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.

BELOW PAR

'Golf is a good walk spoiled', a quotation attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and various others, is not the widely held view in Hollywood, Co Down, for it is from this small town suburb of Belfast  (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West) that the new US Open Champion golfer, Rory McIlroy, hails. A thorough-going Rory-fest is under-way, with massive media coverage and a widespread feel good vibe emanating from Northern Ireland. The sight of an intelligent and charming young man driving and putting a golf ball better than most other men suffuses many people with pride, even people who wouldn't know a four iron from a hoover.

The images of Rory thumping a golf ball round courses in Northern Ireland are claimed to boost the prospects for the region's economy. 'Golf means tourism means money' is the mantra. Plus most CEOs of large companies, particularly Americans, play golf and Americans now love Rory and can't wait to rush this way with massive investments. So keep driving those golf balls boys!

But, please, not over and back across the lower Newtownards Road in Belfast. Golf balls are among a number of weapons of choice used by rioters, together with bricks, petrol bombs and bullets, in communal violence and attacks on the police that have plagued the area since the beginning of the week. Tension between the loyalist and nationalist working class communities is high with allegations going back and forth – like the golf balls! - that attacks are being directed at them. The police reported that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) organised a major loyalist incursion into the nationalist Short Strand area. Dissident republicans are blamed for shooting a press photographer in the leg.

Calls for calm echo across the city. The First Minister holds talks with leaders of the UVF, bunkering the edict of 'never talking to terrorists'. Much hand-wringing ensues as images of conflict replace the smiling face of the champion golfer in the international news media. You can't bring tourists to play golf in a country where people are chucking golf balls at each other and at the police. No CEO is going to want to make profit from the labour of individuals whose principle skill is creating mayhem and who want to chuck golf balls at each other rather than act as caddies for the same CEOs, the hand-wringers assert.    

Good walks and the spoiling of them is part of the problem in that the assertion by loyal orders of a traditional right to stage large, colourful, single-identity marches across the city is one of the contributing factors in raising tensions between people of the same social class but diametrically opposed political and communal aspirations.

Marching to a different beat this week are members of the US military who heard their Commander-in-Chief and President, Barack Obama, announce they will be marching out of Afghanistan. Having contributed to the destruction of that country, the soldiers are to be brought home for nation-building. And vote catching. And a chance to work on their golf games.

Tomorrow the people of Derry and Londonderry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West) will stroll, amble, dander, meander, potter, totter, zimmer, wheel, cycle and enjoy a good walk, not a golf club in sight, across the new Peace Bridge (see http://www.ilex-urc.com/Projects/Peace-Bridge.aspx), as it officially opens. 

Can we use it to drive off into the future and find a fair way? 

LOVE YOURSELF TODAY

Damien (Damo) Dempsey sings from a fit-up stage in front of the Free Derry Museum, in Glenfada Park, the site of multiple killings by British Army paratroopers on Bloody Sunday, 1972. 

It's all good, sure it's all good, All I say to you today

Love yourself today, Okay, okay

This is Bogside, Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), one year on from the release of The Saville Report and British Prime Minister's apology for the killings. Billed as a Day of Vindication, families of Bloody Sunday victims and local activists organise a day of events, culminating in the concert headlined by Damien Dempsey.

We sing, sing all our cares away, 

We'll live, to love another day, 

We grow strong, from it all, 

We grow strong, or we fall, 

We grow strong. 

The banality of the lyrics and the sentimentality of the emotions are lifted by the melodic power of the performer's voice, his determination for and unbending urge to possibility, voicing a strength that infuses the modest crowd of adults and children gathered in front of him. 

The IRA are blamed for one of Northern Ireland's worst atrocities. A report by the police's Historical Enquiries Team claims the massacre of 10 Protestants near the Irish border 35 years ago was carried out by the organisation.

The Commission for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland writes to the First and Deputy First Ministers to alert them to growing disaffection and a loss of confidence among victims and those who provide services to them.

Readers of An Phoblacht see a call by Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams TD, for the setting up of an independent international truth commission.

Is there a head of steam building in support of a truth recovery process, driven by pressure from the legacy of the past?

Damo sings:

Well I've exchanged the spear and the sword

For words and melody

Patience, give me some of that patience, Lord,

I will keep my eye on my goal

Patience, give me some of that sweet patience, Lord,

I will keep my eye on the ball.

WANDERING WRAITHS

Further leakage from the past happens this week. Former members of The Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provos) give statements to The Smithwick Inquiry, run by the Irish state into the killing of two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers near Jonesboro (54 degrees North, 6 degrees West) in 1989. A new inquest is announced into the killing by loyalists of Gerard Slane in 1988 and a former Brigadier in The British Army is required to attend to give evidence.

These, and other, moves produce very divided views, with callers to phone-in radio programmes, comment writers to news media websites and letter writers to newspapers asserting, among other things, that the inquiries cost too much, take too long, cover the wrong incidents, are always benefiting 'the other side', are not enough, never get to the real substance of the matter and, most damning of all, leave matters in a worse shape than before.

Is it time for an agreed and comprehensive truth recovery process?

In the play AH 6905 (Dave Duggan, Sole Purpose Productions, 2005), Danny, who is undergoing an operation to have the truth of the conflict events between 1969 and 2005 cut out of him, wonders:

If I open my innards to this truth recovery and let the world listen to the thrum of blood in my heart, the gush of bile in my spleen, the susurrations of air in my lungs, the drip, drip, drip of urine in my kidneys, the clatter of corpuscles and platelets in my arteries, when I sound them all from deep inside where the dead reside, will I be healed?

Will Danny get what he wants from a truth recovery process? Knowledge, truth, prosecutions, justice, revenge, peace? What would the elements of  such a truth recovery process be, given the experience of instances in Guatemala and South Africa? They would be social and healing, judicial and legal, national, communal and personal, and above all, political.

There are 17 known cases of individuals who are suspected of having been murdered and secretly buried. There are 3269 unsolved killings before the police's Historical Enquiries Team. There are calls for international inquiries into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane and other high profile killings. This is just the tip of the pile of unresolved matters from the past. 

And matters unresolved continue to infect society, continue to populate our world with wandering wraiths, so that the dead abound and, like Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, Danny arms himself with the garlic, thorn roses, crucifixes, the Host, wooden stakes, heavy mallets and other implements necessary to secure the dead in their graves and release the living, suffused with grief and sorrow, to continue their pained lives.

Note: The text of the play AH 6905 is available in Plays in a Peace Process by Dave Duggan, (Guildhall Press, 2008).

TWO MARYS

Mary McArdle is appointed as Special Advisor to the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Belfast (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West) and a public outcry ensues. Sinn Féin, the political party involved, is accused of arrogance and insensitivity in making this appointment. Anne Travers, sister of Mary Travers who was killed by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit in 1984,  condemns the appointment, saying it re-opens old wounds and asks her and her family to compromise yet again for the good of The Peace Process.

Mary McArdle was a member of the IRA unit that killed Mary Travers and wounded her father, Tom Travers, a judge and the primary target of the attack, as the family walked home after attending Mass at their local church. 

Both Catholics, the two Marys are joined by this extraordinary historical event, one as victim, the other as perpetrator. But for this event, it is unlikely that their paths would have crossed given the residential and social divisions  of Belfast.

The two Marys are brought together again at the end of the month of May 2011, by the outcry that has arisen. Bluebells carpet woodland floors, delicate blue skies appear shyly and pearly eggshell light leads us into long evenings.  It is a tragic irony that May, the month of Mary, long celebrated in the Marian cult and the Mariology historically famous in Catholic Ireland, should be the month when these wounds re-open.

Twenty seven years after the killing, Mary McArdle sets to working in a regional administration of the United Kingdom as did Tom Travers in 1984. The character of that administration has changed significantly. Working for that administration is no longer a widely supported rationale for summary execution, though dissident republicans are targeting members of The Police Service, particularly Roman Catholic ones.

The furore around the appointment, argued by some to have been media generated, displays the gulf between the political class and the general population. The simplistic notion that an all-embracing line can be drawn under the past is exposed as seriously flawed. The conflict resolution imperative of ensuring the political project is advanced by committed, experienced and determined people requires that political ex-prisoners in conflict situations across the world, from South Africa to Ireland, from Israel to Nicaragua, are involved. 

Consistency rather than arrogance is at play. Civil servants in the current administration's Department of Justice previously served in the Northern Ireland Office in the period of the conflict when collusion between state forces and loyalist paramilitaries was widespread, both by acts of commission and omission, as specifically noted in the recently reported case of the killing of the solicitor Rosemary Nelson. The President of Ireland invites leading loyalist paramilitary figures to a state commemoration honouring Irish people who served in British Forces in the World Wars. 

These are not viewed as instances of arrogance. They are acknowledged as highly sensitive but necessary moves in the process of reconciliation and peace-building. However, as the political class creates new realities, it does so without the assurance that the general population is accommodated. 

The Woman, the political ex-prisoner, in the play Waiting.... (Dave Duggan, Sole Purpose Productions, 2000) says:

You're wrong. I felt every thing. Everything I learned. Everything I saw, everything I knew. I felt it all. That's why I acted. In history. In time. And now history and time have stopped, as if they were cogs in a great engine turning the century and I stuck my little finger in there. So they're stopped. And I'm waiting.

Re-starting history involves acknowledging the legacy of the past, both the myriad individual experiences and the over-arching collective narratives. Though the political class has a role in this – they are currently sitting on a viable approach known as The Eames-Bradley Proposals – this is essentially a social matter to be created by citizens at local and community level.

The Man, who's wife The Woman blew up, tells her:

I'm a survivor. I survived. Through all the pain, anguish, hurt, grief, history, time and blood. I survived. That's my legacy. Your legacy too. 

The story of the two Marys brings this legacy into the sharp focus of early summer light as the longest day of the year approaches suddenly.

Note: The text of the play Waiting.... is available in Plays in a Peace Process by Dave Duggan, (Guildhall Press, 2008).