“Dis paides oi gerontes …” (Menander of Greece).

As leader of the British Labour Party Mr Jeremy Corbyn will have a difficult job but it will be one of those curious jobs that, whether he wins or loses, he  can  come out of it with more dignity than any number of winners. We have seen the steady dismantling of almost everything we thought we had won since the end of the second world war. Torture now  made respectable by governments, in America and Britain for instance, who are saying openly and almost without opposition that torture is all right if it produces results. It produces horrible results but one of the things we have lost is that comforting pretence governments used to make of being appalled by such violence. Now they admit they are not.

And death as a solution to problems, that idea has flourished while public declarations of respect for life fade further and further out of our public conscience.

Jeremy Corbyn says  nuclear weapons do not solve problems and therefore we should stop having them.  If governments believe death solves problems then presumably they think the more deaths the better to solve each particular problem. The only solution to nuclear mass destruction is to stop producing nuclear weapons and get rid of those we have. We humans never created a weapon yet that we did not use, ever since we discovered how to put a sharp edge on a stone. So we have to tell governments, As long as you have them you’ll use them, so stop collecting them.

People used to fall out about such things – famously, Bruce Kent in London fell out with his Archbishop, Cardinal Hume. Bruce who had been in  the British Navy did  not want nuclear weapons at any price, while Hume , one time member of St Benedict’s peaceful religious order, approved of them as, he said , a deterrent. A deterrent to wipe out whole populations. Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn will start people arguing about that again.

The Churches were and still are split on this, as on most other issues of public safety and dignity, so effective leadership is desperately needed there –  but churches tend to join in our disputes rather  than heal them.

What Pope Francis said recently in America was interesting. Interesting because he dared to address  the very problems political assemblies over there are presenting to mankind – continuous war as government policy, war as a business, destruction of the environment as a way of making not money but more money, creating  hunger for profit, reducing respect for life and for what sustains it.

That the Pope addressed these things knowing that he was putting a needle into the heart of the lion was refreshing for  us Ancients who realise that just because an institution is two thousand years old  that does not mean it will dispense two thousand years of wisdom.  We Ancients  though can  hope that a pope even as Ancient as Francis has a lot of wise things to say to new generations who think  old fellows are just children twice over ,”dis paides oi gerontes”.  People who listen to John Kerry , President Obama and other powerful people may well reflect that the Pope may not have any battalions behind him  but he has  millions of people behind him and the multitudes  people saw on  the streets of America gave  them a demonstration of how large their number may be. With as many people as that going in one direction governments cannot afford to be seen going in the other.

Government and people in the USA obviously want the Pope to be on their side. One way to achieve that is for them to get on his side on these issues of life and death.   Sooner or later the millions on the streets will send the message: governments come and governments go, but the human will to be free, secure  and full of dignity will last – literally – for ever.

And if they think the multitudes in the streets and in the hills don’t matter, they  may be reminded that it was the multitudes, the people, the people of God who were given  the Christ message of justice, dignity  and life in the first place. So Pope Francis seems to know where to find it now.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In the nineteen thirties the Pope did not wear a crown, he wore three.

The most interesting thing  is not that he wore three crowns but that he wore any crown at all.

The Catholic Church looked on itself as a monarchy, that was its official view of itself. Easy to understand: in those days monarchy was looked upon  as the most noble form of government although sometimes, even in Julius Caesar’s time,  there were lively discussions and even fights  about whether monarchy was even safe and whether  perhaps  republican  power-sharing might  be better. But monarchy spoke to monarchy and that helped when monarchies were in fashion. 

In the nineteen thirties the pope was carried on a special chair on the shoulders of special people. That and the papal tiara signalled  not only spiritual power but worldly power as well – it was not many decades beforehand   that people including Irish soldiers had  fought a war to help the reigning pope to keep his papal states which Garibaldi wanted to take off him. 

In the nineteen sixties things changed and by now the three crowns are gone  and  the pope is going around in, what is it, a Fiat?   He is also paying at the counter for his breakfast – gone is the convention of royalty not having to carry money;  as he  waves to the crowds he can if he wants to glance at his wrist watch to see what time it is - gone is the convention that royalty don’t have to bother about such things. And the everyday garb of a pope looks remarkably like that of the missionary  priest in North Africa we read about the other day. Gentle small changes.

A pope nowadays behaves in public  more like the  president of a modern republic than a king. People don’t have to bow and scrape, walk away backwards, have to wait until spoken to before saying anything. The difference between a picture of the Pope in the nineteen thirties and one of the Pope now can be quite startling to us Ancients.  Is it simply  a recognition that in the modern world republics rather than monarchies  will appeal to more people?  After all, the word republic is based on the word for people, the word monarch  is based  on the word for just one person ruling them. Republic, public-rule by the people , monarchy mono-rule by one of the people.

That is not to say that the Catholic  church is becoming republican in sentiment ,  governance or religion. That should be surprising, because one of its beliefs is  that all its members are at some time touched by the Holy Spirit of God  and in that case you would think it should be the most active, best equipped democracy – or republic  if we like the word – in the world.

Of course it is changing. The change from a triple-crowned  leader carried in splendour  to a white-clad breakfaster in a respectable Roman hostel is the outward sign of a new and intriguing inward grace. Like all signs it is on the outside telling you what to expect inside.

What is changed inside is hopeful for some , upsetting for others, intriguing for most of us.

When for example an archbishop when pressed on the radio to say whether hell exists or not says, hesitatingly, Well, hell is possible………When an  expert in Theology remarks cautiously that after the death of Jesus Christ his followers then “experienced his presence among them in a new way”… When there appears first a new tolerance and then a new acceptance of people who in the past might have been told they were no longer wanted in the church …. it is clear that the sign outside means the changes inside could be worth having a closer look at.  Real changes  in behaviour ? Real changes in teaching ? Real changes in belief ?  Some say it  means the Pope is giving a new lead;  some say it means the Pope is rapidly catching up with us.

Changes can refresh , irritate, alienate. They may cause conflict and sourness. But it helps our sense of dignity if important institutions, governments, political parties, churches, do not either take us by surprise or take us for granted. If they change their minds or find  a fresh  explanation for   what they believe, do or think others should do or think , let them say so and respect our dignity by telling us the reasons why. One mark of the intellectually self-confident is their willingness to change their minds; a mark of their respect for our dignity is to tell us they are doing it. 

Long ago during the great Catholic revolt now known as the Protestant Reformation  people might go  to church  this Sunday and find the message from the pulpit strangely different from the message last Sunday; even longer ago when the Christians in Ireland took over from the druids a king in Tara named Diarmait Mac Cearbaill ( one of the Ó Neills by the way) performed his pagan rituals in Tara and still presented  land to the Christians to build the Monastery of Clonmacnoise. In Ireland we are reasonably good at understanding even the most startling of changes.

It’s a matter of experience really

PLACE OF REFUGE

In deciding who shall take care of refugees  flooding into Europe there has been remarkably little talk about those primarily responsible, namely, those who created the present state of continuous war from which so many of the people are  fleeing.  .  Surely the first responsibility should lie there.

If so, this  leaves all  members of the European Union with  a problem ; we may not have caused the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many other places but we did give our consent to them. Now we all have to pay the price of what we consented to.

Those who create war know there will be  refugees fleeing from it; they do not create war in the naïve belief that it will be nice and clean and people will  go back home when it is over. War is about displacing governments and people.

European governments, and the American government still to an extent, could in the past direct  wars  fought on someone else’s territory, they need not even see refugees. 

Now all that is different and the results of our wars – our wars  because  apart from a minority we either consented to them  or condoned them – have arrived on our European doorsteps.

The image of a small boy dead aroused  both horror and generosity, but we had had the cold knowledge of what was happening  to people like him for years before that  heartbreak happened and  governments, media,  universities  looked on  as cold as an item in yesterdays newspapers.

Then discussion revolved around what could be done  to limit the damage rather than to recognise the causes of it and  prevent it happening again. 

Whether we like it or not we are “the West”. So it  is immaterial whether we personally approve of NATO or not, it is immaterial whether we approve the renewal of a cold war with Russia, it is immaterial if  the government that manages our affairs and our wealth  spends  more than enough on  nuclear and other weapons and less than enough on nursing care , it is immaterial because we can do nothing  either to prevent  one or help another. Eventually of course we will be required to undo  resulting damage but we shall be given  little part in preventing it. 

And there lies one of the many tragedies of governments  to whom we give our consent, or whose actions we condone : what should  create  the greatest benefit for the most people becomes a means of channelling the greatest benefit towards the few who are powerful enough to  corral it for their own advantage.  And so war becomes  not a painful necessity but a business like any other.

Many refugees are coming from countries whose borders were drawn up without respect for already existing tribal and other boundaries and to meet  the demands  of   European governments who had  the power to do it. That has caused  problems  ever since.  In Northern Ireland we can understand that.  Northern Ireland is a  political unit  drawn up with great deliberation so that for all time it could be governed only  by a single unchangeable political party. At the time, the first decades of the twentieth century, this was  not considered unusual. Internationally it was tragically usual.

Our own experience – and history – should  certainly help us to be  generous in   relieving the distress of refugees  especially if we insist  that governments  admit the real reasons for it.

But those who want to reject a great flow of people into European countries say it will mean that rates of pay will fall, because immigrants will be willing to work for little because they have to live. It is also very attractive for governments to welcome an inflow of people from abroad who are well or highly qualified in medicine, law, teaching , engineering and much else.  If immigrants are filtered through because of their relative value to the host countries’ economy what will become of the rest ? This is one of the questions that could become more prominent soon .

There was always a tradition of immigrant workers into European countries.  Countries  enjoyed the benefit of an influx of workers when their  economy needed it, and they could tell them to go home when they were no longer wanted. Because of this it was possible for a country  to boast  it had a  low unemployment rate. It did, partly because once the migrant workers had fulfilled their purpose they went home. Meanwhile  working conditions and lack of dignified living conditions gave  many immigrants a very poor life . It was hoped that the European Union would remedy some of this, there would be free movement of labour and goods but decent living conditions.  But now international aggression in which Europe is involved, whether Europeans like it or nor, is  creating  immigrants of a quite new kind some of whom will fare better than others, often for domestic political and economic reasons .

Those who are concerned about human rights and dignity will be watching to see whether generosity and intelli

OUT WITH THEM ALL !

Two recent  events have shown  Britain and Ireland  overwhelmed by the idea that democratic politics is about  excluding  large sections of our populations rather than including  as many of them as possible in our political processes . In the heat of argument many politicians  even forgot to praise themselves  under the burning necessity of condemning others.

Jeremy Corbin  could , it was said, cause the terminal decline of a labour party simply by being elected  head of it;  in Ireland Sinn Fein could cause the downfall of everybody  not because of what they might do  but because of what they might have been.

Curiously, an argument was implicit that Tony Blair who had led people  into war was more acceptable than Jeremy Corbin who hadn’t, while in Ireland republicans who had led people out of war were less acceptable than anybody at all.

Such clear evidence of the awe-inspiring decline of rational discourse in our politics may well be the only advantage we get from either of these two events.

A curious element in the Irish situation is , we now accept that the police can pronounce judgement on the character and  possible actions of a group of citizens, cast a pall of doubt and suspicion on them regarding particular crimes while  still only  gathering evidence, evidence whose disclosure could prejudice a court case. What effect  may this have on future court cases ?

We may feel the same unease  reading that  police have opposed bail in court because of “fear of further offences being committed”  when a defendant has not been proved to have  committed this one. We may have thought the function of police is to guard people and property, help prevent crime and find evidence or opinion to offer  not  in a  BBC radio programme but in a court of law approved by the people. A statement by a policeman, however senior, can  cause political unrest in an already  delicate situation and a threat of  breaking down  an administration which many people worked very hard to create and whose fall  many more people believe could be followed by something worse.

We may also feel unease that more academic lawyers who are educating young people to act justly in courts that are just do not discuss critically and publicly whether  police and courts  should be allowed to pronounce moral judgments as well as administering the law. Referring to identifiable people as criminals, thugs ,people unworthy of full citizenship – as  members of government for example –without due process should  be , one would think,  an item for discussion.

Doubtless many voices may be raised to say that  uncomfortable things are required “for the common good”. Or, as we say now when we redact this or keep quiet about that, “in the public interest”, phrases  conveniently vague that they reassure some of us, frightening  the others.

It is refreshing to remember that in the long run it is only the democratic votes of dignified people that will decide who shall govern  and who shall not ; and that elections are about identifying the best, not  arguing about who is worst.  

Not refreshing however is the thought that in the United States of America politics seems like a game for the super-rich more than a life-enhancement for the rest.

The most grim indication that we share an international aim of politics by exclusion is the millions of people turned out of their own countries by unnecessary wars and kept out of other peoples’ countries by concrete and barbed wire.

Ah yes, but that could never happen here.

Extremism

Addressing very important people at a recent very important meeting of representatives of very important nations Mr Barack Obama said, among other important things, that  national governments should unite in opposing militant extremism and Russian aggression.

This was curious because he did not explain what either of these two things really are.

Militant extremism - does this include starting wars in one country after another, choosing allies and enemies as casually as  important people  choose golf clubs between casual conversations at the fifteenth hole ? Does it include managing the flight of drones from somewhere in your own country whose course is  programmed   in a little room  hundreds of miles away to fall  - killing whomever may be around –  thousands of miles away?  

It is  surprising that  learned – important - ethical bodies seem to define violence and extremism as what is done by little people, and have been  effectively silent about militant extremism by important ones.   In fact there is simply no body on earth with the ethical knowledge and commitment, the courage and the generosity to stand up clearly and speak loudly against  important people in important governments   making unimportant people kill each other for a living. Armies need arms, the arms industries need armies and  all of them need unimportant people to work in  them and even to give their lives showing how effective the latest deadly models are.  Mass  killing is not now a matter for horrified amazement , it is an everyday  business strategy.

War-for-business is a strategy ,  deployment of troops and drones is a tactic.

It  works.

And  is profitable.

Profit  is the most important test  of the ethical  goodness  of what  important people do nowadays.  

A golf competition under the shadow of the beautiful Mourne Mountains in Ireland ? How much money will it generate for the economy?

An Italian cycle race  playing away from home ?

How much will it  generate for the local economy ?

FIFA ?  FAI ?    True lovers of football may think longingly of the days when loyalty to their team involved  loyalty to almost next-door neighbours and   now  be   uneasy because like the war business  the soccer business  has become globalised and at the matches  the fans just  get  more comfortable seats  to make more fortunes for the Board. .

Religious people sometimes – not so often now as in the past  – point to their sacred writings, the distilled, preserved remnants of  their ancestors’ insights into the meaning of life ,  and quote , “The love of money is the root of all evil”.  If therefore our wars and our drones and our policy of continuous war-for-profit are  evil –although  governments do not agree that they are – then one would expect religious people to say No to them all. Or have the churches, the humanitarian associations, the peace people, the universities  and suchlike all been created in vain because the original reason for their existence has been forgotten ? Are we evolving voluntarily backwards  to a nature red in tooth and claw ?

Governments  who are  setting each other up for war incessantly  will continue doing it.  An  obvious present target is Russia, with a  struggle for power  along the line  separating Russia from those countries that  reason says should  be their allies for the common good.

Then there is China . Indeed there is also whoever else is a threat in world trade and commerce and  a competitor – not enemy, just competitor – in gathering  and storing and dispensing  wealth.

Calling for  united  international help against militant extremism seems  a good idea.

It’s a pity though  that the wrong people are asking for it.

Baltimore

The city of Baltimore has been convulsed in recent days and news reports in Ireland and  Britain seem intent on  insisting   this is an isolated incident – a black US citizen died while in police custody and this sparked off riots and looting and the National Guard is restoring order and peace – that is the story we hear.

But that is not the story at all. In the USA as well as in other countries  there is a shocking and  dangerous situation in which racism, inequality and dying cities , waste of public money in fighting lost wars, refusal of adequate education and health systems all go along with the expenditure of  billions of dollars  donated by individuals and  corporations to have their chosen candidates elected to presidency and other public offices. Those who adversely criticise Washington policies  or practices are brushed off as anti-American. The opposite is the truth – those who reveal what is happening and the extent of physical and cultural poverty being created – not just happening - in the Unites States of America, arguably the richest  country in the world and where great riches have been narrowly accumulated rather than evenly shared, these are friends of America, and best friends at that. It is sad and frightening to think that  a nation  hailed as a land of freedom and justice can be  forced into creating  extreme wealth for a few and poverty for many with, increasingly,  little in between. This is a situation, ironically, from which the ancestors of  many present-day Americans fled when they left Europe to escape injustice and the selfish corralling of wealth.

If we continue to pretend that riots or disturbances or trouble – whichever  term we like to apply to them – are isolated responses caused by isolated incidents, and if we continue the pretence that such incidents are caused by “ a few bad apples” rather than by systemic lack of discipline in dealing with power and wealth we will never  solve the national and  international problems of how we  suffer from each others’ rampant ambitions. Our persistent and increasing worry has to be that since all political unions are certain to break up eventually, the USA cannot be an exception. All political unions break. At   present Europe is in a delicate uniting  mode after centuries of division and turmoil  while the USA takes union for granted. But union , a united people, a nation with one central power and allegiance is never forever. A  combination of extreme wealth, increasing poverty, racism, under-valuing  one’s own citizens  in cities losing their sense of purpose this and much more means the corroding of what held the USA together , what we have   called the American dream but is in fact a dream of humanity which we believed had found a realisation in America. Such corrosion can lead  individual states to believe they could do better for themselves.  No-one is likely now to wish for that. But better not to foster the angers which make it possible.

Meanwhile people are grieving not just because of the pain but because they worked so hard to make sure the pain  need not happen. Our friends in the Catholic Worker  houses ,  the peace groups,  all  the companions  working for justice and recognition of the people’s dignity , these are keeping alive – however difficult and lacking in resources they may be  – keeping alive the idea and the ideal of a better way of life for all .  If they stop in despair through lack of public conscience  and through the unwillingness of powerful people to enrich themselves by enriching their fellow citizens there are no voices left.

We  dare not and need not  let that happen…….

Power Struggle

Angry criticism of politicians, political parties and  politics is increasing.  

One trouble with this is that as people become convinced  not only that individual politicians or political parties are no good , but the political system is no good and politics is no good either , the next thing is  a demand for firm, sure, and strong  government. And that, unfortunately can mean a dictatorship. Or a government  formed without   being selected by those whom it governs. Such a government may do things good, bad or indifferent  but it will certainly be hard to  shift. 

People say , Oh, that could not happen here, wherever here happens to be, but it can happen anywhere. In Britain during the Wilson years it may  have come  near to it . What you need to get that result   is a strong and growing public distaste for politics , enough people able and willing to pose as a ruling class and enough military and police support to make the coup  successful at first stroke. That is a lot to require but it has happened and what has happened can happen. In Ireland and Britain there is outspoken and cultivated disdain not just for politicians and political parties but for politics. Strangely, some of this is cultivated by media who could be the first to suffer in an authoritarian regime.

In every system there are struggles for power, media strength against political  party strength, religious power against secular power,  impatience among the military and police about their hands being tied , between commercial interests and human rights interests and many  more.  Such struggles for power and influence go on all the time with one section becoming uppermost then another. And in  vast countries like the USA  or India  the visible power of money is almost beyond belief as  billions, not  mere millions, are demanded – and made available – to gain political power in  societies where millions of people are in poverty and cities are dying. Strangely, while such power groups are battling it out for supremacy, commentators may still be writing about national conflicts as if they were contests between religions or the result of people not being able to live together in peace if they are left alone. As  present and future elections  in Britain and Ireland proceed  political commentators have to decide  whether they will give us their own opinions which they are entitled to have, or critical analyses which we are entitled to have, whether they will look  at situations professionally and analyse whose   military, financial, religious, strategic interest is involved.

In Ireland this   was often avoided  by dividing the population notionally into Catholic and Protestant and describing the political situation as the result of this division, while all the time   strategic military issues, financial issues, control of economies and much else were at issue in Ireland. This  time round opinions  may become  stronger and analysis weaker as passions rise and sides are taken. That is not going to help anyone. It will not help even the writers who do it  because one day they may find they need to say No to a demand for an  authoritarian regime and will find that having neglected to analyse what was happening to themselves and their readers their only developed weapon is satire or insult which now they dare not use. At the beginning and end of it all, perhaps  safest for us to remember is that whatever we may  think of politicians or political parties they are entitled to respect, as people first and  foremost and as elected or possible elected representatives of the people after that. That is a formidable claim to courtesy. And it still leaves us plenty of room for being  as critical  of policies and promises as we want to be.  Strong, sure, firm government is what we want but we have to be careful about how we try to get it.  

Cardinal

Cardinal Timothy Dolan  Archbishop of New York recently said in a  TV interview that the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, was similar to ISIS. That is, that the IRA was fighting a religious war.

His statement has  considerable nuisance value – it reveals  a lack of information and lack of  analysis of what has happened in Ireland. But it has a positive value too, it draws attention to the appalling mis-information being sent from Ireland to people in countries like the United States of America.

The IRA  was consistently opposed by leaders in the Catholic  and other churches. Not only the IRA but Republican  leaders and policies were condemned again and again by them  although the republican movement in Ireland has always proclaimed itself as struggling for an independent Ireland that is secular,  republican and socialist.

Why  did Cardinal Dolan make the statement ?

Possibly he may have got  false information from Ireland. Possibly because of briefing from Irish diplomats abroad,  possibly because of briefing from British officials. There is no shortage of possibilities.

Vatican authorities are content with British government control of part of Ireland, they are willing to help ensure it continues. Information about Ireland goes to Rome through Ireland’s bishops and  Irish diplomats who  traditionally have had a fear of any change of regime in Ireland.

Traditionally the Catholic church looked upon itself as a monarchy ; it felt comfortable relating to other monarchies, although historically  most of the persecutions and degradations it suffered were from monarchies of one kind or  another. Although the church is shedding its monarchical trappings  slowly but unsurely, it keeps a fear of other forms of government deeply in mind. It is hard to believe but it is true that bishops and other prominent members of the church  in France preached collaboration with Germany during the WW2 occupation in the hope  that they might  see the birth of a new world order and because they looked on the WW2 disaster as retribution for having abandoned monarchy !

The fear of socialism is great too. The horror of  Russian revolution, this time in Ireland  is as alive in some Irish minds as the abandonment of monarchy was in French ones. There has never been an official church analysis of what exactly socialism is, although there have been many condemnations of it. And Catholics used vast amount of their spiritual, intellectual and material energy struggling against communism when it was neither necessary nor profitable.

One could argue that the Church’s fear of socialism has come from a love of monarchy and perhaps this is true. It certainly comes from some irrationality which has invaded Irish minds which are usually intellectually strong enough to resist such things.

While  various factors may have influenced Cardinal Dolan  , only a person with a certain kind of rage could have suggested to him that the IRA was fighting a religious war. Fighting for a secular state , a socialist one and a republican one at that, is a bizarre way to fight a  religious war in Ireland. A rational war, yes. A relevant war, yes. But a religious war, no. And it would be interesting to canvass the response of a member of ISIS to whom you would try to  explain that the IRA attacked with bombs but  warned people where and when they were going to explode , fought wars as a last resort not as a  matter of  first principle, and  asked for peace talks as soon as the war began and went on doing so until government was forced to grant their request.

One worry is that if Cardinals think in such un-analytical  and irrational terms, what is to become of the Church ?

APOLOGIES !

This space has been silent for a long time.

For  reasons beyond our control.

Reasons sadly beyond our control.

But we will start trying again.

Many things - and what is happening in Gaza is one of the most horrifying of them- are “beyond our control” and yet tens of thousands of people who think they have no power or control have made a difference there. The many demonstrations and protests and demands by  what are wrongly called “the ordinary people” have caused   changes there which powerful people were either unwilling or unable to make. 

There is  a great lesson here.

We can  still argue that  “the ordinary people “  should not have to go out on  the streets to protest , because  after all we  pay  our public representatives to make our voices heard. They should be doing it  about Gaza and many other things.

But our system requires that what our elected representative will do  is governed by party policy in most cases ;  if our representative does not belong to a political party  he or she is an isolated  individual and we are back where we started.

So perhaps we need some fresh way for  people to  say what they have to say even more effectively.  The social media are moving us towards that.

We have seen that in a situation like that of Gaza and Israel the United Nations is inadequate, various governments are unwilling to do what is required because they have to see what is in their own interests. Peace groups and human rights groups are working not necessarily as units in a whole movement but as units who want to work separately even for similar aims.  Through the social media, the “ordinary people” have called each other together.And tens  of thousands in many countries came.

What else we can do  is not clear . But in any event we need  never accept war as a first resort in  any problem, we are bound to negotiate and negotiate and negotiate again and again rather than go to war. We can be sure that in Ireland many lives could   have been been saved if those who had power and influence had talked with  everybody, not just with those likely to agree with them. The  unwillingness of power people to talk and negotiate in Ireland was responsible for death.

There is no use saying that must not be allowed to happen again.  It  will of course happen again somewhere. The idea that governments and churches and parties will not talk with opponents for fear of “ giving them status” is arrogant and unworthy. As soon as a disagreement or hurt occurs there  should be negotiation. You don’t say, Lay down arms and we will negotiate – negotiation should be about laying down arms, or dismantling  tunnels, or stopping rocket fire and invasion and always  about giving justice and recognising dignity.  We remember  with shame that repeated appeals to church and political leaders to bring contending parties round the table in Ireland were refused. Churches had nothing to lose, everything to gain. So have governments if they would be wise about it. It is  in their own interest that they agree to negotiate at once rather than fight first.

People who have least power will do whatever they think best, demonstrate, protest write, boycott.  So if governments do not negotiate at the earliest possible moment  they are betraying the good people who feel so strongly about other people’s lives that they are prepared to make a spectacle of themselves demonstrating in the streets while their leaders stay at  home , wondering.

Review

Bill Meulemans worked in Belfast for eleven years  as Professor of Political Science in Queen’s University. Coming from the United States of America , he was , naturally as an academic and a decent person, curious about how an outrageous  political and religious situation had formed around people in Belfast who were also decent and intelligent, including scholars and church people. He set out  and sent his students out to find what it had done to them and why.  What he found is full of interest and contradiction.

Years ago the Department of Political Science in Queen’s was very different. One academic year might be spent by students studying the political philosophy and systems of ancient Greece, the next perhaps a segment of European, American or world social history. Now it was involved , through teachers like Bill Meulemans, in studying what history, religion, politics  do to ordinary human souls and human behaviour at home . For him and for his students and for those who read the results of their studies it proved a fascinating and sometimes frustrating adventure.

For one thing, one had to read the codes correctly, understanding the meaning of words and phrases which could be as tricky in Belfast as learning what words  to use talking to people in the United States or the Middle East where names , titles and even modes of address of the people to whom you are talking can mean the difference between being courteously helped or sedulously avoided.

Bill and his students had to find their way through this cultural fog in Belfast and did so successfully. This present study is not  the result just of graphs studied, numbers assessed, official reports scanned, it is the result of many, many conversations with many people some of whose occupations the reader may learn and some not. But although the conversations and exchanges are with people of so many kinds there still remains in the book an atmosphere of wonderment and such a preoccupation with the sad fact of communal distrust that one could get the impression that this distrust is the only problem. But this is because we are sharing in  a courteous exchange between people who are unsure, hurt, often angry,  struggling with the contradictions in  their  lives, and who most often  say what they feel  but  are afraid to engage with the real reasons why they feel it.  It is as much a study of people’s reaction to distress and manipulation   as a  description of  the aftermath of a   political crisis in a modern European country . How far is the distress caused by selfish government, how far by people’s unwillingness to live together in peace ?  

The author responds : “This book is about what is inside the heads of Catholics and Protestants since the bombs and bullets no longer dominate the headlines. It is about the reason why they are still haunted by their conflicted memories . It is about why many of them are stuck living in the past.”(p.23). One might think this means  Bill Meuleman’s study would be more at home in the Department of Psychology but the history and present situation of the Belfast people he writes about have too often been  a matter of possession of power, wealth, military bases and in the struggle either for or against this too many people have been hurt. Historians often deal with facts other than  real people suffering the real pain of being pitted against each other whether they  want it or not. In N.Ireland there are   people of perhaps sixty different religious groups and yet they have been successfully corralled by politicians  into two groups Catholic and Protestant, as if the disparate Christian groups did not exist, nor did the Jews, Muslims Humanists and others in N.Irish society.

This book by Bill Meulemans will help  readers to understand the effect this has had on the people who have never been allowed to experience the richness of a fully free community.

BELFAST – BOTH SIDES NOW , Bill Meulemans, (Create Space, Charleston, SC. 2013)

Shadows

It is probably the most intense, best researched and  most revelatory book about how governments do the subversive things they want nobody to know about.  

It’s the book Understanding Shadows,The Corrupt Use of Intelligence”  by Michael Quilligan (Clarity Press Inc. Atlanta,Georgia, 2013.

Michael Quilligan is a journalist born in Dublin, long time resident in Holland, expert and much published writer on what governments do with information and what lessons they consistently refuse to learn. And what decencies they violate.

Readers will first  turn to those parts of it that satisfy their particular interests  or curiosity - what really  happened in Ireland, whose interests were served by Kennedy’s assassination, what  lies were told by the Blair administration in its frantic determination to have its very own war, and by what alliances was it ensured that it would be very difficult to have any  war now without the  United States administration either causing or  manipulating it?

To answer these questions, or rather in our  intellectually polluted world , to see more clearly with  the real problems lie Michael Quilligan has devoted years of research in which he shows that intrigue is a matter of everyday governance, not a sudden outbreak of a few people,s bravado, or villainy. Dishonest use of nearly everything is a normal method of government. Dishonest , cynical or cruel use of knowledge is among governments’ greatest sins.

Some might think in such a  world where politicians like Mr Blair are  not politely refused admission to membership of a  Church but rather are welcomed , arms and all, by a Pope, many people would be aghast and would say so, but the success of governmental dishonesty is made possible by the silence of others which implies consent. The pollution of knowledge , or as here , the Corruption of Intelligence, is consented to and therefore thrives in all the countries which have most influence on our lives, the United States of America, Britain, France for example. What Michael Quilligan is doing is revealing the mechanics of where how and by whom it is done.

In Ireland it took a long time to convince even those who were sceptical of British government intentions that the war being waged there was as dirty as it really was. Even yet many people either do not believe it or refuse to discuss whether it was or not. Our world may seem to fall apart when we learn that the  assassin  paid or given immunity for assassinating is really an “unofficial” branch of one’s  own police force through whose falsely labelled activities  governments can claim it was not involved in killing its enemies or even its fellow citizens. But that  is only part of what the corrupt use of intelligence has been about. This book deals  with the rest of it as well in so far as the diligent and honest researcher can manage it. 

For those who want to know in detail how governments create, foster and fight both sides in crises , Understanding Shadows should be read and we should be thankful for it. There are many crimes but one of the greatest is the corruption of knowledge, a sin which some enlightened theologians believe is the only sin named by Jesus Christ as the unforgiveable.

Readers who like sampling a chapter or two to find out whether the author is thorough and informed would do well to select  the chapter Without Grace or Favour . In it they will meet the enigma of people who being good do  what is bad, and how an institution can hang  much materialistic policy on the twin spikes of hidden information and false information and how political and financial interests may be served thereby.

Having done that,  readers will probably peruse  the rest of the book with increasing determination to start their every study of government with the presumption they may well be  telling lies.

No Brainer

The release of 1984  official papers in London shows that an Irish politician said , presumably to somebody who seemed to matter, that I “was the brains behind the republican movement”.

I was flattered by anyone thinking I had either the brains or the ability to be any such thing, but  the statement is nonsense.

If I had received an invitation  to write speeches for Gerry Adams as this politician asserted, I would have been flattered by that request also, and would have responded with the same courtesy as Gerry Adams has always shown  me. But being aware of both the literary and the political abilities of Gerry Adams I  know  that my contribution would have been not only pedestrian and unhelpful but unnecessary.

However, a serious aspect of this assertion is that it is one of many  made to governments in Dublin and London through the years some of which were  nonsense. We know of some of them, there must have been many we don’t know about. The result of such stuff must be that these governments are willingly fed with misinformation which can only hinder those who are looking for rational solutions to problems. The damage done if this means a war is lengthened, must be considered when one is considering the contribution, responsible or otherwise, of those who made the assertions. And their motive for doing it. Another important aspect of the matter is that a simple phone call could have shown how nonsensical and false the statement about the brains was.

Interestingly, a statement of much the same kind was made at, I believe, much the same time by another person, this time a journalist whose sympathies would be rather different from those of the Irish politician  mentioned above. The fact that Dublin and government officials and such people accepted statements of such a character is one of the most frightening things about what they did during the years when people were suffering in Ireland’s northeast. The responsibility  of Irish and British officials both here and abroad for  the lengthening of the conflict in Ireland has yet to be examined , probably because no-one is willing to take the risk of showing what really happened. The idea that nothing good can come from a certain class, or a certain person or party is very much alive in politics , so the official line has to be  that if a good speech is produced it must be a ghost writer who wrote it and if  votes are obtained in elections, it is all due to  impersonation. It used to be said that until poets and other writers took an interest in modern republicanism it would be second class. Then the poets and writers and  artists  did , and suddenly it did not matter any more. It was an interesting reminder that the tactic is as old as the hills – remember the question in the Christian Gospel, can any good thing come from Nazareth?

Spying

Governments always spy. They have traditionally used  , among others ,  ambassadors  and business people  as spies, even though they were guests in other peoples’ countries. The excuse is that everybody does it and therefore….Which in  turn means that their morality is governed by business and politics ( which often is another name for business).

What still surprises us though is the amount of spying governments do. Not content with scraping in  rubbish bins on the ground, they send spies into space. And the result  is sixty million emails spied on per month in one country alone. What other spying is done we can imagine judging by  the technology available .

However there is no  use in  throwing up hands and lamenting. After all we did bring it on ourselves. We did it by saying nothing as one invasion after another was made into our personal privacy. We did not object when the cameras went up in  hotel lobbies, in the streets, even in the washrooms. We did not object when a sacred moment in human life, the moment of birth  began to be  portrayed in television  programmes not to show the sacredness of it but to give a thrill to watchers  of soap operas. There were  a few shudders of apprehensiveness when we saw the first portrayal of someone in  a  confessional box, another of those private moments in life which somebody decided should be private no longer, thus causing us no surprise when the spies bugged the boxes.

There seemed to be a grim determination  to seek out and destroy every moment which  centuries of  human delicacy  had  declared sacred,  to eliminate privacy and the  dignity of having one’s own space. We allowed it all to be invaded. And said nothing

We were told, of course , If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear. Nonsense. Those who do nothing wrong probably have more to fear than anyone  else.  

Nobody seems to see the connection between the depersonalising of soldiers by giving them no privacy even in the privy – a strange perversion – and having them watched and noted and recorded on their own  approach to  warehouse, witness box or washroom. We did not object to  millions being able to  zoom in to the exact spot where we lived, did not wonder why we should allow this to be done on  us,  or on a villager in Afghanistan seconds before the drones explode. But then we did not object when the technological advance of splitting the atom  was used to eliminate Hiroshima. Now we have allowed the president of a country  to use our technology – our technology – to enable  his henchmen – and  henchwomen , sad to say – to eliminate someone thousands of miles away whom the  droning president has decided without trial is an enemy of his state. Is it really possible for the  United States of America to  stay united in their  desire to let  this abomination  continue ?

Yes, it is.  Until eventually  the united states  disintegrate just as every empire on the face of the earth disintegrates. To forecast that disintegration , or to wish it for the world’s safety is not being un-American.  It is being so pro-American as to believe that no Washington government for decades has been worthy of the American people.

When Mr Obama was elected we all hoped  the  people would have  a  renewed life in which what we called the American dream would be fulfilled for everybody.  

Our thoughts  are different now. More modest . Thoughts about  curbing this  lust for power rather than  giving more authority to the same people for more of the same.

With a mixture of horror and hope we remember the childhood fable of the Frog that proudly swelled  up so much  that………………..