

'This is the Republic of Ireland 2011', he says. 'A republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities; of proper civic order; where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version, of a particular kind of “morality”, will no longer be tolerated or ignored.'

Strong words. Actions will be needed, however, to convince people that the concept of a Republic is underpinning the Irish state's response to the criminal actions of priests and bishops. And the State will have to take action on itself in regard to the neglect and abuse of children. Other institutions and bodies – professional, medical, sporting, commercial and others – will have to give account and assurance that their practices are not criminal in regard to children.  

To paraphrase Rousseau from his 1762 treatise, Social Contract,

'Children are born free, and everywhere they are in chains.'

Will the Taoiseach follow through on his brave words, face down the representatives of The Vatican and, again invoking Rousseau, use the legislative power he currently has to bring about real change in Irish society?

'The legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone.'

MURDOCH FACES DISSENT IN THE MAINSTREAM

This is what happens when dissent goes mainstream. Those Scousers and many others who stopped buying - or never actually bought -  The Sun showed the way. Those many people in media-watch groups who said that News International was corrupt kept us focused. All the people who baulked at how huge and monopolistic the Murdoch media empire, News Corporation, had become were right to trust their instincts. And now the empire is rattled, the charmed relationship with international brands is damaged, the craven fore-lock touching relationship with British politicians is trammelled. Even Wall Street, which rules the world in real terms, takes notice and American politicians are asking questions.

Is this a good day for democracy? Is this a blow for freedom? Does it mark a new dawn for the world? Much purple prose in the print and web-based media would have it so. Certainly any day a major corporation is brought down a peg or two is a good day for people on the planet. The cavalier manner in which Murdoch's News International sacked their News of the World staff illustrated just how evil corporations can be. The trigger was the adverse reaction of advertisers - other corporations such as Ford - as they freaked and pulled their advertising. So, in the corporate world view of Murdoch and his ilk, the obvious plan, given that the brand is toxic, is to ditch the staff, close the operation, open again under a new brand, maybe even take on the old staff, with worse terms and conditions. 

There's the rub. Will these events mark a genuine shift in the power corporations have in the world or will it simply be a case of 'take the hit and get on with business as before'? 

The successful outcome for the planet would be a dismantling of the corporation and a weakening of its power over government and police.

Dissenters have always noted that the cosy relationship between media moguls and politicians was bad for democracy. It's essentially a bullying relationship, with politicians terrified of upsetting the moguls. Industrial moguls have the same effect, threatening to move their production facilities elsewhere and cowering the politicians into favourable tax breaks, weak environmental provisions and anti-citizen employment terms and conditions. 

Check out large food multiples and their ability to get out-of-town shopping centres eased through planning when everyone knows they devastate the human scale of towns. The grimmest of the lot are the arms manufacturers who not only profit from death and destruction but who so spancil the US political system that individual Senators can't breathe without checking it doesn't upset them. 

Were it not for dissenters Murdoch would not be quaking. Were it not for the people who, even quietly, said 'hang on a minute, can this be right?' no inquiries would be under-way, no corrupt and negligent police officers would be quaking, no corporate magnates would be ditching their most senior lieutenants, their consiglieri, wringing their hands in public and appearing before parliamentary committees to answer questions.

It is a struggle for power and in a small way citizens hit home by making Murdoch face dissent in the mainstream.

CHEESTRINGS AND HUNGER

What are cheestrings? They are a highly processed, highly packaged and highly marketed, as convenient and nutritious, food product, aimed at children. Children who grow malnourished and obese on cheestrings and other over-processed, over-packaged, over-marketed food products. If these products, cheestrings included, were really any good for us, would companies have to spend so much money on advertising to tell us how good they are?

Truth is, they're not particularly good. A slice of decent local cheddar is much better. But not as convenient – the touchstone for overworked parents. Not packaged like a Disney-ride – the lodestone for children. And not nearly as profitable – the Holy Grail for global food companies.

Profits at the Irish global food group, The Kerry Group, whose brands include cheestrings, with a head office in Tralee, County Kerry, (52 degrees North, 9 degrees West) in the south west of Ireland and regional offices in the UK, the USA and Singapore, are up more than 11%, reaching €470m. The company, which is still 23.8 per cent owned by the former Kerry milk co-operative, is one of the world's biggest food ingredients and flavouring manufacturers. It is behind household name brands like Denny, Dairygold, Shaws, Michelstown and Dawn and many supermarket private labels.  And cheestrings.

Far outside the current reach of cheestrings are the children at Dadaab Refugee Centre (0 degrees North, 40 degrees east), Kenya. The camp is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world with a population of around 350,000 persons. Thousands pour into it every day, mainly from Somalia, but also from across north Kenya and Ethiopia. It is the ante-room to another Horn of Africa catastrophe, much worse than that which galvanised Bob Geldoff and Midge Ure in 1985, their Live Aid year. 

Twenty six years on and nothing has changed. Drought and conflict continue to ravage the Horn of Africa, while the best post-Live Aid response we have is more aid. And cheestrings. 

Will the major shareholders in The Kerry Group and all the other global food companies transfer their huge profits to agencies working in the Horn of Africa? Is that a cheestrings straw in the wind, blowing drought and devastation across the Horn of Africa?

THE MODERN LABOURS OF HERACLES THE GREEK

When it comes to myths it's hard to beat the Greeks. The Hellenic tradition of story, fable and heroic acts is among the greatest in the world. And the most famous of all their heroes is Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcemena, named for Hera, Zeus' wife. Rome (41 degrees North, 12 degrees East) and Disney (34 degrees North, 118 degrees West) call him Hercules. 

Heracles the Greek is superlatively brave, hardy, enduring, humorous, sensitive, generous and adventurous. He is also lustful, gluttonous and prone to fits of violent temper, especially against those he finds committing injustice. A hero and a Greek, no doubt. 

Heracles has long since completed the Twelve Labours originally set him by  King Eurystheus, following Heracles murder of his own family. (The Greeks never do anything by halves, especially not tragedy.) 

In an echo of one of his triumphs, when he faced and destroyed the many-headed Hydra of Lerna, he now faces the many-headed Hydra of Austerity. Her many heads include the prevaricating EU, the avaricious ECB, the bumbling states in the Euro-zone, the slavering German Tyrannosaurus Rex, the rapacious French Raptor, the IMF, the spiteful, venomous, venal international banking system and the police, who themselves, ironically, face cuts from the Hyrdra of Austerity.  

Tear gas fills the air in Syntagma Square in Athens (37 degrees North, 23 degrees East), as Heracles faces the Hydra. The plaza resembles a war zone. The detritus of battle lies everywhere, with burning barricades, smashed pavements, shattered masonry, looted shops and destroyed kiosks.

It is the setting for scenes from Euripides play, Heracles.

Ha! what is this? I see my children before the house in the garb of death, with chaplets on their heads, my wife amid a throng of men, and my father weeping o'er some mischance. Let me draw near to them and inquire; lady, what strange stroke of fate hath fallen on the house? 

The mischance and the strange stroke of fate the Greeks are enduring and are making Hecaclean efforts to overcome arise from the present state of modernity, from the myths that progress is delivered by continuing economic growth and that value is measured in money, that loose credit and over-consumption are economic drivers (indeed - drivers to ruin as in Ireland and Portugal) and that when private enterprise, in its most devastating form as casino capitalism, wreaks havoc, the public sector must bear the pain of the collapse and carnage. 

It is no wonder that Heracles is angered and fighting back, on a range of fronts.  

Cast from your heads these chaplets of death, look up to the light, for instead of the nether gloom your eyes behold the welcome sun. I, meantime, since here is work for my hand, will first go raze this upstart tyrant's halls, and when I have beheaded the miscreant, I will throw him to dogs to tear.

Euripides wrote the play between 421 and 416 B.C.E and yet the voice of Heracles resonates in Athens today. One of the problems facing the rioting Heracles is that he can be filmed and labelled as destructive. Unfortunately the destruction wrought by casino capitalists cannot be so easily filmed and labelled. It will take considerably more than rioting to slay this Hydra. 

Heracles the Greek will be called upon to face many labours in the time to come. 

....... here all mankind are equal; all love their children, both those of high estate and those who are naught; 'tis wealth that makes distinctions among them; some have, others want; but all the human race loves its offspring.

Check out this yacht for sale at Piraeus, Greece's third biggest city. 

http://www.ypigroup.com/yacht-althea-for-sale-3002602.htm

Some have, others want. It's not surprising Heracles the Greek is angry.