PLAYING DICE OR SPINNING COINS?

A Simon Carswell front-page story in The Irish Times, dated 17^th October 2013, is accompanied by a photograph of religious leaders, holding books, appearing to lay hands on a government building. The leaders are seen side-ways on. Some of them have their eyes closed.

The government building, sitting back across a lawn, is tall and white, with lofty towers, rows of columns and lighted galleries. It is not in Kabul, Lahore or Riyadh. It is in Washington. It is The Capitol.

The religious leaders, women and men, one of then in a Salvation Army uniform, others in suits, are attempting to influence the deliberations of the politicians inside the building, as they wrestle with a debate about the budget for the country. At the core of this debate is a thorough-going, ideological difference of opinion on how a very wealthy country covers the costs of health care for its citizens.

Most of the politicians at loggerheads hold strongly-held religious views, mainly Christian. Many of them end speeches with phrases invoking their God's name and seeking their God's blessing on their country and their fellows.

The debate inside The Capitol is rancorous.

The pressing of the hands of religious leaders towards the building, as seen in the press photo by Doug Mills of The New York Times, gives the impression that the religious leaders are laying hands on the building in order to influence the politicians in their debate so that they might arrive at an agreement. They wish to end the political logjam, which they know is further alienating the political class from the general population.

Is God working in mysterious ways here?

There are strong links, in many societies, between political and religious professionals. These links are rooted in ancient history and they tighten and loosen over time. A sense of loosening of such links exists in Ireland, at present. They remain taut in America and Iran, two countries on the brink of a major rapprochement on the issue of nuclear weapons.

Is God working in mysterious ways here also?

The dynamic, tensile relationship between politics and religion, two of the major stories we tell ourselves, is described in Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka's Reith Lecture (2004) observation that politics and religion are two sides of the spinning coin of power.

Is God spinning this coin?

Politics and religion are two encyclopaedia of mythical discourse and narrative we use to explain ourselves to ourselves; to operate the world in various favours as we construct them; to create morality and to reconcile ourselves to mortality.

The press photo shows religion attempting to spin the coin of power by giving politics a hand.

Is God playing dice by tossing coins?

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/us-government-shutdown-ends-as-senate-strikes-deal-to-avert-debt-crisis-1.1563511

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/lecturer.shtml

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MAN SHOT DEAD, MAN ON THE RUN

A man buzzes into a set of flats above a main street office, climbs the stairs, enters one of the flats, separates a woman and a man in bed together, shoots the man dead, then walks back out into the early morning to-and-fro of a busy day coming alive.

Speculation runs riot in the city as to the motive for the killing. Paramilitary revenge? Drug trade sorting out? Anti-state violence? A paucity of policing? A contract killing? A domestic?

The police put a photograph on the front pages of the newspapers of a man they want to question. Sightings are made of this man in locations in the city and across the border. Armed police with soldiers raid a house on a country lane, following reports that the man is hiding there. Nothing is found. The man is still on the run.

The man has been on the run for a long time. He is a political ex-prisoner, with lengthy bouts of incarceration behind him.

I am one of the incarcerated,

Brought before you by the police this day

And all through the days of our history.

He has been running since his war started. And, though for many of his former comrades that particular manifestation of war has ceased, it runs on for him – and some others – even as it runs into the brick wall of this killing.

A man grows cold in a coffin. His family bury him. His nine year old son stands on the steps of the city's main civic building with his grandparents and local politicians. The condemnations echo around him. The clock on the tower above his head sounds mournfully. The deafening silence of the absence from his life of his father's voice booms inside him.

The man is running by.

Who is this man running? 

Before you stands a local, wanted man.

But not by you. Not wanted. Feared? Abhorred?

As dog turds on a peace bridge are abhorred.

Avoided. 'Yuk'. Walked round. Scraped off your shoe.

Do not bring me into your cosy home.

I am the pariah part of yourself.

Police mount a man-hunt. They tell the public to keep clear of the man on the run. He is dangerous. He is the running demon of that much-used public phrase, 'the legacy of the conflict.' Public figures condemn the killing and call for an end to violence. The Prime Minister visits and speaks to workers at an aerospace factory, which, in part, relies on defence contracts. The Prime Minister bigs up the prospects of inward investment by multi-national corporations.

The man runs on.

The war continues, in many forms. A man begins to rot in a grave. Another man keeps running.

Running.

DENIZEN : Dave Duggan; verse drama (draft); manuscript; Derry; 2013

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SURFING STOUT MUSHROOM CLOUDS

Images of a pint of stout settling in a glass and a mushroom cloud growing over an atomic bomb blast site are uncannily resonant of each other.

It is no coincidence that the speech at the UN by Iranian president and cleric Hassan Rouhani about nuclear disarmament and Diageo's big Guinness promotion, Arthur's Day, should happen at the same time.

As I sat lookin' up at the Guinness ad I could never figure out

How your man stayed up on the surfboard after 14 pints of stout.

Then US Special Forces raid houses in Libya and Somalia. Citizens wonder if Libyan and Somali Special Forces will now raid houses in the USA.

The stout is not settled in the glass. The US Federal Government is not functioning fully at home.

Have another pint/punt, this one overseas. Get up on that surfboard, kiddo.

Is any country? Settling or functioning?

Citizens say 'hang on a minute'. Citizens have been emboldened by the stop they put on plans to bomb Syria.

Hold that mushroom cloud.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette

Inspectors take sledge hammers to machines that generate chemicals in Syria.

Citizens surfing on news-waves try hard to stay out of the water. Try hard not to drown.

There is a wave of further deaths in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

As I sat lookin' up at the Guinness ad I could never figure out

How your man stayed up on the surfboard after 14 pints of stout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl1NQi_Vit0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT_RGgFSN3M

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INCINERATOR NOVEL FORETELLS LIFE

A public meeting is held in Derry Londonderry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), on the topic of waste management and the various approaches taken to it across the world. This is hot because of the concerns of citizens at the prospect of a large-scale gasification plant which will take in waste products, convert them to gas and incinerate that gas, with waste sent out a chimney stack and into an ash pit.

There was a similar plan in the early nineties, by industrial giant Du Pont, to build a waste incinerator and bring waste from many regions. Health concerns were raised by the plan. Public meetings took place. Public representatives wrestled with the challenge of waste management. A successful, citizen-led campaign of opposition caused Du Pont to withdraw their plans.

The notion developed in me that I was of this place and that I would take charge and do something about it. That this was my city as much as anybody else’s and that I was going to let my voice be heard, now and into the future. I was going to make a difference. It was up to me. The city – Derry - was up to me.

There were public representatives in attendance at the recent meeting. Eventually their experts will have to make recommendations to relevant committees and to the full City Council.

Sometimes I wonder at the timing of events. I wonder if there’s a big clock out there turning and ticking away and that events occur when the time is right, even when we don’t know it. I feel this about the job. I was at a meeting today, after speaking to Tony. The full department. A major review of the council waste management policy is to be launched. Everything from wheelie bins to toxic emissions and pipes spewing effluent into the river. The whole grubby underbelly of the city’s life. And I sat there and made my contributions. Spoke my piece confidently. One of only two women at the meeting. People listening to me, making notes on the pages I’d circulated. Asking me questions.

The public meeting was informative and challenging. There was good evidence from international speakers, in the room courtesy of the everyday magic of Skype. They spoke of waste reduction and job creation successes in San Francisco, Italy and in Wales, Scotland and Magherafelt. A City Council worker spoke from the floor and described a new recovery facility, which created 4 new jobs and a welcome service.

I wasn't nervous in the ordinary sense of that word. I was tense, ready, prepared. I'd done the work. Just one phrase could cause me grief. Zero Emission Site. That was the one to get across. Now that I'm on the inside of the waste management problem, if I want to see off incineration I've got to box clever. I've got to prove other alternatives and I've got to prove them against two further tests. They've got to make money and they've got to win votes.

This idea of recovery and designing-out waste at the front end is the realistic, modern way forward.

I presented my vision of a thriving eco-industrial park where the city's minimised waste was managed largely by conversion and re-manufacture into useful goods. I gave a timetable aiming at a zero emissions site and I projected up to five hundred new jobs. It was music to my audience's ears.

Such parks exist all over the world. Fewer and fewer gasification/incineration plants are being built in America. Towns and cities in Italy have turned their backs on what was named as 'old' technology. Responding to waste at the front end rather than at the back end is the modern way.

If we think there's a machine we can put crap into and get gold out of, we're codding ourselves.

If I had a success with the council, surprising Paddy, other officers and the councillors themselves, then it was only because I cannot live 'on the outside', as if I was a spectator of nature. I am a macroscopic being, embedded in the physical world. These pages record the everyday dialogue I write between myself and the world.

There are no easy options.

I have no grand powers to overtake the laws of thermodynamics, which say that time's arrow goes in one direction and that disorder and waste increase as time goes on. That affronts me, both as a scientist and as a person.

But there is optimism.

I am an expert in waste. A new set of initial conditions for my life and for the future. It will never be a smooth curve. Chaos makes sure of that, but the fractals, the apparently irregular, complex shapes and trajectories generated in the chaotic geometry of my life, will be mine. And they will be beautiful.

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

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DR. STRANGELOVE RIDES AGAIN

Narrator: For more than a year, ominous rumours had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that …..

. ….. Dr. Strangelove The Second plans to bomb the USA.

'For far too long, the USA has been outsourcing our bombing in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. It's time we brought the bombing home. Why should the USA bomb those countries when we could bomb our own infrastructure. Think of the boost to USA business when reconstruction commences'.

Queried on the wisdom of creating a precedent, Dr. Strangelove The Second, was quick to cite the USA's long-term history of bombing internationally.

'I've always done this, I don't need to tell you. Hiroshima? How you like them apples? And as for chemical weapons, well, I exported tonnes of napalm and Agent Orange all over South-East Asia and look how those economies have boomed since then. What I'm planning is nothing new.'

When pressed for details of schedules and targets, Dr. Strangelove The Second said

'A draft list of sites already exists, mainly in desert areas with low population densities.'

Asked about reports that many people are on the move, creating a refugee problem, Dr. Strangelove The Second replied

'These are Native Americans. They're nomadic people, not refugees. They're migrants, seeking to benefit from the the opportunities this bombing will bring.'

Dr. Strangelove The Second dealt curtly with the proposal that medicines and food parcels should be dropped instead of bombs.

'This is business. Not welfare.'

When further queried about the dangers of acting unilaterally in this fashion, Dr. Strangelove The Second revealed that France plans to bomb France, with specific targets in The Loire Valley and in Provence.

'France has a long history of bombing all over the world. Even now France is bombing Chad, wherever that is. And, like me, France is keen to bring the benefits of targeted surgical strikes back home. For far too long, I have been exporting my best bombs and out-sourcing major reconstruction opportunities. France feels the same. I am confident that the UK will arrive at a similar decision and begin bombing parts of the Wiltshire countryside near the chemical weapons facility Porton Down.'

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/quotes

Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Love the Bomb; film; Stanley Kubrick; Columbia Pictures Corporation; Los Angeles; 1964

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BOMBING SYRIA ANYONE? CHEMICALLY?

Overheard, off-mike, at a corporate briefing, with italic-static coming in from academia.

'When all else fails, we bomb.'

With the unprecendented scale of American indebtedness it is hard to see how the US can continue to project its military power as it did in the post-Cold War period.

'Listen, bud. When we've sold them the stuff over the years, years in which we've propped them up, cosseted and feted them, and they start misbehaving, well, then we call them despots and bomb them. Well, not 'them' as such, but the poor people around them. The soldiers in their army who took the despot's pound (100 qirsh) to feed their families. And we bomb the rebels too and their families, while we search furiously for someone to put in the despots place, because it's westernisation and modernisation and shock and awe we're touting'.

At present the US combines an absolutist insistence on its own national sovereignty with a universalist claim to worldwide jurisdiction. Such an approach is supremely unsuitable to the plural world which globalisation has created.

'Pull out those swords and we'll give them a good rattle. Line up those battleships and sail them into the east Med.. We're lords of all the sea. Rule Westernia, Westernia rules the waves. Listen, if those folks won't behave in a modern manner – buy our goods, eat our food, choose our religion - who says we're abandoning it? We fundamentally are not! - use our weapons – who said we invented chemical weapons? Germany and Britain 1914-1916, you say? Had to, when you think of it. Made a few pounds out of it too. Of course, I've paid a visit to Porton Downs. Wonderful part of the country. We run marvellous training courses. Do we research and produce chemical weapons?'

The economic recession is linked to a recession of democracy.

'No point waiting around for the UN to come up with a plan. They couldn't come up with a pot to piss in. No, we'll have to do it ourselves. Done it through the centuries. Bloody Russians won't play ball. Damned Chinese are worse. Only interested in themselves. Not really interested in the world and modernity and progress. As we are. No, I am not being ironic.'

The notion that the United States leads an expanding bloc of western nations is almost the reverse of the truth. In present circumstances, 'The West' is a category which has ceased to have a definite meaning – except in the United States, where it denotes an atavistic resistance to the unalterable realities of multiculturalism.  

'Listen, bud. This is only going one way. Our way. And we'll kill if we have to. And afterwards we'll re-construct the hell out of the place, you bet your bottom dollar we will and we can tell you now, we're ready to get down and dirty with those oilfields. What? Syria has no oil? Why the hell are we thinking of going in there?'

There are things practically everybody can do, and if you are from a privileged sector of the population, then there are even more opportunities. You can speak, you can write, you can organise, you can reach out to other people. If you keep doing it, you can make an impact.

False Dawn -The delusions of global capitalism: John Gray; book; Granta; London; 2009

Occupy: Noam Comsky; book; Penquin Books; London; 2012

https://www.gov.uk/defence-chemical-biological-radiological-and-nuclear-centre

http://breathingwithalimp.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/so-syria-has-no-oil-then.html

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THE IMMUNITY OF THE WEALTHY

One of the puzzles of the current age in Ireland, and across the globe, is the immunity of the wealthy in the face of their very obvious culpability in matters of law, finance and governance. 

Great devastations have been delivered via the banking, legal, financial, accounting, property development, civil service and political systems in Ireland; devastations that have impoverished people, wreaked havoc on landscapes and environments and forced thousands to emigrate. Yet no one has been brought to book.

Why is this?

Because his purse is basically unlimited.

You know any really rich people?

Maybe a couple.

You ever know one you could trust?

Fintan O'Toole, columnist in The Irish Times, is near apoplectic on this question.

The legal system, meanwhile, has proved itself to be almost entirely powerless in bringing to justice those who commit crimes that are most corrosive of social order: corruption, fraud, tax evasion, bribery, perjury, market abuse, corporate recklessness.

Why is this?

The jury has a story. In their head. About what happened in that room. We have to drive that story out of their heads.

How?

By telling them a better story.

One of the stories the rich tell us is that we're all in this together. We are not. The gap between rich and poor grows daily and becomes, many people argue, increasingly irreversible. Another story the rich tell us is that the rich/poor divide is equivalent to other divides in the world and thus amenable to positive action to rectify it.

build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old

This is a fallacy.

because nobody's going to come out and admit they're awed by his money

Good efforts can be made to rectify the discriminations cited by Barack Obama, all except for the rich/poor one. At the end of the day re-distribution of wealth, and the immunity that comes with it, is the only course of action that will bear fruit.

I tried being poor. I didn't like it. Did you like it …?

Race: David Mamet; play; Samuel French; New York; 2008

A More Perfect Union: speech; Barack Obama; 18.3.2008; excerpt in a theatre programme; Hampstead Theatre; London; 2013

Facing up to State's failure can allow us to begin again: Fintan O'Toole; column; The Irish Times; 6.8.2013

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