READING SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The reader is swept up by the words and the ideas of Seymour M. Hersh. Their density is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Can this be true? Is it the rantings of a man so convulsed by American conspiracies that he spews complexity and travesty to such an extent that what he writes could not possibly be the case?

And yet what makes Seymour M. Hersh's words chime is the very ring of truth they have been sounding since his shocking 1969 revelations about the My Lai massacres in Viet Nam. He has sources inside the military, political and secret service institutions of the most powerful country on the planet, the United States of America. He writes forcefully and compellingly. He grips.

In the first 2016 edition of The London Review of Books (Volume 38, Number 1, 7th January) Hersh writes about a source, a close adviser to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria.

But the military chiefs felt that the politicians in Washington were fixated on getting rid of Assad, in the classic 'regime change' strategy that led to the chaos the peoples of Iraq and Libya endure. They felt this would lead to another disaster, for the US. So they embarked on a subterfuge, circumventing political direction and supplying intelligence to Assad via allies, including Germany, Israel and even the Russians.

It was clear that Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn’t know, but Obama doesn’t know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that’s true of all presidents.

The reader is mesmerised. Is this the back story of a Hollywood Middle-East political drama? Then, the reader enters the sewers of rendition torture chambers.

Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers. Assad also secretly turned over to the US relatives of Saddam Hussein who had sought refuge in Syria, and – like America’s allies in Jordan, Egypt, Thailand and elsewhere – tortured suspected terrorists for the CIA in a Damascus prison.

Can this all be true? And can it make sense of the dead boy on the beach, of the thousands fleeing by sea, drowning in the Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) of the Roman Empire, in today's 21^st Century battle of the Empires? This is Star Wars written on our own broken, blue planet.

Seymour M. Hersh's sources cross the planet. He writes of unlikely allies and macro-alliances, played out above the heads of citizens.

A senior adviser to the Kremlin on Middle East affairs told me that in late 2012, after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks and military defections, Assad had approached Israel via a contact in Moscow and offered to reopen the talks on the Golan Heights. The Israelis had rejected the offer. ‘They said, “Assad is finished,”' the Russian official told me. ‘“He’s close to the end.”’ He said the Turks had told Moscow the same thing. By mid-2013, however, the Syrians believed the worst was behind them, and wanted assurances that the Americans and others were serious about their offers of help.

The reader is not surprised but is nonetheless forcefully struck by Hersh's assertions regarding the relations between the militaries in the regimes in the US and Russia. Is this a background paper to a John Le Carré novel? See how, supposedly neutral, Ireland gets drawn in?

In August, a few weeks before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey made a farewell visit to the headquarters of the Irish Defence Forces in Dublin and told his audience there that he had made a point while in office to keep in touch with the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. ‘I’ve actually suggested to him that we not end our careers as we began them,’ Dempsey said – one a tank commander in West Germany, the other in the East.

Yet again, this is not a surprise. Hersh writes what many people know to be the case.

One of the constants in US affairs since the fall of the Soviet Union has been a military-to-military relationship with Russia.

Hersh writes about macro-events, amidst the political/military and secret service elites. He cites US militarist amazement at the Obama Administration’s support of the Erdogan regime in Turkey. He offers no explanation of the US political administration's much-criticised insistence on 'moderates' in Syria, and the support offered by the regime in Turkey.

Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obama’s continued public defence of Erdoğan, given the American intelligence community’s strong case against him – and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case.

As a journalist who writes on such heated matters, with access to named and unnamed sources in very critical circumstances, Hersh attracts praise and criticism in fair measure.

The reader listens to oud players while reading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnLfbiHuoko

Is there more to be gleaned about the lives of peoples in the region from the music?

Read Seymour M. Hersh yourself. Listen for the chimes of truth that you may hear. And listen to the oud players, for the human heart of it all.

All good wishes to the peoples of Syria for 2016.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military

Le Trio Joubran on France 2 TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Y_FOq8DoY

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SEASONAL SHAME

The Irish Times is a major newspaper in Ireland. The weekend edition is published each Saturday and includes a magazine with human-interest features on celebrities, personalities, food, fashion, travel and gardening. There's a comprehensive listing of TV programmes and a scattering of ads. It provides the 'lifestyle' supplement to the news coverage in the paper.

In the pre-Christmas edition of 19^th December 2015, there is a one-page photographic feature entitled Gifts for Him. It includes an image of a stainless steel self-winding watch by Tiffany and Co., priced at 5, 650 euros.

Who is the Him and has He no shame?

Has the newspaper no shame?

They sold me a dream of Christmas

They sold me a silent night

The front page stories concern strictures applying to judicial inquiries into matters of serious public concern such as the banking crisis and the sale of Sitserv, a private building services company that instals water meters. There is also a story on bonuses paid to the partners of officials in the police service's representative body.

Perhaps Him received one of those bonuses? Or benefitted from the sale of Sitserv? Or escaped, quids in, when the banks re-invented themselves with public money? On page 2 of the News Agenda, there is the statistic that the government baled out one bank with 20.8 billion euro of public money, of which the bank has repaid 1.64 billion euro. Is Him a banker?

And they told me a fairy story

Have Him and the government no shame?

And I believed in Father Christmas

And I looked at the sky with excited eyes

On page 9, in World News, there is a report from the UN that there are 60 million refugees in the world. It is also reported that there are 2.5 people with pending requests for asylum. Is Him among them?

They said there'll be snow at Christmas

They said there'll be peace on earth

But instead it just kept on raining

The political consequences of the suffering wrought by the flooding along the river Shannon are considered on page 6. The human suffering is not addressed in any detail, though there are assertions that eliminating or preventing floods is no longer sustainable and that the recent devastations are the results of Acts of God. So Him is not responsible and can get on with admiring His new watch.

Has Him no shame?

There is report of a UN-backed road map for a Syrian peace process on page 10 in World News. Tensions exist between regional powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, who engage in proxy wars on behalf of allies further afield. Iran and Russia line up with the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia want that regime brought down, as do the western powers. What does Him want? And what do the people of Syria want? Is Assad Him? Is Him an arms' dealer?

I wish you a hopeful christmas

I wish you a brave new year

Has Him no shame?

Have Assad, the many militants and their arms' suppliers no shame?

Some insight is offered on page 11, in columnist Simon Carswell's American Letter. A man (Him?) with business interests in casinos in Las Vegas bought an influential American newspaper for 129 million euro. Could this be Him? Perhaps Him is closer to home. In Business News on page 17 there are details of houses sold in Ireland in 2015 for 26.5 million euros, 10 million euros, 7.5 million euros, 6.35 and 2.2 million euros.

It is evident that Him has no shame. And will brazenly assert  "Everyone wants a 10 million euros house and a 5 grand watch? Or if they don't they're fools.”

Him was at the auction for the personal effects belonging to Margaret Thatcher, described in Fine Arts and Antiques, page 19, as her 'Free market' triumphs. Michael Parson's column indicates that the purchasers of the Iron Lady's memorabilia got real bargains, including a pair of shoes which sold for over 4, 000 pounds sterling. Him bought them? For Her?

A veil of tears for the virgin's birth

Has Her no shame?

The ability to hold all the world together in a brazen, bare-faced, shameless assertion of the current order is a miracle, a Christmas miracle, that lasts the whole year round.

What use is shame at this or any at any other time of the year?

Newspapers like The Irish Times have a powerful capacity to hold a compartmentalised range of material together and present it to readers as if it were all of a piece, as if this is the only reality that counts and that nothing jars. The ability of a newspaper to encompass such a variety of stories and promotions is evidence of its quality. It is how it is.

It is the mechanism of the watch, complicated and complex, difficult to unravel, a marvel to behold. It simply ticks along as Him would have it.

The use of the word 'we' is an essential element. We are all part of it. There is no shame in wanting a five grand watch or a ten million euros house or a four grand pair of shoes. There is no hypocrisy in such wants and, at the same time, the impulse to feel bad about poor people who go hungry at Christmas.

It is just the way things are. As told to us by Him.

'till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn

And I saw Him and through his disguise

The readers of The Irish Times, including this writer, are brazenly capable of holding an image of a five grand watch together with images of business corruption, banking collapses, flood devastations and war catastrophes amidst rising profits for arms' manufacturers, whilst not feeling the slightest degree of shame.

It's Christmas.

I believe in Father Christmas; Emerson, Lake and Palmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPm6CheT6rs

The Irish Times; newspaper, Dublin, 19^th December, 2015

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BLOG POST SPECIAL: PORTRAIT OF A MOTHER

BLOGPOST SPECIAL: PORTRAIT OF A MOTHER

The text delivered by Dave Duggan at the Portrait of A Mother event, organised by WoW Derry Londonderry, at St. Augustine's Church, 10.12.2015.

I’d like you to meet my mother, Margaret Spillane. But she died in 2001, so we’ll have to rely on some memories and a film clip or two. I invite you to visualise. You might want to close your eyes, every now and then. And pardon a smidgin of false memory and a leavening of poetic licence.

There she is, in this first clip. Margaret Spillane, just seventeen, a robust girl, born in 1936, there, on the quayside in Waterford, beside her father, Jack. The steel wall of a ship rises behind them. Funnels belch black smoke. The quay is thronged with families. Cattle slither up a gangway. My father, Eddie Duggan, ten years older than Margaret, stands off. He is afraid of Jack Spillane. Jack's a War of Independence veteran. Margaret and her ten siblings are alive only because her father's death sentence was commuted with the signing of the Treaty. He's the Sergeant of the Guards and a noted pugilist.

Margaret isn't afraid of him. She is not pregnant, despite what he might think. She is set for London. For betterment. When I come along, 2 years later, Margaret and Eddie are married and making their way among immigrants, despite the signs reading

No Blacks, No dogs, No Irish.

Three words outline the portrait of my mother:

working; laughing; singing.

See her skip up the gangplank. She's crying, but she's seventeen and she is Ava Gardner, in the musical Showboat. She waves to her father and climbs aboard her future.

(Sings) Fish gotta swim

Birds gotta fly

I gotta love one man

'til I die

Can't help loving that man a' mine.

My first memory of my mother shows her lifting me to safety. Another film clip. We are in a basement flat. Our neighbours are Cypriots, Hungarians, Windrush Jamaicans and Irish. There is a glass door leading to a patch of scrubby grass. My uncle Donal crashes through the door and deadly diamonds scythe the air. My young mother sweeps me out of harm's way.

I see my mother working. Close your eyes and you can see her in a gingham shop-coat. She has previous retail experience. Here's an earlier photograph of her and another girl, aged fourteen, both auburn-haired, even in black and white. The shining black of the spaniel Margaret is holding. The gleaming white of their dairy-girl coats. Margaret parlays this dairy experience into the shop job in London, where she recites this rhyme for a forgetful shopper:

bread, brown or white;

sugar, brown or white:

tea, butter, milk or marg

rashers of bacon; slices of ham

bread soda, caustic soda

liniment, ointment; unguent

toothpaste, blades, bars of soap;

bars of chocolate

Margaret laughs.

I have more of it forgotten than I have remembered.

Her real party pieces are songs. A common phrase around Margaret is

Go on Margaret, give us an aul' song.

She gives a little half-cough of self-deprecation.

Ah, I don't know. I have a bit of a tickle.

See the rapt faces of the men and women ….

Go on Margaret, girl. The Harbour Lights.

… as Margaret picks the song of her choice.

(Sings) They tried to tell us we're too young.

Too young to really be in love.

She's a life-long romantic. She carries a fierce commitment to the idea of betterment. An experience in a hospital, aged nineteen, when she didn't know the word 'urine' sees her vow

that no child a' mine will never not know the words.

And she has her own words. That's her with her dog, Archie.

Get offa tha' sofa Archie or I'll give you a verk.

Her voice is enough for Archie, who is so much part of her life that some of her grandchildren name her ….. Nanny Archie.

When a film I write, Dance Lexie Dance, goes to Hollywood, Margaret goes to Derry, for the local celebrations. She has a ball, possibly better than we film makers in Tinsel Town.

She's a romantic. A working woman. A singer. And a babe. She puts the razz into razzamatazz. She enjoys a bit of glamour. Showbiz! That's part of her portrait.

We can watch another film clip. See her, singing in the Theatre Royal in Waterford. Not from the stage. Rewind a bit. There. Margaret, Chrissie and Hannah are in the front row of The Gods, for the inter-factory variety shows competition, The Tops of the Town. Tonight, the Glass Factory faces The Chipboard Factory, where my father works.

He says Dem fellas? Shur they can't work, no mind dance.

Margaret agrees. Ah, God love 'em. They're not really front row material.

Disappointment strikes when the on-stage electrics fail. You can see steel toe-capped boots dashing under the fire-curtain. The packed house grows restive. There's some gentle barracking from The Gods.

A performer calls from the stage

Are ye up there, Margaret? I can't see ye, ye're that high up. Go on, Margaret, give us an aul song.

See her laugh, Chrissie and Hannah pinching her until she stands, grasps the metal rail in front of her and charms her audience with song, as they crane their necks upwards from the dress circle, the stalls and the stage.

(Sings) I was born one morning when the sun didn't shine

I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

I load sixteen tons of number 9 coal

And the boss man says wella bless my soul

Here's a video of me and Margaret on a road trip. I'm her white-headed boy: a man or boy, who is highly regarded or favoured; a pet; a darling. Ask my sisters. See Margaret in this video still. It's a mid-shot, taken at Gougane Barra, in west Cork. Margaret is half-turned to the tungsten corrugations of the water and the shimmering drapes of the cliffs that ring the coum, cupping the lake.

We drive on to Killarney and hire a jaunting car. The jarvey is a pipsqueak Margaret describes as scrawnier dan your father. She urges him to speed up. He's soon galloping like Barry Fitzgerald in The Quiet Man.

Back in town, Margaret waves at everyone. So do I. Everyone waves back. Margaret often says:

Remember the day the Yanks all waved at us in Killarney. God love their innocence.

I have a photo. It's framed in blue, like her life. We perch on a rock beside the lake. Killarney's hills undulate behind us. There are trees, dense upon a crannóg. A red boat, The Eanna, lifts its prow. It could be Irish, but it is the ancient Sumerian name for the temple of the Goddess Ishtar. Heaven, you could say.

Margaret's earthly concerns find her working in the laundry at Waterford Regional Hospital. If we edit some clips from the film Suffragette, we portray her ankle-deep in water, hauling sopping sheets from cavernous machines.

As a perk, Margaret and her colleagues provide a laundry service for their families, and many others, from their 'one woman, one bag' allowance. Here's another film clip. See that red car. Yeh? But you can't see the women, such is the pile of black bags on top of them.

She lives a tempestuous relationship with my father, Eddie Duggan. He's a well-read, factory-working intellectual and, as they say in Waterford, a martyr to the drink. He's mercurial and melancholic. She's robust and romantic. They have six children, a white-headed boy and five strong women. Listen ... the wheels of a pram clatter up the wooden stairs of the Housing Office, as Margaret pulls her family with her, presenting her demand to be re-housed.

She meets Bill. He's widowed then, like herself. My sisters name him Sailor Bill, a retired steward from the Rosslare-Fishguard ferry. She brings vivacity and gregariousness to his life. He brings a gentlemanly demeanour and a well-kept car to hers. Here's a film clip, as they set off on a weekend to Clonakilty. See my sisters banter with her.

You and Bill are off to Clon? For the weekend? What's the set-up exactly?

See Margaret grinning, girly once more, the perennial seventeen year old.

Dat's for me t' know and ye, ta never find ouh.

She loves Christmas because of what she calls the bit a' plenty.

Margaret and her work colleagues have a Diddly, a small, weekly savings club that pays out at Christmas. So with the bit a' plenty my mother enjoys Christmas, giving generously to all her friends and family.

She loves us all, to this very day. One of her catch phrases, one I use with my own children, is to shout Up our House. She doesn't just mean our house. She means everybody's house. Your house too.

Another song then. They all sing it. Forever. Ella. Lena. Billie. Margaret.

(Sings) Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather

Since my man and I ain't together

Keeps rainin' all the time.