OTTER MADNESS

An otter runs out of a lake and up the main street of the village of Tulla, County Clare, Ireland (52 degrees North, 8 degrees West). Locals give chase amidst much excitement and hilarity and eventually the otter returns to the lake, not before causing mild mayhem and nipping one or two of the chasing locals. This is exactly the sort of story beloved of broadcasters who's voices take on a smarmy smirk as they preface it with ' ......and finally.'

BBC Northern Ireland, broadcast out of Belfast (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West), speaks gleefully with a Tulla man who got the otter into his jeep and then speaks with an official from an English conservation agency who says that Irish otters are 'particularly feisty, known to be more feisty than otters on the mainland.' Such  language from an official is startling. Edward Said called it Orientalism, referring to the east, but given that Ireland is an independent country on another island to the west of  England, should this be called Occidentalism? Or simply colonialism?

Even allowing for a poor experience of geography teaching at school, it is unlikely that the official would have used the term 'mainland' about an otter in France, another sovereign European state like the Republic of Ireland, though smirking asides about frogs and eating snails might have arisen. With Ireland, it's always the off-shore island, where quirkiness abounds, wee laughs and oddities are the order of the day. And the recent bail-out of the Irish economy by various bodies, including The British Government, copper-fastens the image that Ireland is not serious; that it is best kept in the '.... and finally' section of the news, delivered by broadcasters, smiling wryly and looking put-upon.

Irish political and financial elites are to blame for the crisis leading to the bail-out, but you wouldn't know that reading the report of the Nyberg Commission of Investigation into the Causes of the Irish Banking Crisis. It's heavy on psychology, light on blame. No naming and shaming, asserting that all Irish people are to blame as they engaged in 'group think' and a 'herd instinct.'  

Nyberg, formerly a ministry of finance official in Finland, says they engaged in 'national speculative mania', selling property to each other on credit. Given his previous place of work, it's not surprising that he protects the political and financial elites in a Report – number three in a series of no-namers and no-shamers -  that cost 1.32 million euros. For instance, where is his criticism of the role of external auditors (See also Complacency, Auditors and The Road to Tripoli, 1/4/2011). No where. They, along with the bankers, the politicians and the regulators have experienced a soft landing as this crisis unfolds, while the rest of the population suffer a hard, hard landing from which many of them will only survive by emigrating. Nyberg needs to get his hands on Naomi Klein's  Shock Doctrine and read it on his yachting holiday up the Finnish fjiords, paid for by the Irish tax-payer.

Meanwhile, the new Taoiseach,  Enda Kenny, barely a wet day in office, visits The British Prime Minister in Downing Street, London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West), in a  de facto gesture of  'touching the forelock'. It's hardly any wonder then that the English conservation official thinks Ireland is an off-shore island of mainland Britain. The people are great gas. Their Prime Minister rushes to visit ours. And finally .......  the otters are more feisty.

Reading The Second Plane by Martin Amis

Acclaimed stylist and publicly engaged London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West) writer Martin Amis wrote extensively on the atrocities of September 11th  2001 in the USA, and their aftermaths. The Second Plane (Vintage Book, London, 2008) collects essays, short stories and reviews written for print media in New York (40 degrees North, 74 degrees West) and London in the period 2001 to 2007. The strongest sense from these polemics is that  Amis is seriously discommoded by the turn of world events developing from the deadly attacks on New York using passenger flights as suicide weapons of mass killing. He is tired and bored, but most of all he is afraid and wishes that the world, and in particular the Islamist jihadin, would just give over, so that he could continue to write stories and polemics in his rationalist Western tradition, often using beautiful – vacuous? - sentences: 

'I said goodbye, after the all-clear, to those earnestly frowning faces, these men of impressive, indeed daunting steadfastness and altruism.' (185, On the move with Tony Blair.)

British soldiers, in Basra (30 degrees North, 47 degrees East) in southern Iraq, are much put-upon altruists, simply trying to help, who could do so much more if only their leaders would give them the necessary equipment – weapons and body armour - and the recalcitrant locals would just calm down. The invading military as neutral broker has long been a narrative used by Westernists (Amis' own coinage?) to rationalise adventures of plunder and colonial wars. Check the history of Ireland. 

Amis' jihadin are full of shit, quite literally in the case of Muhammad Atta, (97, The Last Days of Muhammad Atta), who crashed Flight 5930, the second plane, into the second of the Twin Towers with murderous intent and devastating effect. Amis' formidable imagination and story-making talents are wonderfully evident. 

Elsewhere he appeals belligerently for reason, often with graphic images. This appeal for reason, from a writer who's works of imagination are extraordinary and hugely successful, feels like a let-down. Amis' premise presents as 'why can't people, especially Muslims, be reasonable? Like me.' He may go further and wonder 'why can't everyone just be like me?' His desire for such unreasonable orthodoxy is central to the best outcome he offers in the face of the campaigns of the jihadin. He offers a hyper-Hobson's Choice between George Bush and Osama bin Laden and implies we'd best plump for Bush, who, bad an all as he is, is, at least, 'us'.

Amis now sees that violence is endemic and global; that threat is everywhere. Amis agonises over 'equivalence'. There is no equivalence. There are asymmetrical conflicts, contesting and chaos, manifest in the 'shock and awe' wrought by fighter bombers and the terror delivered by suicide bombers; latent in the poverty, hunger and oppression upon which the current world order is based. The atrocities of the jihadin brought this home to Amis and made it personal. 

The world is always heterodox, however. Narrow bifurcations, A or B choices, and yes/no answers, are not adequate. Are not reasonable. Westernists fetishise reasonable machines and send fighter bombers on missions of surgical strike. Islamists fetishise religious bodies and use them as transports to Paradise. Both are illusions. Both kill and maim. Both privilege death over life. 

If these works are the best that a Westernist London intellectual can imagine, then more imagining and reasoning are required.

MOL AN ÓIGE

Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí is an Irish proverb which translates to English as praise youth and it will flourish. This week's youth unemployment statistics in Northern Ireland show youth being damned, not praised, more likely to wither than to flourish. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds is 20.4%. 

Behind every number is a young person. And a condemnation of the stewardship of the world offered by the generations ahead of that young person. Unemployment, youth and adult, is long endemic in Northern Ireland, despite many initiatives, fan-fared loudly in the media, often involving inward investors who's commitment to local well-being is as shallow as the pot of state funding they can access. And this week's statistics bring the reality of a life on the dole for young people into sharp focus. 

The local radio interviews a young man, now 24, who had lived in a derelict railway museum and a young woman, aged 19, on a one-year media skills training course. Both live  in a youth accommodation foyer, a scheme for young people aged 16-25 in housing need who are prepared to commit themselves to training and employment. They are intelligent and avid for work, yet can find nothing in their home town, a small city on the north-west of Ireland. Why?

Ironies abound deep in the heart of the globalised economy today. Competition is vital and profit depends on low input costs, which means that industries will not come to Northern Ireland without juicy subsidies and tasty tax perks. And will only stay as long as the subsidies and perks remain. Every job is, in essence, a public sector job, even though a private company, often one that sends it's profits out of the country, enjoys access to a large pool of cheap local labour.

By any measure, this is a ludicrous way to organise economic activity. Considerable public funds go into schooling young people and, even allowing for the fact that a principle role of schooling is the management and soft-incarceration of young people, the return on this public investment is uneven, and arguably poor. Anecdotally, educationalists speak of young people with low language and social skills struggling in nursery schools and very often not catching up.  Teachers believe that poverty is having a negative effect on the well-being of students. They say children living in poverty arrive at school tired, hungry and  without the proper uniform or in worn-out clothes. They say that these youngsters lack confidence and suffer from higher stress levels, damaged self-esteem and social skills, poor physical or mental health and become victims of bullying. Employers speak of young adults with poor literacy, numeracy and life skills coming into the workforces.

Cui bono? The Roman orator and statesman, Cicero attributed the expression cui bono to the Roman consul Lucius Cassius, “whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?' ”

Apply the maxim of Lucius Cassius to youth unemployment -  who benefits? It is certainly not young people, the economy, the public purse, future prosperity, and social cohesion.

Can we expect young people in Northern Ireland to email, text, tweet and facebook each other into revolution as their contemporaries in countries across North Africa have been doing?

PASSING UNDERSTANDING

A young radio journalist stops citizens and asks them if they think Catholics should continue to join The Police Service of Northern Ireland. The First Minister, an evangelical Protestant, attends the funeral mass of a murdered police officer and makes headline news. That Catholics joining the police service and the attendance of the First Minister at a Catholic ritual for the dead are both newsworthy confirm the confessional character of the Northern Ireland state. Photographs of an array of political leaders from Irish and British nationalist parties appear on newspaper front pages following the funeral. Behind them stand senior Christian church leaders, in a powerful demonstration of community opposition to the murder of the police officer. The two arrays are also a powerful demonstration of the proximity of Church and State in Northern Ireland. And, for both of them, of their proximity to force, as represented by the police officers all around them, many of them armed, and all of them paying their respects to their dead colleague.

There are, however, gaps, within and between, the serried ranks. Gaps between fact and aspiration. Northern Ireland is an integral part of The United Kingdom, a fact made manifest in the uniform of the police officer being buried; in the Executive and Assembly the politicians run; in the civil authorities the Church leaders petition to fund their schools and in the taxes and benefits the State negotiates with the citizens attending the funeral. The aspiration of many of the citizens present is that it be other. Their aspiration is that Northern Ireland not be an integral part of The United Kingdom but be re-united with The Republic of Ireland, as it was pre-1922, but now as a new republic. 

The gap between this fact and this aspiration is narrowed by the killing of the police officer, according to the perpetrators of the bombing that claimed his life. It is not, according to the people at the funeral and the vast majority of people across Ireland. Rather is it narrowed by shows of solidarity – strength? force? - involving politicians, church leaders and police from across Ireland. Who is right? Who will prevail?

Massive condemnation of the murder floods radio phone-in programmes, newspaper letter pages, social network websites and tv panel shows. The murder of the police officer  highlights the problem of violence and the challenge of evil. Some of the people attending the funeral have an ambiguous relationship, as perpetrators and supporters, with political and institutional violence. Some will say 'that was then, this is now', which simply affords permission for acts of violence depending on time and circumstances. A political ex-prisoner on one radio phone-in refuses to condemn the murder and says he understands why people did it. He is vilified by the programme presenter and many other callers for his understanding. When he brings up the problem of the use of violence in relation to Libya he is shouted down, castigated for bringing up another, different problem, which it patently is not. There seems to be no role for understanding, no sense that someone who has an understanding of why such an evil act was perpetrated could contribute to getting such acts to stop. 

Church leaders appeal to their texts, oblivious to understanding:

'And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'  (King James Bible, Philippians 4:7)

Politicians commit:

So we must make a law that serves, 

A law that all citizens deserve.

And arguments must take account.

Of every voice, within, without.

This city is a divided place.

And law and policing must the future face.

Can we create the rule of safety

From the changing needs of our security?    (Without the Walls, Dave Duggan, 1998)

An answer to the young radio journalist's question: more atheists, agnostics, political sceptics and people with understanding to join The Police Service of Northern Ireland?

Complacency, Auditors and the Road to Tripoli

A government report published in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees East) castigated the auditors who audited the city's banks in advance of the recession with 'complacency'. That people charged with scrupulously investigating and analysing best accountancy practice in major financial institutions were 'complacent' is alarming. It conjures up images of men dressed in blue suits with train-track wide pin-stripes, shirts striped and coloured as a barber's awning and ties so silken smooth meringues  slide harmlessly off them, lazing on great sofas in louche and fey manners while laptops lie unattended all around, blinking their cosmic screen-savers at no one in particular.

That the auditors were complacent is alarming, but hardly surprising. What is surprising is that the report didn't castigate the auditors for being 'collusive' or 'corrosive' or even 'negligent'. Four behemoth accountancy companies do the bulk of this bank auditing work and being complacent is obviously a necessary pre-requisite for getting the contracts. You wouldn't want to be too rigorous, lively or attentive when exploring beneath the dirty sheets of people who are your friends, former colleagues, drinking buddies, dinner party guests, siblings, partners, spouses and former school mates. You don't want to flaunt regulations, but you don't want to be too stringent or strident. Or even thorough. 'Complacency' is the right tone to strike. Leave well enough alone, because when the bust comes the auditors and their allies will ride it out. Complacently. As they are doing now. In London and even more alarmingly, in Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees East), where baling out banks has become the national raison d'être. The Republic of Ireland, it's sovereignty, it's land, people, productive output, tax revenue and future exist to pour money down the cesspit of failed financial businesses, while cowering before larger European financial institutions, in particular German banks. Seventy billion euros is the figure calculated. So many hospitals, schools, arts centres, playgrounds, factories, farm businesses, swimming and leisure centres, cancer services, train services, jobs, music. So much country. The numbers are mind-boggling. The consequences are devastating. The people of Ireland are reeling and punch-drunk.

As are the people of Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees East), enduring the second bomb incident in a week near the courthouse. The last one led to the forced evacuation of a residential home for the old and infirm. A nearby hotel took some of them in. Others went to family and friends. Images in the press show care workers in the middle of the street pushing wheel-chair bound senior citizens huddled under blankets. The people who placed today's suspect device, viable or otherwise, assert that this action will unite the partitioned parts of Ireland. The people, including the local MP, evacuated from the courts, houses, offices, businesses, shops, building sites and residences in the area are not convinced. 

Neither are the Western powers, centred on London, when faced with the arrival of defectors and emissaries from Libya. Neither convinced nor convincing. This new shuttle diplomacy, as the military actions in Libya grind to a standstill along the coastal road to Tripoli (20 degrees North, 0 degrees East), adds to the hypocrisy of the whole Western powers' action.   

Complacency never suffices. Neither does corrosive collusion.

"We'll sell both lots of you the weapons you need to kill each other. And – look away now – our companies will just keep on taking the old black gold.”

May Visitations. March Demises.

Swallows come to Ireland in May, for their own good reasons, all related to their survival. They come for food and the continuance of the line. They swoop and circle, gobble insects on the wing, nest, procreate and depart. Ireland, at least the Republic part of the island, expects two more May visitations this year. The Queen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will swoop and circle, be well fêted, stay overnight, shore up the security of her descendants and then depart. The President of The United States of America will also visit in May. He may make it to Northern Ireland, though the border could prove an obstacle. The President will also swoop and circle, enjoy good food and drink – there will be the obligatory photograph of The President resting his elbow on a bar counter, inches away from a well-settled pint of stout – stay overnight (perhaps), ensure his own continuance in office by securing good pre-election coverage in print and broadcast media, then depart. This May visitation will confirm that The President is in fact white, with Christo-European origins.

The border does not prove an obstacle to the swallows who will happily swoop and circle, gobble, nest and procreate all across the island. And, if the countryside is not entirely destroyed, they will come back next year, because they have no interest in the post-colonial dimensions of the visit of The Queen or the economic imperatives of the visit of The President. They are open about their self-interest and necessity, yet find little of worth in degrading and valueless phrases such as 'Ireland is open for business' and 'Ireland Inc..' The swallows experience Ireland, North and South, as domestic, not commercial; home, not call centre or shop; family, not workforce or cheap labour market; current, not historical; egalitarian, not hierarchical; welcoming, not fawning: a great place to spend a summer.

With May visitations ahead, March demises occur. Snowdrops return below ground, taking their whiteness and their promise with them, their shining innocence lost to us for another year. An uneven cast of weather tempts us with thoughts of heat, light, the swallows' arrival and the final days of Winter. 

A bright star of Hollywood dims, fades and goes out when Elizabeth Taylor, actress and very-public figure, dies. In the film version of Edward Albee's wonderful 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?' she leans into her husband, played by real-life husband, Richard Burton, as they coruscate around each other in a drunken row and whispers to him  'Getting angry, baby, huh?'

The Minister for Health in Belfast (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West), in a final act before the Northern Ireland Executive winds up for an election, handbrakes very-advanced plans for a radiotherapy unit at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry (54 degrees North, 17 degrees West). Altnagelvin is an anglicisation of Alt na Gealbhán, the ravine of the sparrows. Swallows will no doubt swoop and circle there in May, but if the Minister's decision signals another March demise, they won't see the radiotherapy unit and seriously ill cancer patients from the north-west of Ireland will continue their 200km plus round trips for treatment in Belfast and Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West).

Cue campaigns, rallies and protests.

'Getting angry, baby, huh?' 

Meltdown Modernity

The earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan present a major threat to modernity in an advanced First World country with a lauded, now debt-ridden economy, a stable society inhabited by people described as 'stoical' and 'pliant', living under a benignly authoritarian political imperium and enjoying widespread material well-being in complex urban and rural settings, lit up, in good measure, by nuclear power plants. 

The earth's crust shifts, cracks open and buildings topple, motorways buckle. Fragile humans, mere flesh and bones, perish in the debris. Then the sea surges, heaves up and casts itself upon the beaches and the coastal plains, smothering all before it, before sucking everything into its great maw. Japan lives precariously on the fault lines and the edge of the sea. Is being modern sufficient? The most advanced monitoring systems, the best building controls, the most sophisticated social and public awareness and preparedness are to no avail in the face of the energy of the earth schism and the thundering brine. Fault lines trace the earth's crust and nuclear power plants bestride them in ungainly and delicate poses.

Japan is not Pakistan, where the 2005 earthquake caused 73, 000 deaths and a national catastrophe. Japan is not even New Zealand, where the more recent devastation in Christchurch chastened English-speaking Westerners because New Zealand is known, modern and, though far, is not foreign. In the way that Pakistan is unknown, far, not modern, and foreign.  

Some distance west of the epic centre of the Japanese earthquake lies Chernobyl in the Ukraine (51 degrees North, 30 degrees East), where, 25 years ago, a disastrous meltdown of a nuclear power plant occurred. The aftermath continues to sicken a vast area around the site. Estimates are contested but a figure of one million dead as a direct result of the meltdown is current.

Putting the atomic activity of the stars inside a human-engineered facility is the  apex of modernity, a triumph of ingenuity and endeavour, grand-gesturing and profiteering by homo faber, the scientist and businessman. Yet Chernobyl remains a death-trap, threatening once more as the concrete sarcophagus that was hastily constructed to contain its over-heated core degrades and cries out for renewal.  

Engineers flood the the Japanese nuclear plants with sea water to cool the cores, in an act so ironic it seems unreal. The central bank floods the financial system with liquidity. People flee and panic mounts. Warnings from the power plants grow more strident. Modernity melts down. One man survives astride a piece of roofing, miles out to sea, a primeval image of a man clinging to timber and tile. Adrift, yet afloat.