WHO IS THIS 'WE'?

Who would pick the strawberries from their fields? Who would get the fruit down from their trees? Who would wash their carrots? Who would scrub their toilets? 

Complex questions of identity – who are we? -  come to the fore in times of crisis. Who is Greek now, as the threat of expulsion from the European Union looms? 

Politicians and economists, financiers and bankers, civic leaders and their media cheerleaders invoke the language of 'we' to sanitise the dread they feel as the casino-market model, that has ravaged the world since World War Two, implodes; to deflect the blame that clearly points at speculators and speculation, that turns private losses and debt into great public burdens, borne by citizens all across Europe and beyond.

We are told that we are all guilty, that we all indulged in groupthink. And greed.

We are told we are all Greeks.

Who is this 'we'?

In 38 years, spent mostly in news and current affairs, I never saw groupthink. I don’t say it was never there. But I never saw it.

Because there is no such thing, as it is currently promulgated in the defence of a failed economic and political order.

Who would mend their garments? Who would iron their shirts? Who would fluff their pillows? Who would change their sheets? Who would cook their breakfasts?

Forms of Power use 'we' in a self-serving and occluding manner.

Frank: We need every advantage we can get and right now that's us knowing and them not.

Knowing is essential. How the many 'we s' make up the multi-form 'us' on the planet.

Danny: What are we going to do? Are we going to canvas Heaven?

No. We canvas ourselves and the toiling Japanese women in Julie Otsuka's luminous novella.

Greeks. Irish. Nigerians. Afghanis. Australians. Filipinos. Pakistanis. South Sea Islanders. Americans. English. Bolivians. Italians. Poles. Laotians. Iranians. Greeks.

Greeks. Greeks. Greeks. The very Greeks .....

... Who would clear their tables? Who would soothe their children? Who would bathe their elderly?

Us. We Greeks.

The Buddha in the Attic; novel; Julie Otsuka; Penguin/Fig Tree; 2011

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0518/1224316281182.html

Blue Bloods: TV police drama; Panda Productions et al.; 2010 - 

WHAT DID THEY DO WITH THE BODY PARTS?

Reports hit the media in Northern Ireland, and David Cameron, British Prime Minister in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West) expresses regret about it, that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the police service before the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), have retained organs, tissues and body parts of individuals injured or killed in crime incidents. A skull was mentioned in the list of items. 

A church bell rang out across the city and I noticed a smell for the first time. The hospital smell. Formaldehyde. Bleach. Flowers wilting. Starched bed-sheets. Death. I lifted the sheet of paper and read Teresa's details, then a list. Whole brain. Lungs. Kidneys. Tissue samples: pancreas, spleen. Dates were noted and the phrase 'Retained Pathology Department'. 

This action by the RUC echoes a similar action of organ retention by medical authorities.

'There are a number of....Teresa is one of a number of ca...children whose organs were retained. For medical and scientific purposes. Like the others, Teresa has helped our diagnostic work over the years.'

This broke my vow of silence.

'We have no problem with that. But you should have told us. You should have asked us.'

The relationship between powerful institutions and citizens is complex. As for the individual who is representing the institution, who is also a citizen, at what point does s/he call 'halt!'?

He stood up. All the others had sat. A restless man, I could see that. A man used to moving. A man who acted, who took decisions and made things happen. He accepted the Chairwoman’s assertion that there would be public consultations. He explained certain – 'unwelcome' – practices as being historical, as being part of the way we did things then, more a case of ‘custom and practice’ than of policy. And then one of the two women who had come in late stood up and interrupted him.

'But nobody asked,' she said. Clear as day. A trumpet blast remark that stilled the room. One of those moments when the heartbeat of the world skips because something resonant has been said. 

In the face of the citizen in the institution, the one who blithely and successfully operates the institutional practice, the victim of the derogations of those institutions - Police, Medical, Church (the recent obfuscations by Cardinal Brady regarding his role in the un-monitored interrogation of teenage boys and his subsequent rise to  high office in his institution are relevant here), Education, Justice – reaches for the resonant moment and asks the searing question and offers dissent as a creative act of revelation.

‘Look, it says they’re reviewing procedures. People who agreed to have post-mortems may not have agreed to ...organ...organ retention.’

‘So what did we bury?’

Families experience an emotional roller-coaster as the news of this RUC organ retention comes out. Some of them may face a second funeral. A second walk to a grave. A further heart-searing approach to the lip of eternity.

'How do you walk away from a child’s grave?’

Slowly. Falteringly. In bowed and beaten procession through the sodden headstones, looking over the city. There, the walls circling and enfolding. There, the spires insolent and tremulous. There, the river, ominous and leaden. There, the chimney stacks of the factories and the plants, pluming and grey.

And here am I, tumbling inside myself, being led away, powerless and amazed.

There is no way to walk away from a child’s grave. You stand there forever. 

A Sudden Sun: novel; Dave Duggan; Guildhall Press; 2012

ROOF GARDENS, OLYMPICS-STYLE

The roofs of dwelling houses are now the ramparts of the city of London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West). The guards patrol them as they patrol the battlements of Elsinore, speaking of wars past and wars to come.

 Now, sir, young  Fortinbras,

Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,

Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,

As it doth well appear unto our state,

But to recover of us, by strong hand

And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands

So by his father lost; and this, I take it, 

Is the main motive of our preparations, 

The source of this our watch, and the chief head 

Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

So Horatio, in Act 1 Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Hamlet explains why the ramparts are patrolled late at night. For war is in the air.

The ramparts of state are now set upon the roofs of blocks of flats as the British military prepare for attacks from the east or from within the state of Britain itself by placing Surface to Air (SAM) missiles on the roofs of apartment buildings in east London.

Seventy nine days to go and the missiles are on the roofs. Seventy nine days to go and the gun boats are on the Thames. Seventy nine days to go and the alarums of war sound behind the five-ring clarions of the corporate festival of sport, The Olympics.

The modern version of the ancient Greek games, the Olympics, are BIG business. Ask MacDonalds, Cadburys and Coca Cola, who are the principal, exclusive food sponsors. Favouring fast-food, chocolate and sugar-rich drinks in the context of a sporting festival is particularly ironic.

How does it connect with military roof-furniture?

This strange blossoming of Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) roof gardens in late Spring flies in the face of the British military castigating enemy forces for the use of 'human shields' in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

There is, however, a long tradition, by military and para-military forces, of installing hardware and personnel on tops of flats. 

Numerous buildings in Ireland such as Rossville, Unity and Divis have sprouted roof gardens of communication aerials, gun emplacements, listening equipment, mortar devices, weaponry, observation towers and look-out posts in the service of war.

Are the Olympics simply war by other means?

While patrolling the ramparts of Elsinore, the guards see the ghost of Hamlet's father. Horatio begs him.

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,

Which happily foreknowing may avoid,

O, speak! 

Do the military roof-gardeners beg the same foreknowing?

Hamlet: stage-play; William Shakespeare; 1602 (?)