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.